In Response: Trip to Tarzana

My post this week was in response to Shmuel Nosrati's Trip to Tarzana. In it, the author talks about her trip to a British specialty store in suburban Ventura county and how it and her patronage there relates to the Kling, Olin, and Poster's article, "The Emergence of Postsuburbia". More specifically, it relates to a point Kling, Olin, and Poster made about how the postsuburban population in Orange County look to consumerism of "exotic" goods and services as cultural attainment and how the region's geography and set-up encourages this view. Below is my response to this post:

First off, I want to say that I found this post especially interesting not only because the author made an interesting connection from a small shop in Ventura to a concept in our reading, but also because I can personally relate. Not as much now, but a few years back, I was quite the Anglophile. I listened to BBC Radio1, watched British television series, only drank PG Tips, and of course preferred Cadbury to anything more readily found here in the States. I thought that by doing that, I could become more in touch with British culture. But clearly that was the thought of someone who had grown up in a Southern Californian suburban bubble. There is so much more to a culture than such superficial things. As the authors of both the blog and "The Emergence of Postsuburbia" have pointed out, our postsuburbian population have equated consuming something of another culture as attaining it. We are so comfortable in our single-family homes with full amenities and backyards that we seem to lose the urge to go out and see the world; rather, we look for the easiest way to "become cultured." Sure, we may acquire a little culture through consumerism, but do we really get exposed to the important things? We can't come in contact with the people, or be in the actual presence of historical sites and buildings. While any sort of exposure can turn into a learning experience, it sometimes leads to this false sense of knowledge, and when these postsuburbanites actually travel, they often end up making fools of themselves. I think that our sometimes desperate attempt to become cultured leads to this stereotype of postsuburbia: that whatever attempt turns out seeming inauthentic. Although it can be said that postsuburbia has a strange culture of its own, by no means should it be the only one a person is consciously aware of.