Jerry Springer: the Opera

February 11, 2002 11:18 PM

Jerry Springer: the Opera has become a cult classic in London! Is this another testimony to the death of high culture or the popularity of American talk shows like Jerry Springer? Has anybody seen or heard about this themselves?
posted by crog (7 comments total)

why can't "high culture" co-exist with (i suppose) "low culture"?
posted by moz at 12:05 AM on February 12, 2002

All the better I say. The separation of the two "cultures" is arbitrary at best, hypocritical at worst and unnecessarily exclusionary.
posted by owillis at 2:26 AM on February 12, 2002

If - supposedly - high culture (opera) and low culture (springer) are separated on arbitrary merits, then I think we should thrive on that arbitrariness.

I'm not sure why the two 'cultures' are necessarily hypocritical. Exclusion, though, seems to fall also into the realm of arbitrary.

I could try to argue, somehow, that high and low culture are needed distinguishers between great and minor 'art,' but I'm not sure I could do it with any success here (on account of my own limitations).
posted by alethe at 2:50 AM on February 12, 2002

This sounds like a right laugh, although I don't know how you take the piss out of Springer when it takes the piss out of itself. And surely the Opera bit is just part of the joke?
posted by Summer at 4:41 AM on February 12, 2002

I figure that high culture died in London when Mamma Mia hit the West End.
posted by MrBaliHai at 4:55 AM on February 12, 2002

Oh, hell. I never dreamed that you poor sumbitches on the other side of the pond would have that muckraker on your televisions too.
posted by alumshubby at 5:51 AM on February 12, 2002

Of course, what most people don't remember, is that the only thing high and mighty about opera in the beginning was how much it cost, making it only available to the (middle) upper class. It was meant as a high class entertainment, which doesn't necessarily equate high culture.

I haven't seen the opera so I know nothing about the quality of the production, but on the surface it seems like a logical yet absurd attempt to revive opera.
posted by margaretlam at 6:26 AM on February 12, 2002