THE AGE OF MASS INTELLIGENCE
We’ve all heard about dumbing down. But there is plenty of evidence that the opposite is also true. Is this, in fact, the age of mass intelligence? John Parker reports...
From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Winter 2008
Russell Southwood is queuing outside his local cinema in south London, listening to his iPod. Hip-hop and jazz, as usual. What is less usual is what he is queuing up for: not a film but a live transmission of this season’s opening night from the Royal Opera House. “I like hip-hop and opera,” he says. “Not a big deal.”
That’s increasingly true. Every other Saturday, Darren Henley is at the Priestfield football ground cheering on his beloved Gillingham. In the evening, he goes to a concert by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic or the London Symphony Orchestra, because he is also the boss of Classic FM, a radio station that sponsors those orchestras.
Cultural incongruities are popping up everywhere. When the Guardian, which sponsors the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, picked ten visitors to interview, one turned out to be a check-out clerk at Tesco who saved all his money during the year so he could go to the festival for his holiday. He was far from the most unlikely visitor who might have been found. High-ranking officers from the SAS (Special Air Service), Britain’s crack covert-operations regiment--who have to remain anonymous--have been known to spend their holidays each year travelling from their base at Hereford to Hay for lectures on Wordsworth and Darwin.
The sharpest of all these cultural contrasts, though, was the one taking place at the Royal Opera House itself the night Russell Southwood was queuing. Every seat had been taken not by the furs-and-cufflinks brigade but by readers of the Sun, a newspaper not noted for its opera coverage. Amid huffing and puffing from connoisseurs, 2,200 readers of Britain’s biggest-selling daily, accompanied by a trio of page-three girls (modestly attired), descended on the house of Handel and Callas for Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”. The paper celebrated with an inch-high headline: “Well Don, my Sun”.
In most rich countries, the old distinction between high and popular culture is breaking down. Isolated examples of this have been seen for a long time. In the 1960s Karlheinz Stockhausen, a doyen of avant-garde music, appeared on the cover of the Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper”. In the 1990s the Three Tenors found a mass audience for Puccini. But what used to be a characteristic of individuals or particular occasions is now becoming the defining feature of the whole culture.
Millions more people are going to museums, literary festivals and operas; millions more watch demanding television programmes or download serious-minded podcasts. Not all these activities count as mind-stretching, of course. Some are downright fluffy. But, says Donna Renney, the chief executive of the Cheltenham Festivals, audiences increasingly want “the buzz you get from working that little bit harder”. This is a dramatic yet often unrecognised development. “When people talk and write about culture,” says Ira Glass, the creator of the riveting public-radio show “This American Life”, “it’s apocalyptic. We tell ourselves that everything is in bad shape. But the opposite is true. There’s an abundance of really interesting things going on all around us.”
That may seem Pollyanna-ish. But consider these straws, all blowing in the same direction. In 1999/2000, there were 24m visits to Britain’s biggest museums. In 2007/08, the figure was 40m. Between 1999 and 2001, Britain scrapped entry charges, so the increase is partly attributable to that. Still, it was a lot of people. And another factor is the popularity of blockbuster exhibitions, such as the Terracotta Army show at the British Museum--which are seldom free, so scrapping charges cannot be the sole explanation. In most of the great cities of the West, museums now dominate the lists of most popular tourist attractions. More people go to the Louvre each year than to the Eiffel Tower; in London, three museums--the Tate, the British Museum and the National Gallery--each attract more visitors than the London Eye.
In 2006 the New York Metropolitan Opera started an experiment to reach a new audience. It began transmitting opera performances live to cinemas. In the first year it broadcast six productions to 98 movie houses in America; 325,000 people watched. The second year, it transmitted eight operas to 935,000 people. This year, there will be 11 productions, 850 cinemas in 28 countries and a forecast audience of 1.2m: roughly 100,000 people per show, compared with just 3,700 at the Met itself. A few dress up in finery. Many more stood outside in Times Square, New York, this year staring at the digital displays that usually advertise Panasonic or Disney, watching the Met’s opening-night concert.
* * * * *
One of the commonest complaints by cultural doomsayers is that nobody reads good books any more. Yet in the past two years, the Oprah Book Club in America recommended Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and three novels by William Faulkner--good by any standard, and they all made the bestseller lists. This year, Waterstone’s, which owns over 300 bookshops in Britain, asked two celebrated novelists, Sebastian Faulks and Philip Pullman, each to choose 40 titles and write a few words of recommendation. The chain then piled copies of the books on tables next to the entrances of its main shops and waited to see what would happen. Faulks and Pullman hardly dumbed down their choices: they included Fernando Pessoa’s “Book of Disquiet”, Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”, and Raymond Queneau’s “Exercises in Style”. The sales increases for these books over the same period the year before were, respectively, 1,350%, 1,420% and 1,800%--clear evidence of latent demand. If you offer it, they will come.
Literary festivals show the same thing. The Arts Council tries to keep track of their number: 43 in Britain in October alone. Some are tiny, like a weekend festival in Mere, a village in Wiltshire. Others are huge. Next year, the Hay Festival expects to sell 165,000 tickets for events over two weeks. When it began, in 1988, there were 2,000 visitors. Its director, Peter Florence, says the audience has grown, about 15% a year for the past 20 years. Now, he is branching out abroad, helping organise festivals in Cartagena (Colombia), Granada, Havana, Nairobi and Beirut. Not far from Hay, in Cheltenham, another literary festival has also grown, from 67,000 visitors in 2005 to over 87,000 this year. It, too, has children: the Cheltenham jazz, science and classical-music festivals have all flourished on the back of the literary one.
Of course, it may be just that there is more of everything, from serious-minded literary gabfests to drunken holidays in Benidorm. “In the past 20 or 30 years”, says Ira Glass, “there have always been little pockets in the culture where people do interesting work. But now there are so many more places, so many more people who are willing to try anything. The result is that there’s a lot of crap, but there’s also more stuff that’s good at every level.” And the internet, with its instant searches and e-mail newsletters, makes it much easier for people to know what is happening and how to get it.
Where you can make direct comparisons, the serious end of a market is holding up as well as or better than the popular one. Take television. There certainly is no shortage of chewing gum for the eyes. But a clever quiz show such as “QI”, which one might have expected to have lasted a season, is now in its sixth year on BBC2. The even more upmarket radio programme “In Our Time” was the BBC’s first podcast, in 2004, and it was an instant hit. Janice Hadlow, the new controller of BBC2, recently told the BBC staff magazine: “I want to see intelligence in popular programming. It’s good to see it cropping up in all sorts of different places--not just those programmes where you might expect it.” A series like “The Wire”, which its creator David Simon admits “requires thought and commitment to watch”, has survived poor ratings to become a critical smash. Barack Obama was one of many to call it the best show on television. The Los Angeles Times used it as an example of what “is generally acknowledged to be something of a golden era for thoughtful and entertaining dramas”.
