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Bogan Pride
I've been pondering for ages doing a post on class in Australia and my rather complicated position in it (I grew up in a working class area without much money, but I'm not sure I was ever entirely working class, as much as my leftist family trained me to despise the bourgeoisie, and I feel alien amongst pretty much any class bracket) But for now I'll just say: I don't like the word "Bogan" as an insult (rather than self description etc). I think it's classist. (A lot of this applies to the word "hick" too)
Like the synonyms on Wikipedia: chav, white trash, redneck etc, people might claim it can't be classist because they also apply it to rich people who have the same characteristics, but that only indicates the difference between income and class. And "It's ok to discriminate against them because they suck" or "But it's funny!" are as unacceptable as they are with racism, sexism, etc :P
Wearing tracksuit pants and a heavy metal shirt doesn't make you an idiot, not does it indicate that you have a poor education. Coming from a subculture with different fashions doesn't mean you have poor taste or don't care about your appearance. Showing off your wealth in obvious unsubtle ways is no worse than the subtle "If you are the right sort of person you'll recognise this dress cost $2K" stuff less-neuveu-riche people do. Having a poor education doesn't make you an idiot or mean you have poor taste.
The whole idea of being "cultured" was developed to maintain class divisions since they're totally arbitrary and invisible, and says nothing about how intelligent, interesting, or deep someone is. When my mum volunteered at the canteen of my snooty private highschool she realised that while the mums there went to opera and ballet out of peer pressure, they had no more deep understanding of art than the less "cultured" mums at my working class highschool(*). There may be more overt anti-intellectualism amongst the working class but in my experience upper-middle-class culture values "intellectualism" mostly as a way of jockeying for position and making money, which is not, imo, any better.
I'm never sure how I feel about stuff like "Kath and Kim" or "The Castle". They're affectionate, but I think the "We are all bogans and thus dorky figures of fun" attitude isn't entirely healthy, even if it's better than "THEY are bogans and thus pathetic figures of fun" approach.
Yes, a lot of working class people are horrible idiots. This is because they're people, and Sturgeon's Law applies. And if you want to insult people who vote for One Nation or people who don't appreciate poetry then insult those groups, don't resort to classism.
Also, as relating to the title: I don't really see myself as a bogan, even if I do like some heavy metal, grew up working class, and wear a lot of black and tracksuits. But as with Jews I feel enough connection to the group to take it rather personally and be pissed off when people are discriminatory against them.
(*)Yes, she is a bit of an art snob :) There's a complicated relationship between elitism and classism. I must admit I'm sometimes prone to a bit of elitism myself, and I'm not quite sure how to think about it.
Like the synonyms on Wikipedia: chav, white trash, redneck etc, people might claim it can't be classist because they also apply it to rich people who have the same characteristics, but that only indicates the difference between income and class. And "It's ok to discriminate against them because they suck" or "But it's funny!" are as unacceptable as they are with racism, sexism, etc :P
Wearing tracksuit pants and a heavy metal shirt doesn't make you an idiot, not does it indicate that you have a poor education. Coming from a subculture with different fashions doesn't mean you have poor taste or don't care about your appearance. Showing off your wealth in obvious unsubtle ways is no worse than the subtle "If you are the right sort of person you'll recognise this dress cost $2K" stuff less-neuveu-riche people do. Having a poor education doesn't make you an idiot or mean you have poor taste.
The whole idea of being "cultured" was developed to maintain class divisions since they're totally arbitrary and invisible, and says nothing about how intelligent, interesting, or deep someone is. When my mum volunteered at the canteen of my snooty private highschool she realised that while the mums there went to opera and ballet out of peer pressure, they had no more deep understanding of art than the less "cultured" mums at my working class highschool(*). There may be more overt anti-intellectualism amongst the working class but in my experience upper-middle-class culture values "intellectualism" mostly as a way of jockeying for position and making money, which is not, imo, any better.
I'm never sure how I feel about stuff like "Kath and Kim" or "The Castle". They're affectionate, but I think the "We are all bogans and thus dorky figures of fun" attitude isn't entirely healthy, even if it's better than "THEY are bogans and thus pathetic figures of fun" approach.
Yes, a lot of working class people are horrible idiots. This is because they're people, and Sturgeon's Law applies. And if you want to insult people who vote for One Nation or people who don't appreciate poetry then insult those groups, don't resort to classism.
