{"id":346,"date":"2010-08-26T09:40:24","date_gmt":"2010-08-26T09:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/?p=346"},"modified":"2010-08-26T09:42:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-26T09:42:42","slug":"a-question-of-culture-in-high-school-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/2010\/08\/26\/a-question-of-culture-in-high-school-musical\/","title":{"rendered":"A question of culture: in High School Musical"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u201cThe music in that show isn\u2019t hip hop … or rock…or anything essential to culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

So says\u00a0one\u00a0basketball player to another in the otherwise yawn-inducing \u00a0High School Musical<\/a><\/em>. At that piece of dialogue, my brain was finally roused from the torpor into which it had slumped, driven there by the film, and emerged into the light of reason with the promise of something actually interesting to contemplate. (Such moments in the film are rare indeed: then again, I may not be its target audience).<\/p>\n

What culture does\u00a0he mean ? Contemporary youth culture ? Urban culture ? His own culture ? Or, more likely, anything connected with the Culture of Cool ?<\/p>\n

Even more interesting is the idea of what is ‘essential’ to culture: what’s ‘cultural necessity’ ? Is it something that allows culture to thrive, to develop, to progress, to evolve\u00a0? Or something that allows culture to protect, to venerate, and to preserve ? Or is it something that allows culture to communicate, to be handed down from one generation to another, or across\u00a0national divides\u00a0?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably a mixture of all of the above: as teenagers (perhaps even most of us as adults) do, they define culture perhaps\u00a0in terms of their own interests, of peer pressure and their own growing and developing experience and tastes\u00a0and what\u2019s seen as cool, or hip.<\/p>\n

Culture is what we define it as: what we read, watch, write, paint, listen to, indeed create. It\u2019s also how we view our own society, our fellow citizens; it\u2019s how we define our beliefs and creeds, what is important to us socially, morally, educationally and intellectually. It\u2019s the ways in which society entertains itself, deals with its dead, dresses itself and raises its children.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the mirror in which we view ourselves, define our values\u00a0and judge our own actions. I wonder what the music in that show Chad was talking about\u00a0actually was<\/em>…<\/p>\n

(Oh wait:\u00a0this\u00a0all took place in\u00a0High School Musical<\/em>: no, I don\u2019t).<\/p>\n

Posted by Dan Harding<\/strong>, Deputy Director of Music at the University of Kent<\/a>. Click here<\/a> to read his music blog, \u2018Music Matters<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe music in that show isn\u2019t hip hop … or rock…or anything essential to culture.\u201d So says\u00a0one\u00a0basketball player to another in the otherwise yawn-inducing \u00a0High School Musical. At that piece of dialogue, my brain was finally roused from the torpor into which it had slumped, driven there by the film, and emerged into the light … Continue reading “A question of culture: in High School Musical”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":620,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[595],"tags":[25244,1353],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":381,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/pandora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}