The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent: Defending Popular Culture from the Populists

Author(s): Simon Frith

Source: Diacritics, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 101-115
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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 THE GOOD, THE BAD,
AND THE INDIFFERENT:
DEFENDING POPULAR
CULTURE FROM THE
POPULISTS

SIMONFRITH

In his book Originsof the PopularStyle, musicologistPeterVan Der Merwe

suggests that "reviewing the popular music of the twentieth century as a
whole, most people would probablyagree thatsome of it is excellent, some
unbearableandmostof it very indifferent.Whatthegood, badandindifferent
shareis a musicallanguage"[3]. Mostpeople wouldprobablyagree withthis
statement;disagreementwouldbe aboutwhich songs or genresorperformers
were good, whichbad,whichindifferent.And,as Van DerMerwepointsout,
suchaestheticargumentsanddistinctions(includingthatbetween the "high"
and the "low")are possible (andimpassioned)only because they take place
within a shared musical and critical discourse, because they rest on an
assumptionthat we know what the music we like and dislike "means."
Take,forexample,thefollowing threeauthoritativestatements.The first
comes from the most famous middlebrowintellectualof the 1980s-Allan
Bloom. "Rockmusic,"he wrotein The Closing of the AmericanMind,"has
one appealonly, a barbaricappeal,to sexual desire-not love, not eros, but
sexual desireundevelopedand untutored... these are [its] threegreatlyrical
themes: sex, hate and a smarmy, hypocriticalversion of brotherlylove"
[73-74].
The second comes from a leftist culturalcritic-Mark Crispin Miller.
"The rock critic," he wrote in the New YorkReview of Books in 1977,
"strugglesto interpretsomething thatrequiresno interpretation... tries to
appraiseandexplicatea music whose artistsandlistenersareanti-intellectual
and usually stoned, and whose producerswant more than anythingto own
several cars"[175].
The thirdcomes from The Shoe, a novel by a young Scottish writer,
GordonLegge, the best book I've readabout what it means to be a pop fan.
"Howcouldpeople get so workedupaboutrelativesandcarswhentherewere
records?,"asks The Shoe's centralcharacter.

Recordscutso muchdeeper. For himAstralWeeks, CloserandFor

YourPleasure(the threebest LPs of all time,[he] said. No contest)
articulated the mundanity,despair and joy of existence.... [He]
said his records were the most importantthings in his life-more

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 0

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 importantthan Celtic [football club] easily.... It'sjust thatfootball was easier
to talk aboutforfive hours down the pub on a Saturdaynight. [36]

Several things could be said about these passages-not least about the remarkable
assurancewith which academicsdescribeotherpeople's pleasure-but I want to pick up
immediatelyon GordonLegge's point:the exercise of taste and aestheticdiscrimination
is as importantin popularas in high culturebutis moredifficultto talkabout. This means
that the glib, professional talkers, the Blooms and Millers-and I could multiply
examples of such confident accounts of the real worth or worthlessnessof pop culture
from both left and right-have the voices thatare heardmost often.
This is the case even after the rise of culturalstudies as an academic concern. The
aestheticsof popularcultureis a neglected topic, and it is time we took it as seriously as
Allan Bloom et al. One reason for this neglect is that cultural studies emerged from
disciplines in which issues of taste and judgment are kept well away from issues of
academicanalysis and assessment:"evaluation,"as BarbaraHerrnsteinSmithnotes, was
long ago "exiled"from literarycriticism,and has yet to be admittedto studies of popular
culture.1
In universities,then,just as in high schools, thereis still a split between what Frank
Kogan describesas the discourseof the classroom(with its focus on a subjectmatter)and
the discourseof the hallway(withits focus on one's feelings abouta subjectmatter)[3-4].
In this respect(anddespite firstimpressions)academicapproachesto popularculturestill
derive from the mass culturalcritiques of the 1930s and 1940s, particularlyfrom the
Marxist critique of contemporarypopular culture in terms of the production and
circulationof commodities. FortheFrankfurtSchool, analyzingthe organizationof mass
productionon the one hand,and the psychology of mass consumptionon the other, the
value issue was, in a sense, straightforward-if it's popularit mustbe bad!-and Adomo
andhis colleagues developeda numberof concepts(suchas standardization)to show why
this must be so.
On the whole, the analyticmove since then has been to accept the Frankfurtreading
of culturalproductionandto look for the redeemingfeaturesof commodityculturein the
act of consumption. The task,beginningwith Americanliberalsociologists in the 1950s,
has been to find forms of mass consumptionthat are not "passive"and types of mass
consumers who are not stupified, to provide a sociology of watching and reading and
listening. If it is in the act of consumptionthatcontemporarycultureis lived, then it is
in the process of consumptionthatcontemporaryculturalvalues must be located.
In the culturalstudies traditionwith which I'm most familiar, British subcultural
theory,thisreworkingtookon theparticularformof identifyingcertainsocial groupswith
what we might call "positive mass consumption"(which became-and remains-the
pithiest academic definition of "popular"culture). The value of cultural goods could
thereforebe equatedwith the value of the groupsconsumingthem-youth, the working
class, women, and so forth.
Therearetwo pointsto note aboutthis move fromthe position "if it's popularit must
be bad"to the position "if it's popularit must be bad, unless it's popularwith the right
people." First,this remainsa highly politicized notionof popularculturalvalue, whether
explicitly, as in the British use of termslike resistance and empowerment,or implicitly,
as in the American celebrationof opinion leaders and taste publics in the name of a
pluralistdemocracy. Othervalue terms-beauty, say-are notableby theirabsence. To
put it anotherway, culturalvalue is assessed according to measures of true and false

1. This has led, among other things, to the relentless drive offilm, TV,andpop music studies
to develop canons of texts-for-studyeven less open to challenge than the literary canon. For a
general discussion of these issues see Smith.

