High and low culture

[Alexandra]

Thanks to Ari for this, on Links:

Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum ponders the divide between high and low culture in the Washington Post.

Although the article is about books, the issues affect all the arts. I was struck by her closing paragraph:

There are, it is true, still a few "crossover" writers, mostly writers of excellent popular books about American history, and one or two novelists. But my sense is that their numbers are shrinking, that there's almost no more middle ground. Popular culture now hates high culture so much that it campaigns aggressively against it. High culture now fears popular culture so much that it insulates itself deliberately from it. As for the rest of us -- we're inundated with the former, often alienated from the latter.

There are so many issues here -- the "high art" side that resents that they're works aren't popular, the "low art" side that resents that they're works are very popular but scorned by critics. The fact that, even in our "there is no such thing as high are or low art" culture, the divide between the two is wider than it's ever been.

I definitely believe there is -- and should be -- a distinction between high art and low art. Each has a different intention. But do both genres have to be so alienating?

[carbro]

It goes beyond the arts. As the society -- with its ever-vaster communications networks -- is sprouting communities and subcultures (as exemplified here ), we are talking more and more to ourselves. As Ms. Applebaum says,

I'm not quite sure how it got to be this way -- writers of heavy books on one side, mass media on the other -- because it wasn't always so. The great American cultural blender once produced whole art forms, such as Broadway musicals and jazz, that might well be described as a blend of the two. But nowadays, that gap is so wide that I'm not even sure the old descriptions of the various forms of "culture" -- highbrow, middlebrow, popular -- even make sense any more. Does Edward P. Jones, the Washingtonian whose eloquent novel, "The Known World," won a Pulitzer Prize this week, even inhabit the same universe as MTV? Does anybody who reads one watch the other?

When I was a teen (a status I lost in 1970), the radio stations that played rock played the gamut: Motown, folkies, bubble gum, R&B, "British Invasion" etc. Now every genre has its own stations. I don't even know what most of the names of the styles mean! (Plus, I am now my parents, bemoaning lack of melody and everything sounding the same. )

An item on AlterNet.org referred me to the Austin Statesman of April 4, which applies the same phenomenon to our political lives that Ms. Applebaum does to our literary lives.

American democracy is based on the continuous exchange of differing points of view. Today, most Americans live in communities that are becoming more politically homogenous and, in effect, diminishes dissenting views. And that grouping of like-minded people is feeding the nation's increasingly rancorous and partisan politics.

I wish I knew what the answer might be, that we might halt this splintering of ourselves into ever more isolated niche groups. It is not a reassuring trend.

[Ari]

High culture now fears popular culture so much that it insulates itself deliberately from it.

This may be true in literature (the Jonathan Franzen/Oprah brouhaha comes to mind), but it certainly isn't the case in the performing arts. What we have there is the opposite -- institutions of high culture laboriously trying to "get hip" (I'm afraid my slang is woefully old fashioned). Ballet companies doing rock ballets, opera companies advertising that opera "isn't as bad as you think," adaptations of classic drama that manipulate the text in order to "update" the production for "relevance" -- the problem is that high art is ashamed of itself and is trying to become pop art.

But, generally speaking, I think Applebaum has a point about the high/low divide, and I think it's a legacy of the 1960s. Ever since it became OK to rebel against the Establishment, we've tended to see things in black and white -- either you're a traditionalist or an innovator. There's no sense that you can build on tradition and develop it and create new work out of it. Applebaum mentions Broadway musicals as an example of middlebrow culture (in the best sense) and I think she's right. Look at the virtual disintegration of the musical in the last forty years -- pop music composers don't want to write for the musical theater any more because it's too traditional, doesn't have that attitude or edge of rebelliousness that is de rigeur in pop culture these days.

[perky]

By low culture I'm assuming that means "pop" culture. The reasons pop culture seems to be so all consuming now are many. Pop or low culture is fast, colorful, and given to you in such varied forms that you almost can't help but be drawn in. It doesn't require a lot of brain power to absorb, and if you don't like this than wait a half a second try this!

High culture on the other hand, requires more of a commitment. Mentally, aestically, money-wise. Something this commitment phobic society we seem to live in now won't or can't go with.

When did the tide turn? My quess would be in the eighties. I was a teenager in the very early eighties. It was about that time that MTV premiered. Cable TV came along with it's many channels that needed quick cheap programming. It seemed that every week a new magazine was launched. At the same time people were finding that in order to support thier families, both parent's had to work. Or work more than one job. When you're that tired from working all day then taking care of the kids at night, I suppose you want to be entertained by something mindless and disposable. Comsume it then spit it out. What place does high culture have in all of this? I quess that's why Applebaum wrote that high culture fears popular culture.

I'm a person that can live in both worlds. I love Monty Python, Spongebob Squarepants, and Jim Carrey movies. I also love ballet, listen to my opera CD's and try to read heavy books. Does that make me an exception to the rule now? I hope not.

[kfw]

When you're that tired from working all day then taking care of the kids at night, I suppose you want to be entertained by something mindless and disposable. Comsume it then spit it out.

