You've come across it haven't you? The radio DJ who ends his programme with 'nispera li ghazla tad-diski laqtet il-gosti ta' kulhadd'. The billboard announcing some festasajf or xitwa or whatever promising to provide entertainment 'ghall-familja kollha'. Or the clothes shop which claims to have the most comfortable house coat for grandma, the coolest goth T-shirt for your pasty teenager and blouses straight out of Carey Bradshaw's Sex & the City closet. The restaurant which has Chinese spring rolls, Maltese timpana and English breakfast on the menu.Why do we have this pathetic obsession in Malta to please everybody at the same time? You can't and you shouldn't. Taste in music, entertainment, clothes and food is tribal. And tribes don't mix very easily. The very idea of having a taste for something is rooted in an instinct to distinguish it from what is not liked. You enjoy what you like precisely because you know exactly what you don't.
A radio presenter who plays Massimo Ranieri's Io tu e le rose back to back with The Stones' (I can't get no) satisfaction followed by Lady Gaga's The edge of glory should be tied to the studio speakers and dumped at sea. Families whose members enjoy regular nights out on the town together are more dysfunctional than the Simpsons. A clothes shop which caters for grandma's taste in house coats and her grandson's in macabre goth T-shirts will get both wrong. A restaurant menu which offers you dishes from three different national cuisines will serve you inedible food which tastes like none of them.
A favourite cartoon from my younger days pictured a long haired hippy holding a pair of bell-bottom jeans in a clothes shop. He turns to the salesman, "Hey man, can I show them to my mother. If she likes them, I'll bring them back". Peace man, but my tastes are sacred.
4 comments:
A shop selling both granny housecoats and knuckle dusters probably has an image problem, and I'll gladly join you in dealing with any dj playing io tu e le rose, BUT (yes, one of those butty arguments from your earlier post!) I see nothing wrong with eclectic tastes. I myself happen to be partial to a bit of both beethoven and blind faith, velvet underground and vivaldi, marillion and mozart, doll by doll and debussy! 21st century schizoid, maybe?!!
@mcam - Agreed, obviously. But would you want to hear Beethoven played by Blind Faith, The Velvet Underground doing one of Amadeus' sonatas? I didn't think so.
LB yes, I would, actually
"Specialisation" has it's pros and cons.
On the one hand, it enables focus on a particular "thing". E.g. today I had my first ever visit to a Periodontist in Wimpole Street, London (same thing as Harley Street - which is a few steps away - for Doctors). He happens to be Maltese, and has a B.Ch.D from UoM and at least three Masters degrees from various Universities (about the relatively small and specific area). You ask him something related to orthodontics, and he very professionally tells you "No, that's not my area, ask this other guy". Same with Professors at the University. You ask a Professor of information security about cryptography (who knows an awful lot about the topic), and he tells you: "No, ask this other guy, who's an expert on the topic". This is good! In a way, if I asked someone two different things about two completely different areas and got an expert answer on both, from the same person, I'd say "No, this guy is either unprofessional, or else a super genius".
On the other hand, however, specialisation about just one "thing" can lead to stagnation. Sticking to professions and research as an example, it is easy to spot patterns in innovation. Indeed, many of the great innovations come from interdisciplinary efforts. You take a psychology or philosophy theory, apply it to computer science, and voilà, you get something particularly good. I'd bet that the same thing applies to music and everything else. Rock, Jazz, Rave, Techno, football, rugby, and all, are not just ONE "thing". Each and everyone of these is interconnected. Things are rooted in God knows what. So the mixture is not only, arguably, reasonable. It is intrinsic in what someone likes, or what someone does not like. Extending this a little further, one could argue that it is difficult for someone to be sure that s/he does or doesn't like something. Have you ever come across the kind of thing where someone says "I hate X", and someone else tells him "Heh!! You hate X??? Then you shouldn't like Y ta!! cos they're the same thing!!".
So, specialisation (or sticking to the particular identity) is in many ways good because it defines something. But the definition is a categorisation, which in turn is an idealisation (or generalisation). But it's also bad, because it could lead to stagnation.
Now, whether a radio or TV programme should stick to an identity or not, I'm not quite sure. I guess it's a matter of preference. I'd be interested in learning more about the difference between the sexes about it. I'd hypothesise that us men are more likely to agree with Lou's view.
Interesting post Lou!
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