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consciousness;aestheticissues, thepolitics of excitement,say, or grace,are subordinated
to the necessities of ideological interpretation,to the call for "demystification."
Second, because such reclamation of popular culture from the machinationsof
capital is politically selective, those consumerswho aren'tapprovedare still dismissed
as "dupes"in conventionalMarxistterms. This is the fate, to which I will return,of the
middlebrow: the easy listenerand light readerand AndrewLloyd Webberfan. Indeed,
it would be quiteeasy to producea canonof populartexts excludedfromculturalstudies,
such exclusion reflecting a contempt for their consumerswhich derives, in turn, from
assumptionsabout theirclass position and/orsocial passivity.
Morerecently,though,partlyin responseto theimplicitelitismof thisposition,partly
as an effect of the depoliticization of cultural studies as they enter the humanities
curriculum,a new argumenthas emerged:if it's popularit must be good! I could point
to specific examplesof this approach-the PopularCultureAssociation,the workof John
Fiske-but the questions that interest me here are whethera populist approachis the
logical conclusion of subculturalism,and whetherit is likely to be the normof academic
culturalstudies in the 1990s. I fear thatthe answerto both questionsis yes, thatcultural
studieswill remainrootedin accountsof the consumer,every act of "popular"consump-
tion an excuse for celebration. This is the populist argumentagainst which I want to
defend popularculture,and I shouldbegin my defense by sketchingthe problemsI have
with it. To begin with, it is based on inadequateempiricalstudies of consumption(and,
indeed, production)as such. I suspect that less such empirical work is being done in
culturalstudiesnow thanwas doneby positivistsocial scientistsin the 1950s, andI'm not
yet convinced thatthe so-called "turnto ethnography,"with its focus on select groupsof
valorized fans, is going to solve this problem.
This has two consequences. First, for all the talk about process and modes of
circulation,the definitionof "popularity"by defaultrefersto consumptionas measured
by sales figures and marketindicators-Neilsen ratings, the music charts, box office
returns,bestseller lists, circulationstatistics, and so on (figures that in turnbecome the
regulatorsof popular culturalhistory). Even if such figures were accurate (which is
doubtful),they provideno evidence as to why such goods arechosen by theirconsumers
nor whether they are actually enjoyed or valued by them (it is a common enough
experienceto go to a blockbusterfilm, watcha high-ratedTV program,reada bestselling
book, or buy a chartrecordthatturnsout to be quite uninteresting).The elision between
what sells and what is popular(the assumptionthatwhat sells is therefore"valuable")is
obvious in John Fiske's accountof "populardiscrimination,"for example. He stresses
rightly the inabilityof mass cultureindustriesto predictor manipulatepopulartaste (as
indicatedby the vast numberof "failed"records, films, TV shows, magazines, and so
forth)butdoes notquestiontheassumptionthata marketfailureis by definitionunpopular
or thata marketsuccess has by definitiona popularaudience [see Fiske]. In accountsof
popular music, at least, this is to ignore the significant unpopularityof certain stars
(Vanilla Ice, say) and the popular cult influence of such market failures as Velvet
Undergroundor the Stone Roses. If nothing else, consumerresearchamong pop fans
immediatelyreveals the intensitywith which musics and musiciansare loathedas well
as loved.
Second, becauseof its lackof sociological sophistication,academicculturalanalysis
remainsfor the most parttextualanalysis. The populartext (the TV show or shopping
mall, the Madonnavideo or SpringsteenCD) is read for the positive or "transgressive"
values the "popular"audience must have found there, which is to end up (as in E. Ann
Kaplan's book on MTV) with the familiarargumentthat culturalconsumers and their
valuesaresomehow determinedby the text, thatwhatKaplancalls the"historicalviewer"
is irrelevantto a theoryof popularvalues. "Evidenceof specific spectatorbehavior,"she
declares brazenly, "in no way invalidatesthe theory of MTV as a postmodernistform"

