Heuristic cultural question

[muckefuck]

I'm not sure quite what I'm asking, so please bear with me. The recently flurry of entries about regional stereotypes (Digression: Now that's my kind of meme! Not the same dull list of questions propagating from blog to blog but a discussion that causes each person to ponder the same issues but post about different aspects of them) got me thinking about local culture and sparked the question:

Who do you think of as your culture-bearers?

Of course, this already begs many more questions, most significantly what constitutes "culture". The arts, particularly performance, come immediately to mind, but foodways or even modes of thought certainly qualify as well. Even a person who simply embodies a particular mindset that seems locally prevelant might fit the bill.

I admit, when it comes to my own background, I'm kind of stumped. Mark Twain was born only a few miles away from where I once lived, but I don't read his works to learn about my culture as much as to get a taste for one that preceded it. None of the modern writers I've read has given me the experience of thinking, "This is it; these are the people I belong to (or came from)"; the closest I've come is the petit-bourgeois northern German family described in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks.

But I feel I've already said to much to prejudice the question. Don't rely on my interpretation; take it however you will.

Comments

[felipemcguire.livejournal.com]

Robert A. Heinlein.

Not perfect...but as close as I've come among real people...

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

speaking purely about MY local culture -

Carole Pope, the two fat ladies, Andrea Dworkin, Mary Daly, Judy Chicago, AA Bronson, Evergon, my grandmother, Balla Demeter, Endre Kertész, Mapplethorpe, Margaret Atwood, Gordon Lightfoot, Rick Bébout, Jane Rule ...

but is that what you're after?

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

and how could I forget. Joe Gage, Al Parker, Richard Locke.

[febrile.livejournal.com]

I know for a fact that I'm flattering myself terribly, but...

...I'd say a strange cross between Oscar Wilde and Woody Guthrie.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I must not be understanding this - how is it self-flattery to acknowledge people who conveyed culture to you?

[febrile.livejournal.com]

I may perhaps be interpreting the question too narrowly.

I was trying to take it from the perspective of regional self-identification, and was attempting to marry my Yorkshireman grandfather and librarian mother (Wilde) with my Okie roots (Guthrie). If the question was simply meant as "What cultural figures do you like," it would yield a bigger list and different discussion.

I think it is self-flattery in a sense to list either of those gentlemen because it seems to impart a certain similarity, and I've not the genius of either of them.

That said, I will amend my list and also add Thomas Jefferson into the stirabout. Again, it feels self-flattering to mention him as well.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I would think it was an act of honouring the people who were influential in your life, and giving credit where it's due. But again maybe I'm not getting the idea.

[febrile.livejournal.com]

Again, if it were a simple matter of which cultural figures I like, I think it would be different. But by answering the question, "Who are *my* culture-bearers," it somehow feels like 1) I am claiming a greater ownership of them than others (non-Anglophile, non-Okie, non-American) can, and 2) like I'm insinuating a similarity to them, which my caveat had meant to acknowledge.

I did not list Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, Dante Alighieri, etc., because I don't feel I have a regional/ethnic link to them. But really, do Italians own Dante more than Oklahomans?

[felipemcguire.livejournal.com]

See...already the conversation has gotten interesting...

I guess for me, my environment and background have little to do with what I perceive as 'MY' culture.

In fact, I didn't even post about 'MY' culture as I perceive it, rather as a representation of the kind of culture I would LIKE to live in.

But then, I have always had difficulty identifying with the 'culture' I perceive...kinda makes my skin crawl to be honest.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Ah OK I see what you mean now - it implies that you've done great things in the tradition of these great people.

I guess my take on it is that everyon has culture of some kind and it had to come from somewhere. Which is why I'm curious that people don't list family members, usually the primary source of cultural info.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I think that might have something to do with recognisability. It's like if someone asks you what "type" you're into, you're far more likely to list "Brian Dennehy" than "my sister's high-school science teacher", even if the latter represents a far closer approximation of your ideal. No one who didn't grow up with you (or your sister) is going to know who the latter is, whereas there's a good chance anyone you're talking to might have seen the former on t.v. or in a movie.

Obviously, I'm more culturally influenced by my mom than by Lisa Birnbaum or They Might Be Giants, but just saying "my mom" won't say anything to someone who hasn't met her.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

So what this is about, is communicating to other people what culture you're part of, by way of a third part referent. Or maybe it's an analogy or even a metaphor.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

My culture? The Pixies and REM and Tom Robbins and Douglas Adams and Annie Liebovitz. Not that they're my favorite anythings, in particular, but they seem like cultural touchstones to me.

[humpingbears.livejournal.com]

Wow, excellent question...

I'm making this more about the culture of my family, the culture in which I was raised, and the culture I feel I live in now.

Ummmmmm, stir together Charles Wesley, Bob Dylan, Katherine Graham, Earl Scruggs, Robert E. Lee, Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Blount, Jr., Jimmy Carter, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Anne Richards. Add a dash of Andy Warhol, and a hair of Ad Rheinhardt.

I, too, have just flattered myself to no end.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Ingri D'Aulaire, my piano teacher Joel Dobkin, CS Lewis, my great-grandmother, my paternal grandparents and maternal grandmother, George Lucas.

I HATE to give Lucas credit for anything, no matter how much Star Wars informed my mindset as a child. And so much of much culture came from oral histories, especially of my father's family.

(NB to humpingbears: I'm very proud to say that I am Robert E. Lee's 3-greats niece.)

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

... so much of MY culture ...

[humpingbears.livejournal.com]

That's pretty great. I am related to him in no way whatsoever, but I grew up in Chattanooga, TN, in a part of town literally littered with Civil War cannons and monuments, and he just seemed to be an appropriate part of my heritage to list. My dad's side of the family is all from East Tennessee, and though very few of them were actually supporters of the Confederacy, Lee's style of life is, I think, very emblematic of much of my family at that time. There is a lot of "Old South" in my heritage.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Have you read Harry Turtledove's alternate history series that begins with The Guns of the South? (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345384687/qid=1111083099/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-9149081-9749518?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) My Nunca Bob E Lee is a really appealing character in it.

Sometimes I complain about how southerners still go on and on about The Wawuh, but it IS some compelling history. Lee is fascinating to me not just as a sideways ancestor but also because of the choices he made, fighting for the Confederacy because he felt himself to be more of a Virginian than a USonian in particular, despite his abolitionist tendencies.

[humpingbears.livejournal.com]

I have not read that, but it sounds intriguing.

And for the record, I know very few Southerners who go on and on about the war, even though I think it has done more to shape Southern culture than any other period in out history.

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Vanna White. Cult of mindless youth, beauty and easy riches.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

Actual culture: Doug Liman, Douglas Coupland, Kevin Smith
Aspirational culture: Dean Martin, Robert Benchley, Robin D. Laws