Post 321: The Water is Wide

The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy. ISBN: 9781453203897 (eBook).

In The Water is Wide, Conroy comes to recognize the values of television as a medium through which we can have shared experiences. In this case, the shared experience is the movie The Wizard of Oz. Of all the possible movies that the kids could have been exposed to, this is a really good one, but what do we have today that almost everyone has been exposed to in order to have those common experiences?

It seems that pop culture is changing so fast that it instead of "popping" it flashes. It is there one moment, and in the next it is gone. What's the last movie that you saw that you think will make a lasting impression on you? Was it anything this year? Can you say the same thing for art? Books? Advertisements? Clothing? TV Series? It all seems so disposable. In some ways this is a good thing, because advertisers and creative teams have the chance to try a whole bunch of new things and see if they stick, but the problem with that is that they don't stick around for very long even when they are moderately successful (Farscape, Heroes, Dead Like Me). Or they have the problem of sticking around far after they lose their appeal; or even worse, they never had any to begin with because it was a poorly formulated and/or executed idea because Someone thought it would make a whole lot of money and pushed it before it was really developed.

Then again, it seems that Making Money has caused its own problems. In order to be able to push More on the consumer they have actually given us too many options. By providing ten thousand flavors of family drama, vampire romance, train wrecks in the form of reality TV shows, and whatever else your brain could possibly think of, there is almost no way for there to be any front runners. We don't have the kind of common culture we had back in the day because it's hard to watch the same shows as your neighbor when you both have 200 channels to choose from. This is of course the same with reading material, movies, etc.

Is this a good thing? Or is it just the way it is? If we were to have a core of common knowledge, what should it be and who should decide?

My review can be found on Goodreads.
LibsNote: Free review copy provided through NetGalley.
If you like memoirs, this is a good one.

Post 320: The Water is Wide

The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy. ISBN: 9781453203897 (eBook).

There was an excellent moment in this book when Conroy realizes he's being an asshole. I kind of really love these moments, because I've had enough of them in my life to know the utter shame and embarrassment and genuine regret of behaving in a way that shows the world what a big asshole I am. I don't necessarily mean to be an asshole, but by thinking I know better than someone else or my cultural/educational/whatever beliefs are somehow better than someone else's, it sometimes happens. This blog is full of those moments, and I sometimes have to eat my words with a healthy dose of foot sauce.

In this case Conroy has discovered exactly how extreme and how ingrained the belief of ghosts is in the people of Yamacraw. He attempts to "cure" some of the children of this belief by telling them a dwarf ghost lives in his house. When the children scream their little heads off he comes to this conclusion:

"I was still not taking their phobia seriously and was trying to think of a way to eliminate this nonsense once and for all. I did not realize that I was not dealing with nonsense but with a culture, a history, and something very kin to religion."

Ah, the beginning of understanding. It is a wonderful thing.I myself had the opportunity to experience something like this at a young enough age that I did not in fact have to experience the culinary delight that is me eating my words.

When I was about eight years old we moved to a fairly isolated island out in the Pacific Ocean. While this is not quite the same as an island off the coast of a southern state, it does have its parallels in the sense that Guam developed its own spiritualist culture. It is a culture that is still present today.

While living on Guam I had the privilege of taking a class on the history of Guam. I say it is a privilege because I believe children who are now brought over to the island for tours with their military families all go to the Department of Defense schools, which probably does not include the culture of the area. I feel I actually learned more about Guam than any other place I lived (besides perhaps Germany) because of this class. The teacher instilled a very healthy dose of respect in us for the taotaomoa (tao rhymes with ow in this case). We were told to ask for permission to enter the boonies before ever stepping foot away from civilization. There are very real things in the boonies that can harm you, possibly the most dangerous being the boonie bees, which are pretty ferocious. Check these suckers out, they look as mean as they are.

Rather than scoffing at the very idea of asking some dead ancestors sending overly aggressive bees or angry wild boars my way, I decided to play it safe and take their customs very seriously. I think in the case where you are living in someone else's culture that this is the way to go. It doesn't matter if you think it's silly that someone thinks taking a picture will somehow steal their soul, it's not your soul and you don't mess with something like that. It's too bad that Conroy did not respect this, and honestly having a healthy dose of ghosts and spirits probably serves the very good purpose of keeping villagers close to the village at night. This is very important on islands and other isolated areas that don't have the best access to medical care and may not even have the resources for a full fledged search party. As long as the tradition isn't beating the devil out of a child, I say it's probably okay to allow a native population to keep their beliefs, to even be proud of them, and to respect them while you are in their home and on their homeland.

My review can be found on Goodreads.
LibsNote: Free review copy provided through NetGalley.
If you like memoirs, this is a good one.