We are Americans, after all; our national myth is Footloose.
April 11, 2021 11:12 PM Subscribe
The Strange Undeath of Middlebrow
It is hard to coax a single definition of middlebrow out of all these essays, but there are a few threads we can pull together. Middlebrow unifies; it mediates; it educates. It addresses both heart and mind. ... Middlebrow is good for you. All of these writers frame middlebrow as a thing in need of defense, even though the specific works they want to defend seem quite safe... They talk about middlebrow in the way we talk about things we feel in danger of losing through a failure to appreciate them. How did a word that sounds like an insult come to acquire such emotional coloring? To answer that question, we must look to its history.
It is hard to coax a single definition of middlebrow out of all these essays, but there are a few threads we can pull together. Middlebrow unifies; it mediates; it educates. It addresses both heart and mind. ... Middlebrow is good for you. All of these writers frame middlebrow as a thing in need of defense, even though the specific works they want to defend seem quite safe... They talk about middlebrow in the way we talk about things we feel in danger of losing through a failure to appreciate them. How did a word that sounds like an insult come to acquire such emotional coloring? To answer that question, we must look to its history.
Just for the sake of clarity, I don't think that's the author of the essay's take, but it is definitely the attitude of a number of people he quotes at in giving his history of the middlebrow. (I don't want anyone who hasn't read the piece to get the wrong impression of its stance.)
posted by gusottertrout at 2:15 AM on April 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by gusottertrout at 2:15 AM on April 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
Yeah my take on this article is that "middlebrow" is an obsolete classification in a generation that may have finally shrugged off the archaic notions of lofty art vs commoner entertainment. We're a collection of generations who have appeared to find new ways to enjoy works that are problematic in many dimensions, and take what we want from them. We're no longer pinning our identities to genres of music, but enjoying their ambiance wherever any of them fit.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:45 AM on April 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:45 AM on April 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
What confused me about this was this in places it felt like the message was "it is bad to dislike middlebrow because you are a snob but it's fine to do so because it is the product of a capitalist system" but the end result is sort of the same. It is still "if you knew more you would not enjoy this" and, well, no.
posted by mr_stru at 2:49 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by mr_stru at 2:49 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
I liked this, because it went on to ask some interesting questions after its fairly expected dunking on how 'middlebrow' was a pretty open sublimation of class - I appreciated the tackling that prestige TV is not what people meant by 'high art', but also that the frustration with the crassness of shared culture doesn't come from a healthy place either. (As I'm fond of pointing out to people who get mad at Harry Potter-based political metaphors, if you want to reference a shared culture you need to pick things that you can safely assume your entire audience has read.) I'm not sure the conclusion really follows the premise, admittedly, it's sort of taken as a given that 'middlebrow' culture wanted the things that are now decried as socialism, that there is such a thing as a truly democratic culture, which strikes me as a Platonic ideal that's referenced as an achievable goal.
The model I've tended to adopt when talking about culture tends to reflect my cultural interest in games, where accessibility can be considered far more objectively - a piece can be literally inaccessible thanks to poor controls, built-in assumptions, or unforgiving gameplay. Accessibility is a spectrum that's orthogonal to mass appeal, and also to quality. Something can be inaccessible, but still not be worthy, but a work can be challenging, and that challenge is what makes it possible to be so good to those who it speaks to. My very favourite game is a game called Hollow Knight, which gives you very imperfect tools to navigate and makes no concessions to its rather stiff difficulty - if you spend an hour lost in its first, rather plain area, you'll bounce off it very quickly. And yet, for those who can, that's what allows it to present a world that rewards careful navigation, and makes its unpleasant surprises pleasingly tense. (But then for some people the level of challenge to reach that level of tension would be lower, and the game as released is inaccessibly difficult.) It's not a case of 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow': it's a constellation of works in conversation with one another, speaking more specifically to smaller audiences as they move away from the centre.
