Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
So I’ve been working all day and just noticed the time – less than 20 minutes to Medium Cool.
With no topic in mind, I googled “culture” hoping that it would spark something. The first thing I have to say is that AI has totally fucked up Google and the ability to find good information from an internet search. The second thing I’ll say is that AI is doesn’t even get grammar or sentence structure and clearly doesn’t understand the concept of counting, so I think we are doomed.
Here’s a smattering of what came up:
- What are the 7 popular culture?
- What are the big five culture?
- What is culture 3 examples? (they listed 4 things)
- What are 3 American cultures? (they listed 4)
- What is a non example of culture? (WTF?)
Anyway, the “3 American cultures” answer – Indigenous Americans, Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians (yes that’s 4!) – sparked a thought and left me wondering whether a discussion of how various cultures have influenced us might be interesting. I guess we’ll find out! The list above is not intended to limit the discussion to those listed.
Music is one place where other cultures have had a huge influence, but there are a million more. Beauty is another. Family. Language. Art. Food. Values. Traditions. I could go on, but I won’t because it’s 6:55. :-)
and oh my gosh, could someone somewhere please come up with a good image for culture. because these are not that.
In case you are new to Medium Cool, these are not open threads.
Tim C
So, I teach AP Human Geography and we do a whole unit on culture. The only thing I would chime in on is that on the lower row of images, second from left, that’s a decent academic breakdown of the different aspects of culture.
On the other hand, yep. AI is trash and kids are idiots for trying to use it to do school work.
Chetan Murthy
Here’s a thesis (and it is mine): the only real cultures are those of poor people. In the US, that means indigenous peoples, and those immigrants (whether voluntary or not) who somehow got crushed. So, slaves, Acadians, maybe a few others (probably Appalachian poor whites count). The middle-and-on-up classes can partake of those cultures, but they are not the -repositories- of those cultures.
My only evidence is that all the real cuisines and arts in America come from poor people
ETA: I guess immigrants can bring their culture here, but even then, “the good stuff” is all due to the poorer immigrants.
Wapiti
I have a theory, and it is mine, is that people of different cultures can often find that they have things in common if they are open to new things.
I had a co-worker staying at my house for a couple of weeks. Rural upbringing, big into hunting, etc. So I said, hey, do you like chili? Like hot chili? “Sure” ever had Indian food? “Uh… no?” So I took him to an Indian place, had him try a curry. Pointed him at the lime pickles they served on the side. Got lamb jalfrezi myself, because that’s what I wanted. Yeah, chili and curry aren’t quite the same thing, but they’re more similar than they are different. He was a good sport about it, thanked me for the experience.
Samosas and empanadas and hand pies. Same thing, all over the world.
arrieve
This is almost too big a topic…and yet.
I teach English to immigrants and include things about American history and culture in the lessons, because language is only part of what they need to learn to live here. I teach idioms and play songs and show clips from old TV shows, and some of our best discussions come from when a student brings an example of a word or expression they don’t understand. (One example: a student got a reply to a text that said only “Ditto.” We ended up watching part of the movie “Ghost.”)
Culture in this sense is much more fragmented than it used to be. I don’t get a lot of the references anymore! But I teach what I can.
JanieM
WaterGirl:
This site has allowed me to see Google results more or less as of yore, with no AI bullshit in sight. I followed the instructions for both Firefox and Chrome several weeks ago and have had no problems so far. (It might even have been someone in comments here who linked to the site, but I’m pretty sure it was just, ironically, one of the results of a Google search.) I haven’t tried it on my phone since I don’t do enough internet-ing on my phone to bother.
tam1MI
Don’t have much to add here except to say that, if you can find these books, the “Jewish Trilogy” by Stephen Birmingham – THE GRANDEES, OUR CROWD, and THE REST OF US – are a fascinating study of the 3 great waves of Jewish immigration into the US and their impact on American culture.
scav
Like it or not, all us bipeds got culture. Even the ones you don’t like.
For the illustration, for some reason I prefer the microbial, but I’m off-plumb (but not off puns).
Suzanne
This is an interesting idea, about what makes culture. Churchill said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,” and I think about that a lot. With respect to architecture, we’re in a period in which most normies dislike the contemporary styles. I often wonder if that has always been the case, if everyone always preferred what came 50-75 years before.
