h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I found a nifty website with fascinating statistics http://yougov.co.uk/topics/entertainment/articles-reports/2019/10/12/monty-python-50-still-beloved-brits

I can say I’ve heard of Monty Python, but I can’t say I’ve seen more than a few sketches - I’m very impressed that you managed to watch it! I thus didn’t get that reference - googling was informative, though, as I have not been keeping up with the news lately... Keeping Up Appearances is much more to my taste in comedy

‘ writing that illuminates but doesn't patronise’ - yes, a challenge, but very rewarding to get it right, so the reader enjoys learning something new

Thanks, Sasha!

Yes, 'Monty Python' was on PBS Sunday nights, as I recall. And I found out my parents weren't shocked because they had no idea what was being said. This was a serious concern: they made me quit watching 'The Six Wives of Henry VIII' because they *could* understand it, and disapproved of the behaviour depicted....

I remember going to see 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' while at uni. At the time, everybody went around quoting the lines in that. Especially the medievalists, but we were a weird and vanishingly tiny group.

on the joys of 'getting it right' - fun to do, and a mitzvah to share!

Does this need to discard your cultural baggage mean that some subjects are out of bounds to some writers?

For example, if I run historical drama and Black Lives Matter together,
you get subjects which are very sensitive. I, as a white writer, wouldn't dare write a novel which featured life on a slave plantation.

I would hope nobody would set a drama on a plantation without researching the subject to within an inch of its life. Or ever, ever again try to turn such into a romance novel.

I don't think you should completely discard your cultural baggage. Sometimes, it can stand you in good stead. You just need to keep in mind that:

1. Other people won't know what you're talking about. Make sure you explain, and don't ever take it for granted.

2. Be careful: your associations with the item of cultural baggage may quite different from someone else's.

Take, for example, a Confederate statue. Suppose a character, who is white, grew up near the park where the statue was. As a kid, he and his friends snuck out at night and climbed on the statue, pretending to ride it. Its associations for him were 'good times, naughty behaviour, funny clothes on old General So-and-So.'

Now take a Black character who grew up in the same place. Depending on the time, his personal reaction to that statue could range from noticing how offensive the inscription was, or finding it unpleasant to walk past it every day, to discovering that he, as a child, wasn't allowed to play in that park - or that he was allowed to be there, but couldn't use the water fountain near the statue.

To tell the truth about all that requires that we get hold of the cultural baggage. And explain it, if need be.

Last night, we watched 'My Mother and Other Strangers', a BBC NI series. We were really annoyed by the end of it. The NI writer did a great job on HIS cultural baggage - but got everything wrong about the Americans and the Second World War. The music was wrong, the people behaved inconsistently, the actress from Leeds served up an accent not found in nature...worse, there was no reason to name the American caption 'Dreyfuss'. They seemed oblivious to the ethnicity of that name. Then he turned the whole mess into a 'romance' story. It was badly done.

On the other hand, the version of 'Daniel Deronda' that has Hugh Dancy in it is beautifully handled, and if that's not a lot of cultural baggage to explain, I don't know what is.