Intellectual Snobbery
Cosmo Landesman wonders:
Allan Bloom, in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, argued that listening to rock music destroyed a young person’s ability to appreciate high culture. Could it also be true that an appreciation of high culture destroys a person’s ability to appreciate popular culture?
Interesting proposition, but let’s look a little further.
I encountered critiques of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia by two of my favourite intellectuals, Germaine Greer and Bryan Appleyard. Ha, I thought, that’s just so typical of intellectuals! Their overeducated minds and over-refined sensibilities have left them incapable of appreciating a good weepie.
Then I started to talk to non-intellectuals about Australia, and they also had a sneery and snooty view of the film, which left me wondering: have we all become too cynical, too damn sophisticated, to enjoy a film like this?
Or maybe dislike for the film comes from reasons other than being an intellectual. What his definition of an intellectual is however is anyone’s guess, particularly given that he considers Kerry Katona to be comparable to Virginia Woolf.
A much simpler explanation would be that people have different tastes, and that isn’t always to do with their status. There is high culture and popular culture I like, and there is high culture and popular culture that isn’t my cup of tea. There is no philosophical contradiction in my enjoying both Family Guy and Bizet.
The idea that “the masses” have some innate inability to appreciate high culture is a myth anyway. The Sun managed to explode that little myth with their cut-price tickets to Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House, which sold out. Their point is that what we consider high culture has very rarely been some mythical exclusive enterprise open only to elites. Shakespeare was originally performed with a starting ticket price of a penny, Chaucer deliberately wrote his works in the vernacular.
It is the myth of the snob that high and popular culture are incompatible.
HT: Normblog.
Sphere: Related Content“The Grinch” was not an Instruction Manual
Once upon a time we knew how to deal with the joyless lot who sought to eliminate Christmas. We overthrew the Commonwealth and booted the rest of their sorry lot over to America. These were the people who tried to ban the Anglican celebration of Christmas and took offence at the eating of mince pies.
One would have thought that such folly would have been confined to the scrapheap of history after the Restoration. Not so, it seems, for over at City Hall the Grinches considered the following acceptable regulations for a Christmas tree :
Usual rules, no Christian symbols, colours or fairies! We cannot have any political colours for the decorations e.g. red, blue, green, yellow, so white and silver is best. Any decorations must be from a recycled, eco friendly source. No star or fairy please.”
The behaviour of such people deserves nothing short of ridicule and contempt. Rather than demonstrating some multi-cultural awareness of the sensitivities of other religions, it simply demonstrates the narrow-minded bigotry of those involved in the decision. The underlying logic is that Jews, Muslims and other religious believers are so thin-skinned or volatile that any whiff of a predominantly Christian country celebrating possibly the most positive and inoffensive festival it has in its calendar would result in us all feeling dreadfully excluded and therefore get upset and possibly blow something up in an orgy of violence. You can almost bet that the policy was proposed by some mindless white middle-class twenty-or-thirtysomething.
The reality of course is utterly detached from the mindless bien pensant and patronisng view that holds non-Christians to be po-faced and intolerant of the established religion. Like many of these PC measures, they are neither suggested, or wanted, by the minorities in question, but are steamrollered through by some over-employed joyless Grinch. No suicide bomber has ever declared in his “martyrdom video” that he was motivated by anger at the celebration of Christmas. Indeed, browsing the Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir website, the only objection I could find to Christmas from them was the increasing commercialisation. No mass riots, no fatwa imposed on Santa, likening him to Salman Rushdie. Jewish and Muslim communities have felt under greater threat since 2001, but banning Christmas is the resort of those who would like to be seen to be caring, rather than actually bothering to inform themselves about the concerns of minorities.
Send anything other than this and you're a racist.
The greater danger with these policies is that we lose something far greater in the process. If our cultural insitutions are unwilling to celebrate Christmas in a Christian context, we will concede it entirely to a crass commercialisation and kill off the very spirit that makes it such a wonderful time of year. Burke’s Corner warns that “The result of such Puritanism would be a mere celebration of consumerism and materialism, a season without a soul.” Tom Harris too has hit the nail on the head in pointing out that the culture of Britain, a culture that spawned the very rights that allow me to practice a religion different to that of the majority, is inherentl Christian. That should be cherished and defended.
As a final point, should public policy be kowtowing to the sort of Scrooge who takes offence at people celebrating religious festivals?
This year, let’s all stick two fingers up to the po-faced latter-day Puritans and celebrate Christmas and its rich religious-cultural heritage.
Sphere: Related ContentObligatory X-Factor Post
If you don’t vote for JLS to win the X-Factor tonight I will do something so drastic that I have no idea what it is yet.
Yes, I have a massive interest to declare: I go to the same college as one of them (never met any of them though). This isn’t a music issue, this is a matter of pride, college rivalry and bragging rights.
If it eases your conscience think of it like the geopolitical bloc voting of Eurovision, only without the Cold War. Also remember that if they win my already-massive ego will be massaged, making me happy, and therefore able to write more for this blog.
Sphere: Related ContentOutraged at Classic FM
Although I am mid-flow in an essay I still have enough time to get outraged in a sensible middle-England sort of a way.
The presenter on Classic FM just said in return to a message:
there’s nothing good to be said of painting a ceiling
He’s obviously forgotten that rather significant ceiling in the Vatican then:
Shameful. I have never been so outraged in all my life. Except during the Russell Brand saga. And then it was genuine.
Sphere: Related ContentA Question About Ross
Apologies for putting out another piece on the Ross-Brand saga, but something Nigel Farage raised on Question Time flagged up an idea.
Jonathan Ross’s gigantic salary is justified by the BBC on the grounds that if they failed to pay them such astronomic amounts, he would be snapped up by another broadcaster.
Surely then, that should be an argument for letting him go? The reason we have a public service broadcaster is to have a source of media that can maintain a degree of distance from commercial and competitive concerns. If the private sector is willing to pay Ross, then let them pay for him. The money could be better spent elsewhere promoting new talent and better programming.
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