But buildings, and most other constructions, are responding to cultural forces, as well as constraints. It would be discordant to build a Greek temple in, say, Austin, Texas.
Yet Another Haldane
Suggested image for “culture:”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/npmeijer/9696950969/
Image search says it’s free (CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDivs).
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: I have to ask: don’t most people also dislike the Brutalist style that was prevalent from the 50s to ….. not sure when, but I’d guess the early 80s ? I can’t recall anybody defending it except people whose business it is to preserve buildings ?
I’m just a civilian, so maybe I’m mistaken.
Nukular Biskits
Does redneck culture count as “culture”?
bbleh
Regular PSA: look up appending “udm=14” to your search queries; it gets rid of the AI, the ads, and other crap.
Chetan Murthy
@Nukular Biskits: I would think that the -authentic- redneck culture does. I mean, Appalachia has a distinct musical culture, no? I don’t know about food.
Suzanne
@Chetan Murthy: Sure, probably most people dislike it. Like every other style, there’s a few great examples and then a lot of meh.
Nukular Biskits
@Chetan Murthy:
I said that to be a wise-ass but “culture” is a very wide-ranging and, IMHO, a very subjective term, with both positive and negative connotations.
Even though, as Elton John said in “Honky Cat”:
Well, I quit those days and my redneck ways
And, mmhm-hm-hm, oh, change is gonna do me good
there are still fond memories of certain times. Not all of them, but some.
Chetan Murthy
@bbleh: sigh, I’ve had that set since forever, and it doesn’t seen to take effect. Set that “site search” entry as the default search engine, no joy.
billcinsd
@Chetan Murthy: Aren’t most hoi polloi cultural things, stuff that started with the elite, filtered down to the hoi polloi and then got dropped by the elite? Then, some of the hoi polloi emigrated, etc., and their culture merged with the new area. Until recently, I think it was somewhat rare for the elite to emigrate from where they had it good
Marc
Sadly, Google didn’t need AI to fuck up internet search. They did it the old way, manually tweaking the algorithms until they maximized advertising revenue. I actually find the AI summaries useful as they usually bypass all the crap that is intended to increase advertising clicks and provide direct links to the truly useful sources. Google will fix that eventually.
Chetan Murthy
@billcinsd: I don’t know about that: my understanding is that all the really good food in America was invented by poor/enslaved people. And in France, i was always told that the good stuff was all French country cooking, that the haute cuisine was almost always refinements of what was invented and continued to be cooked in the countryside.
Certainly all the good Texas food was invented by poor people, most of it by poor Mexicans
ETA: OK, except for chili and BBQ. But all the tex-mex …..
Timill
@Suzanne:
How about in Nashville?
Snarki, child of Loki
Google, and it’s ad-pushing and AI nonsense, has resulting in me moving ALL internet search (browsers, phone) to DuckDuckGo.
If DuckDuckGo does something similar, I’ll have to check if AltaVista still exists. Enshittification.
zhena gogolia
@Marc: Yeah, I now sometimes use the summary to get where I really want to go.
Nukular Biskits
@Snarki, child of Loki:
I wouldn’t be the first to complain about the enshittification of Google’s search engine but the past week or so, it seems to have gotten much, much worse.
When I first started cruising the intertubes, I used a search engine recommended by a fellow geek, called “Hotbot”.
Prior to posting this, I went to see if it was still a thing. It is … but it uses AI. <sigh>
Suzanne
@Timill: Yeah, uber-tacky. LOL.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Timill:
In contrast to, say, Las Vegas.
[P.S., I have been thinking lately about the fact that we live in an almost completely built environment. Even outside cities. Almost everything you see was put there by someone.]
Suzanne
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah, I’ve made that observation, too…. lots of posh things started as peasant food or street food.
Which…. PUT THEM IN MY MOUF YUM.
Chetan Murthy
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I look at it this way: every American who goes to Vegas to see the “Eiffel Tower” is one fewer mouth-breathing American who’ll go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. That’s a win for France.
Marc
It’s funny how “AI” has turned into a cultural thing. We’re being told that only the “best and brightest” minds can understand it, that it takes capitalization to implement of magnitudes impenetrable to all except the masters of the universe, and that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be here to save us in just a few years.