Television, opera and perhaps museums might be said to be absorbed passively. But that is not true of literary festivals, nor of some of the new businesses taking advantage of changing public taste. In a former grocery shop in Bloomsbury, Sophie Haworth, who used to run the Tate’s education programme, has just opened the School of Life, aiming to bridge the gap between adult education and self-help. Haworth calls it “a one-stop shop for the mind”. It is more rigorous than most self-help groups and more fun than adult education. Its courses are sold out for months ahead. So are public debates for 800 people on propositions like “It’s wrong to pay for sex”, staged by Intelligence Squared. When the company started, says Jeremy O’Grady, one of its organisers, he was virtually offering free tickets to tramps on the streets to fill the hall. Now you can hardly squeeze in. “Marketing people always think the public is seduced by glitz and instant gratification,” says O’Grady. “But we’re less shallow than we think we are.”
Lastly, lest you think the School of Life and Intelligence Squared, which cater for thousands, are typical of the new cultural endeavours, consider Classic FM. Before it came along in 1992, Radio 3 had a monopoly over Britain’s supply of broadcast classical music. But (as is often the way with monopolies) it catered for insiders far better than for anyone else. As Henley says, Radio 3 “super-served the connoisseur”. You almost needed permission from the Royal College of Music to listen to it. During the day, Radio 3 strode about in a corduroy jacket; in the evening, it changed into white tie and tails. “Classical music had a language and a set of values that made it very elitist,” argues Henley. “It said: ‘This is the music. This is what you wear. These are the rules.’ But when we talked to people, they said that while they loved the music, they all thought they were the only ones put off by the way it was presented. It was like a club where the door is always locked. From day one, our aim was to blow open the locks.”
Classic FM’s launch was nothing short of sensational. Within four months, it had 4.2m listeners--twice Radio 3’s audience at that point and a vivid example of latent demand. “The audience was always there,” Henley says. “We just identified a need that wasn’t being fulfilled.”
Now, with 6m listeners a week, Classic FM is easily the largest commercial radio station in Britain (BBC Radios 1, 2 and 4 are bigger but are not commercial). One in nine of Britain’s adult population are regular listeners. They are not just the cardigan-wearing classes, either. At least 1m Classic FM listeners also tune in to Radio 1. So do about 400,000 children under 15 and, during the spring, half of all those who call the station’s musical-requests programme are students who, it seems, switch from pop, rock or dance music at exam time to something that helps them concentrate or relax. The station’s presenters embody its crossover appeal. One, Alex James, was the bass player for Blur, one of the leading Britpop bands of the 1990s; another, John Brunning, was lead guitarist for the 1970s band Mungo Jerry.
Like any good marketing operation, Classic FM divides its audience into segments. It labels them nervous discoverers, background listeners, classics as pop, popular enthusiasts and connoisseurs, and it provides programmes tailored to each. In the morning, when there are more background listeners and nervous discoverers (the youngest of the groups, also the Radio 1 listeners), the music is bright, breezy and interspersed with news and talk. In the afternoon, programmes turn more soothing for the popular enthusiasts (older, affluent, more women than men). In the evening when listeners have time, and connoisseurs tune in, you get traditional concerts.
The station goes out of its way to be user-friendly. For new or occasional listeners, it sells guidebooks (“The Friendly Guide to Classical Music”). For the enthusiasts, there is a monthly magazine. Last Christmas, it even held a “Barbie at the Symphony” concert in Liverpool’s Philharmonic hall--“The Nutcracker”, “Swan Lake”--for another target audience: doll-loving girls (and their parents).
This leaves it open to accusations of dumbing down. It is certainly true that a good deal of Classic FM’s output is undemanding; the most ferocious and rebarbative contemporary music is banned. But it plays the world’s greatest music in proper recordings. It takes the classical canon beyond the traditional audience of connoisseurs and, with its magazines and books, tries to engage new audiences more deeply with the music it plays. Darren Henley’s quest is unfinished. “I've no doubt”, he says, “that one day, everyone will listen to classical music, maybe not all the time, but at different stages of their lives. It offers people a spirituality, an otherworldliness that they want. We hear that from our listeners all the time.”
* * * * *
Philippe de Montebello, soon to step down after 31 years as director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, is fond of saying “the public is a lot smarter than anyone gives it credit for.” He seems to be right. But why? It’s unlikely people are more intelligent than they used to be. Perhaps the elites that enjoy high culture are now bigger for some reason? Perhaps popular tastes have changed in such a way as to benefit high culture? Or perhaps it has nothing to do with changes in the audience, and more to do with the artists and institutions, who have become more skilled at attracting people? Answer: all of the above.
Hard though it may be for professional pessimists to credit, educational standards have risen appreciably over the past 40 years. A good way to measure this is to look at how many people have degrees in each generation. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris has worked this out and found that 29% of Britons between the ages of 25 and 34 have what it calls “type-A tertiary education” (basically, universities). But the share is little more than half that in an older generation (16% of those between 55 and 64). This reflects the expansion of universities in Britain since the 1960s. And in case you suspect the effect is merely a result of relabelling polytechnics as universities, the OECD has allowed for that, too. It calls the polytechnics “type-B tertiary education” (ie, vocational and higher training). Type B education in Britain has been flat. The growth has come from universities alone. In a literal sense, there has been an expansion of mass intelligence: more people have been trained at universities to want, or expect, more intellectual stimulation.
People with degrees are much more likely to go to museums than anyone else. Two researchers from Oxford University, Tak Wing Chan and John Goldthorpe, studied the influence of income, occupation, social class and education on whether people go to theatre, dance, cinema, music and the visual arts. They concluded that education is by far the most important factor. “The higher individuals’ education level,” they write, “the higher, one might say, is their capacity for cultural consumption.” They also looked at whether people tended to concentrate on one thing (going to the movies, say) or to engage with lots of art forms. They found that university graduates were far more likely to be “cultural omnivores” than “cultural univores”. Others have found the same thing. In 2007 the American research group MRI looked at the viewing and reading habits of the elite market, which it defined as those who went to, or subscribed to, at least two of the following: the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, HBO, theatre, art galleries or classical concerts. They found that of this group, a third also read People magazine, watched “American Idol” and subscribed to the cable sports channel ESPN. One of the features of the market for mass intelligence is its heterogeneity.
There is a second, indirect link between education and culture, albeit one that is hard to pin down. Over the past two decades, education has been increasingly rewarded; in the “knowledge economy”, university graduates have done much better than others and the value of a degree has soared. People with degrees also go to cultural events more often so, though there is no necessary connection, there is a correlation: education, culture and income or status tend to go together. A study by the Pew Research Centre in America last year measured this correlation by proxy. It found that 60% of people with incomes of less than $20,000 a year said they had a low knowledge of current affairs; 15% had a high knowledge. For those on incomes of $100,000 and over, the shares were almost exactly reversed: nearly 60% high, less than 20% low. Keeping abreast of current affairs is obviously different from going to the opera or science festivals. Indeed, going to an arts event is often an escape from work. But it is also a way to gain status, to network and to use and burnish the thing that helps you at the office: knowledge.
An alternative explanation for the growth of mass intelligence comes from Peter Florence of the Hay Festival. Forty or 50 years ago, he argues, the public appetite for debate and intellectual curiosity was partly met by politics. The 1960s was a period of political ferment. Later, the current of public interest ran through television and radio; the BBC and ITV played a huge role in bringing theatre, opera and the rest of it to a wider audience. The tradition of public service, he thinks, “nourished an appetite for culture that has survived the splintering of monolithic public-service broadcasters and been encouraged by the rise of the internet”.
No doubt these long-run trends have played a role. But if they were the sole explanation, you would expect the market for mass intelligence to have developed slowly, imperceptibly. And one of its striking features is how rapidly it can appear--as Classic FM, Waterstone’s and the Met have all shown. The behaviour of arts providers makes a big difference too. Most successful arts organisations are busy blowing away a certain dustiness and injecting a sense of fun and style. Adult education and debating societies used to mean draughty halls and comfortless benches. The School of Life, in contrast, looks like a designer shop and the Intelligence Squared debates take place, says O’Grady, “in the most comfortable leather seats northern Italy has to offer”. This year’s Christmas programme at London’s Southbank Centre includes a Quentin Crisp lookalike contest and a concert by an orchestra using instruments scavenged from rubbish--drainpipes, traffic cones, discarded soy-sauce bottles.
When arts organisations do this, they can not only expand their audience but sometimes create new ones in the most unexpected ways. This is what Naxos Audio Books has done with recordings of classic books on CD and tape. Its bestsellers include abridged versions of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (three CDs) and a four-CD account of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Amazingly, Naxos sells thousands of copies of an unabridged version of “Ulysses” (22 CDs). “When I first proposed it, my colleagues thought I was mad,” says the company’s founder, Nicolas Soames. “At the start, it was just a hunch. I thought that if we read writers like Dante or Milton aloud, it would make them live again for a new audience.”
What was most remarkable was the origin of that audience. “I was a judo journalist,” Soames says, “and when I visited judo groups I found that everyone wanted to learn. The -do in judo means ‘the way’ and the concept inculcates in those doing the sport a strong desire to learn. These people would never sit down and read Dante or Joyce. But they would listen to them if they were read well enough. Now we know there is a group of people I call self-improvers who want a wide range of intelligent stuff, including the classics.”
From opera in cinemas to audio books for judo-players: the expanding market for intelligence is certainly unexpected. But what does it really amount to? Is it a profound cultural change or a mild shift upmarket? Here are three tentative conclusions. First, the growth of a market for intelligence may not imply anything about the quality of art being produced. Artists and patrons do separate, if related, things. Accusations of dumbing down are legion. On the other hand, the LA Times’s view that this is a golden age for serious television might be applied more widely. It is hard to believe that those who accuse arts institutions of dumbing down would want audiences to be smaller.
Second, the growth of intelligent interest may help resolve an argument that exists in universities between those who say culture is really all about class or income, much as it always was, and those who say that, no, sweeping statements about class are no longer relevant, and that these days personal taste, not class or money, is what matters. The new audience suggests both schools are partly right (or wrong). Taste has become fantastically heterogeneous: people do indeed watch and read whatever they want; intellectual snobbery is breaking down. But as Drs Wing and Goldthorpe have shown, one group--those with university degrees--read more, watch more and mix and match more than anyone else.
Third, what does all this say about the widespread view that societies are dumbing down, educational standards are crumbling and people’s ability to concentrate is collapsing? The reply must be that it cannot be true across the board and that for a significant number, the opposite is the case: people want more intellectually demanding things to see and hear, not fewer. Surely both things are happening at once: part of the population is dumbing down, part is wising up. But something has changed. H.L. Mencken, the so-called sage of Baltimore, said: “No one in this world...has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” A growing number of people are proving him wrong.
Picture credit: Mike Prior, make-up by Darren Evans
(John Parker is globalisation correspondent of The Economist and former features editor of the FT)
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Intelligence as Commodity
December 5, 2008 - 16:48 — George (not verified)Several claims here seem unexamined. While more people are getting PhDs, going to museums, listening to classical music, reading Faulkner, it does not necessarily follow that people are more "intelligent" or intellectual. Being in the world of academia, I find that intellectual or "high" culture is simply yet another commodity that cheery, ambitious students and the hipster periphery consume as a means to "being" a certain kind of person. People are getting degrees in fields in which they have no talent and minimal interest, but nonetheless believe that higher degrees = intelligence. They have made the choice between intelligence and money and have chosen the insulated world of academia, high culture, etc as a way of thinking of themselves as successful people. So many of these people don't belong in academics and it is distasteful to see them force out narrow, irrelevant dissertations to "get" their degree. They have dumbed down the world of academia into one populated with self-promoting dilettantes competing over number of publications or conference speaking slots. The erudite, mildly awkward scholar of old Oxford or Princeton in the 1910s cannot compete against the academic-yuppie. This is not high culture, it is the barbarization of one of the final sinecures of high culture.
On a broader level, the middle classes have gotten the message that the upper classes think they're stupid and have responded by believing they can become cultured like it's off the rack Walmart shopping. Pick up a guide to classical music, hit up a few concerts, read a few Great Books in the soft glow of an Oprah club, and presto, you're intelligent, cultured, or best of all, eclectic!
People take these things like medicine and develop no appreciation for high culture other than as a means to come across to others as a intelligent person. The fast pace of the cheery meritocrats and the lower middle classes that plunge forth towards college in their wake have coarsened high culture, not revived it. "Reading Faulkner" is measure to tick off in an article about culture now! Better, it's reputation builder for your facebook profile.
High culture was never meant to be accessed by the many. At least in the 80s no one thought that the stockbroker who bought art at pricey galleries was actually participating in high culture. He was just a schmuck trying to buy a personality.
but Pourquoi?
December 5, 2008 - 17:19 — SigLNY (not verified)I've often pondered at the paradox of modern society getting both more and less intelligent at the same time. It's harder to get into an Ivy League university then ever before but at the same time basic surveys on history, geography and science with American High Schoolers show troubling statistics indeed. So what's happening here? Perhaps the statistics are bad but nonetheless better than they ever have been in the past (I wouldn't be surprised if this was true), perhaps language barriers with new immigrant families are dragging down scores, making the scores skewed. Perhaps as the class divisions stratify, especially in the Bush era, and the middle class is more and more polarized between two extremes, it is inevitable that the rich will not only get richer but smarter as well. Likewise the poor shall get dumber. It's an interesting problem but, as this article (or any trip to google) proves-there are a lot of very very smart cultured people out there, probably more than ever, even in proportion to the population size.
How about a 4th reason
December 5, 2008 - 17:33 — Martin Blythe (not verified)Just throwing this out there. Perhaps it has to do with whether we are a Flat Thinker or a Linear Thinker. Flat thinking is visual, unlike sequential thinking which is linear. I'm not sure that flat thinking is inferior to linear thinking.
Flat thinking is spatial and relies on analogical or lateral thinking. Linear thinking offers an illusion of depth.
I guess some of us do both but one skill is gaining ground among kids while the other is losing ground. In my opinion it's a wash, not a net loss.
intresting
December 6, 2008 - 11:04 — Alexander Kabusk (not verified)intresting
Culture only for the select few?
December 6, 2008 - 11:15 — Dimitrios Diamantaras (not verified)"George" says in the first comment that "High culture was never meant to be accessed by the many." To this I say "bah, humbug!". Whatever the reason a person engages in cultural activities, the person is positively affected by this engagement. I disagree strongly with the idea that "high culture" is the exclusive realm of some small elite. Your statement about that is worse posturing than the one of the "schmuck" you allude to, George. And yes, I have set up my blog, where I have also discussed this, to be automatically posted on my Facebook page. Go ahead and despise me now, I must be such a schmuck.
Here is the expected
December 6, 2008 - 13:32 — George (not verified)Here is the expected anti-elitist response, though perhaps I did not make myself clear. If high culture means a rarefied, refined form of art and lifestyle, saying that it was never intended to be accessed by the many is the equivalent of saying that being in the top income decile was not meant to be accessed by the many. It's definitional.
What this article doesn't quite propose, but what many people out there seem to think possible, is that there can be some sort of mainstreaming of high culture. That as the tide of intellectualism rises, we will be awash in sophisticates who were once pedestrians. Unfortunately, as I see it, we are awash in pseudo-sophisticates who believe that "being cultured" is just another checklist goal filled with prescribed books, music, and art. I understand that there is a strong streak of believing that anyone can just knock back a few operas and now "get" it and what was so hard about all this high culture in the first place (nowhere is this stronger than here in america, see e.g. Sarah Palin). Or as you put it, Dimitrios, people are "positively affected" by such culture. But that's the whole point that has slipped from the debate. High culture is not medicine you take and become better. Art is typically not about making people better.
Here's the bottom line, which, I predict, is what you would most like to hear in order to write me off. High culture is the preserve of the upper class type who has turned away from mere frivolity and used their wealth to go to great schools, spend time traveling the world, gaining introductions to "important" people, generally living a life of intellectual pursuit enabled by their family's wealth. It is also the world of sometimes poor, sometimes "patron-supported" artists, child prodigies, calcutta filmmakers, avante-garde chefs. The third class of people, and the one that is being used as a backdoor into sophistication, are academics. Typically these were stewards of this culture, surveyors, people with a passion for their discipline and not inclined towards celebrity themselves.
What we have now here is an invasion of aspirants, in the worse sense of that word. Students are ambitious, but to "be" a professor and live the professor's life, not for their chosen discipline. If they evidence strong feelings for their field, it is most likely because they have discovered a narrow interest that will carry them to their goal of professorship at the most prestigious school possible. From this new breed of PhDs (or perhaps out of the same thing that created them) has filtered down to the middle classes this sense that education is some sort of comestible that confers intelligence through its consumption. If you read Ulysses, for instance, you must = very smart. It doesn't matter whether you "understand" it, or even have the cultural tools to understand it. Any interpretation, or even just "engagement" with the book leaves you better off.
I know we are still recovering from French post-modernism, but I think even Derrida would feel a bit reluctant (not openly of course) to say that "any" interpretation, any understanding or even lack thereof of Ulysses was just as good as any other. I understand that this raw egalitarianism is the result of snobbery from the upper classes towards the middle classes. That doesn't make correct the notion that high culture is just a list that any old sot can run off. The stampeding barbarians, storming the Bastille waving copies of Absalom, Absalom at the upper classes, may be demanding recognition that they are intelligent, but this does not, in fact, make them intelligent or cultured. They are Visigoths paging dumbly through the annals of western civilization as Rome sits smashed in their wake.
Who defines "high" culture or "intelligent"?
December 6, 2008 - 14:47 — Dimitrios Diamantaras (not verified)George, I don't care for the definition of high culture as a refined lifestyle that makes it equivalent to a lifestyle of the few. I think there is an objective way to rank cultural activities from "low" to "high". I know that not everybody would agree with this. I am very far from espousing the opinion that all readings of a work are of equal value; that's a gratuitous reading of my previous comment. There is no need to associate Derrida's thinking with mine; I don't know that he did any logically consistent thinking, so I don't want to be mentioned in the same sentence with him.
But I am not a philosopher, so I will cease discussing Derrida. I sympathize with your aversion of the pretend-cultureds, of the narrow-minded PhDs who want to live the professor's life rather than think. That's probably why my professional trajectory as a professor (of economics) has not been quite as illustrious as what my PhD background should have made very likely. I have been too "lazy" and spent time reading outside my discipline (and singing in symphonic choruses) to become a monomaniacal research paper-generating machine.
I have been indeed surprised to see just how many fools with doctorates crowd the halls of academia. They are hard to reach because they talk and don't listen. But it is possible that even such a person can be influenced by the right encounter with high culture and become more worthy of it. It is even more likely for an average person in the Clapham omnibus (or whatever the current term for this is) to become worthy of high culture and even a creator of it.
It is the being-worthy-of-high-culture that you would rather reserve for yourself to judge, is it not? You may be a fantastically well-read writer-philosopher-composer-choreographer-painter-Nobel laureate, but I suggest that you do not ascribe to yourself (or anybody) the infallible ability to recognize the people who are truly deserving to be called highly cultured.
Finally, I did not say, or mean to say, that culture is like medicine, in that you take it to feel better. It is entirely possible that one is positively affected with one's encounters with culture, which make one perhaps happier (or dourer, if the experience pushes one to cultural pessimism) but at the same time the person can become more cultured and can be a good presence for the future of high culture. Surely you don't mean to say that there is a high wall around high culture and entry is prohibited to the unwashed masses who are knocking on the castle door?
A cultural repose
December 6, 2008 - 18:34 — George (not verified)Dimitrios, I don't reserve for myself any particular right to judge what counts as high and low culture. I make my own judgments, of course, but ultimately these are more for my inward enjoyment than any evangelical purposes. What I object to is the idea that some sort of middle class Great Intellectual Awakening is evidenced by an increase in the number of copies of The Inferno sold, an uptick in admissions to concerts of museums, or generally the insertion of more "high" culture references into the pop cultural setting. These are affectations. This is not a sign of a cultural Renaissance, unless that Renaissance is a two dimensional one staged with tableaux of people carrying copies of Kim on the subway. There is nothing "wrong" about all this, but neither is there anything particularly right. The more fundamental issue, to me, is that this middle class invasion and commodification of high culture has disregarded the very spirit behind the most superlative expressions in human culture (my def of high culture). Like a cell phone wielding yuppie careening in an SUV out of whole foods on hold for opera tickets, we have simply taken to ordering high culture to our doorsteps as if intelligence and culture were available in discrete little units for our edifying pleasure, books to read, films to see, music to "get into." I guess what I may not be making clear is that this is a perversion of what high culture is. Not what "counts" as high culture, but what it means to develop a refined interest in a subject. The culture surrounding high culture used to be one of passion, dedication, argument. People became a curator of early music, not because it was a stable career (at least not a majority) but because they loved the music and longed to immerse themselves in it. Art historians went into their fields because the art inspired them. They wanted the immersion of a life spent reflecting on art. Now we have Art History for Dummies, or more seriously, flashly, highly advertised exhibits on Dali or Warhol meant to play on the pop cultural currency of these figures. Can these people still "access" high culture through these devices? Perhaps, but I contend they are not. They are going to these exhibits and filling up concert halls (for the big name pieces) because they want something from the art unconnected to the art itself. They want intelligence. They believe intelligence is an ongoing process of filling out one's personal encyclopedia as fully as possible with high culture, and as you get more advanced, ironic low culture. It's a consumption mentality. It's a coarsened version of high culture which completely extracts out passion and inward repose for cultural merit badge racking up. This is what I mean by "never meant to be accessed by the many." Throughout history not many have been drawn to the monastery, to the relatively low paid world of academia, even away from a life of carefree wealthy loafing to the task of serious study. In my opinion, we are not in a New Englightenment. We are living in a debauched Rome, where the new narcissism is less "how much money do you make" and more how advanced is your degree and how "refined" are your tastes. It is happening at all levels from the shopper who will by the same item at Target but never at that low end Walmart, to the people who are willing to pay twice the price for a pizza so long as it's called a "flatbread." The store of high culture is opened, and like fools parading around town with illuminated manuscripts on their heads, high cultural artifacts are appreciated as bright, shiny objects, and not as books which might have more to illuminate than the pixels on one's facebook profile (and I don't mean yours, Dimitrios).
Who's really at fault?
December 7, 2008 - 00:52 — Taylor (not verified)I'm fascinated by the debate that's grown here, particularly with George's notion that high culture has become commodified and, in the process, devoid of its original, enlightening purpose for those truly devoted to it. Perhaps it is the case that the majority of people in this country who read Oprah's book club choices or listen to classical music are poseurs, simply buying a façade of intelligence. However, I also agree with Dimitrios that there can be something profound for these types to glean from such exposure. I may be one of the younger set, but I go to the opera, try to read challenging things, and hope someday to go after that PhD. Not because I want to simply appear intelligent, but rather because opera is an incredible art form, because challenging books offer a perspective on life this current world could never offer, and because an immersion in the subject I love (art history/museums) could potentially allow me to share that passion with others.
I think this commodification of culture has two parts to it: the people who take to it for some semblance of self-improvement, and the institutions and organizations offering it. The fall of culture had to start somewhere higher than the masses, because they could not have bought into it without some kind of dissemination from above. If there's criticism against the former, there should also be criticism against the latter - someone let those pretend academics into grad school. Museums are indeed offering kitschy blockbuster exhibits and creating satellite branches à la Bilbao, influenced by the dollar signs in their trustees' eyes - granted, some museum directors are businessmen and financial gain is "what they do," but others hold PhDs and still give the final nod for these things to happen. Alongside these developments, I would agree that the refinement surrounding high culture has somewhat dissipated, but also think that there is more at fault than just the people who merely take advantage of what's offered them.
Where We Stand Today.
December 8, 2008 - 05:00 — Cameron (not verified)George,
I have read all of your entries so far, and what you are really trying to say -though elegantly, and through much pontification thought to frighten away less erudite readers, and while embodying long drawn out sentences such as this one - is that art and education are things that only truly belong to the upper class.
Please join us in modern times, George.
To say that fine art and scholarly pursuits are novelties only to be truly enjoyed by people whose mummies and daddies have dumped enough money on them and allowed them the time to enjoy them, is very ridiculous. We can't all be worldly pampered princes of pedantic prose and poetry.
In your argument you debase what 'art' should be. Well what is it George? Are you going to define 'art?' Are you going to define 'culture?' Are you going to tell us who has the right to pursue or enjoy it?
And, of course, intelligence. I am of the belief that it is any human's right to access intelligence. Yes, Art for Dummies may seem silly, but it's a starting point for many. And the people who read books like these do not makes claims of "high culture." They are just trying inform themselves. As this essay suggests, we are living in the age of intelligence. George, you're holding onto a lost ideal that intelligence, fine art, and higher learning - all blended into an illusive "high culture" - exclusively belongs to some and not others.
If art is any sort of expression of the human experience, then it would be paradoxical to say that it belongs to some humans and not others.
And yes, picking up a book by Kakfa doesn't make someone intelligent. I don't even think people even seriously use claims like this. The point is that anyone CAN pick up a book by Kakfa and make what they want of it.
There is a sort of disillusionment that goes along with upper class elitism...the idea that they and they only are entitled to all of the world finest intellectual resources. Welcome to 2008. Holding on to this belief in the 'age of mass information' is like intellectually masturbating to a hollowed ideal.
Amongst the great Historical
December 8, 2008 - 12:16 — Visitor (not verified)Amongst the great Historical problems, nay paradoxes when "high culture" becomes available to the "masses" is the disortion that is derived as a result of the inproper abilities to fully analyze the qaulities attempting to be expressed. Using religion as a form of art, it can come as no surprise that suicide bombers are so readily accepting of the idea of martydom. Without any proper knowledge, teching, or guidance when interpretating the readings (Qu'ran in this case) they have no choice but to believe what they are told. This holds true across the spectrum of the academic and non-academic fields. Unless an individual is educated to a certain degree, and is able to possess a qualified interpretation based on pre-existing knowledge and educational advancement of the field in question. The "Masses" response to the Mona Lisa, will be extremely different then a modern artists perspective. Now is it good or bad? That is up for discussion. Whilst any attempt by any individual to educate themselves may be seen as a good thing, how much is a member of the "masses" really getting out of Plato's "Republic" if s/he has no understanding of the time in which it was written, the philosophical basis which it would become, or the impact on the modern world that it has become? This has historically been the problem when "High culture" has tried to export itself to the rest of society.
A comment on the whole discussion
December 8, 2008 - 12:55 — Paulo Freire (not verified)I would like to introduce a point in this discussion... I would say that if someone goes to operas, reads books, etc. just to appear cultured, then such a person is just posturing. That used to be the case with me as a teenager. However, at some point, I really started to _enjoy_ good literature, movies, museums, etc. As Dimitrios say, I was not only positively changed by it, but I started craving for more. Developing a taste, to the point where I can now say that fine culture is "for me" as well.
So posturing is not necessarily a bad thing, you might actually start enjoying the museums you visit. Reading a book just because Oprah recommends it can be a great thing, particularly if it makes you start your own journey of literary discovery and enjoyment.
I also think that people might be now "consuming" more intelligent cultural items out of tiredness with "dumb" media and art. Some people really get sick of Britney Spears.
The Age of Mass Culture
December 8, 2008 - 13:00 — Visitor (not verified)Not mass intelligent... as a engineering student at the University of Waterloo... it's disappointing to watch the courses getting dumbed down year of year... the same is happening in high school... the younger generation is more inclined to have fun than have a career...
Snob.
December 8, 2008 - 13:16 — Visitor (not verified)Snob.
High culture = hard work?
December 8, 2008 - 13:20 — Harry (not verified)My reading of George's comments is that high culture requires dedication, something that the eclectic consumer that's being typed as behind the current trend is not prepared to put it.
Taylor, I don't think it's quite fair to say that George demands that high culture is reserved for silver-spooned posh daddy's boys - they're just one of three possible participators George suggested, including, if I understood him, poor-kids-with-talent-and-passion who will be sponsored by patrons (or the state?), and people who are seriously committed to the subject and prepared to become academics in the field (although, to meet George's tough criteria, they must do so with no trace of a desire to use their academic qualifications for social status).
Without getting too tied up in the precise
categories of person, I think that some of George's argument does resonate - that there are certain participants in any field (for me, this could be art history or simpsons trivia) who are more committed than others, and who therefore will be able to a/ appreciate on a deeper level and b/ contribute to, the field they're in.
Now essentially, by definition, we all only have finite amounts of time available to us, so if you place the threshhold of commitment high enough, it is quite clear that "high" culture in any field becomes an elitist occupation - we can't all become experts in everything. I'm reminded of Malcolm Gladwell's proposition that it takes 10,000 hours of solid practice before you reach a "threshold" at which you can become an expert in your field - a figure he claims is broadly constant whether the field is classical music, anaestheiology, or mathematics.
So on this level I'm sympathetic to George's comments - that a lot more people are appreciating "high" culture might be the case, but that they might not have committed to the field "enough" to appreciate it on the same level as a member of the elite (an elite whose membership is, today, more or less open to anyone I would argue - given a certain level of intelligence). And certainly I'd tend to agree that a 'casual' participator in high culture is unlikely to be able to make worthwhile contributions to it.
George, I have to say I'm probably slightly less sympathetic to your deploring the motives of the average academic these days - I probably know the field less well than you, but to me it sounds a little bit like classic hand-wringing about "the good old days". not everyone's motives are going to be pure. and just because someone has "impure" motives does not automatically mean they are unable to make worthwhile contributions.
On a final note, would people agree that contributing to high culture requires a certain level of commitment? Or does todays Web 2.0 participative culture allow for a new way of contibuting? I'm dubious...
What about appreciation? Can we really say that only experts appreciate high culture? Even if only experts can "truly" understand Kim, say, does that mean it's not worth anybody else reading it? Isn't part of the value of art its ability to affect as many people as possible, irrespective of their cultural background? Did Mozart write Operas for other composers to listen to, or for regular people?
A final, final thought - George, surely you can't be saying that the popularisation of "high" culture is a bad thing? Even if they're not appreciating it on the same level you are, surely it's better for the great unwashed to read Kim than to watch American Gladiators?
These debates are good, but
December 8, 2008 - 13:25 — Visitor (not verified)These debates are good, but maybe getting too intellectual.
What I got from the article is this- most of what hear today is that Americans are stupid- and where ever market economies are- more people will consume than think- or more specifically think about shallow things and less deep things. MAYBE this is not so true.
Since I have moved to Prague (one of my reasons was to ask questions like these, and many more), first off let me say that I am not impressed with "European wisdom." I see bigotry and nationalism. Since my move I have also been reading books like "Microtrends" and zogby's "The Way We'll be," (don't be fooled by the predicting title- more about the state of America now). What seems to be happening is, like the article mentions- more people are exposed to more things. More people practice yoga or TM, more people (who used to drink beer) are enjoying fine French wines. Basically, it seems to be that the old materialist dream of attaining junk, is now including attaining more tastes from the intellectual world.
But my biggest point is this- who cares whether high culture is being mass produced, or that more people are fascinated with the image of carrying a book.
The point is that when more people have more access to these things, the more likely we have a public that COULD eventually dedicate their lives to one or more of these traditionally upperclass/intellectual tastes. Of course the definition of education- to paraphrase John Dewey- is that it is a life long process which is never finished.
It makes me glad to know that some girl living in an apt. near a crack ridden neighborhood with 2 kids at the age of 18 and getting stoned everyday before work- is reading The Birth of Tragedy (this is actually a true story- and I discussed it with her).
I think education should especially teach reflection-and if we have an increase interest in art, theatre, classical music, and Tolstoy, the next step is getting them to reflect on its significance. But that is up to the schools.
This discussion is very
December 8, 2008 - 14:33 — Visitor (not verified)This discussion is very amusing and entertaining. I am American and am very pleased people are getting more and more involved regardless of the reasons. As time goes on and they learn more then I think it will increase their interests and enjoyment so whatever the initial motivation I could care less.
I can't speak for Europe but everything in the US is market driven and not government supported so much so I'm delighted that more and more people are buying books, going to plays, operas, classical music, buying more books supporting publishers and bookstores, buying art in art galleries from fledging artists and so on. I'll use a metaphor. There are not so many Orthodox Jews in Australia for having kosher meat but thanks to the far greater number of Muslims who keep halal (those who keep halal can buy kosher meat) the kosher stores are in business.
Besides, I think for children to grow up in families where parents are bringing them to museums, etc. and enjoying culture will help the children to enjoy it for the sake of enjoying it.
As for people getting PhDs of "low quality" isn't that up to the education institution and its faculty to ensure its PhDs are up to standard?
My God, does no one here
December 8, 2008 - 14:45 — Visitor (not verified)My God, does no one here know that using paragraphs does make what you write easier and faster to read???
Intellectual Growth
December 8, 2008 - 14:47 — NotGeorge (not verified)Georges comments express a pompousness and arrogance that are obviously covering an underlying insecurity. Why so judgemental? If people are expanding their minds, do we need to deride them for somehow "not doing it right" or "not doing it enough"? The more minds that are exposed to great works, the more inspiration we are likely to uncover. It might be 1 in ever 1000 people, but that is still 1 more than would otherwise be uncovered.
As others have said: Kinda
December 8, 2008 - 15:25 — Visitor (not verified)As others have said:
Kinda funny that intelligence is mostly equated with good taste and knowledge of the classics. Some smart folks have bad taste - I listen to pop music and prob'ly couldn't pick out gourmet food in a blind taste test, but the tests say I'm clever (and I'll take a compliment where I can get one). Conversely, the folks we recognize as, say, pioneering musicians aren't always the most all-around intelligent people of their time.
For a different take on people getting smarter, check out Malcom Gladwell's story on the Flynn Effect. Populations have been getting a few IQ points smarter each decade, and the apparent cause is that the world each generation grew up in is a little more complicated than the world the previous generation dealt with. There's also the book Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, which I haven't read.
Looks like the blog software here isn't set up to break comments into paragraphs right unless you add <p> tags by hand. Adding this code to the page's stylesheet would fix that (there's probably a better way, though, hidden somewhere in the blog software being used):
.comment .content {
white-space: pre-wrap; /* css-3 should we be so lucky... */
white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; /* Mozilla, since 1999 */
white-space: -pre-wrap; /* Opera 4-6 ?? */
white-space: -o-pre-wrap; /* Opera 7 ?? */
word-wrap: break-word; /* Internet Explorer 5.5+ */
_white-space: pre; /* IE only hack to re-specify in addition to
word-wrap */
}
Missing Golden Age
December 8, 2008 - 16:16 — David (not verified)One thing that struck me as curious reading through these posts is that no one has disputed George's proposition that we have declined from some sort of Golden Age. It is simply untrue that high culture was created for a high-minded elite. Buying the best was just aristocratic conspicuous consumption. Mozart's early sonatas, for example, tend to be less remarkable than the later because they were simply mood music for silly soirees. Look at the ballets that were wedged into operas for the boorsih Parisian Jockey Club audiences, or the "elite" tourists that attend the promenade concerts at seaside towns in Proust. Or, from the same novel, look at the catty and pathetic behaviour that undeprinned the great "intellectual" french salons. The first great novels (eg. Richardson) were written to entertain bored, under-occupied, under-educated housewives; great paintings, like those of Rubens, were propaganda commissioned to force religion down the necks of "the unwashed", etc, etc.
For what it's worth, I tend to see high art as that which survives through the admiration and inspiration it invokes in others. Much "high art" was once popular, say the novels of Dickens, Italian opera, Ovid. It has survived because of the greatness its "perfection" inspires in those who follow, the ability to endlessly provoke, to be repeatedly mined and reinterpreted.
Popular consumption of this variety of culture must surely be welcomed, in that it may lay the ground for a new generation of great artists. That makes me happy; I don't really see how anything negative can come from popular appreciation for "high culture", and I don't see that it matters very much whether all those consuming this culture are deemed capable of understanding it if it means the next Coleridge or Janacek, or whoever, can find a big enough market to earn a sufficient living.
I just have to ask, George,
December 8, 2008 - 19:13 — Serena (not verified)I just have to ask, George, where from do you get your opinion that people go to museums and operas to fill their encyclopedia of culture? To seem intelligent? Did you arrive at this conclusion because you have met a billion people and they have all told you that they read Anna Karenina, go to see the Magic Flute, or attend symphony concerts simply because it makes them feel smarter and richer?
For people to appreciate fine art, do they not have to first experience it? Is it not possible that someone who is not a trained musician becomes an opera fanatic because it makes him feel something wonderful inside, because it illuminates some part of life for him? In order for opera or books to have this effect on people, don't people have to first read or listen? It is very possible that they are accessing intelligent entertainment because the audience wants to feel smart, but one still cannot deny the other end of the spectrum, that further exposure allows people to further understand the value and meaning behind the fine arts. Why should we judge someone who starts to read Les Miserable because he/she wants to become more intelligent, but in the process, finds this great work to be illuminating and emotionally rewarding? In turn, the same reader may seek other works that have a similar effect.
Also, the NY MET opera offers theatre screenings for their live performances. People who go to these screenings do not pay nearly as much as a ticket at the MET. Therefore, people can no longer really claim listening to an opera as a class activity, because that money barrier is not nearly as present today.
Benjamins
December 8, 2008 - 19:29 — Douglas (not verified)David - I think your closing statement is compelling, and is consistent with the way I think about this topic. I like to illustrate this point using an artist like Bill Frisell. I don't know many people who would consider Frisell a household name. But he, evidently, sells enough records to make a living as a musician and composer. Personally, I worship the guy. He's my hero. I hear something new every time I listen to him (indeed, I didn't even like his music at all the first time I heard it - but at this point I've seen him live at least 25 times). Maybe the vast majority of people that listen to Frisell don't get the same experience as I do, but that hardly matters. As long as they keep buying his records and going to his shows, then I'm assured of enjoying his genius for a long time.
Do I recognize his contribution to the wider concept of "music"? Do I think what he does makes music richer and more compelling? Yes and emphatically yes (I've been a musician all my life, so I do have SOME knowledge of the topic). But whether other people "get" it or not is irrelevant, except that they get it enough to help Frisell keep doing his thing. I think anyone who has tried to make a living as an artist can relate.
high culture
December 8, 2008 - 19:32 — patrick (not verified)this is a very fanciful article. i can assure you that after a long life teaching in both graduate and college level sociology, the candle of intelligent human life has gone out. by intelligence, i mean the ability to grasp context and interrelations within context. i remember teaching classical social theory in a 1983 graduate center. I asked the students to read Chapter 1 of Das Capital, to open up a discussion regarding modern culture. Their response: it is too difficult to read. So i opened up my edition and read from the introduction to the first edition in German. I am so happy to see my work published in German, Marx wrote, because at long last it will be read by a working class that can understand it. they students, in New York! were horrified. Postmodernism had taken its toll on academic intelligence.
They say that kids are grow
December 8, 2008 - 20:16 — ricecake (not verified)They say that kids are grow up faster these days.
They say that kids are smarter these days.
They say that kids are trickier these days.
They say that kids are more imaginary these days.
They say that kids are spoil these days.
They say that kids are lazy these days.
They say that kids are very fat these days.
Right on!... almost
December 8, 2008 - 20:29 — Christopher (not verified)You've hit the nail on the head, George. It was, however, doubtless the nail that the editors dangled right there in front of our faces--'Everyone is smarter now because technology has rendered "high culture" more accessible'--this is the stuff that sells magazines (in precisely the same way that Bill O'Reiley sells television). Its called provocation and is obviously not published for its proximity to the truth or reality.
If you strip away the unabashed condescension of your post, though, you are quite right; participation in traditional high culture does not make people more intelligent. Thank you for taking the bait. It is, in fact, the superficiality of one's discourse with, say, Dvo?ák's 'Rusalka' that marks one clearly as a sham-a faux intellectual--because it requires not only more of a commitment, but also the very intelligence of which we speak to probe anywhere near the real value or meaning of such a piece of art.
Thus, does Oprah truly appreciate Faulkner? By no means. But does she need to don a tweed suit, stick a pipe in her mouth, and recede into "mildly awkward" cloister for a few years to do so? By no means. I think your comment falls shy of the mark largely as a result of your romanticization of an anachronistic academic ideal--an ideal, mind you, whose adherents have accomplished little for the image of academia and even less for the greater good of the world beyond it (a world that needs well informed, gloves-off charisma more than it needs an isolated, erudite elite).
To George on his
December 8, 2008 - 20:45 — nemi (not verified)To George on his 'Intelligence as Commodity' comment. I would agree that the world of academia is populated with individuals only seeking success. The following "Being in the world of academia" and "it is distasteful to see them force out narrow, irrelevant dissertations to "get" their degree" might indicate that your perspective is higher up the echelon i.e. the erudite scholar. But isn't the same scholar/professor who admits those 'inept' candidates and who believe in stroking the ego of these desperate creatures?
Your comment only the elitism and narrowness of the academic world in certain respects. Your comment on obtaining supposed knowledge of Walmart shelves only reeks of a superiority complex.
I suspect that it is because of such elitist academics like yourself that academia is only seen as this 'ivory tower' which tends to produce one article only read by a few.
Everyone has their little
December 8, 2008 - 20:55 — Matt C (not verified)Everyone has their little niche in which they want to be Top Dog. If one is motivated by this type of social dominance maneuvering, anything at all is up for debasing whether it be wealth, contact with culture (high or low, sincere or ironic), or even the lowest-class desire for 'street cred' derived from having survived the most hardship in the most extreme poverty. The "I'm wealthier-/more cultured-/Harder-than-thou" mentality is, it seems to me, entirely unconstrained by class, national, or genetic boundaries, much less by the particular content or cultural domain of its claims.
That said, it seems like there are multiple confounded issues under debate. What George seems to be pointing out is that the above article is trying to draw a direct connection between the wider dissemination or availability of art and a necessarily increased capacity of the general public to understand or relate to it; a conclusion that does not necessarily follow.
It is worthwhile to make a distinction between the availability of so-called 'high-culture' and the motive forces behind the people who avail themselves to it. George seems to be proposing, quite reasonably, that there is more to claiming cultured status than mere exposure. It doesn't seem at all unreasonable -- or indeed even controversial -- to me to assert that mere contact with art & culture is not itself edifying unless it is met with the appropriate inner response on the part of the viewer (whatever that response may be said to entail).
As much as I agree with this part of George's sentiment, however, I can't see how an alternative suggestion regarding art's increasing availability would be at all helpful or desirable. Who exactly is served by keeping the great monumental achievements of our culture cloistered away and sheltered from the vulgarizing view of the masses? How would one ever grow worthy of it?
Perhaps it is perfectly true that us hopeful or self-styled cultural appreciators have justifiable reasons to be irked at the pretenses of the many pretenders to intellectual achievement that are rapidly becoming a common phenomenon. An understandable (and typical) reaction to this is to claim elite status. This does not seem to me like the best long-term solution considering that 'elite' by definition means, among all other things, 'minority.' The qualification of cultural literacy entitles one as much to a certain kind of loneliness as it does to that of rare achievement.
It is possible that I simply lack the proper social circle to understand this defensive concern regarding the invasion of a bunch of philistines. But I myself am not part of a cultured microcosm full of bright and well-cultured people. Neither, I imagine, are most people. As a 20-something university-going male, meetings with the proudly uninformed are by far the norm. Given my experience, it seems natural to conclude that the more people we can shake loose from the clutches of banality, the better.
As a result I have no impulse to keep great art to myself; and if indeed I had grown up in a world where others had, I never would have managed to grow out of the cocoon of juvenile entertainment i so treasured in high school. My appreciation of culture was not innate or given, and my exposure to it was gradual. But only by being bootstrapped out of it did i become able to appreciate it at all. The only reason that happened was because it was constantly around for me to bump into, however shallowly and fleetingly to begin with.
Even if the overwhelming majority of people never make it very far, i fail to see how whatever remaining minority has any chance to if we keep everything deemed too sophisticated for their current ken hidden and out-of-reach. On this basis I don't understand what constructive ends arguments like Georges' could be serving other than short-term self-preservation. We should be finding a way to foster whatever 'proper' cultural appreciation is, rather than trying to undo the ever-widening dissemination of it.
P.S:
December 8, 2008 - 21:32 — Matt C (not verified)re David: "...I tend to see high art as that which survives through the admiration and inspiration it invokes in others." I like this statement. There is a crucial difference between the ability to garner popular appeal and cultural merit, and perspectives that reduce both to one or the other are overly simplistic and, i find, often fueled by cynical or juvenile motives.
On the subject of elitism, arrogance etc.
December 8, 2008 - 23:16 — George (not verified)Comments here seem to be attacking my remarks on two fronts: that I am an elitist (and that this somehow equates to being wrong) and that I wish to wall off "high" culture for the enjoyment of a select few. As Matt C points out, my initial comments were directed at the premise of the article: more integration of high cultural elements into society signifies a "wishing up" of society. The article is meant to be provocative by being counterintuitive: "I thought society was dumbing down but, look, people are watching the MET on tv and reading Faulkner in book clubs." I objected to the idea that these statistics reveal anything relevant about the societal IQ and proposed an alternative explanation (that what's really going on is a fetishization of intelligence that breeds a desire to consume high culture as a commodity). I don't deny that people can encounter Shostakovich in a way that inspires them to learn more about classical music *for its own sake*, I just assert that, in the main, people are not doing that. What predominates is an acquisition mentality. I certainly don't propose limiting people's ability to read Kafka and get whatever they want out of it, but I take issue with the article's presumption that more "interest" in what has typically been considered "high" culture leads to the inexorable conclusion that society is experiencing some sort of middle class intellectual Renaissance.
As far as charges of elitism go, I don't mind the attack. It seems besides the point since I'm not really asking for anything to change--for instance that people be asked for credentials in order to read certain books. In fact, credentialism is one of my chief dislikes. In my opinion, credentialism and degree hunting are precisely symptomatic of a cultural ethos that values outward demonstrations of "intelligence" over private appreciation for its own sake. I find the "publicness" of this new resurgence of interest in "high" culture, in part, indicative of its shallowness. Now, to the point of "how I know this"--well I certainly don't. It's my own little myopic opinion, on par it seems with the other commenters so far.
To put this all another way: my argument is one of process whereas this article is one of measurement. The article says that certain measures traditionally associated with "high" culture seem to be on the rise. From this it draws its conclusions. My alternative explanation for these increases comes with a lament (elitist, of course) that appropriation of cultural signifiers is not the same as appreciation of those same objects. I am not saying you need to spend 10,000 hours dedicated to something to appreciate it, all I am saying is that the mentality with which people approach, say, picking up Being and Time is not one conducive to appreciating it. Yes, a value judgment is encoded here. In this sense, empiricism might be on my side. I think that the increasing desire to publicly demonstrate one's purported erudition (getting advanced degrees, artfully constructing one's bookshelf at home and one's profile online) is evidence that "high" culture is being used as a means to reflect to others the kind of person one wants to be. We may simply disagree on this point, and you may think that there is nothing disingenuous in all this. My own experience is one where people wait excitedly for lists like The 100 Most Important Films so that they can watch them and extract the intellectual currency they think comes from doing so. Alternately, you may believe that such exposure, even if somewhat wrongheaded, nonetheless works a good result on balance. But this takes us back to the beginning of the argument. Either you think that a coarsened, mainstream version of "high" culture has residual edifying effects, or, like me, you think that the demise of a personal, non-ostentatious appreciation of "high" culture is an ugly thing to watch. I don't yearn for the "good old days"--I wouldn't even know what period in history those might be--but I do resist the notion that we're somehow living in an age of heightened intellectual engagement.
Oh, and the reason I put "high" culture in quotes is roughly for the reasons that David spells out above. I'm not protecting a fixed idea of what counts as "high" culture or saying that great works have always stemmed from the patronage of the moneyed classes. I am only attacking the modern day consumption of ideas and culture as an external, not internal, event. Also since it seems of interest, I am an academic, though not particularly old.
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