Also, as relating to the title: I don't really see myself as a bogan, even if I do like some heavy metal, grew up working class, and wear a lot of black and tracksuits. But as with Jews I feel enough connection to the group to take it rather personally and be pissed off when people are discriminatory against them.
(*)Yes, she is a bit of an art snob :) There's a complicated relationship between elitism and classism. I must admit I'm sometimes prone to a bit of elitism myself, and I'm not quite sure how to think about it.
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ETA: On a second read, I am an idiot and missed your entire first paragraph.
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The tl;dr I started writing before your edit, which you're getting now anyway since, hey, I've written it already :)
I went there on a scholarship and was noticeably poorer than all my friends. My mum pretty much forbid me to have them visit so they wouldn't see the terrible rundown government housing we lived in, and although my dad was briefly employed as a lab assistant for most of the time he was either a menial labourer or on unemployment.
But I did get a private school education, and went on to get a Phd at a snooty university (on another scholarship, plus the Aussie equivalent of student loans and government student support) And mum was persuaded to take me to the highschool scholarship exam by one of her middle class friends, none of the other equally bright kids in my class even applied.
And then...your edited reply came in. So I'll stop. But yeah, it's complicated :)
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I'm struggling to even get through high school, so I certainly know how being the other makes you feel. I grew up poor but had a great education primarily due to a great (public) primary school and library access, too.
I'm thinking now that having a better education that your fellow comrades makes you alien to those without, and that appears to change your class bracket superficially, albeit not in reality.
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I think education level and class are separate, but both have a really significant effects. Also: a snooty private school education isn't necessarily better than a state school one (I have a friend who switched to a co-ed state school and learned what she wanted much better there), but it's different, and if nothing else taught me to hang out with rich people without sticking out like a sore thumb (or if I do it's because I'm a weirdo, not because of class :D)
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I identify very strongly with all you've written, except perhaps the intellectual elitism. Don't get me wrong: my family is exactly like that (though my father is worse than my mother by far), but I've (my older siblings first, so I should give credit where it's due: they finished my ethical education) come to reject it. For me it's classism, too, albeit another type of classism.
It's more difficult to get away for it than from the first kind--though I still get spikes of that one in the stupidest subjects. My sister pointed out to me, for example, that my dislike of Boca--a fútbol team--has very likely classist roots.
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Being with Cam has been helpful in this regard: he's very intelligent and thoughtful, but had a fairly "uncultured" upbringing, and brings me down to earth when I get too snooty.
Really tired. Er, ask for clarifications if I fuck this up.
From what I've studied in geography, class in Australia is very strange. Given we were founded on the idea of 'equality'* a lot more so, than a place like England, class seems a lot more tied to income and to a lesser extent education. This slight difference in meaning has caused more than one or two amusing misunderstandings between Chris's medieval eurocentric history learnings, and my Australian geography based learnings. :P
The exceptions to this, such as CUBs are quite hilarious in how angry it makes more middle class group. It's almost like they realise they actually aren't all that much better off, so bitterness sets in a bit. Hence the complaints about unculturedness. I mean you need to feel superior _somehow_.
The thing I find annoying about my mothers side of the family (lower middle class I guess) is the mythologising of my fathers very very working class family. The phrases 'salt of the earth' and 'how lovely it must be to live such a simple life' get mentioned a great deal to my irritation. Actually my sister uses this kinda 'its what dad's family does' to excuse some of her worst behaviours, never realising they're the things the family isn't proud of (like excessive drinking, crappy jobs etc...).
Though on the other hand the thing to remember with 'The Castle' as someone that went and watched it with bogans and the working class, a lot of bogans love it, because it is a celebration in a lot of ways of themselves and how they grow up. The 'dorky figures of fun' as opposed to real people idea is definitely something I notice is put on by the middle classes acting offended on the behalf, because real people can't be like that (they really can).
Kath and Kim however is about lower middle class suburbia from memory, less so about the working class. I think bogan has become a much more broader term then I usually remember it being, partly thanks to the CUB phenomena I guess> Still, Kath and Kim is social comedy of something very different to what The Castle is, its about the putting on a pretense of 'culture' which isn't very bogan trait.
Oh and to end with, I identify pretty strongly with the idea of Bogan, especially in my tastes in music, clothes and my dislike for most 'cultured' activities. Thus, it pisses me off the amount of times discussions of privilege ignore class as a rather large issue.
