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.

dickens. apart from great expectations which was bearable.

I adore wuthering heights and you should give it another go....how boring can a man in depair at the death of his idea of a love with his soulmate bashing his head be???? NOT is the answer.

love ballet. all you doubters need to go and see Macmillan's romeo and juliet. highly charged erotic and guaranteed not a dry seat in the house imo.

cod, i want to start a one woman mission to turn you on to poetry. I will perhaps send you a gift of this book

this is such a fabulous anthology i defy you to read it and maintain that you hate poetry

send me your address and I will post it to you darling (couldn't agree with you more on the last mcann thread btw).

I guess visual arts i don't know loads about...but can enjoy.

yes. i think it is definitely dickens.

am a philistine.

christ yes...thomas hardy dire....especially the trumpet major. jeez.

Another one I've never liked Hemingway

have you tried french poetry cod?
english is just not a poetic language.

Wagner
Ballet
Van Morrison
Tom Wotsisname (that bloke who did all the music for Down By Law - Tom Waites?)
Jazz
Tracey Emin etc.
Musicals (dire)

Dicken. Never finished a single one - but still managed to write an essay about him in my Finals and get a 2:1!

Nightynight - yes I see.

I'm a verbal person, intensely and maybe too much so, so I think for me music, with its abstraction & irreducibility to language, is a way of (briefly) getting away from the compulsion of words. (So perhaps I like it for the very reasons you don't. Though the escape-from-language wouldn't be much good if there wasn't that peculiarly pleasant brain sensation too - I don't get that from visual things - those I do have to feed through the verbal mill before I can appreciate.)

that's very interesting.
I was wondering after I read your last post, what exactly, does give me the sensations you described.
I think, the nearest is probably french poetry. French, because thats the only language I speak well enough to appreciate the poetry, apart from english. (Its attraction is perhaps, because it breaks the normal rules of verbal communication? )
The only music that does make me feel something, is opera, and that, of course, has words in it.
I cant submerge myself in art in the same way, because I have trained as an artist myself, so I am always too conscious of the technique behind any piece of work.

My cultural blindspots would be many - modern jazz, modern dance to name but two. I just don't get them at all.

My cultural shame - maybe an addiction to Harry Potter?

Classical ballet - waste of good music IMO. Some opera - will confess to like all the big arias (that might be a cultural shame perhaps - like eating only the orange cremes in a box of chocolates).

Other cultural shame is probably sci-fi - in any shape or form. Actually I don't really see what's to be ashamed of. Some of it is fantastic, imaginative and well-written. Also reading a great deal too much detective fiction atm - everything the libary can supply me with. Don't know why - maybe a midlife crisis? . Also Holby City but that really is the only crap TV I watch.