Get cultured, fool

By Mark Costello
Collegian Editor
September 13, 2006

Welcome back to another week of commentary goodness, my friends and fellow experiential partners in the human condition. My writers and I will wax lackadaisical this week in declaring that we have pet causes that you, the reader, ought to care about. Indeed, we care about stuff, and so should you. Practicing what I preach, I declare my raison d’être: ensuring the long life of culture, also known as perpetuating a crusade against bad taste. My attack on the detractors of all things positive, the denizens dedicated to the destruction of delightful distractions from life’s more deadly doldrums, is divided into three departments: film, music and literature.

“Did you see that movie?” asked my friend after seeing Snakes on a Plane. Treading the fine line between cultural edification and flat-out rudeness, I attempt to explain to him that my leisurely hours are wiled away in a less horrific way and that I try to keep my brain occupied rather than shutting it down completely and totally for three or four hours at a time. My attempt at an egalitarian response fails, and I alienate yet another one of my friends with my high snobbery in regards to films and culture, but come now. We’re young, my friends, and before us extends a long line of great film to be seen. Every moment you spend watching Bring it On, which has its own charm, don’t get me wrong, could be spent watching, dissecting and discussing Casablanca.

“But, Mark!” you cry. “I don’t like those movies!” Well, my friends, that’s your problem. Think of it as taking a necessary, but unpleasant, class in your major, then. You might not like it, but at least when you’re done, you can intelligently discuss why you hated it.

And then there are the horrors that are my friends’ musical tastes. I don’t need to hear thinly veiled sexual euphemisms pouring out of Fergie’s mouth. Frankly, that is not the London Bridge song I grew up with, thank you very much. Real music has string or brass instruments and at least an attempt at vocal talent to accompany. Most of what people call rap or R&B is an attempt at freestyle poetry set to a beat box, which has its place in the realm of free speech, but stop besmirching the good name of music by claiming that’s what Eminem or whoever is popular right now makes. I’m not “hip.”

What are my friends thinking when they enter their local Borders or Barnes & Nobles? “Surely, I can find a stack of expensive books that will make Mark so ballistic when he sees them. Right past the literature section will I walk, straight past the fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and classics... Theater? Heavens no, I can’t make heads or tails of the stage directions! Ah ha! Here’s what I’m looking for. Yes, clerk, I’ll take all of the Shopaholic books. Add The Perks of Being a Wallflower while you’re at it. That’s a good chap.” For the love of all that is holy, read all the worthwhile things before turning to pop fiction. Granted, pop fiction has its place, and I am an avid fan of certain pop fiction lines, but how can someone justify reading The Da Vinci Code without having read The Crying of Lot 49, which is the textbook on conspiracy fiction?

I care about refined culture, and so should you. The society that loses its culture, loses its literacy, is the society that quickly falls to shambles. We’re halfway there as it is, so, c’mon. Read a book. It’ll do a culture good.

costellom4@lasalle.edu