20th Century Popular Culture - A fascinating article on the subject

[dhermann1]

Innnnteresting article:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/how-highbrows-killed-culture/

 

[sheeplady]

I read Brave New World in high school. I never knew Huxley was that insane to suggest dictatorship as far superior to democracy, considering the events that were unfolding.

I don't know if I agree with one of the premises of the article, that American consumerism is a good thing, particularly consumerism of the 1950s. I think the 1950s was a shift in how the U.S. viewed prosperity and valued what they had. It no longer was acceptable to live in the city, you had to live in the suburbs- the start of destruction of millions of acres of farmland and wild spaces for sprawl. The "need" for every family to own an auto- leading to a rise in pollution. If the enthusiasm for bigger lots, homes, and more cars had stayed at 1950s levels, that would have been fine. But it was the first domino that crashed down a whole set, so that now we all "need" 1 acre lots, huge homes, and 3 cars- to the point where we rip down what we have to start again, over and over. Sadly, I see a lot of people who base their happiness on wants and particularly on what they want but don't have.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's a pity he didn't take a closer look at the popular culture of the 1930s -- in many respects it's everything he wishes the fifties had been: the *true* great Golden Era of the popular intellectual. You had people like Clifton Fadiman, Deems Taylor, Carl Van Doren, and Hendrik Wilhelm van Loon who saw it as their mission to bring "High Art" to the masses -- and they succeeded, without incurring any sort of stigma or backlash. The average American in 1937 was probably more conversant with classic literature, classical music, and fine art than any generation before or since.

 

[Undertow]

I'm not sure about this article either. It's give and take. The author doesn't really make any propositions but uses subtle language cues to imply writers like Huxley, etc. were somehow elitists.

Certainly, some of the ideas espoused by those authors were strange at best, and perhaps even treasonous, but the author provides no differing opinion. In fact, it seems as if the author is trying to create a chasm between the supposed fascist Huxley's and the benevolent Bolsheviks of yesteryear.

I might add that those authors at least had an argument, however flawed it might have been - if you're an intellectual raised on the highest degrees of human learning, it's difficult to imagine art and expression diluted and reduced to cheap television shows, dime novels and pseudo-philosophic advertisements.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think he misses the main factor in the juvenilization of popular culture over the last half of the twentieth century: it had a lot less to do with the natterings of academics -- who, in the end, influence only other academics -- and a lot more to do with the need to culturally pander to Baby Boomers from the cradle to the grave. If there's a single defining trait of Boomer-dominated pop culture, it's the fixation on eternal adolesence, and that's what's brought us to where we are today.

 

[Captain Lex]

The article does seem to lack a definite point, but I appreciate the counter-point to the "sheeple" idea that has dogged American culture for decades.

I don't know if I agree with one of the premises of the article, that American consumerism is a good thing[...]

I don't think it necessarily says that it was a good thing; it just defended it against accusations of cultural emptiness.

 

[Angus Forbes]

It's been a while since I read Ortega, but I recall it somewhat otherwise. That notwithstanding, the present article brings to mind something from the Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, where Mill talks (more or less) about becoming so analytic and introspective that one cannot experience happiness or pleasure. Having myself grown up in a dense city environment (Baltimore), I remember being delighted as the decades unfolded to acquire the amenities of the suburbs -- the half-acre lot, air conditioning (believe me, Baltimore can be really hot in the summer), private cars (I wonder if many of the critics have actually gone to the grocery store on a public bus, in the rain, and returned with several bags of groceries after a long wait). I know . . . this is not the focus of the author's wrath . . . nevertheless . . .

 

[Fletch]

I will say only that the writer knew his thesis, and his remit, well enough to ignore what Lizzie points out about the 1930s - that there was, briefly anyway, some permeability in the barrier between high culture and pop culture.

Quite a few twists and turns in the piece. More an intellectual schematic than a narrative of the times.

I never had much use for the Partisan Review crowd, who had a habit of attracting beautiful, intelligent women, then slapping them around.

 

[sheeplady]

I don't think it necessarily says that it was a good thing; it just defended it against accusations of cultural emptiness.

Hmmm... I reread it and I think you're right.

I always find these sorts of articles interesting because they suppose that there were no subcultures. Sure, I think the consumerism of the 1950s was negative in many ways, but already a "back to the land" movement had started right after the war. Living the Good Life as as much a product of the early 1950s as the "live in the suburbs with a car in the garage" movement. Smaller, but significant. Even the back to the land movement played off of early efforts in the 20s and 30s. Most of the authors who were significant in the movement early on lived through the depression as adults.

