While having a complex,nuanced and deeply satisfying conversation with a friend about an arthouse movie,another friend rudely hijacked the conversation,talking about a crap reality-TV show. How should I have brought the conversation back to quality cinema?
J.N.,East Bentleigh,Vic
High culture and low culture have always lived side by side. You go to the cinema to see a gut-wrenching Albanian film about the futility of war and,before it starts,you’re on your phone checking footy scores,Flybuys offers and a YouTube clip called “Top Ten Skydives Gone Wrong”.
You go to a bookstore to buy a glowingly reviewed collection of Vietnamese poetry about the trauma of colonialism and spot it in the bookstore window surrounded by 40 kids’ publications about various animals farting and a weight-loss book called Eat Less,Crap More!
You go to a high-end restaurant and pay $280 for “Essence of Lettuce”,which is blown into your face with a handheld fan while AirPods play the sound of lettuce wilting,and you’re so hungry on the way home that you stop at a drive-through for nuggets with barbecue sauce and,for dessert,nuggets with sweet-chilli sauce.
So,in the same way,high and low culture can coexist in conversations. If a friend wants to talk aboutMarried At First Sight,you could compare it to Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian divorce-dramaA Separation (more relationship twists,fewer dermal face fillers). If a friend brings up the new season ofSurvivor,you could bring up Claude Lanzmann’s 10-hour Holocaust documentaryShoah (fewer tropical locations,a few more survivors).
Find the high and low cultural commonalities and you may wind up having an even more complex,nuanced and satisfying conversation,maybe over a packet of Chicken Twisties washed down with a well-structured 2016 shiraz from WA.
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