Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Decline of Western Culture

"When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher's shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now." - John Updike (1932-2009)

I hear this sort of complaint on a regular basis, and I have to wonder how much weight it carries when one factors in the rise in the standard of living in the mid-20th century in the US, and the increased literacy and financial access of lower classes. What constituted a "bestseller" in Steinbeck's time is probably, adjusted for inflation, still a lot smaller a sample of the overall population than today's bestsellers. Did working-class folks in 1940 read Grapes of Wrath in great numbers? Did kids? Was your average janitor reading a lot? Because I know janitors today who read Harry Potter.

My overall impression of the dumbing-down of popular culture is that it's mainly a factor of the rise of the lower class. Even the poorest of people in the US today can afford books, movies and TVs, and that was not nearly so much the case prior to, say, 1970. As a result, their interests are catered to most often, because they literally are the lowest common denominator, the safest bet. So when people from an earlier cultural era complain that popular culture is becoming increasingly low-brow, what they might want to consider is that it's just the equal and opposite reaction of lower classes achieving higher socio-economic status. But we don't like to talk about class in the US, so we just complain that culture is declining.

Maybe the truth is that popular culture is becoming a more accurate reflection of the make-up of the United States. I think there's room for all levels of "high" and "low" culture, but the stuff that will make the most money, and thus have the most visible presence, will always be the lowest common denominator stuff. Maybe that will change, but somehow I doubt it. Even as Steinbeck was popular in the 1940's, so were The Three Stooges.

UPDATE: I was watching this week's installment of PBS's "Make 'em Laugh," their history of comedy in America, and Larry Gelbart mentions that the writing on Sid Caesar's show was urbane and witty primarily because, at that time, a television was a luxury appliance; it wasn't until more people started buying televisions that they had to start appealing to a broader audience. So I think I'm backed up by a solid source in saying that popular culture has a lot more to do with economics and class than we'd like to admit.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

That's a really interesting thesis you have there. I wonder whether the statistics back it up. I will say this. I was listening to Darren Aronofsky on Fresh Air talk about the origins of wrestler culture the other day. It really made it clear to me that many, if not all, the activities that provoke comments about the dumbing down of culture, in fact have a long cultural history in carnivals and popular theatres, and so on. Still, I wonder whether your thesis holds up statistically. Be interesting to find out.

David Slade said...

I, too, am intrigued by the thesis, but I also get wary when one ascribes any weight to the complaint that "these times aren't as good as previous times." It is axiomatic that this gripe is leveled *every* *single* time there's a cultural transfer from one generation to the next. Consider the medium that Updike is talking about, for that matter. Novels weren't looked at as legitimate intellectual entities until the 20th century. Until that time, people held them in the same regard as we do, say, comic books (although there's another medium that is begining to slide towards the "legit" end of the cultural spectrum, as well).
And, of course, I have to take issue with the assumption that socio-economic status correlates directly with the "cultural caliber" of one's entertainment. I'm willing to bet that Harry Potter books sell pretty equally among all classes, and I'll bet that "Rock of Love Bus" is watched principally in suburban homes. Incidentally, I *will* concede that the presence of R.o.L.B. is a pretty good indicator that, intellectually, we are approaching End Times.

colter said...

Maybe it's really just a question of visibility. Yesterday's circus freaks are today's reality TV. They appeal to roughly the same numbers and types of people, but because they're more readily and frequently available to all, it seems like they're newly dominant in the popular culture. When in fact Le Pétomane was all the rage at the Moulin Rouge in 1892.

But yes, "these times aren't as good as previous times," that's my next blog entry...

Unknown said...

Right, I'd argue that it's much more a matter of business and marketing than a matter of "class," so to speak. Because the greater works are remembered and the trashy ones forgotten does not mean that the trashy didn't exist (as they did--in large numbers).

From my understanding, until around the 1850s there were very weak copyright laws in the US, and writers like Twain and Dickens were hugely popular and well known, as their works were pirated en masse and disseminated widely. In fact, according to wikipedia (caveats noted), once the laws governing this changed in the mid to late 19th century "a situation akin to modern publication had emerged, where most bestsellers were written for a popular taste and are now almost entirely forgotten."

But more importantly, though, I think that the apparent pervasiveness of "low-brow culture" has very little to do with issues of socioeconomic class. I think that the plots of crappy Tom Clancy novels, the design of Sprite cans, and the smell of McDonald's french fries all have in common that they were designed according to very sophisticated market research in order to appeal to the basest instincts of not just poor people, but every American. To concur with David, even though Harry Potter is read by janitors it's also read by heiresses lounging by the pool and CFOs unwinding on a family vacation.

Mass market industry is much too savvy, in my opinion, to "bet" on the interests of any particular class. Rather, they've picked apart the subconscious of people in every possible demographic and class in order to fix-the-odds so that anyone with money, no matter what their background, will have a reliable probability of picking up that piece of literature, music, film, or potato chip.

To that extent, I think the changes in popular culture may turn out to be representative of particular business cycles. My (highly speculative) theory is that when times are rough for business and people of all classes are less in the position to buy loads of crap (e.g. the early 1800s, the 1930s, and, hopefully, now?), that better art will have a higher profile, because the segment of the population that is interested in that kind of aesthetic stimulation is unchanging. Higher art is less effected by market forces, which only serve as a mechanism by which facsimiles of art are produced in such quantities that they shroud the existence of real quality.

(As a side note i should add that the term "bestseller," too, is a marketing device. And, as author Neal Stevenson pointed out, a book can become a bestseller while selling an obscenely low number of books. "After 5 bestselling novels... I am about as famous as the mayor of Des Moines," he said)

Unknown said...

I definitely share your discomfort with the "Golden Age" of yore, David. I just don't buy the idea that things used to be better. I just think, as TT said, that people forget the shwag and we continue to remember and celebrate the best works (although clearly music these days just isn't up to what was released 10 years ago.) I think the one thing that has obviously changed, both for the better and worse, are the methods of transmission by which these works are shared and hence the ease with which they are accessible to more people. Additionally, the increased access to information has obviously led to increased attention to what is being created and government attempts to control that information. I would say that the increased distribution, the entire media complex looking for something to freak us out about, and of course revisionist, nostalgic visions of history have created this belief that there was once a time when our culture created nothing but quality products that did not offend people's tastes and feelings.

One last issue, to echo something TT seemed to be saying, is that I think that the increased accessibility of all these media has also led to increased marketing awareness of how to make the products appealing a wider swath of the population. Whereas before there were all these niche markets, often based on location, class, etc., producers of media have now researched ways to make the products appealing across a wider spectrum - not that niche markets don't exist anymore, they definitely do. Just that the mainstream has learned to takeover more space, co-opt much of what was on the fringes, or increase its visibility in various ways.

I guess this is all kind of stating the obvious, except that so many people still seem to believe that there was once a golden age or that American culture was once pure and more intellectual.