Ugh. Ann Althouse flagged this comment from a reader named Malika, reacting to a New York Time Crossword Puzzle clue that read, “Girl in Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit'”:
“I love this style of clue, where even if you don’t know the exact trivia (I’ve never heard of the band or the song) you can puzzle it out based on the context.”
The answer is “Alice,” and if Malika doesn’t know the “exact trivia,” she never heard of “Alice in Wonderland,” which is a foundational work of English literature with important literary, historical and satirical significance. It means she is unaware of the many movies made of that book (and its twin, “Through the Looking Glass”), doesn’t know who Lewis Carroll is, has no idea what firmly established “mad hatter” in our lexicon, or “Cheshire cat,” or what “Jabberwocky” refers to.
Then there’s the ignorance of the Sixties, the Vietnam era and the drug culture indicated by her lack of familiarity with the iconic song “White Rabbit.” The Jefferson Airplane anthem has been used on “The Sopranos,” “Stranger Things,” “The Twilight Zone,” “The Simpsons,” in the films “The Game,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “The Matrix,””Platoon.” Not only doesn’t Malkia know about any of this, she doesn’t think she should and is willing to broadcast the fact that she doesn’t.
What else didn’t her schools, parents and narrow culture teach her? How many reference points that would help her understand the context of the issues, events and people affecting her life is she lacking? As Don Rumsfeld might say, it isn’t just that she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, and doesn’t know that it’s a problem that she doesn’t know it.
Ethics Alarms 
I recall as a kid that the mother next door, who had a pair of older teens, cautioned me against listing to Jefferson Airplane on account of the drugs thing. I’m sure her kids put her through some hell. But the daughter’s boyfriend had a pretty sweet early year Shelby Mustang though. I’m thinking he was much older than she at the time.
The 60s ended 55 years ago. The young can only absorb so much. Finer details from psychedelic bands are likely down the list. I’m guessing that the Lewis Carrols in the contemporary world are increasingly out of fashion and not on many curricula. Old. Dead. Male. And White.
So Daniel Defoe gets read instead of Carroll because of skin color. Brilliant. Moving awy from dead white men makes sense if there are euqally talented “equivilents of color.” Lewis Carroll was and is unique. He’s just as unique now as when he was alive.
I wonder what my cultural IQ is regarding things from the last 10 years after I basically stopped watching television and have relied on radio and the web for information and entertainment. But, with regard to literature, for example, has there been anything lately that could even get close to being called a classic or iconic? Or even worth knowing as a significant blip on the radar? Probably, and I probably have even recorded that information in my brain’s RAM. But I do find myself at a loss at times when something is being discussed or addressed with which I am unfamiliar. But maybe I’m just old.
It would be speculation, of course, as to what relatively recent written work might have cultural “legs” well into the future. I’ll throw out a couple of possible contenders, though technology may make their vehicles to lasting fame unavoidably different now:
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
The Walking Dead, from the graphic novels by Robert Kirkman.
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books may have had a trajectory similar to what might be expected from anything written today. Do people still understand references to Tarzan from a “Man raised in the jungle by apes” clue?
Tarzan keeps getting revived, so I doubt he’ll fade from public consciousness anytime soon. Off the top of my head there was the Disney animated movie, which had a direct-to-dvd prequel and a cartoon TV series. Then there came a live-action movie and a Netflix “Tarzan and Jane” series. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t even know Burroughs wrote about Mars until the John Carter movie.
The iconic Tarzan is, and must always be, Johnny Weismuller. But the character is in a rarefied group along with Sherlock Holmes and Dracula.
I’ve said this before…. I think your point of view is cane-shakery. People have a maximum threshold of things they can learn and remember, and we have to triage that learning. It’s not fair to future generations to expect them to be familiar with every bit of the entirety of human production, even what we personally enjoyed growing up.
There are obvious casualties along the way: I was never taught calligraphy, I never attempted to use an abacus, and the stick shift in my car is basically an anti-theft device. Building from that, there are other things, things that might have even been foundational to our education, that will be less important to the generation after us. The returns on that will diminish until they exit the public consciousness and yes, become trivia. I could maybe name the titles of 20 books written before 1900 if I tried, but I’ve read none of them cover to cover. I know the gist of Alice and Wonderland, but perhaps only because of the Disney cartoon, and the Jabberwocky didn’t make my consciousness until the 2010 live action abomination.
But…. Take comfort, Jack, because I think in this case you just misread the conversation: The clue read, “Girl in Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’” and Malika said that she didn’t know the band or the song, but was able to deduce the solution “Alice” from context clues, which I take to mean that she knew to associate “White Rabbit” with “Alice”.
