What's your cultural "blind spot"?

[Jessicatmagnificat]

Read somewhere this week about a game called "humiliation" in which you confess to famous classics you haven't read or finished. That got me thinking about my cultural blindspots in general.

Mine's opera. I just don't get it or like what I've heard. That makes me sound like a real philistine, especially as DH's father sang for the ROH.

And my cultural shame would be - chick lit. At the moment, one of my greatest pleasures is to have an hour to myself with a glass of wine and a trashy novel in which the heroine struggles, but always gets her man.

When I read your thread I immediately thought of opera as my blind spot.
Love choral music but opera leaves me cold, the music very rarely touches me
And my shame is that no matter how much i love a well written book I also love a thriller either written or on TV and often the trashier the better, as the pleasure is often in the speed of the consumption

Classical ballet would be mine, I think.

Jazz (especially terribly clever modern jazz). Ghastly.

I can't do Wuthering Heights either. I keep trying and trying but it's sooooo boring.

My cultural shame is I've read Lord of the Rings 17 times.

god now I love opera, and waste all my money on it
I never really got it till I saw it live, though.

I don't see the point of ballet AT ALL. It is just weird looking people making odd shapes with their bodies as far as I can see. dull dull dull

my "shame" is Buffy the Vampire Slayer especially the musical episode

I know it's not fashionable but sport, particularly football ...

ballet. and Dickens.

cultural shame is sci-fi, for which I blame dh entirely.

Heavy theatre, with issues, and confrontation, and Verfremdungseffekt and No Jokes.

Heavy fiction, about issues and political turmoil and calamity and No Jokes.

Cultural shame ... just being too lightweight to do the heavy stuff, probably.

My blind spot is probably art I know next to nothing about it and rarely really enjoy going to galleries. Photography and advertising interest me more, though. But I'm basically a music and literature person.

When we had a TV (which coincided with the time I was writing up my DPhil) I used to take a delicious break in the afternoons to watch those dreadful trashy court shows. We haven't had a TV for over 3 years now but that's still my cultural shame.

Lizst. And Chopin. In fact most of the Romantic-era composers.
Too self-indulgent for me.

Don't think I have much cultural shame . Maybe a weakness for C19th American teenage moral fiction - Alcott, Coolidge etc.

oh and Dickens

can't stand the bugger.

QPootle - I agree, I hate nearly all sports with a vengeance, but I don't see that as anything to be ashamed of!

but cultural kudos points for the use of Verfremdungseffekt, Bink .

theatre full stop.

cultural shame - probably all the crap TV I watch. Also sci-fi/fantasy TV and movies. I too am a crime fiction fan but I don't see that as a cultural shame any more .

But what does it mean????

Catch 22. Can NOT read it, have tried several times after being told how amazing it is, but I just can't stand it and want to throw it across the room after about 5 pages.

(NB Buffy, crap TV etc are not sources of Cultural Shame - they are Contemporary Popular Culture, which is different and not shameful at all)

Cultural blindspot: Modern jazz, anything that purports to be an 'installation' and Beethoven's Late String Quartets (but I'm working on this last one). Until quite recently classical ballet would have been on the list - I have to sit there compressing my lips to stop myself shouting 'just bloody say something' - but I went to a Royal Ballet masterclass recently which was superb.

Cultural shame: A list too long to share. Top of the list are the novels of Georgette Heyer. Oh shame, shame, shame.

JessicaMagnificat - you're right secretly I'm proud, but it's not the done thing in Blairs Britain is it.

Shoudl add philospohy I know lots of names or philosophers or theroies but have very little clue about genuine content of ideas!

Issy: PMSL at 'just bloody say something'

I've thought of a more recent cultural shame. Enid Blyton boarding school novels.

Ohh i love Georgette Heyer, in the old days, i would curl up on a rainy afternoon with a big bar of chocolate and enter the world of regency

Surely Georgette Heyer is long overdue for a critical reappraisal? I think the Abba factor comes in here - after years in the wilderness, she's cool again!

"but cultural kudos points for the use of Verfremdungseffekt, Bink"

Indeed! Bink delivers the 'Mnet is dumbing down' critics a swift Brechtian kick up the theatrical backside.

With me, music of any type. Whatsoever. Jazz, opera, chamber music, orchestral music, plainsong; madrigals - wholly uninterested in it all.

I think I have very catholic reading tastes and so can justify to myself reading pretty much anything (and Issymum, Anya Seton is so much better than Georgette Heyer). Do ocassionally wonder what my literature tutor at Oxford would make of some things, but generally I like to just put it down to being open-minded (and anyway, he's dead). Will also happily watch any piece of theatre, however experimental.

My cultural shame is definitely lowbrow tv - specifically (i) Fit/fat type tv programmes; and (ii) You've been framed type programmes. I consider myself to have a healthy and open relationship with my DH, but I do keep my liking for those slightly under wraps...

Ballet. Why, why, why? And then opera. I can't understand a word they're warbling.

Cultural shame: watching voyeuristic TV 'documentaries' eg "My twin was eating me alive" and a guilty pleasure in Jody Picoult, even though I rail at them as I read them.