Some popular cultural geographies, starring Cyrille Regis, Delia Derbyshire, an Ewok, Mickey Mouse, Napalm Death, the Sylvanian families, and anonymous hate mail…

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay is about many things including, but not limited to, Cyrille Regis, Delia Derbyshire, an Ewok badge, Mickey Mouse, Napalm Death, the Sylvanian Families, anonymous hate mail, bereavement, the luminous popular cultures of the often-deprecated English Midlands, the absence of so many amazing popular cultures from Social & Cultural Geography, and my own recurrent failure to write about these things. It is part of a Special Issue on (Em)placing the Popular in Cultural Geography. The essay opens out a set of questions and prompts for reflection about the relationship (or, more often, the weird non-relationship) between disciplines of Social and Cultural Geography and contemporary popular cultures. At its heart, you’ll find six fragments of autoethnographic writing dealing with: popular cultural absences and silences in the written canon of Human Geography; joy and recognition, but also the burden of doing justice to popular cultures; and manifold antipathies towards academic work on popular culture.ResumenEste ensayo trata sobre muchas cosas, incluidas, entre otras, Cyrille Regis, Delia Derbyshire, una insignia de Ewok, Mickey Mouse, Napalm Death, las familias Sylvanian, correo anónimo de odio, duelo, las luminosas culturas populares de la región central de Inglaterra, a menudo desaprobadas; la ausencia de tantas culturas populares sorprendentes en Geografía Social y Cultural, y mi propio fracaso recurrente para escribir sobre estas cosas. Este ensayo forma parte de un número especial sobre (Sobre)colocando lo popular en la geografía cultural. El ensayo abre un conjunto de preguntas e incita a la reflexión sobre la relación (o, más a menudo, la extraña no-relación) entre las disciplinas de la Geografía Social y Cultural y las culturas populares contemporáneas. En su núcleo, encontrarás seis fragmentos de escritura auto etnográfica que tratan sobre: ausencias y silencios culturales populares en el canon escrito de la Geografía Humana; alegría y reconocimiento, pero también el peso de hacer justicia a las culturas populares; y múltiples antipatías hacia el trabajo académico sobre cultura popular.RésuméCet article contient beaucoup, et entre autres : Cyrille Regis, Delia Derbyshire, un badge d’Ewok, Mickey Mouse, le groupe Napalm Death, les Sylvanian Families, le courrier anonyme haineux, le deuil, les magnifiques cultures populaires des West Midlands, souvent déridées, l’absence de qui sait combien d’incroyables cultures populaires dans les pages de Social & Cultural Geography et la succession de mes essais infructueux pour écrire à leur sujet. Il fait partie d’une édition spéciale sur (Em)placing the Popular in Cultural Geography. ([Mettre en] place le populaire dans la géographie culturelle) et commence avec une série de questions, puis invite à réfléchir sur les rapports (ou, plus souvent, les non -rapports bizarres) entre les disciplines de la géographie culturelle et sociale et les cultures populaires contemporaines. Au cœur de cet article, vous trouverez six fragments d’écrits autoethnographiques qui traitent des thèmes suivants : les absences et les silences de la culture populaire dans le canon de la géographie humaine, la joie et la reconnaissance, mais aussi le fardeau de rendre justice aux cultures populaires ; et les antipathies multiformes envers les travaux de recherche sur celles-ci.KEYWORDS: Popular cultureautoethnographybadgesWest MidlandsPALABRAS CLAVE: Cultura popularauto etnografíainsigniasregión central de InglaterraMOTS-CLEFS: Culture populaireautoethnographiebadgesWest Midlands Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1. If you are looking for an extended discussion of this point … First of all, thank you for taking such an interest and making time to read the footnotes! If asked to explain/defend the essay’s written style, I would make four points. First, I see longstanding norms and expectations of proper research and refined scholarly writing and academic gravitas and confident rhetorical fluency as conceptually and actually exclusionary (being deeply masculinist, classed, ableist and colonialist at heart) (Rose, Citation1993; Caretta et al., Citation2018, M.; Rose, Citation2022). I have come to find a playful, personal, ‘informal’, fragmentary style helpful in thinking and writing otherwise, whilst provoking reflection on what habits of writing are considered not-OK in the contemporary academy (Hayes, Citation2017). Second, running through this essay is a sense that: (i) a radically more diverse range of experiences, voices, positionalities and popular cultures should be recognized in Social and Cultural Geography; and (ii) readers of Social & Cultural Geography should consider our own complicity in constituting academic spaces in which popular cultural diversities have often been effaced. In this context, I have tried to write in a register which is slightly more like my everyday (clumsy, anxious, diffident, scruffy, self-deprecatory, classed-regionally-accented) voice