Culture's ruptures

Christmas is (finally) over and (finally) the debate heating up every Christmas has been settled.

While people celebrated and took sides for Ralphie Parker vs. John McClane, a brief interaction with an ex-Twitter (pun intended) friend made me ponder the importance of popular culture like old movies or iconic TV series. One of my guilty pleasures is to watch old movies, to read vintage comics and pulp stories (I mean, trashy ones) trying to recognize their influence on what came later.

My friend agrees that’s unacceptable to not understand when I say that I tried to be like Magnum, yet I might end up like Higgins. And even those who do understand what I mean would not recognize that old TV series as a subtle parody of 1940s hard-boiled detective stories, nor would they catch its “Casablanca” (1942) references.

Old movies and best-seller books have shaped our contemporary society like ancient classics forged European culture and its oversea spinoffs, with role models from operas, novels and then films replacing those dictated by religion, epics or chivalry. But while ancient works of fiction took centuries to spread and their reach was limited to educated elites, movies and cheap literature hit societies all around the world at once, therefore shaping collective perception on a planetary scale.

To be honest, most old books and films don’t age well, and now they feel hopelessly dull… unless we see them as a source of emulation for people behaving like that in real life. Dialogues and romances in classic movies sound awkwardly familiar because they sound like old people in daily life, thus they are boring, by definition.

As a matter of fact, when old fiction loses its value as entertainment, it becomes History and it should be perceived as such.

It’s appalling how otherwise educated people blissfully ignore the impact of popular culture on their own civilization. 

Istanbul has fascinated travelers for centuries but no tourism promotion would revamp its persisting aura of mystery and romance like James Bond did. The scuba diving industry owes its success to Jacqueline Bisset. Crowded and chaotic Italy is considered a romantic destination since a fictional couple rode a vespa in Rome -and survived. The psychological impact of a 40th birthday can be softened with an 88mph ride in a rented DeLorean. And if a group of young friends rents a cabin in the woods for a supposedly romantic vacation, they better stay away from chainsaw wielding locals.

Before internet memes, there was the cheap wisdom of movie quotes. I once disappointed my favorite disciple when she heard my “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage” in a movie. On the other hand, I realized that an ex was not the one when I answered “I know!” to “I love you” and she didn’t get it. “May the Force be with you” is understood by uninitiated but what do you answer if your boss asks “Starbuck, what do you hear?”

Overlooking others’ culture is not new and it’s the essence of prejudice. Virtually every generation had to fight their parents’ preconceptions to enjoy ever-evolving entertainment. Illustration in children tales was considered a minor form of art, but it produced comic books, which have proved to be an ideal medium for fantastic stories: it generated a modern mythology of superheroes and demigoddesses. Spaghetti westerns, whose photography and storylines also stem from comics, were belittled at first but their influence still reverberates, from Bollywood to planet Mandalore.

Videogames have gone a long way since parents used to worry about their kids growing as criminals because they were chasing and killing colored dots in a maze. But despite their sophisticated evolution, they still bear a stigma of dumbness to older generations that never played them. In fact, some videogame historical reconstructions are so accurate that they are being used for virtual tours of ancient cities.

The problem is that once we are taught that something is irrelevant, we train our mind to discard it, and we often miss something that would actually be very interesting to us. It happens with anything evoking silliness or neglect, like graffiti on street walls. Since Banksy made street art fashionable, murals are appreciated but it was a humble and indecipherable scrawl on a Turkish wall that taught me a valuable lesson.

As a capital city crowded with university students from all over the country, Ankara was always a natural canvas for graffiti, sometimes actual art, sometimes vows of eternal love or political slogans.

State control of the media had already sent a fictional cop to rehab and wedlock, but after Gezi it was extended to internet. The effect was that graffiti promptly became a real life social media to express dissent or call for protests, and we started paying attention to the literal writings on the walls. Then one day a curious logo appeared.

It resembled a lowercase "λ" or, with some imagination, an arm holding a crowbar, as it was indeed meant to represent both. It immediately flashed me back to another time, a few months before moving to Turkey, when it showed me the way to safety or to dopamine-laced rewards.

Back then, the extravagant idea to obey traffic rules in Napoli stopping at a crosswalk resulted in a ruined motorbike and a crushed knee. The latter forced me to a long immobility and a nerd friend of mine came to my help with the “Half-Life” computer game.

I am not a gamer but only because videogames are addictive. With a broken knee I wasn’t able to do much else, so I played Gordon Freeman in a dystopian world where uniformed thugs in armor and gas masks enforced the rule of a corrupt alien clique called “the Combine.”

In that world, escape routes and safe houses were marked with the yellow spray-painted logo of the game. Which was exactly what I was now seeing in Ankara streets, coincidentally near affordable cafes where students or foreign photojournalists hung around, mostly because of proximity to demonstrations hot-spots, Wi-Fi, phone charging and good coffee.

To my chagrin, when I tried to bring it to friends’ and colleagues’ attention most of them had no idea of what I was talking about. Because, you know, “videogames!”

One of my most brilliant and smartest fixer/friends had studied videogame marketing and we did some research. We asked the cafe staff, who knew what the logo was but thought it was just a coincidence. They were surprised that it marked other cafes too, but they suggested some gamers’ role playing¹ .

Our research revealed that the old installments of “Half-Life 2” were still the most played online games in Turkey, peaking after Gezi, but we also noticed that players could exchange encrypted audio and text messages. We clearly were onto something, but before we could find more a wave of bloody bombings cleared the streets and emptied the cafes.

The graffiti didn’t stop but censorship reached the walls too. Teams of municipal workers started patrolling the city to cover anything spray-painted on them.

There can be many reasons for a specific graffiti to be spared for at least three more years by otherwise merciless municipality cleaners. I can think of a few but none sounds convincing. Moreover, I always doubted the wisdom of intentionally marking “safe places” with a very recognizable logo. I still wonder if anyone who noticed those marks ever found out more than I could.

Still, a few years later, FBI uncovered a network based on PS4 sending ISIS fighters to Iraq, confirming both our intuitions: online games could hide encrypted communication and much worse, and overlooking popular entertainment should never be an option for those trying to make some sense of our crazy world. Perhaps, that makes the difference between being a Magnum or becoming a Higgins.

1  None of them was a gaming place