O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!

Dude, that is indisputably false. But it’s a bitching David Brooks impression.

Best line:

Maybe losers bring their own bitter, twisted emotions to their recollections of such events, but I still don’t think it’s wrong to describe the “literary” contingent at both events as, well, bitter and twisted.

Uh huh.

Well, every time I mention Derrida’s book on hospitality in the Little Green Footballs discussions…

…er, “promote,” that is.

“Popular culture certainly does lampoon the high-brow world and sometimes appears to promote know-nothingism.”

Sometimes aggressively so. Two of the most popular and long-running TV comedy shows of the last two decades, Frasier and Cheers, did exactly that, relentlessly. Week after week, they heaped scorn and ridicule and humiliation on any character who professed an interest in high culture and intellectual matters. Anyone on those shows who ever read a book or listened to classical music was portrayed as a preening, pompous fraud who deserved and received non-stop verbal (and occasional physical) bullying; while the only genuine characters were those who did nothing but drink beer and sneer at anyone who went to college. Despite the talented casts and scriptwriters, I gave up watching these shows because the nasty, anti-intellectual attitudes they purveyed left a bad taste in my mouth. Ultimately, they seemed like merely a cleverer version of a Rush Limbaugh or a Newt Gingrich tirade.

huh…i’m high right now…huh…huh

timothy, don’t you think there’s a large overlap between anti-intellectualism and certain kinds of popular culture, particularly the more nihilistic kind promoted by corporations? I think this overlap is what Applebaum was trying (clumsily) to get at.

> We are in a world of niches, or to coin a term that will make me world-famous, microcultures.

The larger and more pervasive popular (low) culture can be sampled by considering the book and music selection at WalMart. Perhaps niche culture has become multifarious, but there still seems to be an oppressive, anti-intellectual mainstream.

Fraiser is anti-intellectual in the same way Oscar Wilde is.

I don’t deny there is a bunch of this. Or that there is a “mass” culture. But I blog a lot.

At Tolkien sites, where people learn 4 elven languages.

At Con Christian sites, where discussion of the collapse of civilization can get pretty heady.
My favorite gay marriage opponent discussed Leo Strauss Friday. Not even counting Bible explication.

The LGF crowd may be vicious and racist, but probably know HTML and Arabic current events a lot better than I.

“Elite, snobbish, over-intellectual” is just a common weapon to be used against your enemies.

Don’t post-modernists and Western Canon types make this claim against each other?

“Elite, snobbish, over-intellectual” is just a common weapon to be used against your enemies.

Yes, but it wouldn’t be if intellectualism were not seen as a bad thing, would it? The weapon relies on the permanent hostility to have its effect. We don’t notice that because we take it so for granted, but there are places and/or times where that kind of thing just isn’t an insult or weapon, wouldn’t occur to people as a weapon.

Rajeev: Apathetic rather than antagonistic, yes, that sounds pretty much right. Mostly. There are pockets, I think…

gemma-

What you identify as objectionable about Cheers and Frasier are perfectly respectable plot conventions, deployed with great success many many times in the history of deploying things. What’s objectionable about those shows, and especially Frasier, is that they ain’t funny.

Anyway, as complaints against lowbrowism go, I personally find this one unbearably lethargic. I feel my lowbrowishness merits more, like, firebreathing and stuff (e.g. some of John Simon’s, particularly the film criticism).

…

“It was as if the gap between the nice things being said about them inside the room and the hostility of the world outside was too unbearable to discuss.”

Boooo! (throws popcorn)

Okay, I’m confused. Isn’t there a valid distinction to be made between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” as social identities, and the cultural artifacts that attach to those identities?

It seems to me that, in order to preserve the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow, it’s necessary to establish antagonism between them. At a meta-level, the article in question seems less about “culture” in terms of artifacts (books, movies, music, etc.) and more about delineating a difference in order to reinforce the distinction between high and low. In other words, the claim “I am highbrow” is meaningless unless there’s a group of Philistines out there to define yourself in opposition to. And of course the opposite is true as well.

(NB: I’m not a philosopher, culture theorist, or sociologist. Just a passive consumer and thoughtful person. I’m sure there’s a more compact, clear language I could express this in. But I really dislike seeing othering as a verb.)

