O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!

by John Holbo on April 11, 2004

Anne Applebaum on ‘the literary divide’ between highbrow and pop culture (via A&L Daily). Does this sound right to you?

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.

Surely wrong on both counts. Chat amongst yourselves.

{ 65 comments }

1

John Isbell 04.11.04 at 4:24 pm

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

2

Claire 04.11.04 at 4:48 pm

Yup. It’s wrong.

3

Carlos 04.11.04 at 5:27 pm

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.

4

DJW 04.11.04 at 7:21 pm

Don’t know what to add. It’s a silly position, repeated generation after generation.

5

Motoko 04.11.04 at 8:15 pm

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

6

Kevin 04.11.04 at 8:20 pm

I don’t agree with the second part of the proposition at all, but the first is only true in a limited sense. Popular culture certainly does lampoon the high-brow world and sometimes appears to promose “know-nothing-ism.” OTOH, it also pokes fun at stupidity and popular culture, itself. The only material difference, in my mind, between high and low culture is that the latter demands less of its audience and often, itself.

7

Kevin 04.11.04 at 8:21 pm

…er, “promote,” that is.

8

gemma 04.11.04 at 8:59 pm

“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.

9

gemma 04.11.04 at 9:00 pm

“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.

10

gemma 04.11.04 at 9:03 pm

Sorry about the double post.

11

paleotroll 04.11.04 at 9:26 pm

huh…i’m high right now…huh…huh

12

Timothy Burke 04.11.04 at 9:34 pm

Anti-intellectualism is one thing, popular culture/high culture another. The high-popular divide has actually never been less significant than it is now; Applebaum just seems flatly wrong to me.

13

gemma 04.11.04 at 9:56 pm

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.

14

bob mcmanus 04.11.04 at 10:49 pm

Try rising to the top in a massive online multi-player role-playing game without intellect.

Try understanding the quality anime.

We no longer have two cultures, or even three adding bohemian/counterculture.

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

15

P.D. 04.11.04 at 11:02 pm

> 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.

16

Ophelia Benson 04.11.04 at 11:14 pm

To say the least. Look at the way the right-wing tv pundits and G.W. Bush use the word ‘elitist’ – not to mean rich or privileged or both, oh hell no – to mean a horrible combination of liberal (however imperceptibly) and slightly educated. Anti-intellectualism is the mainstay of right-wing punditry. Maybe that doesn’t qualify as popular culture – but then what the hell else is it?

17

Rob 04.11.04 at 11:33 pm

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

18

gemma 04.11.04 at 11:45 pm

Hmmm? I never detected any Wildean socialist tendencies in any network TV comedies of the last 20 years. Please elaborate, rob.

19

bob mcmanus 04.12.04 at 12:31 am

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?

20

Rajeev Advani 04.12.04 at 12:38 am

Try rising to the top in a massive online multi-player role-playing game without intellect.

I simply have to pick on you here, Bob. When I played Ultima Online (quite a confession, I admit), many of the top “tank” players had little in the way of intellect.

On your larger point I agree. It’s difficult to classify low and high culture these days (was it ever easy I wonder?) given all the niches.

Ophelia: I’m not sure I’d call it pop culture. When I think pop culture I think a general interest in the world that doesn’t push beyond the familiar topics of relationships and drama with friends and family, coupled with an insipid taste in music and art, and few hobbies to speak of. Lack of exploration is the unifying theme. Any site on “Xanga” provides a good example of my perception of pop culture (but maybe I’m leaning too much toward the younger generation in this.) I think pop culture is more apathetic about intellectualism than it is antagonistic toward it.

21

Ophelia Benson 04.12.04 at 12:44 am

“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…

22

gemma 04.12.04 at 1:03 am

“‘Elite, snobbish, and overintellectual’ is just a weapon to be used against your enemies”

True, but at different times and places it favors one side over another. As Thomas Frank and others have written about at great length, the dated old stereotype of our ruling class as a bunch of prissy, haute-couture fops continually traipsing off to the opera in evening clothes and constantly looking down their long noses at “popular” entertainments has, for the last few decades in this country, been used to turn the working class against educated liberals (often contemptuously denominated “limousine liberals”). Today, our ruling class affects Good Ol’ Boy attitudes and tastes and resorts to Just Plain Folks rhetoric and imagery in its propaganda.

