tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10166090.post2738678900621349745..comments2024-02-17T07:59:18.705-08:00Comments on Grad Student Madness: What is culture?Rufushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17762279210783841414noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10166090.post-39002550367340328702007-07-19T10:39:00.000-07:002007-07-19T10:39:00.000-07:00I've been thinking about the lowbrow/highbrow prob...I've been thinking about the lowbrow/highbrow problem for some time. Because, almost intuitively, my idea of high culture automatically includes things like certain Madonna videos, or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that excell regardless of genre. I definitely think that sci-fi writing is unfairly maligned in these regards. I think that it's possible to come up with a definition of high culture that completely ignores genre and medium, so that we can acknowledge a graphic novel, for example, that has lasting cultural value. And, if we're going to embrace multiculturalism, at some point we probably have to forget genre altogether. <BR/><BR/>Actually, for their supposed snobbishness, I was most impressed by this aspect of French life- they make little distinction between the films that they consider to be the greatest and the novels, comic books, pop songs, or meals that gain the mantle of distinction. They have a sort of guiding principle of the 'good life' that seems to make distinctions of merit central across every imaginable aspect of civilized living. There are high cultural breads and barbaric breads, for instance!<BR/><BR/>Historians aren't supposed to make value judgments- we just contextualize. But, weirdly enough, I find most lit crit people I read do little more than contextualize! <BR/><BR/>I think there is a democratic idea that suggests that any distinctions of merit are selfish- "well, that's just like your opinion, man". This works well with television, a medium that can only distinguish if things are important enough to be on television, but not if there's a value difference between Charles Dickens and the Whopper. <BR/><BR/>This is also ideal for consumer cultures- everyone has their own tastes, all of which are equal. No salesman is going to suggest that Pirates of the Carribean 3 is an inferior film to The Passion of Joan of Arc, especially not to a paying customer. And customers like to be flattered. They like to be told that their easy, unreflective pleasures are a matter of personal preference, rather than a matter of cultivation.<BR/><BR/>Ideally, the best should separate from the worst in a free market- but it doesn't seem to work that way, does it? Art that gives the easiest, most fleeting pleasures seems to be the most successful. So in a capitalist economy, not only are everyone's tastes of equal merit, but somehow we end up with a sort of populist race downwards. <BR/><BR/>Of course, the first problem is that this artistic status quo is spiritually and mentally enervating. I see, on occasion, in my students, a real desire to be exposed to the best things ever created or thought. Some of them sense that pop culture is in the doldrums and high culture has been niche marketed out of existence. Their spiritual eyes are looking, but they've been painfully isolated from truth and beauty. And when struggling with the questions of life, Britney Spears isn't much help. The problem is that it's hard to find anyone who is willing to be that 'pompous asshole' who sets standards of taste. <BR/><BR/>And those of us in academia are no more willing to make these distinctions than anyone else. That Australian editorial from the pissed-off profs included this mind-boggling quote from their colleague: "Teaching school students that Shakespeare is more worthy than reality television is actively evil." But, for as transparently as this statement is bullshit, I've heard countless variations on it from academics.<BR/><BR/>But I think most of us sense that, even though we're drenched in a flood of images and ideas and objects, most of it will not endure. It's thin gruel. In 100 years, it will be much easier to tell what was culture in this era and what was crap. Supposedly 90% of everything produced is crap. But, I think it's more like 9,999 out of 1,000 at this point. I'm not convinced that a coherent culture in the larger sense is even possible anymore; but I do think we should root out and celebrate individual examples, whether they reveal themselves in theatre or grafitti.<BR/><BR/>I don't know if that cleared the waters or muddied them.Rufushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17762279210783841414noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10166090.post-30514949227352774692007-07-19T09:54:00.000-07:002007-07-19T09:54:00.000-07:00You don't mention the lowbrow that becomes "classi...You don't mention the lowbrow that becomes "classic" ie high culture. Moby Dick, for instance, was pulp. Jules Verne wrote quite a bit of trash that became high culture. Charles Dickens--sure, people liked to read the serialized bits in the paper each week, but they still threw the newspaper away or wiped their asses with it when they were done. Pretty much anything in the Penguin Classics library is suspect in this regard.<BR/><BR/>There is apparently a failure or refusal to distinguish between a group and a culture, and in a way, I suspect that lies with historians and historical analysts. It's easy enough to point to a time period in the distant past that produced a thing (slaves, boats, art, music, empires, whatever) and say, "That is a cultural artifact, therefore, that was the culture" and then transfer that to very recent history (+/- 100 years), and point to the made things, and declare commutative cultural understanding. And it's plausible, right? Because we weren't there, and we (present company excluded) aren't historians. So that gets bought. And because historians are AKC certified, now it's fair game for ANYONE to say, "Historian Whoever said _____ comes from ____ culturally, and by the authority vested in me by having read that, and also by Greyskull, I declare that ______ has ______ cultural meaning." <BR/><BR/>So now we're pointing the finger of Cultural Identification around like a high powered flashlight in fog. And it's overwhelming, there is a LOT going on right now, even if you account for how much of what happens is filtered out by the brain's natural filters. In history, the connections and clues are often separated by vast voids. Not so with the present day; there is a firehose of data that one can dip into almost at random and assemble something that will pass for a theory of culture.<BR/><BR/>And, frankly, in a democratic society, it's got to be a jagged pill, to believe that high culture could be something which does not involve you. Even for those who are already elite--for instance, those in a position to pass judgments on what is or is not cultured.<BR/><BR/>At the end of reading what you've written, my very first thought was, other uses of the word 'culture' may cloud the waters. Culture, as when getting the tonsils swabbed and the goo rubbed onto a growing medium. Culture, as when we put a little Buddha figure in an oyster, and pry a little pearlized Buddha out of it later. <BR/><BR/>Sorry I'm all jumbled, hopefully that is of some use anyway.Hollyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10593117152792976823noreply@blogger.com