than the confident, self-assured, self-aggrandizing ‘received pronunciation’ of normative contemporary academic writing styles. Third, although I don’t feel I have done this very successfully, I set out to write in a style which resonates with the love, care, detail, exuberance, idiosyncrasies and luminosity of contemporary popular cultures and fandom. Even if the essay is really not your cup of tea, I hope I have shared something of how contemporary popular cultures matter profoundly, in ways which have rarely been acknowledged in the otherwise wonderfully-inspiring pages of Social & Cultural Geography. The list of cultural references featured herein is idiosyncratic, of particular spaces/times, deliberately excessive, and probably opaque or difficult to follow, but I hope it prompts reflection on the kinds of popular cultures which matter to you and yours, and which have probably gone unacknowledged in the formal research outputs of social and cultural geographers too. Fourth, I recognize that the use of footnotes is divisive, especially when done to excess, but I find them really helpful in adding layers of detail, ambivalence, hesitancy, playfulness, exuberance, commentary, context and counternarrative to the main line of any given paper.2. Cyrille Regis: Brilliant footballer; widely hailed as a pioneering sporting hero who faced down racism, campaigned for social justice, and changed attitudes towards black footballers in the UK. Played for West Brom, 1977–84; later part of Coventry City’s plucky 1987 FA Cup winning team. FYI I was nearly named after Cyrille. I’ve always wanted to write something about Cyrille, but never felt I was adequate for the task.3. From an installation at Wolverhampton art gallery; evidently a manifestation of Stewart Home’s Art Strike 1991–93 (Mannox et al., Citation1992).4. Napalm Death: Pioneering grindcore band from West Midlands, UK. Noted for relentless, discordant, excessive, extreme music espousing principles of equality, anti-racism, humanism, socialism, anarchism, vegetarianism, anti-fascism, anti-corporatism and anti-celebrity culture. Saw them loads of times when I was a teenager. A huge formative influence, sonically and conceptually (Springer, Citation2016; Titchner, Citation2004), although a bit of an acquired taste and maybe a bit difficult to listen to now. I once planned to write a book chapter about them, but I lost faith in the project and deleted it.5. Ewok: Peaceable forest-dwelling residents of the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi (1983). Basically, they’re like teddy bears. I once started writing a paper about them, but I lost faith in the project and deleted it.6. BHS: British Home Stores. British department store, 1928–2016. ‘You’ll never guess, its BHS!’ was one of their advertising slogans, hinting at their somewhat ‘budget’, classed market positioning. Alongside other jobs, my mum worked on the shop floor and in the canteen of Walsall BHS every Saturday for many years. Consequently, we got cut-price coats, shoes, light bulbs and Star Wars figures. Thanks mum.7. Doc Martens: Dr Martens, Docs, DMs. Clumpy boots; iconic footwear brand associated with punk, skinhead, 2Tone and other youth subcultures. I had one pair which were basically my only footwear for the whole of my undergraduate and PhD years. Much more fashionable now than when I wore them at university.8. FYI I’m not from ‘Cov’ and, growing up in nearby Midlands industrial town, I learned to disparage it as a supposedly boring, unglamourous, uncool, unattractive place (a football song went ‘West Brom magic, Coventry tragic, West Brom magic, Coventry tragic … ’). So, in this essay – and in British popular at large – Coventry stands for a kind of place which has an arguably humdrum, deprecatory (self-)image but has nevertheless been a fulcrum for beautiful, revelatory, magic, life-changing popular cultures.9. 2Tone movement: 1970s-80s music subculture, epicentre Coventry, UK. Based on genre-bending fusion of ska, punk and new wave, wedded to principles of interracial working class youth solidarity. Principally developed through gigs, scenes, spaces, styles and creative interventions of the 2Tone record label, founded in Coventry and best known for releases by the Specials, the Selecter and the Beat. Beautiful b/w aesthetic. Still amazing.10. Delia Derbyshire (1937–2001): Electrical music pioneer. Luminary of the B.B.C. Radiophonic Workshop through the 1960s. Prodigiously talented but poorly paid. Chiefly remembered for crafting the Doctor Who theme music – a profoundly powerful, luminous composition which retains a power to enchant, terrify and transport listeners – although not credited on-screen for it until 2013. Tragically underrecognised and ill-served by normative forms of pop cultural posterity which have left large chunks of Delia’s output unavailable and figured Delia as principally famous for influencing successful blokes.11. George Eliot (1819–80) English novelist; masculinist nom-de-plume of Mary Ann Evans. Chiefly celebrated for an astonishing run of politicized, moving, multifaceted novels, among the