The first 11 minutes of the movie “Black Orpheus” was an intense plunge into some representation of what is Brazilian culture. A young woman arrives to Rio where drum beats and music is playing everywhere and people are dancing, playing and smiling. She wanders through the city confused in the loud crowd while being harassed by every other man. She then takes a trolley to the end station where she receives instructions to find to her way to her cousin. Things that stood out to me the most was the lively and happy representation of the culture and the people as well as the weak, objectified and vulnerable representation of women. I believe that the first representation might be an exaggeration while the latter isn’t that far-fetched.

While reading the text by Williams I was desperately expecting to find a connecting point between the film and his writing, which I believe made my reading a bit hard 😀 Jon mentioned in the lecture that both involve a journey, however I came to realize they were quite unrelated to one another. Williams described how he came from a working-class background and was able to climb up the socioeconomic ladder and receive education from an acknowledged university. He argued how culture is both a way of living as well as cultural productions, such as television and media. I liked his argument about how there is no “masses” that consume unworthy culture, and how the way of living of the working-class is equally worthy culture. This is something I’ve heard many times before, but perhaps in a very different context, that people are some kind of brainless “lambs” and consume whatever crap big producers provide them with. I believe today we’re even more susceptible of consuming mindlessly than we were in 1958 when Williams wrote this text, since we are consuming media rather constantly. Moreover, I think social media has also made it more accessible for people from different social classes to consume the same culture, which also might blur the “traits” of the cultures of different social classes. While I believe that money still talks when it comes to culture that we perceive as “worthy”, I also believe that higher education doesn’t necessarily dictate anymore what trends. However, I believe education equips us with tools to consume mindfully and analyze the content we’re faced with critically, which is definitely a good asset to have in the time of “fake news”, but it doesn’t by no means mean that individuals without this privilege wouldn’t have ideas and culture.

Anyway, I might’ve gotten off track here a little bit but my question for this week is what do you think is the culture that we perceive to be “real” or “worthy” today? Do you think we continue to produce and consume under the terms of middle and upper classes? What would you define as working-class culture anyway?