Tribal Totems

[poliphilo]

There was this chap on a panel show who couldn't (or pretended he couldn't) recognise the finalists in this year's Great British Bake Off. Diane Abbott (who gets to be on every panel show going these days) was indignant. "But you ought to know that!" she said.

Question: Is "ought" the right word. Are there certain developments in popular culture that one is morally bound to be aware of?

Well, obviously not.  Ignorance is no crime. On the other hand full participation in any community does rather require one to keep abreast of certain things that are going on in its culture. Corrie, Eastenders, Dr Who, Strictly, Dad's Army- knowing about these shows- even if you deplore them- is part of the freemasonry of being British. They're the esoterica we've been initiated into and foreigners mostly haven't.  They bind us together.  And the people who appear in them rank among our tribal totems.  If I were to post a picture of Sir Bruce Forsyth here- which- perish the thought- I have no intention of doing- I'd expect every Brit on my friend's list to recognise him and every non-Brit (apart from one or two extreme Anglophiles) to go, "Who on earth is that weasel?"

Personally, I can't  see the point of Bake Off,  but I know who Nadiya Hussain is. I sort of feel it's my duty. "England expects..." and all that. 

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I would recognise the winner of Bake Off, because I saw the announcements about her winning, but I wouldn't know any of the other competitors. Now if you were to ask me about current British detective series, on the other hand, or about what is going on in the Archers, I would know. :)

I think it's not just popular music that's all got much more fragmented, there is just so much popular culture these days and so much choice that, as you say, keeping up with it all would be a full time job so one tends to have one's own little niche.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't recognise the other contestants either, but Nadiya has transcended the show and become a national figure- a process that began long before she was announced as the winner.

My parents used to listen to the Archers when I was a kid and I'm afraid I learned to hate it; it was just people with funny West Country accents wittering on about boring grown-up stuff. Whatever spark it had died with Walter Gabriel.