Comments on: O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!

By: Ray

Ray — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 17:35:58 +0000

I doubt it’s worth filling the washingtonpost.com registration form to confirm Applebaum’s lack of historical breadth, so I’m responding to this discussion instead. (And only to the academic part. For most working artists [the ones who won’t be offered a newspaper column], the issues are far too complex and the “institutions” far too vaguely defined to make for meaningful discussion. I sometimes regret even my mild contributions to “mainstream vs. science fiction” blah-blah. Academics and the wealthy decide what’s “high”; newspapers and magazines decide what’s “middlebrow”; the artists, one way or another, usually look pretty low.) Academia has long held a place for popular culture, that place being contempt, that contempt sometimes being fond. On the one (and dominant) side, I found it treated as authentic unwashed unauthored indistinguishable outbursts from the folk (if good), the collective subconscious (if indeterminate), or global capitalism (if evil). (In this regard, note Adorno’s excepting Greta Garbo from his general condemnation of Hollywood. She’s gotta be high art if she makes him hard, right? What a geek.) On the other (and submissive) side, when I did find academics paying respect to twentieth century genre fiction, pop music, commercial films, or TV series, the champions themselves were disreputable: narrowly informed, lazy, and trite. (I’d put “rap Shakespeare” squarely in that camp.) Those were the days of giving the token Joyce class to the sentimental drunk and the token sci-fi or film studies class to the boob. Those who’d like to re-live them should seek out Barry Malzerg’s novel, Herovit’s World. But over the last decade I’ve seen increasing numbers of academic humanists treat these noxious materials with genuine insight, energy, and scholarly care. I’ve raved elsewhere about the latest issue of Paradoxa, for example, edited by Josh Lukin, and the research of Justine Larbalestier and Earl Jackson Jr., and I’ve just started reading a promising analysis of Gene Wolfe’s fiction by Peter Wright. None of these folks have much in the way of clout, but damn, they exist, and that alone has been quite a shock to my aged heart. Perhaps this is a side-effect of the canon loosening instigated by feminism and (multi-)cultural studies? Once you’ve insisted on the right to treat Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, and Samuel R. Delany (one “e” in “Delany”) seriously, it’s hard to deny similar rights to fellow authors, although it’s still easy enough to not do anything with those rights. The pathetic idealization-identification of Madonna studies seemed like a let-the-boob-teach-it epidemic, but even that might eventually have a bright side.

By: Simstim

Simstim — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 10:38:37 +0000

Hasn’t anyone mentioned Sturgeon’s Law yet?

By: gemma

gemma — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:11:40 +0000

msg has hit on something that’s been troubling me for a while: the increasing corporatization of “popular” culture. It seems as though there used to be some space in which some really great things could arise out of what was genuinely popular entertainment. Amid all the ephemera was some stuff that’s gonna last. But looking over the pop-culture products of the last fifteen years, what could possibly survive? Is talent, or even mere competence, becoming superfluous and obsolete? Hell, if you can’t sing or play a note, the engineers can fix it up with their TC-Helicon VoiceOne program. (TCS recently lauded this technology as some sort of democratic triumph: Why should only the competent be allowed to have careers in the arts?, they asked.) This relentless Britneyization seems different from and far more destructive than the clumsy old commercialism we had before. Or am I just an old fogey?

By: Gene O'Grady

Gene O'Grady — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:30:30 +0000

My God, is someone worrying about reading Raymond Chandler for the message? Everyone knows you read him for the details of the furniture.

By: msg

msg — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:23:58 +0000

Poets and poetry of the quality of Shelley and Keats, meaning of the quality we find, now, in Shelley and Keats, then. Poets who are in this time and culture as Shelley was in his, who also are to the (potential)time and culture of 200 years hence as he is to ours, are, I submit, not only rare but laboring under a woefully great burden – that of the language/culture having matured and begun its decline. Whereas in his day it was a young thing yet. – There’s an unspoken but tacit assumption that popular culture takes its form and substance in a natural way, rising out of the spontaneous expressions of the populace. I’d argue there’s no longer a womb for that gestation inside the populace, that it now takes place in vitro in the petri dishes of corporate media. Highbrow culture seems to rise more spontaneously, more organically, though mostly in the inbred chambers of the academy.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:35:54 +0000

Poetry I suggest you scroll this page. How many of them are good? My bet is a bunch. If 10% we got a lot of great poets.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:27:18 +0000

“Yeah, and there are likely 1000 times as many swordsmen of the quality of Richard Lionheart in England, based on population figures.” You are saying it is not out there, people aren’t writing poetry. Interesting, and contains some information. Now, granted this was 1972. Delaney read 2 books a day, mostly small and private press, and could barely scratch the surface of what was available. I will look. But my bet is that it is being written. People don’t know where to find it, don’t know which poets to read, and don’t think it matters anymore? Part of Delaney’s essay said your average College English professor will not teach somebody nobody else in America teaches. So she teaches Stevens and Bishop. There are just too many darn poets.