*It goes without saying that there are more than a few flaws in this, but it is a useful statement to use when comparing to our 'mother' nations and the US.
**But always striving to be 'higher' class. Oh god, the striving. "You need to learn to play piano and play tennis to welcomed into society, Zoe".
Re: Really tired. Er, ask for clarifications if I fuck this up.
You might be right about the Castle and Kath and Kim. Hmm. *lets my brain simmer on it for a bit*
Reading people's replies and thinking about it: I think education level, income, and "culturedness" are all interrelated social stratifications which relate to class. I mean growing up my family was well educated and cultured but poor, while Cam's was pretty well off but less well educated and cultured, and I think we both experience a mix of working class and middle class...stuff. (And our parents get along pretty well and understand each other as long as they don't talk about books etc or politics) Of course you're the one with the relevant higher education level :)
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My family is weird, class-wise: my mom is middle class, my dad is working class; I identify as middle-class, my brother is working class. There is a big cultural element to class; it's not all about money.
Words like "redneck", when used in snooty ways by middle-class people, make me want to spit: my father and brother are both too dark to have "red" necks, but they've got precisely that tan-burn collar mark that came from years or decades of outdoor work; my dad has had his neck/collar mark almost all of my life. Do not use the word "redneck" to me as if the luxury to tan evenly, or not at all, is a signal of your innate superiority and taste.
Talking about language and class, I'm currently trying to find a word to replace "classy". I'm having little enough success that I'm wondering if the distinction of some behavior being "classy" and some not is so deeply tied with classism that it cannot be freed from it. Thoughts?
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But yes: people make all these disparaging remarks about the children of teen pregnancies who grew up on government benefits in government housing and expect me to laugh because clearly I am "one of them". Nng.
I have exactly the same problem with "classy". I've set my subconscious to ponder it, I'll let you know if I come to any conclusions :) Certainly I can't think of anything that isn't classist which combines taste and decency in the same package.
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elegant? or have I the wrong impression of what you are trying to convey?
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i'm definitely guilty of intellectual elitism, which is not linked to status symbols of education, but to an open-mindedness about learning. i think it partly comes from spending a huge chunk of my mandatory-education years surrounded by people who thought that reading for pleasure was weird and who mocked the fact that i enjoyed learning and got good grades. so i developed a serious intolerance to that sort of thinking.
it's actually quite distressing now that my aunt (who used to be a school teacher) has started leaning that way, who is openly contemptuous about my and my mother's love of ballet and theatre, reading, and the general desire to discuss something other than tv and sport. it's not that i have any objection to people discussing those things, it's just that i rarely watch tv and there are no sports i'm interested in. along the same lines, i have no time for people who do things or claim to like things just because they're "cultured." just as i have no time for people who do things or claim to like things just because they're currently in fashion or popular.
yesterday, at work, for example, i heard someone say that she went to bed early the night before because there was nothing good on tv. and that kind of horrified me. you could read! i thought; or have a conversation, or look at the stars or, or, or any of a cornucopia of other things available to humans as activities. so i think maybe i'm snobbish in that way, too.
i don't think i'm classist, but maybe i just can't see my own preconceptions clearly enough. i'm likely to dislike people of all classes. misanthropy is equal opportunity in that regard. but it's definitely something i'll have to poke at further. thanks for giving me early morning thinky thoughts. :)
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I was lucky in that while I did encounter a moderate amount of anti-intellectualism growing up I also encountered a lot of people who valued learning too (and a lot of them weren't mocked the way I was, so I wonder how much of it was bullies using the fact I was a nerd as a tool rather than bullying me because I was a nerd). It was nice at my private highschool not being given crap for trying at my schoolwork (not that I wasn't given crap for other things), of course the school's policy of giving scholarships to bright kids and encouraging less academic kids to leave helped create that atmosphere.
That would be unpleasant with your aunt. My mum goes on a lot about her football obsession, but largely to needle her snobbish socialist mother about her hypocrisy, she values ballet and reading too :)
Glad to provide food for thought!
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I like to think that class is not about how much you earn or how you earn it (most plumbers do far better than university graduates) but about how you spend your leisure time. So I am an unapologetic snob re the value of reading, listening thoughtfully to music, going to the art gallery. This definition puts me in the same social group as my Mum who is dirt poor and left school at Year 12 but who, like me, likes to read, listen to opera, etc. Defining on the basis of money would definitely put me in a class above her, which is just ridiculous since she defined my whole cultural outlook.