All lies, of course. What they’re really trying to do is build “God.” Not a God that will rule them, of course, but a God that will rule the rest of us by implementing their notion of what is right and true. Maybe it should be called “Apartheid Technocracy.”
In reality, “AI” is just a tool that can be used in various ways, not all deceitful. Unilateral disarmament, in this case, is a bad idea.
Suzanne
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Funny you mention. Learning From Las Vegas is one of the most important books about architecture ever.
Harrison Wesley
So when we hear the word “culture” we reach for our AI?
Nukular Biskits
@Harrison Wesley:
That’s probably partly my fault for derailing the conversation about culture.
Mea maxima culpa <stated with a Southern twang>
Steve LaBonne
@Mr. Bemused Senior: You know about the Parthenon in Nashville? Edit: Oops, Timill beat me to it.
frosty
And yet, banks and government buildings everywhere in the US look like Greek temples. When we see columns and piastres (right word?) we think BANK.
Marc
@Harrison Wesley: I’m arguing that we’re intentionally being pushed toward an AI-controlled culture, whether we like it or not. If we care enough to prevent that, the same tools will need to be used against them. I’m not suggesting generating more AI slop, just that the tools can also augment ones ability to organize, track executive orders, court cases, expenditures, hirings/firings, use some imagination…
WaterGirl
@JanieM: That’s awesome!
I use Safari and it’s not on the list, though. :-9
WaterGirl
@Yet Another Haldane: A different kind of culture!
WaterGirl
@Nukular Biskits: Pretty sure the answer is yes.
They Call Me Noni
@Chetan Murthy: And I would surmise that their culture is a result of having to be so creative with little resources.
WaterGirl
@bbleh:
I just tried that. Previously I had googled “culture examples” so I tried “culture examples udm=14” and the first thing I got was AI.
Did i misunderstand the instructions?
Chetan Murthy
@They Call Me Noni: -Absolutely-. I remember visiting Prague in 1994; we went to “dum slovensky kultury” (house of Slovenian Culture) and it was the absolute best cabbage dish I’ve ever eaten in my life. B/c (haha) they had to make do with cabbage for centuries: their lords took all the meat.
RevRick
I looked up the definition of culture and learned that it comes from Middle English meaning a cultivated land.
That definition immediately cast my mind back to the words of Genesis 2, where the Lord placed the man adamah (literally man of earth) in the Garden of Eden to till and keep it.
Having made that mental connection, I thought about the Bible itself, that collection of stories, myths, laws, proverbs, songs, letters, and what Christians call the Gospels, a book that has had a singular power to shape the culture of Europe and surely ours.
Think of the Gothic cathedral, the music of Bach, literature like Moby Dick, the art of Caravaggio.
Our nation is a multiplicity of cultures, but the overarching one is the Bible. And that includes cultural responses reacting to it.
One thing about the Bible is that it itself, as it engages in dialogue with itself, is, in a real sense, a reaction to the dominating culture of imperialism.
Nukular Biskits
@WaterGirl:
You’re “pretty sure”? LOL
Chetan Murthy
@WaterGirl: Ha! Prompted by your question, I tried it several different ways, and now I know what works for me. So:
(0) first, the “udm=14” has to be attached to the URL, not to the query itself.
(1) when I type “culture examples” into the URL bar, I get “udm=14” attached to the URL [not the query], and this is as should happen (b/c I have that set in my Chrome settings) [I’m using Chrome on Linux]
(2) when I use voice search, I DO NOT get that “udm=14” attached
(3) In either case, the page that pops up has a text-box with “culture examples” in it; if I go to that box and hit RETURN in it, the resulting search does NOT have “udm=14” appended.
So #1 works (to rid me of that damn AI), but #2, #3 do not.
They Call Me Noni
@Steve LaBonne: Or the pyramid in Memphis.
WaterGirl
@RevRick: When you say the Bible, do you mean Christian bible? Or is that like calling tissues “Kleenex” even though we don’t mean any specific brand?