23

spacetoast 04.12.04 at 1:07 am

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)

24

Anatoly 04.12.04 at 1:15 am

Bob,

Try rising to the top in a massive online multi-player role-playing game without intellect [etc.]

I like the distincion Barzun draws between intelligence and intellect. You may have to be wicked smart to rise to the top in a massive online multi-plater role-playing game, you might have to have lots of raw intelligence. But “highbrow culture” you can probably do without.

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

25

Howard 04.12.04 at 1:24 am

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.)

26

gemma 04.12.04 at 1:30 am

spacetoast, yes of course these plot points have been around for a long time and have been used for various purposes. My point was that here and now (and for the last 30 years or so) they have been used mostly in the service of pro-corporate ideology. And even if you didn’t find them funny or watchable, millions did.

This kind of stuff has a political effect: I live in a pretty liberal town (San Francisco), yet almost every day I encounter from ordinary people the kind of “damn all you liberal eggheads” rhetoric that’s constantly deployed by the pro-corporate media. The effect is particularly noticeable around election time and it obviously benefits the GOP.

27

a lesser mongbat 04.12.04 at 1:32 am

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.

28

Anatoly 04.12.04 at 1:34 am

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

Now less than ever. On the contrary, high culture is more than ever self-conscious and embarrassed about the distinction between itself and popular culture, and keeps trying various strategies to cope with the embarrassment.

Insulation? They’ve never been so close.

p.d.,

“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.”

What’s so oppressive about the mainstream in popular culture? Or anti-intellectual, for that matter?

For example, take best-selling romance novels (I assume they qualify as popular culture?). What’s oppressive or anti-intellectual about them?

29

gemma 04.12.04 at 1:53 am

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.

30

Gary Farber 04.12.04 at 1:59 am

“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.”

This is very odd, half-correct, appraisal. Its characterization of how the intellectual characters were treated is correct. But who are these “genuine characters” spoken of? The non-intellectual characters: Sam Malone, Cliff, Norm, Woody, Coach, were equally mocked for being idiots, and for their own popular culture foibles.

That people, high-brow and low-brow both, are mercilessly mocked in a “comedy” should not stun anyone as a development.

There were no “genuine characters” let off the hook, and the intellectual characters came off no worse than the non-intellectual. Suggesting otherwise is not supportable by the material.

31

sacha 04.12.04 at 2:00 am

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.

32

Ophelia Benson 04.12.04 at 2:10 am

One perhaps too narrowly specific example – Terri Gross. She is always so profoundly delighted when she gets to say the words “pop culture” in a sentence – and when she gets to use the whole phrase “knowing references to pop culture” – well, her excitement knows no bounds. On the other hand, when some horrible necessity compels her (which it almost never does) to mention Shakespeare, she always sounds as if she’s just stepped in something nasty. I remember in particular (yes, I am obsessive about this stuff, why do you ask?) when she talked to Andre Braugher and he told her how he loves acting in Shakespeare – she sounded almost shocked when she asked him why. When she talked to Ken Branagh she all but said “Why do you like that boring old shit?” She’s not just unfamiliar with Shakespeare, she’s actively hostile. As if he’s Donald Rumsfeld or something.

33

bob mcmanus 04.12.04 at 2:10 am

“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.

34

gemma 04.12.04 at 2:23 am

gary, the voice of reason on Frasier is always the salt-of-the-earth dad, a retired cop, while his two sons are constantly portrayed as prissy, hysterical, ineffectual, effeminate intellectuals–practically “screaming queen” stereotypes in fact. (I often detected a homophobic subtext to it.) Cheers wasn’t quite that depressing, but the cumulative impression it gave was that there’s nothing more worth striving for than hanging out at the watering hole, and that anyone who, even for a brief while, reached out for something more, was a fool who got his just deserts at the show’s end. The fact that it sometimes mocked its blue-collar characters doesn’t really vitiate its ultimate attitude that learning and intellectual curiosity and expanding one’s horizons are all bunch of horseshit.