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[159]. This is an essentially condescendingview of the people-Madonna fans, say-
who are supposedly being celebrated (a condescension not tempered by the use of
anachronistictermslike carnivalto describetheirfandom)and,in particular,has theeffect
of leveling the culturalexperiencesinvolved: the populist assumptionis thatall popular
culturalgoods andservices aresomehow the same in theirempoweringvalue (as they are
in termsof exchange value); the populist suggestion is that we equate romancereading
andStar Trekviewing, Madonnaand metalfans, shoppersand surfers,each having their
own formof "resistance."The aestheticdiscriminationessentialto culturalconsumption
and the consideredjudgments it involves are ignored.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the more celebratorythe populist study, the
morepatronizingits tone, an effect, I think,of the explicit populistdeterminationto deny
(or reverse) the usual high/low culturalhierarchy. If one strandof the mass cultural
critique was an indictment of low culture from the perspective of high art (as was
obviously the case for Adorno,for example),thento assertthe value of thepopularis also,
certainly,to querythe superiorityof high culture.Mostpopulistwriters,though,drawthe
wrongconclusion;what needs challengingis not the notionof the superior,but the claim
that it is the exclusive propertyof the "high."
To deny the significance of value judgments in popularculture(to ignore popular
tastehierarchies)is, if nothingelse, hypocritical.How often, I wonder,do culturalstudies
theoristscelebratepopularculturalformswhich they themselves soon find boring? How
aretheirown feelings for the good andthe bad coded into theiranalyses? I'm sure in my
own cultural practice that Jane Eyre is a better romance than a Mills and Boon or
Harlequintitle, just as I know thatthe Pet Shop Boys area bettergroupthanU2 and that
Aerosmithhas no value at all. The problemis how best to arguethis. To gloss over the
ceaseless value judgments,the continuousexercise of taste, being made within popular
audiencesthemselves is, in effect, to do theirdiscriminatingfor them,to refuse to engage
in those argumentswhich produceculturalvalues.
My defense of popularculturerests, then,on two assumptions:first,thatthe essence
of culturalpractice is makingjudgments and assessing differences.2 Such judgments,
distinctions, and choices are justified-to examine the question of value in popular
cultureis to examinethe termsof suchjustifications. Second, thereis no reasonto believe
apriori thatsuchjudgmentprocessesworkdifferentlyin differentculturalspheres. There
are obvious differences between operasand soap operas,between classical and country
music, but the fact that the objects of judgment are different does not mean that the
processes of judgmentare. The conventionaldistinctionbetweenform(high culture)and
function(low culture)is not sustainablefor long, even in its populistreadingas a contrast
between measuresof qualityand aesthetics,on the one hand,and measuresof relevance
and productivity,on the other [for a discussion of these terms see Fiske.]
In Contingenciesof Value,her book abouthigh culturalevaluation,BarbaraHerrn-
stein Smith suggests that

what we are doing in makingan explicitjudgementof a literarywork is

a) articulating an estimate of how well that work will serve certain implicitly
definedfunctions
b)for a specific implicitlydefined audience
c) who are conceived of as experiencing the work under certain implicitly
defined conditions. [13]

This could equallywell describewhat's going on in thejudgmentof pop songs orTV

shows, shoppingcentersor newsreaders. The implicationis thatto understandpopular

2. One sign of this is the ubiquitoususe of competitionsin the popular arts.

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cultural values we need to look at the social contexts in which value judgments are
deployed,to look at thesocial reasonswhy some aspectsof a soundor spectaclearevalued
over others. Musical valuejudgments,for example,are most significantlymade in three
contexts:
First, among musicians. The value complex here is fairly straightforward:values
emergingfromtheconstraintsof collaboration(trust,professionalism,reliability);values
emerging from the constraintsof craft (skill, technique, technical and technological
expertise); values emerging from the experience of performance(revolving arounda
sense of difference).3
Second, amongproducers,by whom I meanthe broadrangeof people concernedto
turna music or musicianinto a profitablecommodity. The obvious values of productive
efficiency in thisgroupareoverlaid,perhapsunexpectedly,by a Romanticbelief in genius
andoriginality,in the "mystery"of bothmusicalcreationandaudiencetaste. The cliched
opposition of art and commerce is, in this context, misleading. What is actuallyjudged
to be at stake is the productionof value: commerceas art [see Stratton].
Third,among consumers. There are various sociological approachesto consumer
values: via "homologies"-musical genresare valued for theirrepresentationor expres-
sion of a group's nonmusicalconcerns;via fantasy-a song or staris an object available
for identificationand individualuse; via social settings-music works as a soundtrack,
a backgroundnoise for dancing,praying,shopping,and so on.
Whatinterestsme, though,is not thepreciseconceptsinvolved, butthe generalpoint
that from a functionalperspectivethere is inevitablya tension between musicians' and
consumers'value termsandprocedures(which, fromthe musicians'point of view, leads
almostinvariablyto botha contemptfor their"popular"audienceanda sense thatpopular
music makingis a matterof compromise).4The gap betweenthe evaluativeprinciplesof
music makersand music listenersis equallyapparentin classical music. In both pop and
classical worlds this gap is bridged by producers, who seek to bring creators and
consumersinto profitablealignment(a productivetension),and by critics, who function
both as experts, teaching audiences how to listen and look, and as representatives,
interpretingaudiencesfor artists.5The commodificationof culture,in short,in constitut-
ing a tripartitestructureof communication-creator/producer/consumer-also con-
structeda series of evaluativeoppositions(artvs. commerce,artvs. craft,the amateurvs.
theprofessional)anda seriesof evaluativeprocessesthatarecommonto all contemporary
culturalforms, thatplay across high and low culturalpracticesalike. One effect of this
has been the rise of the culturalgo-between, the publishersand critics who now play a
centralrole in the makingof meaning. Indeed,fromthisperspective,we could define high
culturesimply as thatform of mass culturewhich is mediatedby academics.
The importanceof the critic's role leads me to a second sociological issue: not the
context of culturaljudgments,but the termsin which they are made. As I have argued
elsewhere(drawingon the workof HowardBeckerandPierreBourdieu),threediscourses
seem to dominateculturaljudgments [see Frith,"WhatIs Good Music?"]:
an art discourse-the ideal of culturalexperience is transcendence;art provides a
means of rising above the everyday, leaving the body, denying the significance of
historicaltime and geographicalplace;
afolk discourse-the ideal of culturalexperienceis integration;folk formsprovide
a means of placement-in a space, a season, a community;

