Salvation by Pop Culture
by The surprisingly positive influence of pop culture on the education of a child in America.
Most of my generation, I suppose, were most influenced by movies as children, movies and television. I had a different childhood. What movies I saw till the age of 15 were solely on television because my parents were members of a Holiness Christian sect that forbade going to the cinema. Even to see a Disney cartoon. We were taught that to cross the dark threshold of the moving picture parlor was to seal one’s damnation.
Yes, I had a very unusual upbringing… at least, back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was unusual.
I watched a lot of television, an amazing amount in retrospect, an amazing variety of shows – my parents didn’t seem to exert much control over my intake of cathode tube rays in the beginning. And my mother loved certain movies – Hitchcock, in particular. I remember seeing The Birds a number of times (starting around age 4) and being utterly fascinated and terrified.
I especially loved Westerns, war movies, and detective shows. More of my personal ethical inclinations owe more to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood’s work for Sergio Leone than to sermons and The Good Book. Then there was The Fugative and its healthy dark fear of authority; and Ephrim Zembalist, Jr. on The FBI, who just seemed trustworthy, and the flatfoots on Dragnet, the patrolmen of Adam 12; Mannix, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Columbo, Banacheck, McMillan and Wife, McCloud; later, there’d be Quincy, ME.
But above all there was The Rockford Files, with the maverick law-bending, hard luck, happy-go-lucky, barely making ends meet Jim Rockford/James Garner. I think he was my supreme archetype for what a man was supposed to be like – the guy who tries to do the right thing, screws it up, gets punished for it, tries to do the right thing again, and so on until, at the end, he’s as broke as he started the day. But he did what he was supposed to do: stood for something worth standing for, regardless of the price, and outwitted the opposition, sometimes with the help of some dumb luck (and a sympathetic scriptwriter).
I learned about all the great and not-so-great movies of the ‘70s as they came out in the then black and white inky pages of MAD Magazine – I was introduced to the not-so-subtle arts of parody and satire and caricature, and to a bit of New York sarcasm and Yiddish cursing, all a providing a view of the world new to me. Later on I discovered the originator of MAD – Harvey Kurtzman – through reprints of the ‘50s issues, which were utterly amazing, especially the pieces with the artist Will Elder. It was like looking at William Hogarth prints made for 20th century sensibilities. As an aside, it was because of Elder and Kurtzman that I became interested in Hogarth, and thus in the 18th c. and its satirists, such as Voltaire, its philosophies and ideas.
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Post CommentRohit
On October 6, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Well, I myself am interested in reading and learning. I was just reading a comic book called Watchmen. The “golden age” can be relived.
But your second point, if we are being cheated, is absolutely right. We need educational reform, I despise the way we are taught. In English for example we get work to do, finish it and hand it in. We are never taught HOW to read or HOW to write better. But it is the opposite for other courses, like Math, we are taught HOW to do the work, but not WHY it works. Use this formula to get this, I ask why and the teachers never seem to have an answer.
Richard Van Ingram
On October 6, 2008 at 7:19 pm
You have an excellent mind (Watchmen is one of my favorite comics of all time, too, with v for vendetta, both by Alan Moore — a master writer and thinker).
The disconnection between theory and practice (the why and the how) you recognize was already at work in my day and probably well before. My short answer for why this occured: History.
As in, the study of history. Mathematics makes complete sense, the formulae and everything provided someone can tell you the history of mathematics and science — teach the math historically. Then you discover the reason why the formulae and the concepts were invented or discovered; and the history is fascinating.
I recommend two things to you:
1. There is a PBS documentary series that was made back in the ’70s by the physicist/biologist/humanist scholar J. Bronowski called “The Ascent of Man.” If you can get your hands on the series, excellent. If not, there is a book that is equally excellent, and should be easy to find in a good used book store or online. It is doubtless out of print, but many copies should be available.
2. Another documentary series about the philosophy of science called “The Day the Universe Changed” from the late ’80s by James Burke, then science editor for the BBC (I think). The series is wonderful, but very expensive, but, again, there is a book that is affordable, and it’s in print — you might find a cheap copy used online.
(You might also find these documentaries at a good library to borrow.)
Reading and seeing these will give you the foundation for understanding many of the things you’re asking, and they’re well-made, and very interesting (Burke’s is even entertaining — he’s very witty).
Try them! You’ll thank me — and do so by showing them to others and discussing the ideas.