Handing Down of Culture | Chapter 9 | Leon Bernier

Chapter 9 | Leon Bernier

(continued)

1. the artistic creation of young people is not a manifestation
of their family’s culture

In order to grasp fully the meaning and the range of this first statement, which contradicts what sociology tells us about handing down of culture, it must be said that the youth participating in our research were not chosen at random, but because of their manifest interest in art, and especially making art. We are therefore involved with a sample which was deliberately biased in its selection, but biased in favour of the younger generation, that does not mean that there was also a bias insofar as their parents were concerned. The members of the sample are, without any intention on our part, generally from a middle class milieu. Fathers who are workers are numerous and the level of education of the parents is often very low.2 In the section of the interviews about their family and its role in their awakening to the arts, there is a sort of leitmotiv: “my parents are not very keen on culture.” During the very first interview, with a young woman registered in a programme concentrating on dance at the secondary level, the disparity of cultural interests between herself and her parents was explicitly stated:

My parents aren’t fond of art at all. I once went with them to a dance performance. They didn’t like it and I heard them saying: “It is dull. Shall we go?” It was very unpleasant. I don’t go with them any more to such performances.

She mentioned also that her boyfriend was like her parents when going to cultural events. On the other hand, her parents and her boyfriend never miss her shows and fully encourage her and are totally supportive of her studying to become a professional dancer.

If there are cases where one can talk of a heritage of artistic creation on the part of parents3 and if there are others where the taste of the younger generation for art is met with opposition, or, worse still, indifference, the situation usually resembles the example described above, where the desire and the pleasure to practice the arts arises independent of family, in a space we could call personal, but can’t realize without the central role of a family, offering financial support, and more importantly moral and emotional support. We still find that parents tend to warn children interested in the arts that it is a difficult path for earning money, but we also see a larger trend arising from our study where parents are proud of the artistic achievements of their progeny. The most common attitude of parents facing what their children can do at an artistic level is, without doubt, astonishment, and even more so when a taste for the arts does not arise in the family. Perhaps that astonishment is what children need most when they begin to devote themselves to arts; their parents are often their first and best public.

If this is the way things are going, it should be said that the essential role of the family, so far as an awakening to the arts is concerned, is at least socio-relational, if not more than purely cultural. As François de Singly puts it, “in a society that heavily valorizes individualism [...], individuals, young or adult, succeed in mobilizing their energies, even those of a heritage [...] only if they receive a sufficient dose of personal attention” (de Singly, 1996: 156-158). Consequently, the support and the approval most of the young practioners say they get from their parents is very important, regardless of whether they benefit from a cultural heritage or not.

2. the artistic creation of youth is not in itself a manifestation
of the youth culture

This second statement appears contradictory. Can we not imagine that youth culture is the sum of the cultural actions of those who comprise the younger generation of the population? In terms of pure linguistic logic, yes, but not as viewed as the sociology of youth. Youth culture does not refer to what youth are doing, but rather to what is particular to them as a precise social category. But even here, one should distinguish between a particular age group and a generation.

In our survey, we met youth members who were current or former members of rock groups. We also met some who were “graphiteurs,” and others whose first experiences were in cinema and video. But we have met a larger number involved in theatre, dance, painting, poetry, singing or who were registered at a school of music — activities not necessarily linked to youth — and which made them somewhat special in the group they belonged to. Being involved in the arts was doing more to obliterate than to enhance their belonging to their generation. For some, for whom artistic activity is becoming a quasi life project, this means searching for recognition beyond their peers.

This does not mean that young people who practice art are isolated from their group and marginalized. Most of them are socially integrated in their surroundings. The fact of their artistic activities, which others of their age are not interested in, does not keep them from being participants in the youth culture, either through the music they listen to, the feature films they watch, or the sports they practice with friends who do not necessarily share their passion for the arts. In the daily lives of these youths, their artistic activities do not act as a source of social distinction, but rather as something that makes them singular.

Chapter 9 , continued >