My new class is the greatest thing ever. Possibly greater than even Duran Duran.
Last week, while in a Starbucks, throwing back a Café Mocha and pre-reading, I had a rare moment of unbridled clarity that is usually, supposedly, reserved only for those moments when you're high on the Mary Jane. I've had only incredibly unpleasant experiences with The Demon Weed, so I can't really speak from experience. Anyway, my moment evolved thusly:
The homeless man, sitting in the chair across from the front door, hit on me as I came in. I chose to sit far away from him, in a hypo-allergenic, a-little-cleaner-than-the-cloth-chairs leather couch. I was feeling a little bit of nervous anticipation at the thought of my new class. Since it was still a couple of hours before I needed to make my way there, I started in on one of my books. Then came my moment. I read this passage in the introduction, which is about the theory of how people--you and I--interact with things we make and buy
...we make culture and we are made by culture; there is agency and there is structure. It is not enough to celebrate agency; nor is it enough to detail the structure(s) of power; we must always keep in mind the dialectical play between agency and structure, between production and consumption. A consumer, situated in a specific social context, always confronts a "text" in its material existence as a result of particular conditions of production. But in the same way, a "text" is confronted by a consumer, situated in a specific social context, who appropriates a culture, and "produces in use" the range of possible meanings the "text" can be made to bear...
A thing is made, and we recognize it for what it is and we use it. Through our use, we alter what the thing is and the intent of meaning of the creator.
My heart stopped. I'd been kicked in the chest. I read it, and I understood it. And I got teary-eyed in the process.
I understood this! I could reiterate it in my mind into simpler terms! And it all made PERFECT SENSE!!!
I had a second moment when I finally sat down in class. It quickly began to fill with younger Mes. Fat chicks with glasses and ponytails and ironic hipster T-shirts.
My God, I thought, these were Me, back in college. Hell, these were Me NOW. Thirty-five. With my glasses and ponytail and hipster Target T-shirt.
I haven't changed at all. Is this good? Did I discover my true, authentic self (® Oprah) long ago? Or am I stuck in a time warp, living some idealized version of a past Me? Will I always be like this, or will I try to wrest myself from Myself when I reach middle age? Will I ever grow up?
Is this bad? Should I even be doing this?
Does it help or hurt that my face is covered in bug bites that makes me look like I've got really bad acne?
And best of all, the frat boy across the room kept looking at my wedding ring.
The professor said something during that class that made me feel a little better. He said, "You don't need to be ashamed of being a pop culture geek here."
With me, he may come to regret those words.
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Today's class, though, was the greatest thing ever, and yet at the same time confirmed the worst fears I had about the class.
There's a considerable generational gap. Supposing there's around fifteen years between me and any random classmate, at times it seemed like fifteen million. The poor kids. Talking about Michael Jackson like they knew who the hell he was. To them (at least according to their comments in class), Michael Jackson is a pedophilic freak who spontaneously appeared from the ether around the time they were born. He had that one song everybody liked, Billie Jean.
In my mind, I could hear them adding, You know, that guy my parents liked.
Here's the example given to illustrate the cyclical nature of trends, why people like things a lot for a while and then tend to get bored and abandon them: Like, people really liked Michael Jackson when he started making all that really awesome music and the music companies really pushed him on the radio and stuff, like for Billie Jean, and then they stopped liking him.
HUH? I wanted so badly to say, umm, Jackson Five? Off The Wall? Wait, what?
So, so far it's slow going. There's the girl who inadvertently (or probably not) outed herself as a writer of Harry Potter/Snape slash fan fiction when she tried to describe online fandoms. But I've written X-Files fanfic, so I have no right to call that particular kettle black. There's the lanky kid who randomly yells out things at inappropriate times. There's the frat boy who's apparently trying to get through the quarter without buying or reading the books.
Some things never change.
But I've learned all about how saloons started in 19th century America. And how Shakespeare was instrumental in developing frontier identity in the early American West.
And how Habermas is completely incomprehensible, even in English. He reads like a single, run-on sentence. He's probably like that in the original German.
This weekend, I'll be learning about the culture around romance novels. AWESOME.
But so far, one thing is certain, above all else:
Trying to keep up with a college class AND the new television season was much, MUCH easier back when I didn't also have a full-time job.
Homework sucks.