PRESENT TENSE:LET'S KICK OFF with a pop quiz. When you see yet another feature about Don Draper, do you think (a) "Isn't he that controversial Fianna Fáil senator?", (b) "I know he's in Mad Men, but I don't know if he is a real person or fictional" or (c) "Oh my God, yet another piece about Mad Menthat reminds me of my complete ignorance of a pop-cultural phenomenon I'm supposed to be very excited about. And I'm still only half way through season one of The Wire."
This column is meant to be a sometimes semi-jovial attempt to put its finger on the cultural pulse. Usually, its creation involves me searching around for that pulse. Is it under the chin of culture? On what part of culture’s wrist? Is culture actually dead and I’ve just not figured it out? Eventually, I might torture a simile until it coughs up a paragraph.
Then it's time for another paragraph. But this week, having read yet another piece on Don Draper's status as a pop-cultural icon of the moment, I decided to shout stop. (Quietly. In my head. I was at work at the time.) Because, even though I'm regularly presented with pieces about Don Draper's status as an icon of the moment – likewise with the Mad Menactor Christina Hendricks – I finally felt compelled to admit that I really don't care that much.
No doubt I will. Some day, in about three years, I'll start turning to people on the train and saying, "Have you seen Mad Men? It's genius." And they'll tut and ask me what decade I'm living in.
For now, though, I have watched bits of Mad Men, and I understand through the chatter that it is a work of great brilliance. But I've been working on the assumption that I'll catch the box set at some point, after I've watched the three series of The WireI've yet to see, all of Flight of the Conchordsand whatever else needs to be thrown on to the flaming cultural pyre in my mind.
This week I discovered one person who has never seen Star Wars. Someone else claimed not to have ever knowingly turned over to The Simpsons. I know of people who have never watched Coronation Streetor who were baffled by why millions were baffled by Lost.
In the spirit of their honesty, here are a couple of other things that passed me by somewhat.
I haven't seen Glee. Not a minute of it. Not a squeak. I couldn't name a character. Couldn't pick out its stars. Don't know the plot. I haven't seen it because I do not live with any teenage girls. I myself, you might be surprised to hear, am not a teenage girl.
I’m not on Facebook. This is a slightly different thing to missing out on a box set of a TV show, because there are a great many people who live their real lives almost as an adjunct to their Facebook life. Not me. Twitter has been enough of a digital narcotic.
So I have a certain ignorance of these things. This goes against the prevailing opinion that if you are not watching Mad Menor jumping around to Gleeor poking someone on Facebook, you are an outcast from the zeitgeist.
I’m not proud of that, as such. I’m not a determined hold-out against the cultural onslaught. I’m the Arts Editor of this paper, and part of my job is to add more weight to that crush, to pick out the interesting, to spot the trends, to tell people what they might like to see and, occasionally, what they should do.
But there is something cleansing about occasionally admitting that there are entire pop-culture phenomena that have passed you by, that there is so much being pressed against our eyeballs and into our heads that you can feel force-fed and bloated and unable to eat every last morsel.
It doesn't mean you have to be obnoxious about it, just that we should create a loving and safe environment in which people can openly say: "You know what, I don't know who Seinfeldis." (Although, if anyone was to say that, they would need to be gaffer-taped to a sofa and force-fed season four until they emerged with gaffer-waxed wrists but aware of a previously unimagined comedy plane. Hold on, I've just ruined the tone of this column . . .)