I assume you're right, perky. But as for me, something mindless and not worth my mind is exactly what I don't want when I have only limited time to refresh myself. It's then most of all that I want something thought-provoking, moving, and inspiring -- something I can feed on while I work. In fact, I'm deeply conscious of the fact that life is short, and that I'll never have time to experience/soak in/master half of the good stuff out there. So while I do attend to some pop culture, I don't attend to what I think is merely amusing and disposable.

[Alexandra]

I think there are two reasons for it. One was that the avant garde, somewhere about mid-century, decided it wanted to alienate, that if it was popular, somehow that was bad. Deborah Jowitt wrote a piece in the Voice once about loft dance, that it was a group of people making work for each other. That's fine, but then don't scream when the Good Fairy doesn't come down and shower you with a million dollars.

The second alienating factor is technology. I was struck by carbro's comment above. I remember liking songs as a child that I had no idea were "country" or "rhythm and blues" -- and that I would never have heard if they'd only been played on those stations. It's very true of the 1960s and 1950s in television, too. The Variety Show that had "something for everyone" because everyone was clustered around one TV set. When Mom, Dad, Dick, Jane, Spot AND Puff each had their own set, ratings data indicated what programs most speple of this age and that gender preferred, and mainlined it. I think it's had a terrible effect -- it doesn't expose us to anything that we don't already know.

I take a lot of cabs (I dont' have a car and am always, it seems, lugging magazines to post offices) and in Washington, the drivers are overwhelmingly native African-Americans or new arrivals. I never know what I'll hear when I get in a cab. The black drivers, men in their 60s and 70s, may be playing rock, or jazz, or classical, or a Bible show or Rush Limbaugh. Get someone under 45 and it will be rock or rap.

[Leigh Witchel]

I think "special interest groups" and the politics of identity may have risen in the 60s (anyone remember Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 - a rather prescient novel) but I don't think it began there. And special interest politics may never have arisen if those special interests felt like they were getting pieces of the pie (little stuff like suffrage and desegregation) to start with.

Many people know good and great art when it hits them. I'm not advocating art by consensus or by quota, but let's face it, we also know what we grew up with. If everyone on a museum selection panel grew up with the same education and background, you'll get a segment of excellent art that corresponds with their education and experience. Getting a variety of viewpoints and experiences doesn't have to be done on quota points, but it should be kept in mind.

My own pet theory of "classical" and "pop" art (divisions I prefer over high and low) is that pop art is temporal. It exists to fix us in time. My favorite example is in Neil Greenberg's The Disco Project when a snatch of a song comes on and a projection announces "This is the song that was big when my brother died." That's what pop art does for us; it gives us a location on a timeline and in society.

Classical art steps outside of the timeline by necessity. It's what we hand down; it needs to be more universal and less topical. And everything in our world, including the availability of communication, has made us more and more topical.

Another pet theory, but it also seems the history of the 20th century in the US was that at the outset, culture was still driven by the upper class. With the advent of mass communications, especially the movies and recorded music, it became driven by the middle class - and what we saw reflected was their ideals and heroes. By the end of the century (and communications were now even more disseminated and available) it's been driven by the street.

It's going to be interesting indeed to see what this era passes on to the next.

[silvy]

Regarding dance, specifically ballet vs popular dance forms, I am experiencing it all the time, in person.

Normally once a month I dance as a guest artist in dance events that take place in my country, mainly in the provinces (that means, not in Montevideo, which is the capital city of Uruguay). In these events competitions and non-competitive performances concur. They encompass all forms of dance. But there is very little ballet, so little sometimes that I am the only one to perform classical or neo classical repertory!! (last year I was even given an award by the organzation for my task of "Presenting classical ballet in all the corners of my country") The younger people seem to prefer contemporary dance, or salsa, folk, tango to ballet.

In the last of these ocassions ballet was so forgotten that the premises were barely adequate for ballet, meaning that the floor was hard, the place was dusty, etc I mean, they are converting this in a popular thing altogether, which made me furious.

And, of course, I have to refrain myself from rather scorning the other forms of dance!!!

Silvy

[Hans]

I think it's possible to enjoy high culture and low/pop culture. For one thing, pop culture isn't always mindless, even though it may seem that way. Some of it is interesting, carefully crafted social commentary.

[Alexandra]

I never mean to say that one shouldn't enjoy pop culture. I agree; both forms serve different purposes and each can be enjoyed on its own terms. My only point is to speak up when the two get confused, or when pop culture is all dolled up and passed off as high culture.

[Hans]

I guess this just brings up another question for me: in the "what is the difference between art and entertainment?" discussions we've had, everyone uses pop culture as examples of mere entertainment. I recognize that low art/pop culture has a different purpose, but when we speak of it as being "mindless" and "just entertainment," aren't we doing exactly what high culture "snobs" are accused of in not really considering it art? Or is low art not really art? Maybe we could come up with a broader definition of art that includes "low art." Because I see a difference between the mindless junk that is broadcast often right next to very interesting pop culture that I think meets previously-discussed prerequisites for being considered art.

I hope I'm being clear; it just seems like there's a disconnect somewhere when we speak about high and low art both being art but having different purposes and then use examples of low art in order to define what "art" is not.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs?