NEW YORK Times columnist Joshua Kurlantzick says in his travel article “36 Hours in Charlottesville, Va.” that “arriving in Charlottesville from the lush, rural Virginia countryside, you almost feel like you’ve stepped back into ancient Rome.” What follows is an elaboration of this statement, a description of Charlottesville as a city that is classical in appearance, European in feel, and quaintly Southern in taste. Kurlantzick relies on readers’ common assumptions of what this kind of culture implies in order to explain his perception of Charlottesville as some sort of ideal Southern paradise.
Conversely, take Saturday’s Culturefest, where more than 20 University CIOs performed dances, prepared food and put on a fashion show in order to demonstrate the customs and traditions of their respective cultures. What Culturefest lacked was a more inclusive view of culture. Organizations without an ethnicity in their title were absent from the program predominantly because students have come to perceive such an event as focusing on non-Western and non-white cultures only. James Burney, the co-director of the University Program Council’s Art and Enrichment Committee, which sponsored the event along with Student Council, said, “We sent the Culturefest invitation to pretty much everyone this year: IFC/ISC, Multicultural Greek Council, National Pan-Hellenic Council, and all CIOs and it was still the usual group of people.” Both of these cases — Kurlantzick’s elitist notion of culture and students’ notion of culture as something possessed by the non-white “other” — confirm that it is time to engage in a more universal dialogue about what exactly culture means.
Kurlantzick sticks to the high culture theme throughout his travel article, describing the downtown mall as a rich haven for artists, street performers, and musicians, peopled by casual diners relaxing at outdoor cafes. He also writes about unassuming farmhouses speckled throughout the rolling mountains, wineries whose regional vintage would make Thomas Jefferson proud, a “Gone With the Wind-style Southern mansion” (the Clifton Inn), and “dining amid the ruins” at the Palladio Restaurant in Barboursville. If I hadn’t lived here for the past four years, I wouldn’t recognize the place from the description, not because all of this doesn’t exist, but because the culture of Charlottesville is more than just fine wines and quaint cafes.
But it isn’t just what Kurlantzick says about the Charlottesville scene: it is also what he doesn’t say. Nowhere does he mention the city’s various music venues — save for Miller’s, at which he recommends catching the “famed bebop jazz trumpeter” John D’earth. The restaurants he recommends are all upscale regional gourmet in fare, and he omits mention of the dozens of other cuisines available to the weekend traveler. Finally, he suggests a stop at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection as a “fascinating detour” filled with “stark and sometimes inscrutable works of art.” The art museum, for the writer, is a detour rather than a stop along the way, a break from high culture and a peek into the exotic world of a cultural other.
I could go on about Kurlantzick’s perception of Charlottesville, but I think you get the picture. What his article amounts to in the end is an endorsement of the age-old model of Western cultural superiority, of columned buildings, presidential houses, and wineries as the quintessential definition of American high culture. Everything else is disregarded as an illegitimate tourist destination.
Similarly, for all the work Culturefest does to give CIOs the opportunity to make themselves visible to the University community, the divide between those who decide to participate and those who do not makes evident exactly what students think about culture. It is quite illuminating to look at who is on stage and who is in the audience. The physical divide between these two groups mirrors the unspoken divide that we live with everyday on Grounds, the divide between who we think constitutes a culture and who we think defines the norm.
The point is that culture continues to lack definition. For some, like Kurlantzick, high culture implies elite, European-style living or a Scarlett O’Hara-like outlook on Southern history. It’s the only culture that counts. And while Kluge-Ruhe may offer a glimpse into aboriginal life in Australia, that culture is something to be gawked at rather than enacted. It is intriguing, but for Kurlantzick, it is not attractive. For others, like some who attended Culturefest on Saturday, culture amounts to anything that is deviant from the mainstream. It is something to be gawked at and somehow understood by observing a dance, listening to a song, or reading a poster about another country. Neither definition is tenable, and both are highly dangerous.
Kurlantzick’s version of Charlottesville can easily be found if people come looking for it. Hopefully, however, that is not all that they will see. The same applies to Culturefest. While it is entertaining to watch the Indian Student Association dance for 10 minutes, such an act hardly counts as cultural enlightenment. So before we collectively commence once again to construct our own notions of a culture, we should take the time to think — and to talk — about exactly what culture means. If we are truly able to do this, we may arrive at some striking conclusions.
Amelia Meyer’s column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached a.meyer@cavalierdaily.com.
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