“Cultural memory” seems to me the best descriptor of what I want to discuss in this post, but it appears that I do not mean it in the usual sense. What I mean is individuals’ memories of culture, and how it colors their interpretation of new art and experiences. You might feel more comfortable thinking of this in terms of “tropes”, “memes”, or “allusions”.
You can find these cultural touchstones in music, when Metallica plays a melody from West Side Story, when Neil Young sings about Johnny Rotten and the King, when Bruce Springsteen writes an album based on the character of Tom Joad, and even (ugh) when Kid Rock fuses Warren Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Examples abound in literature, such as Joseph Heller’s take on Achilles, any other work that uses that phrase, the similarities between one of Heinlein’s titular characters and a familiar figure (along with a vast number of other literary characters), and Nabokov’s obsession with The Raven. Television and film do the same thing: Community’s Abed builds a job as a short-order cook into a ruthlessly efficient underground market in chicken fingers that would impress Michael Corleone, Spaceballs visits the Emerald City in addition to its more obvious parodies, etc. Also, computer games, youtube videos, visual art, and any other form of creative expression. It is even useful in “real life”, like when someone inserts a quote from a movie into their conversation.
Tapping into someone’s cultural memory is a very powerful thing. Comparing a new situation or character to one with which people are already familiar can provide as much detail as thousands of words. When I described the name of a bill as Orwellian, it saved quite a bit of explanation of the absurdity of naming something as its exact opposite. Through the power of analogical reasoning, it may even be possible to succinctly communicate a concept that cannot be expressed directly. This is exactly what I was trying to do when, recently struggling to describe exactly my interpretation of the psyche of Michael Scott, I instead compared him to Willy Loman. Placing cultural memories in different settings or scenarios from those in which they originated can be fantastically humorous. Shared cultural memories can help to form bonds between people as well. This is my goal (and to get a laugh) when I reveal my poker hand with the proud statement “all red”.
All this is well and good, but what happens when someone attempts to communicate through a cultural memory that their audience does not have? Part of my decision to start reading through parts of the literary canon a few years ago was to expand my cultural memories. I made a very poor choice in starting with what many consider the greatest novel ever written. While the primary reason that I struggled until eventually realizing it was making me dread reading and gave up was the writing style, it would have been largely a futile effort even if that were not the case. To gain anything more than a surface understanding of Ulysses, it seems one must have a working knowledge of the entire source material of Western civilization.
In the case of Ulysses, much of what I was missing was material I had never read. My much larger concern, however, is that cultural memories rarely seem to make it into the long-term storage center of my brain. I can remember obscure and useless facts quite well and experiences of my own life fairly, but my memory of fiction is exceedingly poor. I was able to come up with the examples above largely from material that I either had been required to study academically, love dearly, or have consumed often or recently. I started writing short reviews of everything I read here partially to mitigate this problem (also, I crave the opportunity to discuss these works with others who might comment), but I am not sure it has worked well. For most of the books I have read in the last four years I could probably write everything I remember in a fairly short paragraph, and most of that would come from the first 10% of the book. “To The Lighthouse” is a great example — I remember only that a young child hoped to visit a lighthouse, his father told him it would be impossible due to weather, and his mother wanted him to hold out hope. I believe that was on the first page or so. Of the actual trip to the lighthouse I can remember very little. I think they were boarders in someone’s home, along with an artist. There was someone else who belittled the artist because he believed women could not be creative. Some people visited a beach and lost a piece of jewelry. Or maybe that was from a different novel. The only thing I can say for sure is that I did not enjoy it.
There are certainly times when this lack of long-term cultural memory can be useful. I can watch a movie, read a book, and play a computer game that I have not touched in several years and be surprised by the punchlines and surprise endings as if I was experiencing them for the first time. But most of the time it is quite frustrating. When people quote movies at me, I more often than not can recognize that there is supposed to be some subtext but do not know what it is. In the books I am reading I know I am missing layers of meaning that I should be able to understand. When I must wait years between installments of a series, I have no chance of being able to understand the latest installment without re-reading its predecessors.
Perhaps I should just be glad that my brain decides to save programming language syntax and the route to the grocery store instead of plot points …