Actually, you don’t have to be smart to rise to “the top” in a MMOG like UO. You just have to be in college or unemployed. There’s no smarts about hanging around the fucking Gauntlet for 300 hours to get a staff of the magi so you can sell it on ebay.

That’s right about the embarrassment of high culture and its frequent borrowings from low. This is mainly about economics. In order to survive in an aggressively free-market, lowest-common-denominator culture, symphony orchestras now have concerts featuring scratch DJs, public television now shows mostly pap-pop programs with financial gurus like Suze Orman and yuppie swill like John Tesh, formerly sober news analysis programs devolve into Jerry Springer-style shout-a-thons, etc. etc. etc. All in an attempt to keep their heads above water in an increasingly dog-eat-dog commercial culture.

Not that I neccessarily agree with what I’m about to say, but just to play the devil’s advocate…

I don’t think there’s any more or less antogonism between the two sides then there ever has been. However, in this rapidly changing world, doesn’t it seem far more important for Joe Average to have at least some basic understanding of the technology he’s surrounded with, and (more to the point) many of the philosophic/intellectual principles that his country more then likely was founded on?

After all, much of the blatant doublespeak that goes on in politics these days, wouldn’t be nearly as effective if the “Lowbrow” were at least a little better read.

Just to point to the Harlequin Romances noted above – they’re certainly not anti or pro intellectual. At the same time, the people who read Romance Novels usually aren’t balancing this diet out with a healthy mix of Nietzche, Voltaire, Dostoevsky, or whoever else.

Assuming that the aforementioned antagonism between high and low isn’t really there, isn’t it still true however that most academic/literary types, and the culture that goes along with it, want to believe that their culture is at least more sophisticated, if not, perhaps, more valuable, and probably suffers loss of shelf space to many things which are “Lower”?

Anyway, just wondering how people react to that.

“Another example: there are lots of extremely smart computer programmers, whose acquaintance with literature is restricted to trashy SF.”

As someone who has read Ulysses, FW, Counterfeiters,Remembrance, and 7 Mann novels….I sincerely hope you distinguish between “trashy” SF and the vast majority of the field. Recent award winner “Hyperion” based its structure on the Canterbury Tales and the obvious author referenced in the title. Simultaneously and artfully.

Ahhh. Why do I bother. From what I have seen in my life dancing around both, it is “high brow” culture that is closed, ignorant, prejudiced, and unaccepting of intellectual traditions that don’t completely conform to its own.

“…I sincerely hope you distinguish between “trashy” SF and the vast majority of the field.”

I do. There are also many extremely smart computer programmers who only read SF, not necessarily trashy. Different crowd, same point.

“Ahhh. Why do I bother. From what I have seen in my life dancing around both, it is “high brow” culture that is closed, ignorant, prejudiced, and unaccepting of intellectual traditions that don’t completely conform to its own.”

You’re tilting at windmills here. I wasn’t dissing SF (or computer programmers) at all. My point was simply this: a very high level of raw intelligence is entirely compatible — all too compatible — with being almost totally ignorant of “highbrow culture”, with not reading Ulysses, Mann novels, etc.

Anyway, I’d rather you put the fake sigh of exasperation aside and elaborate on how is it that you find higbrow culture to be more closed, ignorant, prejudiced and unaccepting than popular culture. I don’t think it useful to compare them along these lines, myself.

gemma-

Growing up in San Francisco, I constantly encountered people intent on the theme that in all my enthusiasms I was a perpetual and mindless gudgeon for the dreaded pop-culture/corporate-interest tandem, so I am of the opinion that the trope you don’t like is being reinforced in more than the one dimension.

ophelia-

Everyone ever agrees that Terri Gross is intrinsically annoying as shit…you know damn well it wouldn’t be any less so if her inclination on your point ran precisely opposite. In any case, if we can just arbitrarily pick cultural barometers, then I nominate Jared from the Subway commercials.

spacetoast, so what were your enthusiasms that those (leftist?) Friscans sneered at? How long ago was that? Who were these sneerers–unreconstructed Marxist hippies? I did say that these stereotypes had multiple uses, depending on time and place, and that since the late 1970s in the U.S. they have been used primarily to the benefit of a pro-corporate right-wing agenda. Pomo academics aside (much of which looks like a complete cave-in), do you think the use of anti-intellectual tropes has mainly benefitted the Left these last 30 years? Odd.

