Catch-Up Culture

“I soon realised the strangest thing about my new home. All the hunting is done for you by a tribe of hunters who bring food to the shops. In my tribe, everybody was a hunter, or made the fire, or looked after the children. We only did those jobs. The humans have many different jobs and don’t have to think about hunting and food all the time. This means they feel something called boredom. They don’t like boredom, but I think it’s very relaxing and so they should shut up and count themselves lucky.”

 Gareth Roberts, Only Human (2005) 

 

We always used to call these things 'zappers' in my childhood home.

When was it that the consumption of material designed for my entertainment started to feel less like a delight and more like a strange kind of obligation?


I’ve lost count of all the books, films, television serials, radio programmes, YouTube channels, video games, musical soundtracks, and so forth that have been enthusiastically recommended to me by various friends and acquaintances. In fact, ‘enthusiastically’ perhaps isn’t quite the right word. I’m talking about the kind of recommendations made in absolute incredulity that I could possibly be ignorant of the material in question, with great stress on the grievousness of the deprivation to which I am subjecting myself by remaining in said ignorance: “How have you not seen it? You have to see it. It’s so good.”


I don’t suppose this is at all the intention of those making such recommendations, but they always leave me feeling rather inadequate. If the thing in question – I’ll generically call it The Littlest Elf for the rest of the post, for convenience and because it’s a fun A Series of Unfortunate Events reference¹ – is something so good and excellent and valuable that I simply have to see it, if watching The Littlest Elf would improve my life so profoundly, then what does that imply about the state of my life at the moment? Surely the answer can only be that my life is worse than it could and should be, and, by extension, that I am worse than I could and should be, and that I am the only one to blame for the fact, because every effort has been made to enlighten me as to the virtues of watching The Littlest Elf, and if I would only stir myself to do so, my life would doubtless attain to the same quality as that of everyone else who has seen it.


In fact, I am entirely without excuse for not having seen The Littlest Elf, because I live in a catch-up culture where a whole ocean of entertainment is available right at my fingertips. No longer is it a case of asking the friend who recommended The Littlest Elf for a quick overview of the story so far before jumping it at whatever episode happens to be on next; no longer is there any need to glean the important details from the ‘previously’ clips at the beginning of the programme; no longer is it of any import whether one manages to catch the latest instalment as it is broadcast or not. Instead, between iPlayer, Netflix, YouTube, and a whole host of other video sites of varying levels of legality, access to every single episode is freely available. Catch-up culture doesn’t just apply to television, either: there are extremely well-stocked music-streaming platforms, vast online libraries of ebooks and audiobooks – almost every conceivable form of entertainment is downloadable within minutes if not seconds, no need to move from in front of the computer.


But if the availability of The Littlest Elf itself presents me with no obstacle, the availability of the time required to watch it is quite another story. There are, after all, only so many hours in a week, and most of the time, the vast majority of them are already spoken for – work, sleep, church, and so on – so that the rate at which I receive recommendations leaves me quite in despair of ever reaching the bottom of the list even of the ones I can remember. In other words, I can’t find the time to do what has been pitched to me as nigh on vital for my continued membership of human society: “How have you not seen it? You have to see it. It’s so good.” Clearly, there must be something very wrong with my priorities.


And it’s here, I think, that we discover the heart of the problem. Catch-up culture labours under the assumption that our greatest need in life is the need to be entertained. The range of advertisements on the tube, I think, evince this particularly strikingly: of the collection of huge posters at stations and slightly smaller ones inside the trains themselves, the majority seem to be devoted to forms of entertainment – books, films, stage shows, attractions – yet meanwhile, a by no means insignificant number are busily singing the praises of products and services designed to save people time. A couple of examples: HelloFresh, who offer home delivery of ready-to-cook recipe boxes, sell themselves with the slogan, ‘Hello, is it time you’re looking for?’; TaskRabbit, who arrange for people to do chores and run errands on their clients’ behalf, opt for, ‘We do chores, you live life.’ What do the tube adverts tell the good people of London they need out of life? In first place, entertainment, and as an auxiliary to that, more time to spend on that entertainment. Humanity’s greatest problem, apparently, is that we’re bored.


It’s a first-world problem if there ever was one. The notion that our greatest need is the need to be entertained – that watching The Littlest Elf is what will really make our lives more worth living – is  a frankly embarrassing testament to the level of comfort and privilege we enjoy in the modern west. The only reason we can be persuaded that this is so is because we take it so readily for granted that our more basic needs – food, shelter, safety, and so on – will be provided by default. My opening quotation is taken from a Doctor Who novel called Only Human in which a Neanderthal called Das ends up stranded in twenty-first-century London.² Das marvels at the existence of such a thing as boredom – that because the people around him are not required to devote their time and energies to the business of survival, they have nothing to do – and can’t understand why humans don’t seem to like it very much. As far as he’s concerned, mooching around not doing a lot beats going out hunting any day.