Sorry to pick on these two inane, defunct TV shows. They came readily to mind because earlier today I heard several people gushing about them on the train today. There has been much, much worse on the air. But most of these things tend to reinforce the right-wing trope “egghead = condescending liberal = Against Us Plain Folks”.

35

Anatoly 04.12.04 at 2:47 am

“…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.

36

Howard 04.12.04 at 2:49 am

Gemma,

You should be grateful for stereotypes of intellectuals in pop culture. Without them, you’d have no way to define yourself in opposition.

I think we should all co-opt the term “egghead.” You know, say things like “Egghead, please!,” at department meetings, or “Yo, egghead, what’s up?,” while passing in the hall. Maybe we could go all meta and institute a Department of Egghead Studies. Man, I am soooo academic.

(It should be noted that when I use the term we, I mean you.)

And remember, to paraphrase Magritte, this is not a blog comment.

37

spacetoast 04.12.04 at 3:23 am

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.

38

bob mcmanus 04.12.04 at 3:35 am

Ok.

1. Defending SF. (Where are you Gary) I have doing it my entirely life. Reading both high literature and SF there are entirely different values involved, but as opposed to detective novels or romance, SF values are *intellectual* values. There is a reason young nerds read the stuff. It is challenging in large amounts, or deep study.

2) I question the value of high culture. “Ulysses” didn’t change my life, or change the world. It just changed high literature. I view as just another form of entertainment, for those who like to be intellectually challenged as a pastime. Or who think the important or eternal truths are hidden and disguised, and need to be deep-mined out like diamonds from granite.

We are getting too deep here. At the level where the elite say “If the proles only knew what I know, understand what I understand, things would be so very different.”
There be actual thinkers here, and I don’t belong.

Nah. Bush would still be president, and Trump abusing kids would still be the top TV show.

39

gemma 04.12.04 at 4:37 am

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.

40

Chris Marcil 04.12.04 at 5:08 am

As a writer for Frasier I suppose I should get Gemma’s ball back over the net.

I don’t deny that Frasier spinning out of control/ his dad as voice of reason was a, um, trope that we used a lot. But no sitcom (in the US, anyway) would enjoy anything like Frasier’s success without the audience, in some way, feeling themselves to be on the side of the main character.

Besides, Frasier’s sophistication was always getting him fantastic women: Teri Hatcher, Patricia Clarkson, Felicity Huffman, Laura Linney, etc. Whether this routinely happens to devotees of high culture is an exercise left to the reader.

41

Anatoly 04.12.04 at 5:14 am

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.

42

Dan Simon 04.12.04 at 5:42 am

It’s a bit ironic (though perhaps not terribly surprising) for Crooked Timberites to be jumping to the defense of “high” culture. The very concept, in fact, has always been a deeply reactionary one. (More here.)

43

cl 04.12.04 at 5:58 am

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.

44

bob mcmanus 04.12.04 at 6:14 am

gemma up above telling us that Repubs have been brain-washing us with the insidious planting of one-liners in sitcoms and here we are talking about that spaceship stuff.
….
Prologue: I was comparing SF to other forms of popular literature, not high art. Although…well is Tolstoy really intellectually challenging? Not like the puzzle solving of Joyce or Mann or great poetry. And SF does bring that fun.

1. There is plenty of SF since 1965 I would place immediately beside anything else written since then, in terms of pure literary values. Very challenging and difficult reading, poetic etc. Delaney, Effinger, Lafferty, LeGuin, a very long list.