most significant work in the nineteenth century English-language canon. Changed attitudes towards women in literature. Spent three decades in/around what is now the conurbation of Coventry, UK.12. Neil Kulkarni: Pop critic, author and music journalist, from Coventry, UK. Regular contributor to Melody Maker and multiple pop/metal/hip hop/dance magazines since 1993. Consistently a countercultural critic of derivative, nostalgic, exclusionary, blokey, insular, retrograde, white, British, heteronormativities of mainstream pop culture consensus. One of the few British Asian writers to gain prominence in the British music press.13. Coventry Cathedral: Iconic modernist architecture; built around ruins of a medieval cathedral that was bombed out in WW2. A monument to global peace and reconciliation. Arguably transformed attitudes towards architectural modernism and urban design in the UK. A truly powerful, amazing, contemplative space. I’m not a churchgoer, but just sometimes if you stand in front of the stained glass in the nave and the light’s right, it is proper moving.14. Cathedral: V.influential doom metal band, from Coventry, UK. Noted for slow, down-tuned, droney, heavy music. Occasional groovy elements. Obtuse occult lyrics and artwork. Led by Lee Dorrian (former Napalm Death vocalist; leading figure in 1980s Midlands punk/anarcho/crust/metal gig/zine scene; founder of Rise Above records). Seen live, the low-end amps were so loud I felt in an altered state for days afterwards.15. Pete Waterman: Astonishingly successful British pop music impresario/producer/songwriter credited with 500 million+ record sales. Was DJ/promoter/record shop owner in 1970s Coventry at the heart of the 2Tone movement. Best known as part of the SAW (Stock Aitken Waterman) production team responsible for countless hit singles in 1980s UK; often derided for rather bland, formulaic, processed teen pop (NB gendered, classed, blokey forms of ‘real music’ snobbery often pervade this critique) (Rose, Citation2017). Celeb Walsall FC fan and massive model railway enthusiast. I hope to write a collaborative paper about Pete (or more accurately, the snobby non-celebration of Pete in British popular culture) on day …16. Turner Prize: Major annual award for outstanding work by visual artists born/based in UK. The 2021 Turner Prize exhibition was held in Coventry. The prize was awarded to Array Collective for brilliant creative interventions and campaigns principally addressing gendered inequalities, LGBTQ+ identities, and reproductive rights in Northern Ireland. Although personally, I was totally blown away by some of the beautiful work (including a massive whale) created by the neurodiverse artists/activists of Project Art Works collective.17. All these assertions and analyses presuppose that academic publishers’ online search facilities work reliably, which may or may not be a valid assumption.18. i.e. Annals of the AAG, Antipode, Area, Cultural Geographies, Environment & Planning A, Environment & Planning D, Gender, Place & Culture, Geographical Journal, Geography Compass, Journal of Cultural Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Social & Cultural Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Urban Geography19. Three fun facts about these lists: (i) the published versions had to be heavily edited to meet journal requirements (imagine the original lists – 3+ times longer!); (ii) only two items appeared in both lists – Black Sabbath (influential West Midlands heavy metal band) and Dawson’s Creek (touching/lachrymose 1990s teen TV drama), which probably tells you way too much about me; (iii) I love the accidental poetry, politics, juxtaposition and serendipity that happen in these acts of listing; there are also three elaborate, extended popular cultural in-jokes in there which no-one has ever commented on, which leads me to think no-one reads my work in detail, which is probably for the best, all round.20. Sylvanian Families: Peaceable, kind-natured little anthropomorphic woodland animals from the town of Sylvania. Initially a line of flocked plastic action figures launched in Japan in 1992. Now a global, cross-platform, multimedia, pluri-marketed phenomenon with at least 157 families. For example, the pandas pictured in Houlton and Short’s paper are the Bamboo family (including, with pleasing serendipity, Bertram Bamboo: an accident-prone academic who ‘sits locked up in his study for days and days, surrounded by great wobbly piles of old papers’ attempting to write (SylvanianFamiliesUK, Citationn.d..)).21. Charming B.B.C. stop-motion animated film about the idyllic village of Greendale (See Author, 2008a, 2008b).22. Great pop group (see Author, 2010).23. Complex multi-platform pop culture phenomenon featuring ‘Pocket Monsters’ (Author, 2012).24. A young wizard. I intended meant to write a paper about it, but lost faith in the project. Then I was going to write this other paper about it, but never found time and grew disheartened and lost faith in the project.25. Magnificent plasticine animation. I was going to write a chapter about it, but got stuck, grew disheartened and lost faith in the project.