Bob,

I’ve been reading SF my whole life. I love SF. SF’s great. Having reaffirmed that, I’m less sure about your insistance that “…as opposed to detective novels or romance, SF values are intellectual values”. I don’t even understand what this means, exactly. Is it that SF plays with weird and unusual ideas a lot? But then it’ll follow that SF is more intellectual than Tolstoy or Proust — no aliens or time machines there. I’m not suggesting that SF is obviously and clearly less intellectual than novels in which nothing extraordinary, technology-wise or space-time-continuum-wise, happens — but claiming it to be obviously more intellectual than such novels seems even less justified.

Besides, there’s the usual best-of-genre argument. The best in a genre break out of the genre. In romance, look at Jane Austen; in detective fiction, look at Conan Doyle, Poe or The Name of the Rose for that matter. Lots of intellectual values in there.

Just to get your goat, I’d like to suggest, in my best Western Canon voice, that what’s different about “high literature” is that it’s almost always much more challenging than SF, detective novels, romance or what have you. “Challenging” not as let’s-solve-this-murder challenging, or let’s-imagine-how-society-would-look-with-this-technological-twist challenging, but challenging you as a person, your worldview, your emotions, your beliefs, or maybe your idea of a good time. Reading SF, even the best of SF, is almost never difficult. Now I’m not a literary masochist, and I’ll chant the fashinable reading-is-entertainment mantra as cheerfully as the next man. But, while reading in general is fun, and reading SF is certainly fun, reading good “high literature” is a different kind of fun — the kind of fun that turns your guts inside out every now and then.

OK, I’ll go bitch-slap my inner Harold Bloom now, to shut him up.

Here’s a suggestion for high-brow SF: Gravity’s Rainbow

Very difficult, very strange, potentially life changing, anticorporate, etc. Definitely not your typical SF, but I can’t think of what else to call it. And, its postmodern in the ‘good’ way.

Dan, interesting point.
However, I think the conception of highbrow as being reactionary is a bit outdated, in light of the rebellion-via-consumption ethos bestowed upon us by the gods o’marketing in the 90s. Reactionary is the Harley-driving-yuppie, the blingblingy, sex and domination obsessed pseudohiphop clansman, and the “Nascar Dad” (the market niche, not person). The highbrow/lowbrow distinction doesn’t line up with others brought up on this thread like right/left, pro/anti-intellectual, high/low SES, whitecollar/bluecollar, reactionary/revolutionary, etc. Its not a very useful distinction, theoretically speaking.

Back to Cheers for a moment.

What I think Cheers most consistently mocked was not so much high-culture or intellectualism as it was pretention. The show didn’t make Diane the butt of the joke because she was smart but because she thought she was smarter than everyone else, it wasn’t that she read poetry, it was that she appeared to think less of people who didn’t. And as much ridicule as Diane was subject to, she was always allowed to have humanizing moments (often with Coach), a luxury not extended to Cliff Claven, who was often mercilessly mocked for spouting off dubitable trivia in a know-it-all manner. (And also for living with his mother.) It wasn’t just pretentions of intellectualism that were held up to derision. After Shelley Long left the show, Kirstey Alley’s character was made light of specifically for her social-climbing.

Contrast this with the character of Frasier, who, (especially after Long’s departure) is undeniably an intellectual, but is comfortable with and respectful of his friends in the bar. No one would ever claim that Frasier wasn’t smarter than Woody, but within the show you’d have a tough time getting Frasier to say that that difference has any reflection on their relative merits. Frasier isn’t often painted as a figure of fun because he, unlike Diane, doesn’t elevate himself by looking down on others.

That is, I think, at the root of any pop culture/high culture conflict. Aficionados of pop culture criticize high culture when it seems that connoisseurs of high culture look down on them.

In any case, I have a tough time with arguments that any show as witty and as smart as Cheers was at its best is somehow anti-intellectual.

gemma-

Friscans? Anyway, my enthusiasms were Cheers and Frasier. Especially Cheers. And Frasier. And I think that anything that might be an unreconstructed marxist would live in the East Bay these days.

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?

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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?

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.