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.

Thomas Hardy. Can't bear it.
Stockhausen. Mystified.

Cultural shame... I have read 2 or 3 Jilly Coopers (indeed I re-read Rivals recently following MN thread - comforting & nostalgic)!

PMSL at Stockhausen on the labour ward, bet they don't advise that at ante-natal classes!

Agree re Glass/Stockhausen although there are one or two Harrison B things I can actually manage to sit through. Briefly. Oozit who did the music for Blackadder and wrote a jolly good book on the history of music (you know the man I mean, curly blond hair) said they were responsible for western orchestral music disappearing up its own fundament.

Probably classical music & opera. I just find both annoying!

Howard Goodall?

Have major crush on Howard Goodall

Cultural blindspot: reading novels in translation. Never works for me.

Cultural shame: I don't read the 'news' bit of the newspaper

Blind spot is ballet, thomas hardy as well and crime and punishment (read manu other dostoewsky but this one cannot go past page 100! must try must try)

cultural shame is home megazines when I am about to move and fashion ones when I feel shit!

Like music but do not have ear for it at all.

"The composer of the theme music to Blackadder, Mr. Bean, Red Dwarf, Q.I., The Catherine Tate Show and The Vicar of Dibley to name but a few, almost everyone can sing at least one tune that Howard has written.

Some other TV themes by Howard: Country Parish, Seaside Parish, Country House, 2.4 Children, The Thin Blue Line, The Adventure of English, 12 Books that changed the world, The History of ITV, The Great Music Show, Cardiff Singer of the World, Murder by the Book, The Borrowers, Chalk, A Time to Dance, The Lesley Garrett Show, Bernard and the Genie, Words and Pictures, Choir of the Year, The Gathering Storm, Howard Goodall's Organworks/Choirworks/Big Bangs/Great Dates/20th Century Greats/How Music Works."

blimey! who knew?

DEFINITELY jazz. Bores the arse off me.

Opera / classical music / modern art .. most of it, actually.

I don't quite understand why, because I'm well-read, very interested in history, etc., but I just don't get culture, even most popular culture.

I'm definitely a Philistine

Oh, and D H Lawrence! Ineffable shite ... all of it!

Most pupils that I have ever taught have huge blindspots when it comes to the basics of English history and world geography.

Mine would be modern jazz too......nice.

Has anyone said 'mime' yet? I once saw a mime version of The Idiot. It was a curiously apposite choice. Heavens. My other personal low was 'a physical interpretation of Shakespeare's sonnets in the medium of modern daarnce'. Made me want to poke the cast with sharp sticks.

jazz, Wagner, heavy drama which makes political statements (sooo dull)

Mine is Jazz definetely. And museums - I last about 30 minutes and then get "museum fatigue"

My cultural shame is Georgette Heyer and musicals (although I dispute the fact that Georgette is low-brow )

blindspot - Picasso and others of that ilk - hate it soooo much!!! Oh, and Dostoevsky put me off Russian authors for life.

Shame - probably Alexander McCall Smith's No.1 Ladies Detective Agency books - they are so sweet, though!

My blindspot has to be Chekov - saw 'The Seagull' and thought it was a load of guff - lots of soapy inter-family irrelelevent chat then at the end half the cast shoot themselves off-stage - left going 'huh?!' - was 18 at the time so maybe I wasn't 'ready' or it was a poor production ....

as far as guilty secret - that would be playing grand theft auto and really relishing running people over! at least I can't drive in rl!!

guilty secret: gossips magazine and discovery health.

Blind spots (lots) modern jazz, minimalist music, Middlemarch (never finished it ) Romantic era music/painting/sculpture/quite a lot of the poetry and fantasy fiction.

Guilty secrets - none. Not the least guilty about liking Georgette Heyer and Star Trek

poetry

Blindspot is old religious inspired art. Big oily paintings of Jesus as a baby but drawn with a body like no baby I have ever known. Its not all old oil paintings. i love Constable's country scenes. It is just the religious stuff. Makes trips to the major sights in most European capitals hard going.

Cultural shame is TV about real life medical dramas. Things like films in and around labour wards. The kind of stuff they show on Discovery Health or Living TV.

Another vote for jazz here. Leaves me completely cold. Plus, I hate and despise every single work of that terrible chancer, Salvador Dali

Then again, my cultural shame is Most Haunted, so what the hell do I know about anything?

My blindspot is Thomas Hardy - have tried many a time to read Tess of the Durbervilles leaves me cold.
Love most of the 'classics' tohough.
My shame is ' HEat' magazine.
Like Most Haunted too Snaf - has me in stitches!!
' Was that the dog barking?' says Derrick as he swiftly kicks sleeping dog under the table. Class!

Everything to do with music. Its just a noise, it doesnt tell you anything.

I am fascinated by the people who don't get music. There's bits of music I don't like - as below, and also the mindless super-fast-beat stuff that menaces you out of cars - but good music works on me like - you know that feeling of a fantastic scalp massage? - sublime transcendent version of that.

If you don't get that from music, what does do that for you?

I am a visual person, bink.
also, I want more complicated ideas than music is capable of putting across. my school days were marked by music lessons where they would play us some crappy tinpots banging, and then they would go "oh here comes the bumble bee" or "this is jupiter now" and I was thinking "how is is jupiter? its jupiter if you want it to be, otherwise its just a bit of music ffs"

music can never be more than abstract art. Figurative art (bear in mind a picture/sculpture can work on both the figurative and abstract levels at once), theatre, film and writing all offer a far richer way of getting your ideas across.