Taste and classes
I've recently become addicted to ABC I-view (for those not in the know, the ABC is Australia's public broadcaster, more her http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Broadcasting_Corporation nd Iview is where you can catch up on episodes online), watching all sorts of fascinating things from cooking shows (some with a political bent, some just purely cooking) to slightly ridiculous comedies and now moving on up to my first documentary. The latest show that I'm obsessed with is Grayson Perry's All in the Best Possible Taste (only available in on Iview in Australia unfortunately), in which he looks at how class differences define or at least inspire our personal taste.
While the exploration of working class taste was quite interesting, mostly because it was quite foreign to me (and the point that Grayson made that we go to Africa to see different tribes when right in your own backyard there's a whole group of people who live their lives in a vastly different way and yet we judge that), the segment on middle class taste rather struck home, at least to the extent that it can, given that Australia and the UK are quite different (even though you might say that the dominant "culture" here still comes from our British/English convict past). From my limited knowledge of Britain (mostly gained from TV, books and a very short couple of visits), there is a much stronger class divide there. The show has stuck mostly to the Anglo-saxon world too which means that my personal experience, as a daughter of migrants (technically I am one myself, but as I came here as a baby, it hardly seems right to call myself one) is not quite the same. But I'm a big believer in links between people, rather than differences. I know other people who are obsessed with individuality and hate, hate, hate generalisations. But you make them because it makes the world a little bit easier to understand. Everyone is different, and yet somehow, we're a little bit the same. And it's funny because one thing that Grayson Perry discovered was that there is a whole "tribe" of middle-class people who are obsessed with being individuals and expressing their own individuality in their personal taste choices. So it's not even individualistic to be an individual.
Fascinating. The no longer so recent explosion of reality television is I suppose just another example of people's interests in seeing how other people live. Shows where we can compare ourselves and somehow justify our own lives, make ourselves feel good. While I enjoy fictional TV shows and the somewhat real yet unreal scenarios that they create, I love the feeling of reality that hovers over reality TV. I know it's people put into an unreal situation, but they are still real people. It's real what you see, even if they wouldn't do those things without a camera. But that's people, what you do when you think people are watching and what you do when you think people aren't watching are very different things.
Two thumbs up for this show. Also, his tapestries are incredible. I'm completely jealous of his artistic abilities and would love to create something so amazing but unfortunately I am very lazy.
While the exploration of working class taste was quite interesting, mostly because it was quite foreign to me (and the point that Grayson made that we go to Africa to see different tribes when right in your own backyard there's a whole group of people who live their lives in a vastly different way and yet we judge that), the segment on middle class taste rather struck home, at least to the extent that it can, given that Australia and the UK are quite different (even though you might say that the dominant "culture" here still comes from our British/English convict past). From my limited knowledge of Britain (mostly gained from TV, books and a very short couple of visits), there is a much stronger class divide there. The show has stuck mostly to the Anglo-saxon world too which means that my personal experience, as a daughter of migrants (technically I am one myself, but as I came here as a baby, it hardly seems right to call myself one) is not quite the same. But I'm a big believer in links between people, rather than differences. I know other people who are obsessed with individuality and hate, hate, hate generalisations. But you make them because it makes the world a little bit easier to understand. Everyone is different, and yet somehow, we're a little bit the same. And it's funny because one thing that Grayson Perry discovered was that there is a whole "tribe" of middle-class people who are obsessed with being individuals and expressing their own individuality in their personal taste choices. So it's not even individualistic to be an individual.
Fascinating. The no longer so recent explosion of reality television is I suppose just another example of people's interests in seeing how other people live. Shows where we can compare ourselves and somehow justify our own lives, make ourselves feel good. While I enjoy fictional TV shows and the somewhat real yet unreal scenarios that they create, I love the feeling of reality that hovers over reality TV. I know it's people put into an unreal situation, but they are still real people. It's real what you see, even if they wouldn't do those things without a camera. But that's people, what you do when you think people are watching and what you do when you think people aren't watching are very different things.
Two thumbs up for this show. Also, his tapestries are incredible. I'm completely jealous of his artistic abilities and would love to create something so amazing but unfortunately I am very lazy.