Or in this case, any specific religion.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@WaterGirl: Here is an example link: https://www.google.com/search?q=culture+examples&oq=culture+examples&udm=14
Suzanne
@frosty: Most banks and government buildings in the U.S. haven’t been built to look like Greek temples for probably 50-60 years. Neoclassical was definitely a thing, but in most locales, the thinking is that design of a public building should honor the best of contemporary culture.
lowtechcyclist
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Rusty
Ethnicity is culturally based. I was reading recently about being white as the negative ethnicity. It is defined by what its not, black, Hispanic, Italian, and so on. In the reading it pointed this out as a problem, being the hole in the donut leaves you with nothing positive, and so white supremacy fills the emptiness.
Marc
Now we have sophisticated algorithms to generate messages (based on the Bible or whatever else applies) and pass them to groups of similar individuals in an effort to change their behavior. AI allows that messaging to be targeted at each specific individual. That creates culture, but not in the sense that we normally think of it.
RevRick
@WaterGirl: I mean the Christian Bible.
Now, I am here referencing how it has shaped culture and cultures around the world.
I am not making truth claims about it here, because one of the tenets of my Reformed Church (Calvinist) tradition is that in matters of conscience “neither prince nor priest nor thrall” has any right to dictate what you believe or don’t believe.
RevRick
@lowtechcyclist: Funny how white people are erased. Is that because they are the default culture, and all the rest are cultures trying to eke out an existence?
Steve LaBonne
@They Call Me Noni: I lived for 3 years in Jackson, MS, roughly equidistant from New Orleans and Memphis.
I have never been to Memphis. ;)
Harrison Wesley
@Chetan Murthy: Eating Slovenian food in Prague? That’s kinda going out of your way….
NotMax
As for an image, in the spirit of Tom L., a couple of possibilities. #1 — #2.
WaterGirl
@Mr. Bemused Senior: But I want to type in English and not create a URL for the search. :-)
RevRick
@Suzanne: Translation: banks now try to blend in with suburban functional?
lowtechcyclist
@JanieM:
Thanks! Took just seconds to do it in Firefox.
Wonder if they’ll do it for MS Edge at some point.
Steve LaBonne
@RevRick: There are multiple European-derived cultures represented in the US (and I value my own descent from two of them, Irish and Québecois). “White” culture and identity are mirages constructed as tools of exclusion but empty of positive content.
RevRick
@Steve LaBonne: This New England boy has been to Memphis, but then I was there for a Habitat for Humanity work camp.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Definitely channeling Levenson!
Melancholy Jaques
Between 1892 when the Ellis Island immigration station opened & 1917 when it closed during the war, two of the largest groups of immigrants were Jews from Eastern Europe (mostly Russian empire) and Italians. These two groups had a tremendous impacts on American culture. Imagine our restaurants and entertainment without them.
frosty
@Suzanne: The new bank in my borough is just a contemporary cookie cutter design that ruined the the look of the main street of historic (well, OK, just old) houses. So the bank corporation didn’t pay any attention to local culture, just dropped down the same building they’d put on a pad in the parking lot of a big box mall.
Ugh. The Rutters gas station and convenience store did the same thing on a different street.
It sucks being architecturally aware!!
Nukular Biskits
@RevRick:
And, continuing with my being a wise-ass this evening:
Which one?
I need not tell you that if you were to ask 20 representatives of 20 different sects of Christian
believebelief, you’d probably get 20 different answers as to what constitutes the “correct” Christian Bible.Believe me, I’ve had plenty of lectures about how the King James version was the only REAL Bible and the NIV, for example, was “of the Devil”.
ETA: Corrected usage; i.e., “believe” to “belief”
NotMax
Someone’s gotta link to Culture Club.
:)
NotMax
@Melancholy Jaques
Also too a goodly number of Greeks.
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
Do you really want to hurt me?
Do you really want to make me cry?
RevRick
@Steve LaBonne: Alexis de Tocqueville asks, “Pourquoi?”
