Page 11 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

2 Cultural change and ordinary life

end of the night (some people still stood up). However, as a child in cosmo-
politan, ‘glocalizing’ south London (in Brixton) in the 1960s, the only TV in
the house was black and white and we could receive two channels (the Scottish
part of my family had only recently received commercial TV). Music came on
1
45rpm, 33 /3 ‘long players’ (as a big investment) and the 45rpm EP (extended
play). Tape recorders were reel to reel on big boxes. Radio was being trans-
formed due to the offshore pirates, but in a way that actually retained much of
the structure of BBC stations that had been existence for many years. Portable
transistor radios were now common, but still pretty new. Books came mainly
through borrowing from the local public library and magazines were passed
around family and friends. The daily newspaper was the Daily Sketch and my
father would bring in the London Evening News from work (there were still two
London evening newspapers). We had one of the first telephones in the street,
partly to keep in contact with family in Scotland (which involved placing a call
with the operator until the late 1960s), but the device was also a resource for
neighbours, who would come round to use the telephone and for whom
friends and family would call. Letters and parcels were the main means of
communication outside face-to-face talk.
I now live in a ‘gentrified’ village north of Manchester in the north-west
of England. Television is digital and involves many channels (even without a
subscription to Sky), including seven BBC channels. The TV will also provide
numerous radio channels. There are five TVs in the house (more than there are
people). The cinema usually involves driving to a local multiplex, which is
surrounded by restaurants, bars, a gym, and so on. The DVD player is con-
nected to the TV and while the VCRs (three) are still used, the next generations
of home recording are only around the corner. Music mainly comes on CD and
there are many shelves of them. iPods are recent acquisitions and are used
increasingly frequently. There are two computers in the house and four lap-
tops come in and out. These provide web and email contact. There are two
telephone landlines and four mobile phones and I can easily dial across the
world and send texts. There are two computer game consoles. Books are pur-
chased and then often passed on or sent to charity stores as there is not enough
space for them. The daily newspaper is The Guardian and the local evening
newspaper is only purchased on special occasions. Various magazines are
purchased and recycled.
It is possible to read these last two paragraphs as a narrative of upward
social mobility to a professional position and they contain many individual
nuances. However, despite these caveats, the experience condenses, I think,
something of what I mean by the idea that the media are of increased import-
ance. There is, on one level, more of them (although note that there are fewer
newspapers and certainly fewer deliveries and collections of the post) and they
allow us access to more things and information. I am well aware that these
media resources are distributed unequally across our society (as are nearly all
resources and opportunities) in a structured way. However, despite the depth
of my own resources, many with less income also have a significant range of
media resources. It is inconceivable to me that this level of shift does not have
implications for our ways of life, but they do not, to repeat, erase other aspects
of our lives. In one respect, then, this book is about the relationship between