 

[Fletch]

I always find these sorts of articles interesting because they suppose that there were no subcultures

Typically, there's room for one culture and one counterculture. Anything more and you're into scholarly arcana territory. Siegel comes close enough just trying to trace the trajectory of the Yankees of letters, the New York Intellectuals.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Keep in mind too that the movement to suburbia was pretty much exclusively a phenomenon among urban middle-class white people. Many of those who lived in small towns continued to live pretty much the same way as they had lived before the war -- with more job security, perhaps, and with an increasing level of home ownership, but there was a lot less of the ooh-look-at-the-shiny-bauble covetousness that you see in the stereotypical suburbia -- a way of life that stayed remarkably consistent until it was eviscerated by the collapse of American small manufacturing in the 1980s. As usual with this type of article, the author betrays his own origins thru his tunnel-vision view.

 

[Fletch]

I absolutely agree, but I would also point out that precious few of those small town folk ever came to influence the opinionmakers in that day - and even then only one at a time, typically thru in-migration to urban circles and solidarity with urban causes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What, really *is* popular culture? The culture of ordinary people, or the culture of academia? Most academic "popular culture criticism" is the latter, not the former -- a coagulation of fashionable theories that give academics an excuse to go slumming. It's like looking at an ant farm and imagining that you actually understand what the ants are thinking. And meanwhile, the ants go on about their business like you don't exist. Because in their world, you don't.

 

[Fletch]

The 1930s analogy would be looking at an ant farm, not being able to see anything but ants running around like cockroaches, then going off to write about ants as if they were just small, black cockroaches.

 

[sheeplady]

Keep in mind too that the movement to suburbia was pretty much exclusively a phenomenon among urban middle-class white people. Many of those who lived in small towns continued to live pretty much the same way as they had lived before the war -- with more job security, perhaps, and with an increasing level of home ownership, but there was a lot less of the ooh-look-at-the-shiny-bauble covetousness that you see in the stereotypical suburbia -- a way of life that stayed remarkably consistent until it was eviscerated by the collapse of American small manufacturing in the 1980s. As usual with this type of article, the author betrays his own origins thru his tunnel-vision view.

I agree. It's like the balancing work and family phenomena for women. It only exists for white middle class women; everybody else had to figure it out a long time ago out of necessity.

I do think, however, the culture of consumerism has taken a much greater hold throughout all of the classes today. If one wanted to look at a prevailing culture of consumerism, it would be now moreso than then. There's not a lot of significant (as in size) subcultures that focus on being not consumeristic. Even the "green" or "sustainable" subculture today is overrun with rampant consumerism.

 

[Edward]

That article is total crap. It became painfully obvious it was politically loaded when he started on about "leftists" (there's only one political camp uses that word, and that's the sort who use it as an insult), and then attempted to associate a big name "leftist" with Hitler. Yawn. I might have saved myself the bother if I'd looked at half the links down the left, similarly slanted, but hey ho. Whether one agrees with the slant or no, this is political polemic first and foremost. I also find it poorly written, and pretentious. But that's just an opinion, of course.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I do think, however, the culture of consumerism has taken a much greater hold throughout all of the classes today. If one wanted to look at a prevailing culture of consumerism, it would be now moreso than then. There's not a lot of significant (as in size) subcultures that focus on being not consumeristic. Even the "green" or "sustainable" subculture today is overrun with rampant consumerism.

Oh, absolutely. Consumer culture is the rot, the termite infestation, that's eating away our entire society. It started in the roof and has now reached its way all the way into the cellar.

 

[Edward]

Oh, absolutely. Consumer culture is the rot, the termite infestation, that's eating away our entire society. It started in the roof and has now reached its way all the way into the cellar.

Agreed. The only thing up for debate is what causes it, and how to rid ourselves of it. Seems to me the blame must be equally shared by The Man who delivered it to us.... and we who fell for it.

 

[dhermann1]

I agree with everybody's comments so far. The article is from Commentary, which is a pretty right wing rag. But I thought it raised a lot of interesting questions.

 

[Fletch]

Another take on pop culture is that it is, and only is, culture from the common era of mass consumption: tv, rock, youth, etc.

About 20 years ago I interviewed at Bowling Green State U. in Ohio about their graduate program in pop culture studies, which included an extensive recording archive. AIR, they defined pop culture rather strictly as post-WW2 consumerism. There was essentially no focus on earlier eras (not even on the old stuff in the record archive).

I didn't pursue studies at BGSU. (one reason: BG town was so rinky dink and isolated it made Ames, IA look like Paris.) I got the feeling their definition of pop culture was pretty authoritative to the discipline, at least in the early '90s. Have things changed?