Suzanne
@RevRick:
Well, yes-ish. There’s two forces at work on most banks. One is that they’re mostly rental buildings built by retail developers, so they will look like the overall regional vernacular…. In Arizona, everything is that gross pale tan color with some concrete block veneer. In Pittsburgh, there’s wood trim and brick. The other is “brand standard”, which is how the corporation has design standards associated with their brand that they want expressed on the building so that it’s recognizable. Think McDonald’s mansard roof.
bbleh
@WaterGirl: @Chetan Murthy: @Mr. Bemused Senior: in my experience it USED to be enough to add that to the URL line, but now I’m finding it’s spotty at best to do that — sometimes AI-free, sometimes not — and the online advice is to define a new default search engine that’s Google with the suffix added automatically.
Bit of a pain, but worth it in the long run imo.
Suzanne
@frosty:
Yeah barf.
pajaro
In classical music, the appropriation of musical ideas goes in both directions. There are ideas that classical composers have come up with that have been lifted by popular composers for wildly famous popular musical scores. if you listen to Gustav Holst’s tone poem The Planets, you can hear musical ideas that were lifted decades later by John Williams in a number of his Star Wars themes, as well as by Emerson, Lake and Palmer in some of their rock anthems.
My favorite example of appropriation in the other direction is Antonin Dvorak, the Bohemian composer who used folk tuns from his native land repeatedly in his compositions. Relatively late in life he came to the US, and worked and lived here for a few years. He was incredibly taken with some African American spirituals, and he used one as the theme for the beautiful second movement of his Symphony Number 9, which he titled as “From the New World.” Before he left, he wrote an article urging American classical composers to pay more attention to African American music, rather than trying to imitate European composers, if they wanted to produce an authentically American sound.
Sure Lurkalot
@JanieM: In regard to Google search, here’s a link to a podcast hosted by Cory Doctorow outlining how Google’s original search engine worked so well that they purposely broke it to monetize it.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/understood-who-broke-the-internet/id1673817105?i=1000706331015
A cautionary tale of the culture of capitalism …how the allure of too much money outshines the pursuit of excellence.
Chetan Murthy
Or as we used to call him back in the 80s when we were in college: “A Holst emulator”.
RevRick
@Nukular Biskits: Since I am talking about the Bible as a cultural influence, I’d have to say the King James and the Vulgate. Both are problematic as translations, but many of the recent translations are, well, recent, and as far as their impact on culture, I would say meh. But I do have a copy of the Jerusalem Bible with illustrations by Salvador Dali.
lowtechcyclist
@Nukular Biskits:
None of them, technically, are ‘the’ Bible; they’re all translations of (as close as we can get to) the original documents. Of which there are usually multiple such documents, which don’t always agree, which makes life interesting.
Yeppers, heard that often myself.
Speaking of which, I’ve always been a bit perplexed by the phrase ‘of the Devil.’ ‘Of’ seems like a rather non-specific preposition. People who use this phrase – what exactly are they saying about the relationship between the Devil and whatever they’re saying is ‘of’ the Devil?
It’s been a bit more than half a century since I first heard that phrase, and back then I never could get a very clear answer. And in more recent years I haven’t been around people who use it, so nobody to ask.
Nukular Biskits
@RevRick:
Holy Cow (pun intended)! The things I learn here! I had no idea such a thing existed! I’d love to see that.
In all seriousness, the KJV has arguably had the most impact across so many cultures, for good and bad, that it would be folly to claim otherwise.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
Always figured you were a man without conviction. ;-)
Nukular Biskits
@lowtechcyclist:
I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with the “of the Devil” phrase. I tend to avoid discussions of religion with everyone else except those who are generally seeking answers, not just looking to affirm their own beliefs.
Going back to Watergirl’s original theme for this post, I submit that dogmaticists (sp?) are probably a culture unto their own.
Steve LaBonne
@Nukular Biskits: As an atheist and UU I have very little use in a religious sense for the miscellaneous and politically compiled anthology of ancient writings known as “the Bible”. But from a literary standpoint the influence of the KJV on literature in the English language has been enormous and some acquaintance with it is important for that reason only.
lowtechcyclist
@RevRick:
Didn’t know there was such a thing. I want!!
Speaking of interesting Bible illustrations, R. Crumb illustrated the book of Genesis. I love it.
JanieM
@Sure Lurkalot: Thanks. I don’t do well with podcasts, but it looks interesting enough to try, all the more since it’s a topic I’ve been thinking about fairly obsessively lately.