2. SF, as Delaney once wrote is nearly always linguistically and semantically challenging. “The door irised.” starts a fairly weak Heinlein novel. You have to learn new words, and new meanings and uses of words in almost every work.
Not Shakespeare or Joyce or Pynchon, but it does demand a “translation” both of words and content into relatable meaning.
(You know, there has be to post-modernists watching who could do this better than me).

3. The subject matter is often *very* heavy. The writers are nerds and intellectuals. Late 40’s famous example: Asimov writing an interpretation of Toynbee followed by Blish writing an responsive interpretation of Spengler.
….
What do we get, counterexample, out of Raymond Chandler? Does the meaning or message vary thru seven novels? World sucks, bad girls around, honor good stuff. SF is different. In fact the challenge of creating something new every week, month or year destroys writers. Especially since they make no money.
….
Finally, what do we get out of literature. Beauty to make you weep with wonder. Yup. Bloom may gotten great meaning for modern man out of Hamlet but I just get confused and depressed. And the same with most of the rest. Ok, great, the geniuses create a pane of glass and show us the world without illusion. And what do we get?

The world. Confused, depressed, and beauty to make us weep with wonder.

45

cl 04.12.04 at 6:47 am

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.

46

Anatoly 04.12.04 at 7:11 am

Dan Simon,

The rather ridiculous suggestion that Matthew Arnold invented the notion of high culture aside, the primary problem with your post is the unfortunate confusion of the signifier with the signified. “Modern leftists” and “Crooked Timberites” aren’t defending the notion of high culture; if anything, they’re defending the high culture itself — books, music, art which they like and love and which is commonly (and not just by them) thought of as part of high culture. About the notion of high culture and the “exclusion” (from, ugh, whatever) of popular culture they are as as self-conscious and embarrassed as befits the times.

Hence, no irony.

47

d'Herblay 04.12.04 at 7:14 am

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.

48

taj 04.12.04 at 11:26 am

Let’s concentrate on music for a moment. Until recently, the kinds of music that would be considered high culture were the kinds that existed only by the patronage of royalty and rich people, ie “the higher classes”. So people would happily self-identify themselves with these higher classes by saying things like “pop music is low class, listen to this high-class music instead.”

It’s a hangover from the class war, folks. I don’t see myself as having moved up a cultural rung when I switch from Tool to Handel. The people who are maintaining the schism are the ones who think that this difference is still relevant.

As the average income line between high- and pop-culture admirers (pop…. popular… general populace… hmm) gets blurred further, words like intelligent and intellectual are the new yardstick by which the purveyors of high culture differentiate themselves from the riff raff. Let it go already.

The sad thing is that it’s the high culture that suffers. Young people here in India will generally ignore Indian classical music simply because it’s still associated with old, snobbish stuffshirts, which is a real pity as there is something in there for everyone.

49

spacetoast 04.12.04 at 12:43 pm

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.

50

gemma 04.12.04 at 1:39 pm

“anything that might be an unreconstructed marxist would live in the East Bay these days”

Orinda? Moraga? Yeah, I can see it. Especially Orinda. And Moraga.

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gemma 04.12.04 at 1:48 pm

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?

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drapeto 04.12.04 at 4:31 pm

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.

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drapeto 04.12.04 at 4:34 pm

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.

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Steve 04.12.04 at 4:59 pm

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.

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bob mcmanus 04.12.04 at 5:45 pm

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.

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spacetoast 04.12.04 at 6:34 pm

“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.

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BP 04.12.04 at 7:12 pm

“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.

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Another Damned Medievalist 04.12.04 at 7:33 pm

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!

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bob mcmanus 04.12.04 at 8:27 pm

“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.

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bob mcmanus 04.12.04 at 8:35 pm

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.

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msg 04.13.04 at 3:23 am

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.

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Gene O'Grady 04.13.04 at 3:30 am

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

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gemma 04.13.04 at 7:11 am

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?

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Simstim 04.13.04 at 10:38 am

Hasn’t anyone mentioned Sturgeon’s Law yet?

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Ray 04.14.04 at 5:35 pm

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.

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