• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

Stuck in the past

Status
Not open for further replies.
Paul Whybrow

Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2015
Location
Cornwall, UK
LitBits
0
I've been struck how many cliched images there are around to represent different professions. I've worked as a teacher and as a milkman, and it's still common for these jobs to be represented by dated stereotypes. Teachers are usually spectacle wearers, standing in front of a blackboard - it's not unusual for them to be wearing mortar boards and even capes, at least in clip art. Milkmen invariably have a work coat and a damned silly peaked cap, and are toting a wire cage bottle carrier. I ran my milk-round in the 1980s, rarely used the carrier, preferring to use the pockets of my coat to hold bottles, and I never saw the caps which milkmen still wear in commercials and advertisements.

I can just recall some teachers wearing mortar boards and their graduation caps at my grammar school in the 1960s, but it was a posh sort of place and the regalia was reserved for official ceremonies. Writers are often symbolised by being hunched over typewriters. I last used a typewriter in 1995, and I wondered how many Colonists still do their writing on one.

Even the tangle-haired model on the cover of the ebook that I recommended today, How to be a Writer in the E-Age, is about to peck her typewriter with her forefinger.

51eGfcCPosL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
 
I once saw a typewriter in real life, in 1993, at my grandmother's apartment. But how often are we depicted in movies as scribbling hunched over a sheaf of paper, or even as using quill and ink because it's hip and retro? What? Is this 1826?

I still think she looks like Jonny Depp.
 
I used to own an electric typewriter back in the mid 1970's. In the 1960's my Dad used a manual one once in a while. Never had a teacher that wore a mortar board (I didn't know what one was until I graduated High School). I did, after all, grow up in the U.S. Back then, I wanted to be a scientist, but scientists were being portrayed like Jerry Lewis in "The Nutty Professior", then a mathmetician, but I didn't look anything like Sam Jaffe's part in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (Michael Rennie version). I've never seen a quill pen, have used a fountain pen, though (what a mess!). It amazes me what people actually think a writer does (I've been told I don't look anything like Mark Twain or Steven King so how could I be a writer). I hardly ever slouch over my keyboard, and even less often have a single finger poised over it. I do, however, wear glasses and get that glassy-eyed, faraway look, from time-to-time. The problem with stereotypical portayals is they usually don't fit anyone.
 
Stereotypes make me wonder who they were based on, who came up with the ideal in the first place?
 
Stereotypes help us live a little in the past and so recall both the values and follies of a previous age. They must once have been at least partly accurate, else why would they exist at all? For example, we all send Christmas cards depicting snowy scenes, robins on garden forks frozen in the iron ground, red-faced cherubs skating on local ponds, etc, etc, whereas in reality these days it's usually a grey, drizzly day, and those guilt-ridden, bloated, post-turkey souls who eschew Jurassic Park 7 to go for a walk would drown in any pond on which they tried to set foot.
Which reality do you prefer?!
 
Jason Byrne said:
I knew it. Even in downtown Houston? And calls people "pilgrim?"
Click to expand...

In all seriousness, I've never heard anyone say "pilgrim". But I do say "y'all" all the time (it's just more efficient than "you all" or "you guys"). Most people in Houston don't have a noticeable drawl since the city is actually super diverse. Most of us don't ride to work on a horse, but we do have some pretty badass police officers that ride around downtown on their horses (watching them pull people over is fantastic). I've never once used a rope to lasso anything. Going to the rodeo is the closest I've ever come, and, even then, it was mostly for the concerts (and the adorable little kids who run around trying to rope a goat). I won't contradict the guns thing because I think that one's actually pretty true.
 
I've taken to saying y'all, but I think that was you rubbing off on me — I'm one of those people that immediately take on your dialect when I start talking to you. It's especially bad when I talk to people from West Virginia, Georgia, Ireland, or the UK.
 
Jason Byrne said:
I've taken to saying y'all, but I think that was you rubbing off on me — I'm one of those people that immediately take on your dialect when I start talking to you. It's especially bad when I talk to people from West Virginia, Georgia, Ireland, or the UK.
Click to expand...

I do the same thing. My husband, who studied anthropology, says it's called "code-switching" when you alter your speech to fit the people around you. I grew up in a very diverse school (i.e. whites were far in the minority), so when I get around certain people, I start to revert to how I spoke and heard people speak in high school. It is, by far, one of the funniest subconscious things I do (I guess, that I'm aware of).
 
I admit to scribbling with pen and paper (though I don't usually use a quill, I actually have several that I use for calligraphy)--I think better when the thoughts go through a pen or pencil. I also learned to type on a manual typewriter, and did all my undergraduate work on a slick little Brother electric typewriter (weighing in at about 8kg!) that I loved.
 
Nicole Wilson said:
I do the same thing. My husband, who studied anthropology, says it's called "code-switching" when you alter your speech to fit the people around you. I grew up in a very diverse school (i.e. whites were far in the minority), so when I get around certain people, I start to revert to how I spoke and heard people speak in high school. It is, by far, one of the funniest subconscious things I do (I guess, that I'm aware of).
Click to expand...

Yes, me too. Or rather, I should say "yis", since that's how the word is pronounced here in NZ!
 
Nicole Wilson said:
I do the same thing. My husband, who studied anthropology, says it's called "code-switching" when you alter your speech to fit the people around you. I grew up in a very diverse school (i.e. whites were far in the minority), so when I get around certain people, I start to revert to how I spoke and heard people speak in high school. It is, by far, one of the funniest subconscious things I do (I guess, that I'm aware of).
Click to expand...
Hahaha... Stewardess, I speak jive.
CvjaxIM.jpg
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Café Life Tag Cloud

agent author authors book books cafe calls for submissions competition conferences contests creative writing editing fantasy fear fiction genre greetings huddle inspiration life literature litopia motivation new new member novel novels november philosophy poetry publishing reading romance science fiction self-publishing short stories short story stories story submissions time vanity winners words world writer writers writing writing contests zodiac

Similar threads

Paul Whybrow
Thought for the Day The danger of the past was that men....
Replies
1
Views
64
Vagabond Heart
Vagabond Heart
Paul Whybrow
Thought for the Day Forget past....
Replies
0
Views
110
Paul Whybrow
Paul Whybrow
Back
Top