Harrison Wesley
@lowtechcyclist: I used to have a copy of that as well as his illustrations of Philip Dick’s Valis. Unfortunately my Crumb collection disappeared many years ago.
randy khan
I find myself thinking about a stupid book – Cultural Literacy, which told its readers that there were things that everyone needed to know to make their way in American society and then turned around and offered lists of things people should know, whether or not the majority of the population did, because it would be better if everyone did.
Which is a roundabout way to get to something I think is apparent, which is that there’s no one American culture and there really hasn’t ever been. This is significantly different from places like Germany and France (and Japan – how could i forget Japan), even though there are subcultures in those places (particularly Japan). Here, our great cultural monuments, like jazz, are wild combinations of multiple cultural influences, but the cultures also remain distinct in many ways, sometimes through enforced separation, sometimes for other reasons.
Nukular Biskits
@Steve LaBonne:
It’s been probably close to 30 years, but there was a series of books put out by Bart Ehrman, which I considered to be a very concise, academic review & criticism of the books of the New Testament (@RevRick: Feel free to weigh in here).
Needless to say, he has been pilloried and maligned for years by conservative evangelicals for not understanding/interpreting the Bible “correctly”.
Nukular Biskits
Poor Watergirl.
She can’t ever get us to follow instructions … LOL!
NotMax
@RevRick
Mention of de Tocqueville reminded me of this.
“The citizens of the cotton States, as a whole, are poor. They work little, and that little, badly; they earn little, they sell little; they buy little, and they have little – very little – of the common comforts and consolations of civilized life. Their destitution is not material only; it is intellectual and it is moral … They were neither generous nor hospitable and their talk was not that of evenly courageous men.”
– Frederick Law Olmstead
.
Chetan Murthy
@randy khan: I am very willing to believe that there are multiple American cultures, but isn’t their intersection what we call “white culture” ? What I mean is, it doesn’t matter what part of America one grows up in: one can code-switch and behave white. I might go further, and say “Midwest white culture”.
At least, that’s what it seems like (I grew up in Texas).
ETA: and the reason almost all Americans can do that code-switching, is that it’s a -survival skill-. So it doesn’t matter if we identify with that culture or not: we can act as if we are part of it.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: Saw this today.
God goes to therapy.
[ snort! ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
@randy khan
Just desserts.
:)
RevRick
@lowtechcyclist: Well, you can buy a copy of the Jerusalem Bible Salvador Dali edition. It has 32 full page color illustrations. Copies of the original can go for $300+.
Craig
@They Call Me Noni: my friends played there with KISS when it was a music venue. I drove by a few years ago and apparently it’s now a Bass Pro Shop.
Citizen Dave
@Chetan Murthy:
I like your theory. But I always try to think of a contradictory example. I came up (via Google):
Yes, Miles Davis’ father, Miles Dewey Davis Jr., was indeed wealthy. He was a successful dentist, owned a large farm (including a pig farm), and had servants. Miles Davis Sr. also had a farm with horses and a lake. His father’s financial success allowed Miles Davis to grow up in a privileged environment.
RevRick
@Nukular Biskits: Blame the troublemaker for not following WaterGirl’s instructions.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
What, no entrees? Is this Doon, Dessert Planet? :D
Chetan Murthy
@Citizen Dave: Mmmmm ….. for sure, sometimes scions of wealthy or well-off or merely comfortable, will become high-performers in some culture. But invariably, that culture was invented by poor people. Jazz and The Blues were invented by Black people, and my understanding is that they have their roots in poor Black people (who were the vast, overwhelming majority until only recently).
My understanding is that almost everything that makes “Southern cooking” worth the candle, was invented or brought to these shores by slaves.
RevRick
@Another Scott: That reminds me of the Far Side. God’s finger hovering over the smite button.
Steve in the ATL
@Chetan Murthy: do you not keep dossiers on all the posters here? Weird. Anyway, Suzanne and I are both in record here as liking Brutalist architecture.
laura
ai is theft, full stop
I’m unable, try as I might, to love brutalism, but prairie style, like Louis Sullivan, all day, every day. Spare, but with all manner of craft and shine.
