Why do we decide something is not for us? This is a question I’ve been pondering as I’ve got older, and started to take a liking to various cultural products that I’d previously marked down – in some cases, for decades – as absolutely unpalatable. Is this a sign of a maturing, more tolerant palate? Maybe – but I think it’s mainly because the fans of some (it turns out) very good things that you might well enjoy can really put you off.
If you have cultural bugbears, I recommend checking on a few of them, every now and again
For decades – even though he was recommended over and over again by friends, and by writers whose work I really liked, and latterly by Amazon algorithms – I avoided the novels of P.G. Wodehouse. I thought his oeuvre was unutterably twee, shallow and pleased with itself. I can’t remember what finally tipped me over the edge of saying ‘Oh, go on then, just this once.’ Now I discover, belatedly, that these really are the comic masterpieces that their zealots raved about. The sometimes quite acrid – well, OK, just a little taste now and again – nature of Wodehouse’s writing was totally hidden by its enthusiasts. Yes, they are trifling and daft, but so are any number of other things I love. Something about the chatter of his fans put me off.
And then there was Monty Python’s Flying Circus – which I was warned off by lots of sixth formers quoting it ad nauseam when I was barely a child, even though I liked the solo work of some of the members. There was something cringey about its admirers – annoying blokes putting hankies on their heads or saying ‘they mean to win Wimbledon!’ Again, one day I decided to give it a whirl – far easier to do in the age of scrolling through streaming services – and was converted. Red Dwarf is another example – endlessly referenced by smelly people in ill-fitting ‘Starbug’ T-shirts. I discovered 30 years on, it’s very funny and inventive.
And there’s more. People’s rhapsodies about Bach left me mystified – to me, it just sounded like endless, monotonous fiddling and diddling and twiddling. I am now horrified that I wasted so many decades thinking this, during the early part of which I was listening to music by artists including the Thompson Twins and the Rubettes.
Such judgments often seem to have formed in early adolescence, when setting your own identity through your tastes and tribal loyalties is a vital priority. And then, if you’re not careful, you’re stuck with them.
All humour that you don’t immediately get looks smug and self-satisfied. All music that doesn’t click after a few spins seems like a lot of notes. This is made worse when the thing is at its popular height. I find it almost impossibly hard to judge something while it is at the peak of its popularity. I can’t put it into context, I don’t know how it will end. There can be so much social hullabaloo that I don’t trust my reactions, caught in the full beam of their headlights. Am I liking – or disliking – this because it is the thing right now? And I’m sure I’ve been part of putting other people off good stuff thanks to my enthusiasm for it.
The terrible truth here is that as you advance through life being bored and jaded, you could be missing out on material that helps to ease it all.
Another example. Based on hearing a couple of tracks on the radio in the early 1980s, and the keenness of a few long-forgotten schoolmates of my acquaintance, I wrote off the band The Monochrome Set as ineffectual jangling also-ran indie of the fey kind. I’ve now ‘caught up’ with all 16 albums made over 44 years. They are magnificent. There are only a very, very few pop groups I feel this fondly about, so I’m slightly sad I wasn’t following along from 1979. Like all the best art, they are sad and funny and intelligent and dumb all at the same time. And so many, many hooks.
As I caught up, I kept waiting for them to tail off or serve up a duffer… and they didn’t. In fact their second and third comings are generally more accomplished than their (glorious) first. That shouldn’t happen, should it? It’s not supposed to.
It’s like one of those collages of a person who takes a photo of themselves in the same place once a year. In a very short time I’ve seen the singer/composer/guitarist lyricist Bid go from precocious young chap to septuagenarian, taking in a marriage or two and a life-threatening seizure (which he typically used as material to make an incredibly catchy album about spending months in ICU).
These discoveries always come as a shock though. You start to wonder what other bits of culture you’ve missed there. And the music, television, films and books are nowadays often to blame – when even watching a TV series, with their in-jokes and ‘values’, can feel like committing to a lifestyle choice. Their makers have started to act like off-putting fans themselves, which is disconcerting and presumptuous. So if you have cultural bugbears, I recommend checking on a few of them, every now and again, just to make sure you are right. Try gradual exposure, like psychiatrists do with phobia sufferers. Back slowly into a room with an X book or a Y album in it. Forget their fans, and take another look.
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