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That said I agree that income definitely isn't all of it either. I think income, education, and "culture"/class markers all combine to form a complicated very fuzzy set of class boundaries.
It's been educational for me meeting Cam's mother's family: they're from far north Queensland and none of them have much formal education (his mum left school at 13) and in a lot of ways they fit a lot of stereotypes about lower class/rural people. But they value learning about the world and following ones dreams and creativity. It's just more likely to manifest as traveling and talking to people, or painting as a hobby etc.
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However, I would contend with the idea that Australia is a country in which "cultured" elites oppress an "uncultured" working class.
Australia's power elites, its mainstream media, and most other aspects of popular culture cater better for the imagined tastes of a bogan than they do for some notional cultured intelligentsia.
Read the TV guide: "high culture" is marginalised to the point of endangerment ...
I also disagree that "upper-middle-class culture values 'intellectualism' mostly as a way of jockeying for position and making money". To the extent that the UMC (wherever and whatever it is) values opera, ballet or other archetypically "elite" forms of culture, it should be acknowledged that it is actually possible, and common, to legitimately appreciate these forms of art. That is, I really dislike the automatic labelling of art appreciation as snobbery, when it's merely an expression of thoroughly normal cultural variation, and if it involves reinforcement of class status it does so no more than attending an AFL match or an ACDC concert does for other groups.
(By the way, I also come from a background where my family's relative wealth was somewhat lower than average for my educational institution - although not markedly.)
To look at it from a liberal perspective, if "bogan culture" transcends socioeconomic boundaries (as it seems to with so-called CUBs) then perhaps it should be assessed as a reasonable comprehensive doctrine alongside others pursued in a political plural society. With its own values and codes of behaviour. As such any illiberal tendencies need to be scrutinised like those of any other political persuasion.
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If you look at our taxation and corporation laws, they're set up to protect those with money, land and shareholdings, not aficionados of the opera or Nabokov.
And if you look at the way prejudice is reinforced by aspects of culture, you need look no further than the way that "lowest common denominator" (I've always thought that should be "highest common factor"!) entertainment from reality and lifestyle TV programmes through "current affairs" and sport coverage (particularly the only marginally sport-related sports panel programmes) tends to reinforce the rule of the patriarchy.
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First off: intellectualism and "high culture" are two different things. I didn't mean opera etc, I meant going to uni, reading dense non-fiction etc. I don't see opera as particularly intellectual, it's just a form of music (one I don't like, though I acknowledge this as a subjective judgement :))
Since it's hard to decide what counts as "working class" (see all the different definitions in the comments here, even just from Australians) I'll talk about the poor instead (not always quite the same group) since I'm sure we can both agree that the rich picking on the poor is Not Ok.
Having an education is useful for achieving money and power. And in my experience richer people do value having an education more than the poor (on average), and use the perceived ignorance of the poor as an excuse to look down on them.
I did totally ignore the tall-poppy anti-intellectualism which pervades australian society. Unlike countries which want everyone to aspire to be as high in the class structure as possible, in Australia we're expected to all aspire to upper middle class and no further, and anyone too "up themselves" is attacked.
And I agree that "low tastes" and being poor are not totally correlated. But there is some correlation, and the fact that some bogans are not poor, doesn't stop it from it being a classist term which on the whole refers to poor or working class people (the best analogy I can think of: the fact that not all women are prostitutes, and not all prostitutes are women, doesn't stop "whore" being a sexist insult). Criticise anti-intellectualism all you like, but don't use classist ideas and terminology to do so.
I agree, being poor and powerless but having "cultured tastes" doesn't give you an awful lot of clout in Australian society, and a lot of people who like "high culture" do so because they really like it. And I think people who have "high tastes " AND money and power use "culture" as another tool for looking down on people who have "low tastes" AND are poor (the existence of people not in either of those groups does deflate the power of this dynamic somewhat. But I still think it's there)
I don't know that the lowest-common denominator-ness of popular culture says very much about power structures. Hasn't most popular culture always been lowest common denominator? Bread and circuses and all that.