Das, total fish out of water that he is, is the exception that sharpens the focus on the rule. Generally speaking, when we as humans have our more basic needs satisfied, we don’t settle down content with the fact; we start craving something else instead. I am so desperate to be entertained, so sure that it’s the thing I really need, that I burden myself with the necessity of it. I start to define myself by the content I consume. I feel obliged to entertain myself in every way that seems attractive to me, even though I blatantly don’t have enough time to, in order to guarantee that I’m not missing out, that my life is not needlessly inferior to what it could be. I put so much pressure on The Littlest Elf to satisfy me that I can’t even enjoy it properly. Seeking to be entertained becomes a wearisome encumbrance, not a route to satisfaction – which would strongly suggest that it was never actually my greatest need in the first place.


So what is?


Have a look at John 6.³ At the start of the chapter, Jesus turns a few bread rolls and fish into a picnic lunch for thousands of people. Pretty incredible, and the picnickers clearly thought so too, because they determinedly follow Jesus across the lake (by boat, rather than walking on it like he did), and start angling for another free meal:


When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labour for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”


What this bunch think is their greatest need, is the need for food. They’re following Jesus around because he can apparently pretty much generate it out of thin air, and he knows as much. Nevertheless, while starvation is definitely less of a first-world problem than boredom, Jesus still has other ideas about what the real need that wants addressing here is. The real need is for food that endures to eternal life.


Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”

Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”


Food that endures to eternal life? The crowd like the sound of that. How do they get hold of it? And Jesus answers, for once, very straightforwardly: believe in the one God sent.


So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”


Well, believing in the one God sent or whatever is all very well, but there hasn’t actually been any food yet, so the people issue a challenge. Jesus may have fed a few thousand people just now, but Moses fed the entire Israelite nation for a full forty years of wandering in the desert. Beat that.


Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”


Jesus tells them they’re barking up the wrong tree. These people’s greatest need isn’t for food, like they think it is, but for Jesus himself.


That’s worth dwelling on. Jesus doesn’t say that what the crowd really needs is a get-out clause from God’s justified anger against them, or a ticket to heaven. He says they need to come to and believe in him, the bread of life. He himself is the fulfilment of their greatest need. And the same is true for those of us who are tempted to call the need for entertainment our greatest one. The whole point of Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross was to enable the fulfilment of that need, to grant us access to him and, through him, to God the Father. It’s not a case of subscribing to some doctrines, setting aside some Bible-study time, making a few lifestyle changes, and then settling back into the routine of seeking out the maximum possible entertainment for ourselves, betraying that we still think that’s the real business of life. To believe in Jesus is to recognise that my need for him trumps all needs. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference whether I ever get round to watching The Littlest Elf or not.


Now, I don’t want to make anyone feel guilty for spending time enjoying entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with it in itself, just as there’s nothing wrong with food: both are good gifts from God. The question I would, however, encourage us all to ask is: if I’m finding myself prioritising getting my entertainment fix over devoting time to Jesus, what am I saying about where I think my greatest need lies? What is it that I expect watching The Littlest Elf to achieve that makes it so important?


And I would also encourage us to stop recommending things to one another using the language of, “How have you not seen it? You have to see it. It’s so good.” By all means recommend things – if you enjoyed The Littlest Elf and want others to experience the same joy, that’s commendable – but please, I humbly ask, don’t pitch any piece of entertainment as a necessity. Whatever our catch-up culture may tell us, Jesus makes it clear that the only necessity is to believe in him.

Footnotes


¹It was a very clever way to begin the film, truly in the spirit of the continual exhortations to read something more pleasant with which Lemony Snicket filled his novels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXAZ50HOj6s.

²Recently re-released with a snazzy new cover as part of Doctor Who’s fiftieth anniversary series. On the off-chance that you feel inclined to purchase it, you can get a couple of quid off the RRP by doing so through Hive (and support independent booksellers at the same time): http://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Gareth-Roberts/Doctor-Who-Only-Human--50th-Anniversary-Edition/14525409.


³Here it is: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+6&version=ESVUK.

An Enthusiastic Rant About Classical Music

“So there's this man. He has a time machine. Up and down history he goes, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, getting into scrapes. Another thing he has is a passion for the works of Ludwig van Beethoven. And one day he thinks, ‘What's the point of having a time machine if you don't get to meet your heroes?’ So off he goes to eighteenth-century Germany, but he can't find Beethoven anywhere. No one's heard of him. Not even his family have any idea who the time traveller is talking about. Beethoven literally doesn't exist. This didn't happen, by the way. I've met Beethoven – nice chap, very intense, loved an arm wrestle. No, this is called the ‘bootstrap paradox’. Google it. The time traveller panics. He can't bear the thought of a world without the music of Beethoven. Luckily, he brought all of his Beethoven sheet music for Ludwig to sign. So he copies out all the concertos and the symphonies, and he gets them published. He becomes Beethoven. And history continues with barely a feather ruffled. But my question is this: who put those notes and phrases together? Who really composed Beethoven's Fifth?”