3. For a usefulsurveyof musicians'day-to-dayassessmentof theirworksee WillsandCooper.

4. The classic discussion of popular musicians' attitudestowardpopularityremainsBecker.
5. For a brilliantaccount of the evaluativeconsequencesof this "gap" in classical musicsee
Cook.

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 a pop discourse-the ideal of culturalexperience is fun; pop provides routinized
pleasures, more intense than the everyday but bound into its rhythms,and legitimized
emotional gratification,a play of desire and discipline.
The point to stressaboutthese discourses(andthis is whereI partcompanywith both
Becker and Bourdieu)is thatthey describeneitherseparateartworlds nordifferentclass
attitudesbut are, rather,all at play across all culturalpracticesand indeed produceeach
other(the ideologies of artand folk arethusequally the legacy of Romanticism,andwere
both, in turn,redefinedby the emergence of mass entertainment)[see Shiach]. Value
terms (most notoriously the concept of "authenticity")are thereforeshared. Aestheti-
cally, there is no immediate reason to treat popularculture any differently from high
culture (which is one reason, to returnto Bourdieu, why class cultural rituals are so
important:they markout boundariesof taste thatare, in fact, unstable).
In general,though,my argumentis a deliberatedeparturefromthe claim thattaste-
the use of cultureas a meansof class differentiation,a markof distinction-is specific to
the bourgeoisie. Such a claim rests on datedevidence and an oversimpleaccount of the
class structure[for this argumentsee Bourdieu]. It is certainlyeasy enough to trace the
historicalorigins of what Bourdieucalls bourgeoisculture. In Highbrow/Lowbrow,for
instance, Lawrence Levine shows how the cultural flexibility of eighteenth-century
America had to be denied by the aesthetic ideology thatemerged in the mid-nineteenth
century: "A concertgiven in Baltimoreon September12, 1796, atteststo the prevalence
of a musical ethos quite divergent from the one we have come to know, an ethos that
thoughtit quite properto follow a Haydnoverturewith the song 'And All For My Pretty
Brunette,'and a Bach overturewith the song 'Oh, None Can Love Like an IrishMan"'
[107].
The development of a new musical ethos meant first promotingthe concept of "a
sacralizedart,"an art"thatmakes no compromiseswith the 'temporal'world, an artthat
remainsspirituallypureandneverbecomes secondaryto theperformeror to theaudience,
an artthatis uncompromisingin its devotionto culturalperfection"-the wordsaretaken
from Dwight's Journal of Music-and then markingoff this sort of culturalexperience
from all others:

Thusby the early decades of this centurythe changes that had either begun or
gained velocity in the last third of the nineteenthcentury were in place: the
masterworksof the classical composers were to be performedin their entirety
by highly trained musicians on programmesfree from the contaminationof
lesser works or lesser genres, free from the interference of audience or
performer,free from the distractions of the mundane; audiences were to
approach the mastersand their workswithproper respect andproper serious-
ness,for aestheticandspritualelevationratherthanmereentertainmentwas the
goal. This transitionwas not confinedto the worlds of symphonicand operatic
music or of Shakespeariandrama; it was manifestin other importantareas of
expressive cultureas well. [Levine 120, 146]

And Paul Di Maggio has shown how this aesthetic argument was tied into the
development of a class-conscious Americanbourgeoisie: the distinctionbetween high
andpopularculture,he writes,emergedin the second half of the nineteenthcentury"out
of the efforts of urbanelites to buildorganisationalforms that,first, isolated high culture
and, second, differentiated it from popular culture"; his examples are the Boston
SymphonyOrchestra(which sloughed off the Boston Pops) and the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts. What became high art rituals, connoisseurship,and so on were, then, as
Bourdieuargued,an aspect of bourgeois"distinction":if arthad become the experience

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of the transcendentandtheineffable,thenit was also theexclusive propertyof "thosewith
the statusto claim thattheirexperienceis thepurest,themost authentic"[Di Maggio 317].
But whateverthe role of this artisticideology in shapingthe bourgeoisaesthetic,or
the role of the haute bourgeoisie in defining art, it is misleading to fix the discourse of
transcendencein a single social position or to assume that the late nineteenth-century
urbanbourgeoisie is exactly the same thing as the late twentieth-centurymiddle class.
Even in the nineteenthcenturythe increasingconcernto define tasteboundariesreflected
the extent to which tastes were actually shared across classes-the problem was the
control of public space; the threat was social intermingling. "The art must not be
degraded,"complaineda columnistin London's Music Worldin 1845 in response to an
announcementof cheapconcerts. "Toplay the finestmusic to an audiencewhich hasbeen
admittedat a shilling apiece is what I can never give consent to" [qtd. in Weber 26].
Despite such attemptsto controltasteby price, in England,at least, by the end of the
nineteenthcentury "somethingvery close to a mass musical culture had emerged-a
sharing of common taste across a broad social range." On the one hand this meant
"popularmusicians and audiences [drawing]upon what we tenuouslycall 'artmusic'":
"throughthe people's concert, the concert-hall,the music-hall, the choral contest, the
brass band performanceand other routes, Handel, Wagner and Donizetti to name but
three,were known to many 'ordinarypeople': vaguely by some, intimatelyand expertly
by a significant minority"[Russell 6-7].
On the other hand, it meant the broad popularityof what Van Der Merwe calls
"parlourmusic"among all sectorsof the population. This is not to say therewas not, by
the end of the nineteenthcentury,a "GreatMusicalSchism"betweenclassical and parlor
music, but,rather,thatthedifferencescould noteasily be mappedonto the class structure.
Justas professionalmusiciansof the time moved easily betweenoperaand music hall pit
bands, between winter seasons in symphony orchestrasand summer seasons in pier
shows, so listenersfromall social spherescould well be fans of WagnerandVesta Tilley,
choral music and comedy turns. "Highbrowand lowbrow lived in the same world,"as
Van DerMerweputsit, and"quiteoften they were thesameperson"[3-4; andsee Russell
7-8]-a fact that turn-of-the-centuryentrepreneurswere quick to exploit. In its 1934
obituaryof the "high"composer,EdwardElgar,the Timesrememberedwhata "rage"his
first (1904) symphonyhadbeen: "Forsome time the regularorchestrasof Londoncould
not play it often enough, special concerts were arrangedfor it, [and] enterprising
commercialistseven engaged orchestrasto play it in theirlounges and palm courtsas an
attractionto theirwinter sales of underwear"[Crump167].
To trace the social meaningof high and low culture,then, it is not enough to point
to theaestheticideology of the nineteenth-centuryurbanbourgeoisie;we also needto look
at the effects of mass culturalproduction,which in key waysfollowed the emergenceof
bourgeoiscultureand workedon it (justas it workedon urbanproletarianculture). The
"transcendent"meaningof classical music, for example, was both exploited and denied
by its immediateuse in the new movie houses,just as it hasbeen since by radioandrecord
and television companies,as the backgroundsound of advertisementsand airplanesand
shopping malls.
I want to note threeaspects of this approachto mass culturalhistory. First, if high
cultureis definedas bourgeoisculture,it becomes a reflex to equatemass culturewith the
workingclass. In fact, though,mass culture(if we define it as the culturemade possible
by technologicalchange,by the use of the meansof mass culturalproduction)has always
been a form of middle-classculture,characterizedby middlebrowconcerns. As Janice
Radwayhas shown in herstudiesof the Book of the MonthClub, the rise of mass culture
at the beginningof thiscenturyactuallymeanta blurringof the distinctionsbetween high
and low, artand commerce, the sacredand the profane.

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 Second, if one aspect of the emergence of mass culture was the "disciplining"of
nineteenth-century"unrespectable"culture,another,equallyimportant,was the "loosen-
ing up"of nineteenth-centuryrespectableculture. There is, by now, much illuminating
historical work on the formerprocess. In Rudeness and Civility, for example, John F.
Kassanshows clearlyhow therise of consumerculture,the"orderlyspectacle,"meantthe
decline of a participatory,communalleisureculturein Americanworking-classneighbor-
hoods, a move from"enthusiasm"to "disciplinedspectatorship"[252-56]. But the other
side of this story is the developmentof "safe"ways in which middle-class city dwellers
(and the respectableworking class) could enjoy proletarianpatternsof sociability and
noisy publicbehavior. KathyPeiss, forexample, suggeststhattherise of mass culture(the
cinema is a good example) meantdeveloping those aspects of working-classleisure that
the middle class found attractiveand sheddingthose things of which they disapproved.
Mass culturemeant"Polite Vaudeville,""regulatedpleasure"for all classes, organized
especially aroundheterosociabilityanda new valorizationof youth and youth consump-
tion. Her example is Coney Island:

Steeplechase incorporatedinto its notion of mass entertainmentculturalpat-

ternsderivedfromworkingclass amusements,streetlife andpopular entertain-
ment. Likethem,thepark encouragedfamiliaritybetweenstrangers,permitted
afree-and-easy sexuality,and structuredheterosocialinteraction. This culture
was not adopted wholesale, but was transformedand controlled, reducing the
threateningnatureof sexual contact by removingitfrom the street, workplace
and saloon. Withinthe amusementpark,familiarity between women and men
could be acceptable if tightlystructuredand made harmless throughlaughter.
At Steeplechase, sexuality was constructedin terms of titillation, voyeurism,
exhibitionismand a stress on a couple and romance. [Peiss 136]

Fromthis historicalperspectivetwentieth-centurypopularculturedescribesa process in

which class and other group values and conflicts are mediated rather than directly
expressed,which is one reasonwhy popularcommodities(Hustler,say, or heavy metal)
can be and often are simultaneously "transgressive"(of "respectable"values) and
reactionary[see Kipnis].
Third,if mass cultureis not defined againstmiddle-classculture,against art,but is
a way of processingit, thenthe crucialhigh/low conflict is not thatbetweensocial classes
but thatproducedby the commercialprocess itself at all "levels" of culturalexpression,
in pop as well as classical music, in sportsas well as the cinema. High/low thusdecribes
the emergence of consumer elites or cults, on the one hand (the bohemian versus the
conformist),and the tension between artistsand theiraudiences I've alreadydescribed,
on the other(the modernistand avant-gardistagainstthe orthodoxand the mainstream).6
Sometime in the opening decades of the twentiethcentury,notes Levin Schiicking,
the criticalobservationthat"theplay succeeded with the public"became a standardline
in the scathing review, as German theater critics sought to ally themselves with
experimentalplaywrights (and the future)against audiences (and the past) [57]. "The
crowdliked them,"remainsa standardline in a scathingrockreview-the moretheirfans
liked, say, Genesis, the moreI, as SundayTimesrock critic, felt moved to dismiss them.
Thus the themes thathauntedmodernistwritersand critics at the turnof the century
(their"high"culturalconcernto be trueto theirart,to disdainmereentertainment,to resist
marketforces, their longing for a "sensitive minority"readership,for what Ezra Pound

6. For the significance of bohemianismfor pop culture see Frith and Home.

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called "a partyof intelligence,"which meant,in practice,each other) have continuedto
hauntsuch low artistsas jazz and rock musicians, such low audiences as pop fans.7
In Arnold Bennett's 1907 story "TheDeath of Simon Fuge,"the narratordescribes
"oneof the two Londoneveningpapersthata manof tastemayperusewithouthumiliating
himself. How appealinga morsel, this sheet new and smooth from the press, this sheet
writtenby an ironic,understandingsmallbandof menjust for a few thousandpersonslike
me, ruthlesslyscornfulof the big circulationsand the idols of the people!" [196]. This
could equally well be a descriptionof MelodyMakerand its readersin the 1960s or New
Musical Express and its readersin the 1970s, or The Face and its readersin the 1980s.
And in his 1893 story "GrevilleFane," Henry James remarksthat his eponymous
heroine, a decidedly middlebrow,commercialchurn-'em-outnovelist is, nevertheless,
"hauntedby solemn spinsters who came to tea from Continental pensions, and by
unsophisticatedAmericanswho told hershe wasjust loved in theircountry. 'I hadrather
just be paid there,'she usuallyreplied;for this tribeof transatlanticopinion was the only
thing that galled her. The Americans went away thinking her coarse" [160]. Which
remindsme irresistiblyof my friendLouise, who came fromBaltimoreto Londonin 1967
to read her poetry to Donovan. He was coarse, too.
Butperhapsthe most striking(andrecurrent)featureof thecontinuingstandoffof the
aestheteand the philistine (a necessarydiscursivecounterpoint)is thatfor both sides the
other is feminine. The woman as materialistcorruptorof the artistis a consistenttheme
of James's storiesandof subsequentbohemianmythology-of Bob Dylan's early songs,
for instance-just as the high cultural description of mass culture as "feminine"by
theoristsfrom Adomo and Horkheimerto Baudrillardis echoed in rock fans' contemp-
tuous dismissal of"teenybop" music [see Huyssen].
Meanwhile, from the philistine side, the AmericanbandmasterJohn Philip Sousa
once stressed to a Houston reporterthat "the people who frequentmy concerts are the
strongandhealthy. I meanhealthybothof mindandbody. These people like virile music.
Longhairedmen and shorthairedwomen you neversee in my audience. And I don't want
them" [qtd. in Levine 238]. This equationof high art and sissiness and perversionis
familiartoday for us in Britainthanksto the efforts of Gary Bushall, punk-rock-writer-
turned-TV-criticof the Sun.
But the point I wantto stress here is thatthe sustenanceof "art"in HenryJames's or
Ezra Pound's terms became dependent, in the end, on the academy, and it is this
institutionalsetting,ratherthanthevalueissues as such,thathascome to differentiatehigh
frompopularculture. It is the academy,thatis-the university,the conservatoire,the art
school-that, as PierreBourdieuargues,nowadayssustainshigh cultureand guarantees
its reproduction: in the master/pupilrelationship,in the continuityof knowledge and
sense of traditionembodiedin thelibraryandgalleryandconcerthall, in the settingof the
standardsof creativeskill andinterpretativeexpertise. It is theacademythatnow provides
the terms-the meaning-of high culturalexperience;it is academicdiscoursethatnow
shapes the newspaperreview, the recordsleeve note, the exhibition catalogue;it is the
academic who makespossible the mass consumptionof high culture(HenryJames as a
classic text). MatthewArnold, who continues to hover over all discussions of cultural
value, approvinglyquotedRenanas saying that"allages have hadtheirinferiorliterature,
but the greatdangerof our time is thatthis inferiorliteraturetends moreand more to get
the upperplace. No one has the same advantageas the Academy for fighting againstthis
mischief' [376-77]. Academy here means the Acad6mieFrancaise,which, in Arnold's
words,hadspecial facilities"forcreatinga formof intellectualculturewhichshall impose
itself on all around."