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 19:33:52 +0000

Damn. You people are giving me blog topics that I will be forced to consider. In the meantime, is there such a thing as high culture anymore? Or is it just a term used as a synonym for “those damned intellectuals who think they’re better than you?” Or is it just “expensive culture?” Once upon a time, when I was in grad school, a ballet company got an NEH grant to bring ballet to the masses, as it were. They rented out a big theatre, used canned music, and took most of the grant to subsidize the ticket costs and advertise in inner-city areas, rather than the ‘burbs. Tickets cost between $6 and $8. I went a couple of times, and the audience was a clear and wonderful mix of races and socioeconomic groups. Most of the ballets were from the classical canon, and everybody got them. Same with when I saw Branagh’s Henry V in Atlanta—there were more than a few people in the cinema who seemed more NASCAR or Hip-Hop than Shakespeare lovers—and there were even a few grumblings at the beginning, as people heard the Chorus’ language. No one left, though, and within about 20 minutes, it was clear that the audience had picked up on the rhythm and language (although there were some great whispered explanations here and there). At the end, standing ovation. I know this is anecdotal, but I’m not sure that that much culture is inaccessible. Most of the people I know, whether blue-collar or white, have a very broad range of tastes, so much so that there are more overlaps than not. Perhaps we just buy into the high/low thing to much. Footie, cricket, or both? Both!

By: BP

BP — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 19:12:51 +0000

“Reread some Delaney last night, in which he makes the assertion (as a fan and expert) that there are likely 1000 poets of the quality of Keats and Shelley writing in America today, based on population increase and improbability of mass IQ decline.” Yeah, and there are likely 1000 times as many swordsmen of the quality of Richard Lionheart in England, based on population figures.

By: spacetoast

spacetoast — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 18:34:08 +0000

“Orinda? Moraga? Yeah, I can see it. Especially Orinda. And Moraga.” hehe…fair enough. I return the point you lost when you said “Friscans.” Anyway, my points were just: (1) Lighten up about the bad TV—Cheers and Frasier are not the same thing as Rush Limbaugh, etc. (2) If you don’t like the trope “liberal = nasty egghead,” then quit going around saying things like that Frasier is turning the proletariat against you…that is exactly the sort of loopy nonsense that purveyors of the trope you don’t like are liable to point to, and, in the face of said nonsense, it is difficult not to sympathize.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 17:45:43 +0000

Remember exactly the books:”Ironweed”(baseball as metaphor, yawn);”Falling in Place”(whiny boomers);and DeLillo’s “The Names”. The only one that interested me was Delillo, and I asked “Was this worth a close second or third reading?” Nope. No longer willing to invest, I gave up on “serious” literature and have not looked back. ….. Reread some Delaney last night, in which he makes the assertion (as a fan and expert) that there are likely 1000 poets of the quality of Keats and Shelley writing in America today, based on population increase and improbability of mass IQ decline. 1000 Keats. Those that enjoy writing and/or reading it, go for it. It is not “important”; it is not “valuable”. It is just showbiz.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 16:59:16 +0000

The thing is that even if you accept the simple assignment of cultural product into bins, you don’t just get two bins—it’s not highcult vs. masscult, it’s highcult vs. midcult vs. masscult. When—in a rather breathtakingly snobbish letter—Virginia Woolf threatened a vicious penstabbing to “human being, man, woman, dog, cat or half–crushed worm”, it wasn’t because she feared being classified as lowbrow; it’s because she didn’t want to be called middlebrow. Twentieth century high art has always seemed to have a much more comfortable relationship with mass culture, whether it’s detective fiction or Barthes writing about wrestling. What’s happened seems to me to be more about midcult no longer aspiring to be treated as high culture, Bob’s arguments about science fiction as literature of the mind notwithstanding.

By: drapeto

drapeto — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 16:34:41 +0000

re:frazier on cheers, there’s a difference between satirizing the pretentious and anti-intellectualism in and of itself. i mean, is les femmes savantes anti-intellectual? on the contrary—to repeat myself—i’m much more irritated by random High Brow references to indicate Seriousness and Depth in characters, like some trashy show i saw where two lesbians i.d. each are as sexmates because they both like Anne Carson.

By: drapeto

drapeto — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 16:31:37 +0000

prof. holbo is correct. on the contrary it is a disgustingly flagrant open-mouthed-kissing-in-the-streets love affair which i for one have been assiduously averting my eyes from. if i never hear tell of a rap meets shakespeare play again it would be too soon.

By: gemma

gemma — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 13:48:43 +0000

taj, haven’t young people in India always ignored Indian classical music? I doubt it’s only the stuffed-shirt image that keeps them away. Indian classical, like Western classical and jazz, takes some knowledge and experience before it begins to make sense. Too much effort for people. And anyway, whose pushing that stuffed-shirt image in India? Bollywood?