Chetan Murthy
@laura:
you say that like it's badlaura
@Chetan Murthy: i meant to say it like I’m bad. My bad. :~\
Chetan Murthy
@laura: *grin* I only saw the AI comment when I replied. I don’t -actually- have a beef with Brutalism; I’ve only -read- that people hate it. And, sure, I don’t find it so pretty. But then, it’s mostly an uninformed prejudice, and I don’t put much weight on my opinion in matters of architecture.
Suzanne
@Steve in the ATL: I love Brutalism, man. It’s so rad. It’s unapologetic.
I like Abstract Expressionist art, too, which I know leaves some people cold. But they both take commitment.
Kayla Rudbek
@Suzanne: Sturgeon’s Law is that 90% of everything is crap (it’s probably that most of the crap doesn’t survive that long)
prostratedragon
@pajaro:
“Through Moanin’ Pines,” Henry [Harry] Thacker Burleigh
Burleigh was a friend of Dvorak while that composer was here.
prostratedragon
@Chetan Murthy: There are folk arts, one could say, and other arts derived or elaborated from them. Some early blues music exemplfies the former, but jazz and most urban blues, whivh starts as esrly as people like Bessie Smith, is the latter.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: I think we’ve discussed Jonathan Meades Brutalism show on BBC4 (roughly an hour) before.
Some definition of Brutalism that I came across was basically functional exposed concrete, and that’s fine and some can be quite sensible and even appealing (e.g. the UCSD Geisel Library). Some of it, to me anyway, is just overbearing, heavy, lumps. (Like the really massive Nazi bunker stuff starting around 54 minutes in Meades’ video.) Yeah, it’s functional for wartime, but who wants to be around it in cities, etc.??
YMMV!! :-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Craig
@pajaro: John Williams got all up in Dvorak too. My buddy is the musical director for a symphony orchestra. I was bitching about Williams years ago to him. He just said, so what? It’s good music. People have been taking from their predecessors from Prometheus’ time. Would Beethoven been able to play without lifting some stuff from Mozart? People learn to write and play by taking from the people before them. I can appreciate Holst’s Mars, and The Imperial March. My dad took me to see the Fantasia rerelease in 1977 and Star Wars and I was a classical music dork forever, even though 4 years later I was devoted to Black Flag, Dead Kennedy’s, Circle Jerks and Moterhead. I guess I learned Opera from Looney Tunes.
NotMax
Speaking of culture, just spoke with Mom.
She went to the Metropolitan opera this weekend. Said it was the first time she heard the audience there boo. Production was a modern times adaptation of Anthony and Cleopatra composed by John Adams.
Another Scott
@Craig:
What’s Opera, Doc? (6:47)
Classic.
Best wishes,
Scott.
They Call Me Noni
@Steve LaBonne: I lived in Humboldt, TN and visited Memphis numerous times but I think the only place I’ve been in MS is Tupelo.
NotMax
@Craig
Forget what the title of the film is (1960s vintage) which credits the music to Johnny Williams.
;)
They Call Me Noni
@Craig: Saw The Judds there during their farewell tour. IIRC correctly it was the first concert held at the Pyramid and before the concert began water started running down the center aisle. Festivities were delayed for a bit but eventually the show did go on.
Jacel
@Suzanne: Stewart Brand (founder of The Whole Earth Catalog) later wrote a book called “How Buildings Learn” documenting how buildings are adapted over time for changes in cultural needs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn
mayim
@Chetan Murthy:
Michael Twitty’s book The Cooking Gene is about [among other topics] the politics of southern food. It’s an excellent read.
prostratedragon
@NotMax:
Wow. I heard part of it yesterday on the live matinee broadcast. I didn’t have the volume up much, but thought tbe reaction was basically positive.
@NotMax: John Williams regularly went by Johnny early on. That’s how he’s credited for his piano work with Mancini on the Peter Gunn tracks.
Gloria DryGarden
@Tim C: I’m trying to read the labels on your selected graphic. I think the second row farthest left may be similar. It hasn’t enough pixels, so expanding the graphics gives me only a blur, phooey
I’m quite jealous I didn’t take a course with at least a unit on culture. It seems and interdisciplinary and intersectional subject, containing cultural anthropology, religious studies, even group psychology, and involving spiritual beliefs, language ( which shapes how we view and interact with the world), values, customs, traditions, roles and relationships, expectations, as well as the more obvious food, music, art, literature, clothing, and celebrations. And perhaps even travel, seasonal migrations. No doubt each of those topics could be a separate topic for medium cool.
