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It is perfectly natural and healthy for an individual to want to be appreciated by family, friends, community or peers. This desire can spur us on to personal achievement. It acts as the glue that binds society together. But the need to be special is altogether different. In this book, Peter Whittle highlights the demoralisation and division that come with the modern need to claim uniqueness, regardless of talent or deed. By shouting the loudest, by being the most visible, or simply by thumping people the hardest, the attention seekers destroy the privacy of others and contribute to the fragmentation of public life. Meanwhile real achievement and genuine talent are devalued. With no genuine claim to uniqueness, some wannabes simply emote. They self dramatise. They show off. They demand our attention. Others glorify themselves by rejecting other people around them. Paradoxically, despite all the talk in the media of 'community', there has been a repudiation of our collective identity - whether expressed in nationhood, neighbourliness or even personal roots. Such concepts are seen by the single, soaring self as constricting and confining. And in the breakdown of civic behaviour, in the growth of self-centred, often yobbish posturing, 'respect' has come to acquire an altogether new, rather sinister meaning. In "Look at Me", Peter Whittle explores Britain's runaway obsession with the need to be extraordinary, special or visible. He looks at the many ways in which this obsession manifests itself, across different age groups and economic classes. He goes on to consider how we have come to be in this situation. And finally, he looks at what the future holds.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
short and to the point,
By
This review is from: Look at Me: Celebrating the Self in Modern Britain (Hardcover)
Brilliant - an absolute joy to read. Peter Whittle shoots at all the social sacred cows of New Labour and associated trends. His book is short and intelligent but, as you read it, I recommend having the short and fluffy Sloane Ranger books to hand for some surprising related interest. Whittle's cast of characters are everywhere; in the new (and flawed) Sloane-update: COOLER, FASTER AND MORE EXPENSIVE you'll find "Chav" Sloane, surely a close cousin to Whittle's culture-free Harriet (except Sunday brunch at Tate Modern, of course!), while "Eco" and "Bongo" Sloane could, in their earnest attention to themselves, be vegan dinner-party chums to Whittle's "right on" Marc and Sue. But then dip into the original 1982 SLOANE RANGER HANDBOOK which, with the passing of two decades, has acquired an unexpected poignancy. Whittle's lament at today's obsession with "me" instead of "we" was engraved on every Henry and Caroline's heart. Naturally, they were figures-of-fun (if in a kindly intended sense) - but they were the people who got things done. The people who made jam and chutney to sell at the Village Fete that brought the community together and made a profit for the church spire appeal. Whittle seems to worry that his critics will think him some dinosaur dreaming of olden and better days. Well, olden banking days can now, post Lehman Brothers et al, be seen as better in many ways. But - hey, dude - anything new is, of itself, better (isn't it?).
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3.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Predictable polemic, but well worth saying,
By Sirin - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Look at Me: Celebrating the Self in Modern Britain (Hardcover)
This is a slim hardback volume. I devoured it in one sitting. It opens with an interesting comparison of Madame Tussauds, the London waxwork museum, now with how it was in the 1970s. Then it was filled with historical characters from Britain's rich past such as Mary Queen of Scots, Nelson, Dickens, Sir Walter Scott and Byron. Now it is full of tourists giggling and gawping grasping at Brad Pitt's bum and canoodling with Prince William.
A nice metaphor for the way in which Britain's cultural life has been debased by the cult of celebrity: 'the me society' over the past few decades. Now what is valued by people, especially they young, is fame (not talent), personal glorification, attention and triviality over things that are lasting and weighty. This is a pessimistic polemic that does not throw up any great revalatory insights but does chronicle much that is wrong with modern life (the way in which people will ashamedly binge drink and desecrate town centres on a Saturday night, the manner in which people barge rather than queue for the bus). Whittle does conclude with a positive note, that such a culture may becoming exhausted. I am a teacher at an inner city secondary school in London and I am pleased by the way in which the upcoming generation of children seem less celebrity obsessed and more focused on academic achievement than the generation above them. Teenagers nowadays also volunteer for community service type roles more than any previous generation of teenagers in the past few decades. This may be only temporary, and the potential for corruption is still there. But there is a glimmer of hope. The epigram to this book, from Francis Bacon (the 17th Century philosopher, not the 20th Century artist), is apt: Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid'. |
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