An American Artifact
It's difficult to
think of many bands beyond the 1950s and 1960s that didn't use electric
guitar. Chances are, if you ask my grandmother to name a musician that
plays the electric guitar, she would be able to give you a name or
three. Even young toddlers are often exposed to little toy guitars. It's
an image that is embedded in our brains from early on. "This is an
electric guitar, and people that play them are rock stars."
An electric guitar may represent something different to each of us. In
the same way that John H. Bodley states in his article An Anthropological Perspective,
"Americans are not born knowing that the color white means purity, and
indeed this is not a universal cultural symbol," we each might think of a
different style of music or maybe even a specific song or artist when
we see an electric guitar. This would be the effect of different
environments and exposure to electric guitars. For example, if someone
shows me a Fender Telecaster, I'm going to think of indie or country
music. You may not personally apply a Telecaster to indie or country
music, but you may think of your favorite band and that one time you
bought tickets and drove for three hours to see the show. The person
standing in front of me in line at Starbucks might think of her dad
playing the electric guitar in his garage band that he's had for years.
Regardless of what an electric guitar may represent to each of us, it
is a SHARED artifact in each of our lives. We have this in common with
each other no matter if we are 20 or 50 years old. We all have
experiences involving guitars, though some may be more direct than
others.
On a much grander scale, the electric
guitar symbolizes an ideal that many Americans may have toyed with at
some point in their life-- becoming a rock star. Some of our favorite
musicians were discovered in some hole-in-the-wall bar playing to a
crowd of less than 50 people, and now they have all this money and big
houses and fancy cars. Though it may be somewhat of a more twisted
version of the American dream, the idea of becoming a rock star is very
attractive to many of us. People from all over the United States
daydream of picking up a guitar, writing a few songs, and having someone
important throw a contract in their direction. (In this economy, the
American dream can be as farfetched as the idea of becoming a rock
star.)
The electric guitar is an iconic artifact of
modern American culture. It has been around for nearly 80 years, and
our great-grandkids will probably have the same experiences that we have
had with electric guitars. Americans love their rock stars, pop stars,
folk singers, and country stars. Humankind needs music, and Americans
need their Bruce Springsteen. All of us have this shared object in
common, and I hope history will remember the music from this time period
more so than how modern Americans ate too much McDonald.
The first week's readings mostly taught me that in the world of Anthropology, there is a pretty big debate on how to define culture. My Psychology textbooks always have the same definition for culture, so I never would have suspected that other scientific fields fight over this topic. It also seems as though Anthropologists are somewhat aligned with Behaviorism, though to what degree I haven't quite figured out yet since we have just started this class. I did note in one of the slides that the author was quoting the learning theory but discrediting conditioning which a scientist simply cannot do. You cannot nit-pick one part of a scientific theory and ignore the rest.
ReplyDeleteThe hardest part about this first essay was the two hour time limit. I consider myself an adept writer; however, I have my own process that I go through when I'm trying to sit down and spit some words onto paper. That whole outline thing never worked for me because once I start typing, I change my mind on what I want to write. I can write a ten-page research paper in a single sitting, but the build up to that point requires thinking about what I want to say, making a snack, taking a shower, taking a nap, and then finally sitting down and writing. I obviously didn't have the time to do this Tuesday, and it was incredibly nerve-wracking. I honestly don't know how I'm going to deal with writing our next two in-class essays because I do so many things that would probably annoy the hell out of everyone around me. I use private speech. I crack my knuckles. I stretch my arms around. I do lots of other weird things with my hands. These are all self-regulating behaviors that I don't even realize I'm doing most of the time. I feel like sitting in a classroom for the first time in 11 years is going to drive me nuts, and then I'm going to screw up my essay.