Doctor Who S9 E4, ‘Before the Flood’ (2015)

 

In case the picture is too small for you to see, this is a stairwell papered with sheet music, which is such an irresistibly cool idea I just had to include it in my post.

Earlier this week, the ever-talented Jon Cozart, aka Paint, gifted YouTube with another of his thoroughly excellent a cappella medleys, this one entitled ‘History of Classical Music’.¹ For some reason, it’s taken up rather persistent residence in a charming little property known as the Forefront of my Mind, making this week seem a rather opportune time to spend a blog post ranting about how much I love classical music.

I love classical music because it stands with the weight of history behind it, because a well-written concerto will always be the best way to show off exactly what a particular instrument is really capable of, because the vast array of an entire orchestra, every element distinct yet all combining into a seamless whole, will always be able to achieve a more heart-stirringly epic sound than anything else can dream of. I love classical music because it works equally well as not-too-distracting background noise for revising and as a masterpiece to which I can gladly devote my full attention. I love classical music because it seems to me, in some sense, the most musicky music out there, the music most motivated by the fact that it’s brilliantly somehow possible to organise a bunch of seemingly disparate noises into a substance that does things to the hearer’s mind and heart and soul.²

To be fair, it probably helps that I was pretty much raised on classical music. The radio in my childhood home was permanently tuned to Classic FM;³ the only other thing I remember my parents listening to was the occasional borrowed ABBA CD. I had virtually no awareness of popular music at all beyond perhaps the occasional Avril Lavigne or S Club 7 refrain gleaned from a friend’s party or CBBC TV programme. On one memorable occasion when I was in Year Six, my classmates and I were told to write poems following a specified structure that included reference to our favourite music – so I made mention of ‘Jupiter’ from Gustav Holst’s Planet Suite.⁴ Because, you know, it’s a quality tune. Shame the choice sounded so pretentious coming from a ten-year-old.

Jupiter – and some other planets, I assume, though quite what they’re doing so close by is a bit of a mystery.

But an appreciation for classical music doesn’t – or at least shouldn’t – have to come with an obligatory dose of pretentiousness. The genre isn’t nearly as loftily inaccessible as I think it can have a tendency to come across as. While I would absolutely urge that nobody should feel obliged to pretend to like a classical piece in order to come across as cultured, I would just as heartily urge that nobody should dismiss the whole classical genre out of hand. After all, the term can encompass a far wider variety of audial creations than one might imagine.

In fact, ‘classical’ is a pretty fuzzy term when applied to music. In a technical sense, it refers to the music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, sandwiched between the baroque and romantic movements, but surely nobody would claim that its use should be restricted purely thereto. I reckon it’s nigh on impossible to pin down the defining features of the classical genre. Classical music doesn’t have to be orchestral; it doesn’t have to be instrumental; it doesn’t even have to be old. My good chum dictionary.com would have it as ‘the formally and artistically more sophisticated and enduring types of music, as distinguished from popular and folk music and jazz’,⁵ which certainly isn’t the worst definition ever, but it does rather contain that air of pretentiousness we’re trying to avoid.

Plus, we’re confronted with the fact that some artists simply refuse to seat themselves neatly within or without the classical box. Take someone like Lindsey Stirling; she’s a brilliant violinist who accompanies most of her compositions with electronica and dubstep, but sounds just as at home backed by an orchestra.⁶ Or there are the Piano Guys, who seamlessly mash up Michael Jackson with Mozart and David Guetta with Fauré without batting an eyelid.⁷ Or there’s Escala, the string quartet who appeared on Britain’s Got Talent in 2008 with their enviably cool transparent instruments, whose first album features consecutively covers of ‘Feeling Good’, Handel’s ‘Sarabande’, and the theme from The Matrix.⁸ My preferred term for this kind of stuff, straddling the gap between classical and otherwise, is ‘cross-classical’, but I’m not entirely sure whence I picked that up or how widely it’s used. Its blended nature makes this the more accessible end of the genre to those unfamiliar with classical music, and there’s some really brilliant, clever, creative, beautiful stuff going on there.

 

A violin – not as quite as cool as Escala’s ones though.

Still in pretty accessible territory is the sphere of the soundtrack. Cinema and video games may be recent phenomena, but composers were being commissioned to write soundtracks for things long before they emerged; Handel’s ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’, written in 1749, would seem an obvious example.⁹ Some of my favourite film scores include Hans Zimmer’s for Pirates of the Caribbean (obviously), John Powell’s for How to Train Your Dragon, and Harry Gregson-Williams’ for the most recent Narnia series.¹⁰ I’m also a huge fan of what Adam Young (of Owl City) is doing at the moment, namely writing soundtracks for historical events; a new one is available to download for free at the start of every month.¹¹ The fact that one knows, when listening to a soundtrack, what the music is about and what one is supposed to be envisioning is, I think, a real help towards enjoying it more thoroughly.