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You say it's unfair to visit accusations of crude taste upon people living with socioeconomic disadvantage - I'd agree, but I'd also point out that among the chief benefits of wealth, power and privilege is the ability to exercise one's taste and enjoy more sophisticated leisure activities. I simply don't believe your statement that the wealthy and powerful do so just to reinforce their wealth and power. In a sense I think you're coming from two angles here: the first a defensive lowbrow attack on middle class pomposity - which you acknowledge - and the second a dismissive highbrow attack on the middle class, which you don't very much acknowledge. It's the latter that informs this idea that the wealthy sector of the middle class is made up of people that pretend to like things like opera for social reasons.
The subsequent distinction you draw between liking opera and "true intellectualism" in the statement "I don't see opera as particularly intellectual, it's just a form of music (one I don't like ..." is further evidence for this subtext in your OP. Frankly I believe opera can be a basis for intellectualism, I'd say it's a prime example of an artform which requires intellectual engagement to appreciate. I say that as someone who lacks the requisite refinements to enjoy opera!
Regarding the term intellectualism, I find it vaguely defined, but understand it to refer more to an outlook or a manner of engagement with a range of activities, rather than as a specific activity or group of activities in and of themselves. In that sense I think your original point is well taken, that there's no reason to assign intellectual value to class-delineated pursuits unless they are actually pursued with an intellectual outlook: systematising, aestheticising, criticising, cataloguing and in the spirit of learning. The way that some so-called "bogans" appraise performance cars falls into that category - I had a neighbour in Coolbellup who was like a professor of Ford v8s.
I dislike Kath and Kim, probably for reasons similar to the ones you cite: I'm not comfortable with humour that revolves around belittling society's disadvantaged (although last time I saw the show I did notice there was a quite funny attack upon the western suburbs mum / Keeping Up Appearances / vacuous-snob archetype in the form of tin he "makeup ladies", but oddly these characters are still working retail and therefore the satire misses its target IMO).
I haven't seen The Castle, but I think there has always been an oversupply of affectionate but patronising portraits of ordinary Australians in our cinema (starting with Dad and Dave and moving up through Spotswood, The Dish, etc. - these are ok films but where's our answer to Ken Loach?).
Overall I more or less agree with you, I just think that you're unduly cynical about the prevalence of genuine intellectual interest (as far as it goes) amongst the wealthy and powerful. The unfortunate truth, in my opinion, is that wealth and leisure time tend to be tickets to a greater depth of intellectual interests.
What a completely disjointed comment; sorry.
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Also, reading your comment made me come to one of those embarrassing epiphanies where I realised a lot of my generalisations were all about my own Issues and experience. Basically, I was brought up to be a total cultural snob. Until I was 12-14ish I only listened to classical music, scorned popular culture and fashion, went to plays and concerts and arts festivals and was smug about my intellectual superiority(*). But the older I get the more I realise I don't actually like high culture very much. I prefer movies to plays, prose to poetry, scifi to literature, complaint rock to opera etc. Meanwhile I'm getting into and learning to appreciate marginal forms of expression such as fanfic, feminist deconstruction etc, all of which have their own subtle sophistication and make traditional forms of expression (high class or otherwise) look really limited and oppressive. But I also know that part of my issue with High Culture is that I lack certain sorts of intellectual appreciation, eg I Just Don't Get most poetry. Not for lack of education or upbringing, I'm just not wired that way. So it's really hard for me to untangle my distrust of the status quo when it says "This stuff is artistically superior, trust me, if you could appreciate it you'd understand why". I know some of my distrust is warranted (eg when people argue that women can't do Real Literature) but I'm also pretty sure the people who say they enjoy long non-rhyming poems aren't just lying to make me feel stupid.
So! With that in mind, what do I think? Hmm.
I think all the aspects of being "cultured" have genuine worth, and most of people who consume "high culture" do so at least in part out of sincere enjoyment. But a lot of it is somewhat arbitrary cultural preference that only seems superior if that's what you're used to (not that it's inferior either). For example, while I think it's useful I see no reason why being broadly familiar with the bible and greek myths is a sign of superiority compared to knowing about other religions or folklore (even urban myths). And whatever objective intellectual value there may be in or implied by certain forms of "culturedness" as a whole it does not have as much value as it is seen to have. Or, equivalently, many aspects of "low" culture have a lot more value than they are seen to have. And while it gets mixed up with issues of taste and upbringing, there is a tendency for people to consume high culture as sign of status/intelligence/etc, even if that's not the only reason they consume it.
(*)I still do that last part, but not so much about issues of taste :)