As an American, specifically a Californian, living and teaching in higher education in the UK, I find it interesting, disturbing and important to note how the ‘Britain’ that is exported as authentic to the States does not reflect in any manner the England that I exist in on a daily basis. There is a worshipping, at least in the hipper than thou circles which as an anglophile and indie rock lover I often found myself in Stateside, of an amber trapped yet non-factually based moment in British music history. Case in point: in my native Bay Area, there are monthly tribute nights, which are PACKED with hundreds of people, dedicated solely to the holy foursome of the The Smiths. San Franciscans flock to the event, dressed in their best floppy bowl cuts or Mozzer-esque pomps, beads and blazers, emulating a past decade of the 1980s which they saw on the TV, have re-watched and rewound on video cassettes and refreshed on YouTube. Here in the country which birthed the band, I have yet to find any town in the whole of the nation that throws such a monthly shindig; at best, a group in Brighton does an annual Smiths night. This is a small but significant example- illustrating the worship, glamorisation and re-telling of The Smiths, through time, space and place- in a Benjamin like stance, the band has been ripped from their original context, and thrown into the revamping nostalgia machine that pop culture has come to bow down at.

This past weekend, I walked by a mall store which had a “FABULOUSLY BRITISH” display, featuring a Sex Pistols flag and a mannequin adorned in a Stone Roses t-shirt. This turning in side out of culture- the fringe being not only accepted, but now celebrated as part of the “Fabulous”- ness of being English. This appears as a re-telling of the story, a new perspective and elevation of what was once deemed horrifying to a ‘new’ imaging of it as the quintessential traits of a whole nation.