On this ground, I’ll take the opportunity to offer a recommendation of something I think is a good ‘in’ to the world of more traditionally classical classical – like, stuff written by guys who are now dead and known primarily by their surnames, and bearing imaginative titles that consist of a number followed by a key signature or similar. (I know, it’s a terrible definition, but I did say it’s nigh on impossible to define this stuff and you do at least know what I’m talking about, O Perceptive Reader.) Ten Pieces is an hour-long programme created by the BBC for use in schools, but don’t let that put you off. As its name suggests, the programme features ten pieces of orchestral music, but its real brilliance is in the way it explains key aspects of the context and purpose of each piece through a short animated or live-action sequence, and gives the audience a few prompts as to where they might like to direct the wanderings of their mind as they listen to it. There are currently two editions of Ten Pieces, the more recent being most definitely my favourite, though both are worth checking out.¹²

Another potential ‘in’ to the genre is the fact that it’s currently prom season.¹³ The proms – or the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, if we’re being formal – were founded in 1895 with the aim of bringing classical music to the masses, and still constitute probably the world’s largest classical music festival. To witness a prom live at the Royal Albert Hall will only set you back £6 if you’re prepared to stand, but if that sounds like too much hassle, there are other options too; for a start, every single prom is broadcast on Radio Three, and a good number of them are televised as well. There are always a few proms made especially accessible by their foundation around a particular popular-culture theme; this year’s offerings include a David Bowie prom, a Brazil-themed prom, and even a CBeebies prom. To continue in the vein of my beloved children’s television, the Horrible Histories prom put on a few years ago was a hugely enjoyable mixture of songs featured in the sketch show and classical works, with goodly doses of entertaining historical context, of course.¹⁴

And once you’ve found your ‘in’, tracked down a piece or two you really like, it’s simply a matter of scouting about on YouTube or Spotify or whatever your preferred music platform is for similar stuff, and perhaps doing a tad of Googling for context if you feel like it. In fact, Spotify’s ready-made playlists are another ‘in’ worth mentioning: tracks are grouped under headings like ‘Epic Classical’, ‘Peaceful Choral Music by Living Composers’, and ‘All About That Brass’, depending on what takes your fancy. My own ‘Classical Awesomeness’ playlist is woefully understocked at the moment, partly because I keep my cross-classical and soundtracks elsewhere, partly because I’m usually quite content to rely on Classic FM’s playlisting skills over my own. I am, after all, no expert on classical music – but then, I don’t think I should have to be to be allowed to enjoy it. And neither, dear reader, should you.

Footnotes

¹ Do give it a watch. It’s really good fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S5wiYzlrwo.

² Disclaimer: I don’t, of course, love all classical music. Just as in any other genre, some of it’s terrible, some of it goes right over my head, and some of it just isn’t very interesting. But I do really love some classical music.

³ They also have an online radio player: http://www.classicfm.com/radio/player/.

⁴ Fancy a listen? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYdzb6TZW7M. Wow, ten-year-old me had good taste.

⁵ Entry 4a: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/classical.

⁶ Compare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAD0BtEv6-Q with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAD0BtEv6-Q; the first comes with Stirling’s official music video for the song (and yes, her other videos are also very beautiful and worth checking out), the second with a bunch of Alice in Wonderland clips, because why not.

⁷ Here’s their very impressive video for the former: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR94NDIfGmA. Again, yes, the others are worth checking out too.

⁸ Though the piece they really made their name with was ‘Palladio’, as performed here on BGT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3Gvxgudm4U.

⁹ Classic FM will tell you the whole story: http://www.classicfm.com/composers/handel/music/george-frideric-handel-music-royal-fireworks/#1XqQSwRbji6Q2DA4.97.

¹⁰ But I can’t be bothered to link to all of them, so why not start with my favourite track from How to Train Your Dragon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4o5-f6dGAg.

¹¹ No kidding – and as an added bonus, they have totally gorgeous cover art: http://www.ayoungscores.com/.

¹² Sadly, neither is available on iPlayer at the moment, but some kindly human has uploaded a clip to YouTube to give you a flavour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4sNFJPkCyI. You could always try tracking it down on BOB National, https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand, which has recently undergone a revamp, if you’re associated with an institution that grants you access thereto.

¹³ All the details available from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms.

¹⁴ Some lovely human has uploaded the whole thing as a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epq4t6a7bGU&list=PLTO0xV_kw_-NGRgR_rKjrND6eIxiRbQ9O.