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Journalists are advised to cut back on their retrotalk
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Silly Keyes column
Posted by
Steve Weigand
4/14/2009 2:55:31 PM
This is just silly. If everyone stopped "employing terminology rooted in our past" then it would rule out using references to even great works of...
This is just silly. If everyone stopped "employing terminology rooted in our past" then it would rule out using references to even great works of literature as old as the Bard or as recent as Joseph Campbell ("Catch-22") or even "The Perfect Storm."
I hate to break it to Mr. Keyes, but dropping pop culture references -- regardless of how old or recent the reference is -- is the lingua franca of the Internet. If someone doesn't "get" something, all they have to do is run a quick Google search or even say "I don't get the reference" on a message board or comment section somewhere -- someone will clue them in.
It's not just television, music and literature people refer to; they also make reference to things only known on the Internet. If I made a reference about Star Wars Kid in a post, many people online would know what I'm talking about. Offline…?
And that's not to say some obscure reference becomes so ubiquitous and common in usage that it becomes a properly defined word in the dictionary. A quick peek at Oxford Dictionary's new words page lists "celebutante," "crunk" and, appropriately, "retronymn" as new words added to its print edition.
Surely someone whose signature line at the end of his column says he's the author of a book about the forgotten origins of American speech can appreciate this?
Keyes: As a cultural critic, he's no Mencken
Posted by
John Reinan
4/14/2009 12:09:39 PM
This kind of thinking has always bothered me -- that we don't expect people to understand cultural references from the past.
Caruso died 40 ye...
This kind of thinking has always bothered me -- that we don't expect people to understand cultural references from the past.
Caruso died 40 years before I was born, but if I read that someone sings like Caruso, I get it -- they're good. Should it be considered remarkable that I grasp that reference? I don't think so.
And I don't think we should expect journalists to limit themselves to the present or recent past in making those references.
Retrospeak or cultural literacy?
Posted by
Judy Bernstein
4/14/2009 12:00:35 PM
And what happened to building on the past? How can you understand the present if you don't know the past?
Think of all the music...
And what happened to building on the past? How can you understand the present if you don't know the past?
Think of all the music from "back in the day" that musicians nowadays are sampling? (For instance, last summer's Kid Rock hit "All Summer Long," an homage to both Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" and Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London.")
And the phrase "jumping the shark"? That came from a "Happy Days" episode. Oh, and by the way, director Ron Howard's pro-Obama commercial this past election season put him back in Opie Taylor's britches and Richie Cunningham's jeans, and everybody "got" that.
I don't think that because some people -- and age is actually irrelevant here, since I've had to explain references to Rolling Stones lyrics to people just a few years older than me -- are culturally illiterate we should tone down or eliminate colorful references in our language that give us some shortcuts to understanding.
As a kid I watched Bugs Bunny cartoons that referenced classics like "Of Mice and Men." I didn't get the connection till years later, but it didn't stop me from watching Bugs.
If someone doesn't get who Howard Beale is, it's easy enough to rent "Network" -- or even easier to summon up the "I'm mad as hell" soliloquy on YouTube. And the experience you'll have watching either will resonate even today, so what's the loss? That someone might actually develop an appreciation for writer Paddy Chayefsky or director Sidney Lumet or actor Peter Finch?
People who get it will get it, and those who don't? Well, if they take another step, they might actually learn something.
Oh, brother
Posted by
Charles Apple
4/14/2009 11:33:19 AM
My response:
http://tinyurl.com/czwmju
My response:
http://tinyurl.com/czwmju
Or Is It Just Cultural Literacy?
Posted by
chris simmons
4/14/2009 1:59:14 AM
"Retrotalk" may simply be a pejorative term for cultural literacy. It's a fine line, of course. "Eddie Haskell" probably needs a few words of exp...
"Retrotalk" may simply be a pejorative term for cultural literacy. It's a fine line, of course. "Eddie Haskell" probably needs a few words of explanation, but "Mayberry"? That's eternal.
Please - enough Orwell;
Posted by
Trevor Butterworth
4/13/2009 10:29:39 PM
his advice is trite and silly. As for retrospeak, reading is retro, so stop worrying. Every great and not so great work of literature is...
his advice is trite and silly. As for retrospeak, reading is retro, so stop worrying. Every great and not so great work of literature is an assemblage of references to the past. Better to flatter your readers than to treat them as morons - even if they are morons.
Lazy writing
Posted by
David Vossbrink
4/13/2009 7:17:15 PM
The question isn't about using either retro or current pop culture references. It's about lazy writing.
Time to trot that old retro guy Orw...
The question isn't about using either retro or current pop culture references. It's about lazy writing.
Time to trot that old retro guy Orwell, and reread his "Politics and the English Language" (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm):
"(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
"(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
"(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
"(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
"(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
"(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
"These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable."
Write what you know
Posted by
Stephen Doig
4/13/2009 7:00:42 PM
Better to use instant-message abbreviations, pop culture references to American Idol or attempt current slang in a pathetic attempt to sound hip?...
Better to use instant-message abbreviations, pop culture references to American Idol or attempt current slang in a pathetic attempt to sound hip? I don't think so....
Steve Doig
Retro, Shmetro
Posted by
Alex Dering
4/13/2009 6:38:45 PM
The overuse of retrospeak is unfortunate because it appears that the fundamental complaint is that, well, um, the readers might not be bright eno...
The overuse of retrospeak is unfortunate because it appears that the fundamental complaint is that, well, um, the readers might not be bright enough to deduce the meaning by context -- you know, the way children learn language.
Of course, that was back when people actually read, and understood that it meant sometimes you had to puzzle something out.
I wonder how dumb news copy can be rendered before it becomes completely impossible to impart any knowledge whatsoever.
Does Keyes watch cable?
Posted by
Afi Scruggs
4/13/2009 5:29:46 PM
Lot's of those "retro" TV series are alive and well.
Lot's of those "retro" TV series are alive and well.
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