Brain Droppings

[lionmandrake]

-I used to be rather proud of my Italian-American heritage. However, these days, I ponder what has happened to "my people" over the centuries to make them degenerate into a bunch of orange, illiterate, ostentation-obsessed, knuckle-dragging troglodytes. Representing the poetry of Virgil or the orations of Cicero? Of course not. Apparently being

Comments

[thejohngalt]

You know I got to thinking about your post at length last night, about depictions of certain cultures, how they vary from historical representations of cultures, and the assumptions we make.

On one hand I thought, we learn about these great individuals and the culture they came from, perhaps as an embodiment of that culture... and hence start thinking people from that culture are like that icon. In your example, Virgil, Cicero, or perhaps Leonardo, the Medici family, we might think overall that Italians are great lovers of art and thought, etc. Or we might think that was the general state of the culture at an earlier time.

But why would we think that at all? Imagine being someone who has never been to America, but has seen American celebrities. You might think we were all beautiful, happy, and clean (hygienically) people... but nothing could be further from the truth. So maybe, when we use icons from a particular culture, are having a failure of logic when equating them to their respective general populace.

Now obviously, when we make generalizations we know that they will not apply in all cases.... but maybe those "people" we think we came from never really existed. Maybe Italian culture back then was not so interested in discussing or examining aesthetics.. maybe they were not much different from today. Now the everyman has a chance to become a star through "reality" tv, youtube, etc... and instead of displaying variance from cultural stereotypes chooses to reinforce them.. knowing it is easier to be liked and loved for going along with the herd, rather than risk the rejection that can come from going against it.

On the other hand, there are people like you who do run the risk of being an individual. And maybe those icons you refer to were actually being individuals, who were recognized for that... once they were famous enough, the culture was just trying to emulate them...

In other words, these icons are not products of their cultures.. cultures are products of icons.

My hypothesis? What you are seeing is the result of years of "the Fonz" and too much of The Sopranos.

Now that makes me wonder about my cultural heritage as an Irish American... but I can't really think of any stereotypes particular to an Irish American other than drinking too much, and if you're a guy, being a cop.

meh.