There are so many groupings of people, and mini cultures that go with that. Even each family may have its own traditions, inside jokes, secret phrases, that could be meaningless outside that circle. The stories told, the travels, the past, the lineages. I studied a long time with a movement teacher who was inquiring via movement experiments, who were we, underneath the layers of culture.
Also does anyone remember how in English aristocracy depicted in literature, someone could be described as cultured? Or not, and they were looked down on. There are so many layers and nuances to enculturation, and assimilation, for immigrants, and indigenous populations under pressure, yes right here, for ethnic an$ racial groups who learn to speak in code switch, between their own dialects, and whatever mainstream language is required to fit in, and be included.
This topic is so enormous, and interesting. WRT the politically compiled “Bible”, without the cultural context, so many meanings and gems of wisdom get lost. Growing up Episcopalian, the pastor would sometimes explain a passage from the books, and spell out the cultural context, which made all the difference. Some examples, eye of a needle, and words that were translated as virgen, or homosexual. Our english translations may be so far off the mark.
in my family, culture was the music we listened to and played, the Japanese art and furniture my mother had from her time on base after WWII, the Chinese and French dishes we learned to make from going to restaurants, the way we respected nature when we went camping, the art and ballet and museums we went to, the bits of foreign languages we each had acquired, the particular way we celebrated Christmas, the clothes one wore for varied events and venues.
as an exchange student, I found that my way of dressing meant one thing to me, as a self expression, but meant something entirely different to the people where I was living.
on the topic of ancient cultures, a friend found a YouTube on the Gilgamesh, and says it has certain elements and values that show up in the Bible, and have been carried into current societal or religious values.
prostratedragon
“Soft Sounds,” Henry Mancini, feat. John “Johnny” Williams, piano
Gloria DryGarden
American culture also contains people from so many tribes and countries, and lineages. Even each European country of origen has special traditions, dishes, music. Whites are not simply Heinz 57 mutt, surrounded by Asian, Latino, African and indigenous cultures. There are lots of little flavors, Ukrainian, Scottish, Irish, Italian, English, German, and so on.
Gloria DryGarden
This is so cool, to read all the topics and angles in this thread. The politics of food. The shapes of city streets, the way a building shapes our thinking, or how a building changes for our needs. The ways people create community, or solve conflicting values…
Thanks to all.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
in “Living Stereo” no less.
Much preferable to the opposite.
;)
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Yeah, that dead stuff can just slough on off.
Subsole
@Nukular Biskits:
Actual Redneck culture? Yes.
The Duck Dynasty “suburban college grad selling suburban college grads a suburban college grad’s (deeply sanitized) idea of Redneck culture because they think being refreshingly impoverished will give them some kind of trailer park street cred?”
Not so much, no.
Subsole
@lowtechcyclist:
They are saying that it is a lie put out by Satan into the world to lead you astray from the true, revealed wisdom your Pastor has imparted to you.
“Of the Devil” is basically a way of saying something is a filthy, malicious lie.
Subsole
@lowtechcyclist:
He does come and go…
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: It’s how he’s credited on the TV show “Lost in Space” (he wrote two different main themes for the show, both memorable though I think the second one is the real banger)
WaterGirl
@Nukular Biskits: That’s the beauty of Medium Cool!
I start the conversation and then it goes where it goes. :-) It’s a feature, not a bug.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: That is too funny.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: That would have been in Steeplejack’s Stasi file (as he liked to referr to it) .
randy khan
@Chetan Murthy:
As a white guy, I’m kind of uncomfortable with the term “intersection,” but maybe it’s right. White people dip into and adopt parts of other cultures all the time – the popularity of rap and other kinds of music that started in Black communities shows that – and maybe that makes it the intersection. Still, the other cultures remain distinct in important ways because white culture doesn’t accept (maybe the wrong word) them in full, and just cherry picks.
Janus Daniels
Question for any Internet artificial ‘intelligence’… “How does AI destroy cultures?”
pluky
@Citizen Dave: Ah! So now I know how Miles could afford Julliard.