7. For an entertainingand helpful account of these argumentsamong turn-of-the-century

writers see Keating.

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 By 1913, when Sir ArthurQuiller-Couchcame to give his inaugurallecture as the
first Professorof English at Cambridge,this notion of the academy had a more general
currency.The purposeof studyingEnglish literature,suggestedQuiller-Couch,was "the
refining of critical judgment," the Cambridge degree aimed to create "a man of
unmistakeableintellectualbreeding,whose trainedjudgmentwe can trustto choose the
better and reject the worse" [qtd. in Keating 456-57]. The development of English
literatureas an academic discipline has become a familiar story, but it is still worth
stressingthatit involved notjust a civilizing mission-sending discriminatingreadersout
into the classroom and marketplace-but also a defensive move: the academy became
a stockadewithinwhich the betterandthe superiorcould be defendedfromthe philistines
(and, in particular,from the philistines' literaryrepresentative,the journalist,the object
of recurrentacademic hostility).8 Thus, to provide a randomexample of the embattled
academic, defending the artist from commercial forces, here is a quote from Harvey
Allen's 1938 introductionto the Modem Libraryedition of EdgarAllan Poe's complete
tales and poems. Poe's "misfortune,"writes Allen, was that

The results of a labour of a lifetime, two decades of continuousand persistent

writingbothin verseandprose, lay scatteredin thepages of obscure,provincial,
female and piffling-not to say downrighteccentric-magazines, newspapers,
weeklies,journals, remainderedand suppressedbooks and prospectuses-the
very names of which are frequently productive of ribaldry or conducive to
nausea. Only the cast-ironconstitutionof professionalscholarscan solemnly
digest their contents with the bowels of compassion. [v; my emphasis]

The imageryis of the scholaras knight,ridingforthto rescue the innocentartistfrom the

clammy, corruptinghandsof thepopularpaper,thepopularmagazine,thepopularreader.
It is not only our cast-iron constitution that enables academics to consider mass
culture dispassionately, but also our institutionalposition: we're free of the material
implicationsof the art-vs.-marketdilemmaof writerslike HenryJamesor musicianslike
the Gang of Four. It is not surprising,then, that high cultural values are by now
inextricablyentangledwith academicpractices,ratherthanwith bourgeoisconsumption
as such. This has had a numberof consequences both for the teaching of culturaland
literarystudies (hence, for example, the peculiarsuggestion in every monthly magazine
I readat presentthatchanges in universityreadinglists meanthe end of civilization as we
know it) and, indeed, for pop cultureitself (in the influenceof artschools on Britishpop
music, for example). But I want to make two ratherdifferentpoints about culture, the
academy, and populartaste.
First, the equation of high and academic culture helps explain why the high/low
culturedistinctionis still so consistentlyreadas a mind/bodysplit. Thiscan be tracedback
to the mental/manualdivision of labor built into the IndustrialRevolution and the
consequent organizationof education, and overlies the original Romantic dichotomy
betweenfeeling andreason-feelings, thatis, arenow takento be bestexpressedin mental
terms,in silent contemplationof greatartor greatmusic. Bodily responsesare, it seems,
by definition, mindless. "The brain,"wrote Frank Howes in the British Journal of
Aestheticsin 1962, is associatedwithartmusic;"brainlessness"withpop. Popularmusic,
agreed Peter Stadlerin the same journal a couple of issues later, is music requiring"a
minimumof brainactivity."
By 1971 the same argumentwas still being madein thejournalbut now, by Raymond
Durgnat,to the opposite effect. He was celebratingrock and roll for its sensual effects.
This has become a familiarstrandin the populist academic account of pop culture, as

