What you need is a cultural attaché to handle affairs

Mar 31 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

Besides, I think that we spend far too much time gawping at screens of one kind or another

ANYONE with an inquisitive mind who feels they should “keep up” with what’s going on in the world has got a hard time these days. It’s not just a question of reading a serious newspaper, keeping an eye on TV documentaries, having a good novel on the go and occasionally appearing at a theatre or gallery.

Thanks to that two-edged sword, technology, the whole world is at your fingertips through the internet, begging to be digested to broaden your mind for the greater good. It’s got all too, too much and you’d go mad if you tried to keep up with everything. Besides, in this age of inclusivity, there’s no such thing as good music or bad books. All culture is culture and is therefore worthy of consideration and analysis. That just makes it worse, as you can no longer filter out that which is regarded as pointless, frivolous and a waste of time for the thinking person.

Besides, I think that we spend far too much time gawping at screens of one kind or another. We should be getting out there in our climbing boots eroding some Lakeland fell (OK, we’ll try and keep to the footpath), communing with the real world around us, not peering at yet another example of virtual reality which has passed through some electronic channel. No matter how many books, films and plays you imbibe, nothing beats having human interaction. We should be out there communing with our fellow men and women.

But bizarrely, that’s not realistic in life. We’ve all got to keep up, to one extent or another. And if you’re feeling overwhelmed by not only the internet, but perhaps just the sheer amount of information around you desperate for your attention, then you are not alone. There are tens of millions like you, anxious about all those unread books, unwatched films, unattended plays and discarded newspapers. It’s all about that awful feeling of missing out, or perhaps worse, being caught out, especially in public. Just like that embarrassing moment when Princess Diana was asked about Newt Gringrich, the US former speaker of the House of Representatives, and clearly didn’t know who he was. Her personal assistant did and had to answer on her behalf, under the dagger-like gaze of her boss.

Now an individual is attempting to get a handle on such a surfeit of information. True, he’s a film producer, so his means of resolving this problem are not open to many of us. Hollywood Oscar-winner Brian Glazer has advertised for a new personal cultural attaché on a salary of £40,000. According to his advert, this person will be “responsible for keeping Brian abreast of everything that’s going on in the world; politically, musically and culturally”.

Already, it has a parallel in British TV comedy, where the government minister portrayed in The Thick of It is so bound up in politics that he is woefully lacking in social culture.

His aides have to make him a tape of the latest fads, fashions and comic catchphrases to inform him what a chav is and why people joke about Little Britain’s “the only gay in the village”.

I find Little Britain overall too puerile to waste time watching, but it has produced some memorably clever comic characters, such as the awful Vicky Pollard, who have caught the public imagination. It helps to know about these happenings.

The validity of having a cultural attaché is to do with us being “time-poor”. Douglas Adams, the creator of The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy talked about getting a special machine to watch all the TV programmes you’d taped, but hadn’t got time to watch.

There is the argument that time spent really reaching into the depths of War and Peace is time well spent. The very effort needed to dedicate to the understanding is mind-expanding in itself. What it’s really about is quality, rather than quantity. Not that any of us want to be caught out looking like the duffer at the dinner party because we don’t understand the “Yeah but, no but . . .” Vicky Pollard reference.

peter.elson