I agree with your point on the unfairness measure. Cultural references have exploded exponentially esp. for anyone who scrolls the socials even a reasonable amount each day. How does one keep up with all the Kardashians and the would be Kardashians, and read Jane Austen, and watch Thin Man films and learn bridge? It is more than exhausting and priorities must be set.
The “music in my day was way better” sentiment is similar. Even if it is objectively true, one balances the need to hear it with the need to be current, even if current is crap.
I think I’ll go so far as to even challenge the idea that these works we’re talking about are educationally valuable in 2025.
Look, I said earlier, I could probably name 20 books written before 1900, but I haven’t read any. What I didn’t say was that I own many, because I thought that it might be neat to go through the classics, and ultimately abandoned the endeavor because actually reading them is obnoxious. I felt like I was missing a decoder ring. They’re basically written in a different language that you have to decipher before you can even go about the exercise of trying to untangle the metaphors. We don’t *want* kids to learn to talk like that, we’d assume they had aphasia and end up sending them to therapy.
And once you abandon the idea that there’s something innately good in having read the exact words of the text, what you’re left with are the stories. And don’t get me wrong, stories are important. They impart lessons, there’s a shared experience…. But I don’t know that a story about a girl chasing a rabbit through a bad acid trip is a better, more imaginative, morals imparting read than the average work by Neil Gaiman or JK Rowling. And in 2025 if more people have read Harry Potter than Through The Looking Glass, then who is the person who is deficient in the cultural zeitgeist?
I dunno, HT. Johnny Depp appeared in two rather successful Alice-based movies in the last 10 years (although I did not really like his interpretation of the Mad Hatter as I thought it was a little over the top), and Tom Petty had a really cool music video referencing Alice and her friends. Millenials should know about Alice.
jvb
Why?
2010 was 15 years ago, and Alice in Wonderland grossed about the same (at least domestically) as Twilight: Eclipse. Are we saying that the popularity of a movie on release indicates how culturally necessary trivia is to know? The movie itself obviously wasn’t as significant as the books or the cartoon. So what’s the standard?
Because I don’t know that knowing the lead character’s name from the number 2 movie (Behind Toy Story 3) of 2010 counts as necessary generational Trivia. By that metric, you should also be able to cite without Googling the lead characters in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Rogue One.
Malika needs to feed her head.
You deserve at least a “Heh! 😉 ” for that.
This generation grew up on more modern Children’s books one could say if they read at all, so they wouldn’t necessarily have read it. Furthermore in the 60’s there was a movie which most people would have seen as a kid back then or showed to their kids in the 80’s. No so much now. I’m sure they will know Lilo and Stitch more than Alice in Wonderland.
Unless you listen to an oldies station, most kids would not necessarily know about Jefferson Airplane. Most of the movie references except for Stranger Things are also a past generation. Also, if someone heard White Rabbit, they wouldn’t necessarily know what the title referred to because the phrase White Rabbit isn’t in the song itself.
But Alice is, as well as several other characters. Also:
1. While the Alice books were written for a child, they are not children’s books (Have you read them?)
2.Not being aware of the popular culture in any era but one’s own is the very essence of cultural literacy. The music of the Sixties is as essential to understanding the Sixties as the events of the Sixties.
3. These are excuses for ignorance. Today’s students should know “Yankee Doodle,” the origins of “The Star Spangled Banner,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Over There,” “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?,””We’ll Meet Again,” and “Lily Marlene” among others. They are essential connecting tissue of US and world historical comprehension. (So is the “The Marseillaise.”)
#2: I was also going to opine that a white rabbit/Alice reference could well be be considered a point of western cultural literacy. Even a still common phrase “down the rabbit hole” derives from it. If one is going to complain that the J. Airplane song from 1967 is too old to be recognized, it might be noted that the song itself, with its multiple references to the story, was first recorded over a century after the book was published.
Bingo. Grace Slick was culturally literate. Also one hell of a singer…
There’s a Batman video game that starts off with Frank Sinatra’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. I initially recognized the song but didn’t know who it was from, so I looked it up on YouTube (where I listen to most of my music). The comments on the video I found indicated most people were there for the same reason I was, except for one person who commented, “Is there anyone who first heard this song someplace BESIDES Batman?”
Somebody replied, “Um, Muppet Show?” which was the first place I heard it too.
Not recognizing Sinatra is pretty sad, but there are literally hundreds (thousands?) of standards like that one, and nobody can be expected to know them all. Nevertheless…depressing. And as with younger people not having seen great movies, I feel sorry for anyone who misses great cultural treasures…and doesn’t know enough to seek them out. I have a house guest right now who is 20 years younger than me, and I’m bringing him up to date on great movies he’s missed, like “Singing in the Rain,” and “Day of the Jackal,” and “in the Heat of the Night.”