aroundPaulde Mananddeconstruction.
8. Mostrecentlyexpressedin thearguments

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intellectualsfantasizeaboutthepleasuresof mindlessness,andechoes similarintellectual
argumentsaboutthe thrillsof sensationalliterature,the emotionalimpactof film andTV
melodrama[see Durgnat;andFrith,"CulturalStudies"]. "Inshow business,"wrote the
HungarianmusicologistJanosMarothyin his exhaustiveMarxisthistoryof high and low
music, "audiencedemands... are determinedby the taste of the bourgeoisie. With...
a kind of romanticlonging, the bourgeoisie lays claim to the popularin an attemptto
compensate for the emptinessof its life by means of 'exotic' stimulants"[530-31]. In
cultural studies, we might add, audience demands are determined by the taste of
academics. Witha kind of romanticlonging, the academylays claim to the popularin an
attemptto compensatefor the eggheadednessof its life by means of sensual stimulants.
Academics have bodies, thatis, even if the theoreticaleffects of this arecarefullyhidden.
Even more important,"thepeople"have minds. "Here,in readingtogether,"writes
Levin Schiicking about nineteenth-centuryGermanculture (and these days we would
add,in going to the movies together,watchingTV together,playingmusic together),"the
opportunitywas gained[especiallyfor the young] of securingfromtheother'sjudgement
of men andthingsan insightinto [their]thoughtsandfeelings; an insightlikely to become
the firstbond betweenkindredsouls" [Schicking 32]. Exactly the same point is made in
Gordon Legge's pop novel, The Shoe, in which a pub newcomer's character (his
slobbishness, his conservatism, his potential violence) is immediately revealed to
drinkersand readersalike by his jukebox choice: Jeff Beck's "Hi Ho Silver Lining."
As academics,it seems, we don't actuallyknow muchaboutsuch aestheticalliances
and distinctionsor abouttheirimplications(thoughwe live themourselves all the time).
Even when we claim to know what people like, we rarelyhave much interestingto say
abouthow such liking is organizedfrom the inside (an inside untrammeledby sociologi-
cal questionnairesand unpatrolledby subculturalcheerleaders).Among the few studies
I know that give a sense of the popularaesthetic in action are the Mass-Observation
surveys of British film tastes in 1938 and 1943 [Richardsand Sheridan].
In these essays in popularcriticism thereare several obvious evaluative themes:
-films are assessed in termsof technique,skill and craft;with referenceto things
(acting, lighting, staging-details) done well.
-films are assessed in termsof expense and spectacle;cheapnessand tackinessare
words of abuse.
These are judgments (echoed in popularmusic discourse) of what is perceived to have
gone into theproduction;they measurethe extent to which the audience(the viewer, the
listener) is being taken seriously.
-films areassessed for theirbelievability,theirtruth-to-life;the realistimpulse(the
pop concern for sincerity)meansjudging a film's (or song's) narrativeagainstone's own
"reality"(andvice versa),ajudgmentcommonlymadevia identificationwith a character
or performer.
-films areassessed fortheirabilityto takeone outof oneself, a qualityof experience
measured by its intensity (thrills), its presence (laughter), its difference from the
everyday, its quality, thatis, as entertainment.
These apparentlycontradictorydemandsare broughttogetherin an assessmentof films
according to the range of experiences they offer-a good laugh and a good cry, the
believableandtheunbelievable-and themostcommoncomplaintis thata film (orrecord
or TV show or holidayresortor haircut)is disappointing,doesn't live up to expectations
or else meets themall too well. Suchjudgmentsrest on varioussortsof priorknowledge
(about genre distinctions, for example) but also on implicit aesthetic hierarchies:the
popularconsumertoo distinguishesbetweenthe easy andthe difficult,between trashand
quality, between indulgence and education;the popularconsumer too makes different
sorts of demand (more or less aesthetic, more or less functional) of different sorts of
culturalcommodity.

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 I will end-appropriately-with anotherMass-Observationtheme, the suggestion
that to be valuable a film should have a "moral"(a word that substitutes,I suppose, for
meaning). "I don't know what thatwas about,"said someone behind us at The Grifters.
"Whatwas the moral?""Neverthrowsomethingat someone who's drinking,"her friend
suggested. The pursuitof a moral(a point,a closure)is, in academicculturalstudies,seen
as naive if not reactionary;it ensures that commercial popular culture, whatever its
supposedcontent,remainsorderly. On the otherhand,in pursuitof such order,a popular
readingoften has to ask what JonathanCulleronce called (with referenceto the popular
story of the ThreeLittle Pigs) "improperquestions,"just as in theirconcern for the real
the popularreaderor viewer or listener is often in pursuitof improperdetail, of gossip,
anecdotaltruth[Ray 284]. How manychildrenhadLadyMacbeth? Elvis Presley? Paul
de Man?
The compulsionto explain the inexplicable,a recurringtheme of popularnarrative,
has the effect of makingthe remarkablebanaland thus,literally,even more remarkable.
This is not a politicalimpulse (politics startsfromthe materialconditionsin which people
live, not with the cultural strategies that make those conditions livable), but it does
generatea certaincriticalmomentum,and,as I began with two quotesfrom high cultural
positions which dismissed low cultureas having no intellectualinterestat all, I want to
end with two quotes from equally high positions which suggest that what's at stake in
exploring popular cultural values is not just something out there (in the body), but
involves a common culture,somethingin which we share,in the mind as well.
"Whenwe love a book,"CatherineStimpsonwrote recently,

we read energetically. Webelieve thatif a beloved book were humanit would

embraceus. Ourfeeling is moreintense than easy pleasure, more dashing and
ferocious than delight, more gorgeous than distraction. Weare grateful to the
beloved textfor being there.... [Such books]provide some of love's relational
and terrifyingthrills... [provide] thesensationof inhabitinga worldapartfrom
the world that normallyinhibits one; an oscillation between control and self-
abandonment;a dance with the partners of amusementand consolation; the
gratificationof needs that [have been] concealed. [958]

To which I'djust addthattheromanceof readingdefinespopularculturetoo: recordsand

films, cars and TV shows, sportsteams and designerclothes are loved.
"Whenwe study the greatclassics of literature,"notes NorthropFrye in his essays
on popularromance,

we are following the dictates of commonsense, as embodiedin the author of

Ecclesiastes: "Betteris thesight of the eye thanthewanderingof desire." Great
literatureis whattheeye can see, it is thegenuineinfiniteas opposedto thephony
infinite,the endless adventuresand endlesssexual stimulationof the wandering
of desire. But I have a notion that if the wanderingof desire did not exist, great
literaturewould not exist either. [30]

And I have a notion-here's my moral-that if desire has, for a moment,wanderedinto

the classroom we should now be ready to follow it out again.

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