posted by Merus at 3:09 AM on April 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
The model I've tended to adopt when talking about culture tends to reflect my cultural interest in games, where accessibility can be considered far more objectively - a piece can be literally inaccessible thanks to poor controls, built-in assumptions, or unforgiving gameplay. Accessibility is a spectrum that's orthogonal to mass appeal, and also to quality. Something can be inaccessible, but still not be worthy, but a work can be challenging, and that challenge is what makes it possible to be so good to those who it speaks to. My very favourite game is a game called Hollow Knight, which gives you very imperfect tools to navigate and makes no concessions to its rather stiff difficulty - if you spend an hour lost in its first, rather plain area, you'll bounce off it very quickly. And yet, for those who can, that's what allows it to present a world that rewards careful navigation, and makes its unpleasant surprises pleasingly tense. (But then for some people the level of challenge to reach that level of tension would be lower, and the game as released is inaccessibly difficult.) It's not a case of 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow': it's a constellation of works in conversation with one another, speaking more specifically to smaller audiences as they move away from the centre.
posted by Merus at 3:09 AM on April 12, 2021 [9 favorites]
I ultimately decided that I liked this article. I think the joke was on me, but I spotted it, which makes it okay. As an article, it had my preferred mix of humor, pedanticism, cultural references known and unknown (but apparently sound), referenced from other key areas. It used "allusive" correctly, which is rare enough (vs. a typo when actually meaning 'elusive'). By the end, I felt like I'd learned something worthwhile about a topic I'd just been convinced was worth learning about. Who can ask for anything more?
On closer inspection, every now and then, the author's personal beliefs come through ("Roy Lichtenstein’s comic book paintings are fun, but not nearly as fun as actual comic books") in ways that make me think, hmm, in person, I'd probably find this guy equal parts interesting and an asshole. But I think that's a bit on purpose. If I loved the guy, he'd have to be lowbrow, wouldn't he? And we can't have that.
We see that the article is annotated, even after providing the source in-line. This in itself brought an eye-roll. But so did the quote: "In 1949, Russell Lynes defined middlebrow people as follows: These are the men and women who devote themselves professionally to the dissemination of ideas and cultural artifacts and, not in the least incidentally, make a living along the way. They are the cultural do-gooders, and they see their mission clearly and pursue it with determination." I see what you did there, Paul.
He later goes on to state, "This version of middlebrow is a category about which Americans must be profoundly ambivalent, for we both love and resent the idea of education." First- who is "we in this sentence? But yeah, okay, I guess you got me. I want to learn, especially from informed sources, but I don't want to be seen as a person who NEEDS to learn. I both want and resent the level of brow-ness I have yet to attain.
By the end, I felt confident that the article itself was a form of brow-based performance art; multilayered; even calculated. I mean, it performed its function- it expressed its premise and supported it, but there was more. It did so in a manner that revealed itself to the "educated' reader- meaning, one with just enough capacity to grasp most of the the points and understand most of the (many) next-level vocabulary words used- that this reader was (whew!) on at least an upper-brow-adjacent level of taste; because otherwise how could one parse these sentences and connect these Pollockian dots? Well-played, Mr. Christman.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:59 AM on April 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
On closer inspection, every now and then, the author's personal beliefs come through ("Roy Lichtenstein’s comic book paintings are fun, but not nearly as fun as actual comic books") in ways that make me think, hmm, in person, I'd probably find this guy equal parts interesting and an asshole. But I think that's a bit on purpose. If I loved the guy, he'd have to be lowbrow, wouldn't he? And we can't have that.
We see that the article is annotated, even after providing the source in-line. This in itself brought an eye-roll. But so did the quote: "In 1949, Russell Lynes defined middlebrow people as follows: These are the men and women who devote themselves professionally to the dissemination of ideas and cultural artifacts and, not in the least incidentally, make a living along the way. They are the cultural do-gooders, and they see their mission clearly and pursue it with determination." I see what you did there, Paul.
He later goes on to state, "This version of middlebrow is a category about which Americans must be profoundly ambivalent, for we both love and resent the idea of education." First- who is "we in this sentence? But yeah, okay, I guess you got me. I want to learn, especially from informed sources, but I don't want to be seen as a person who NEEDS to learn. I both want and resent the level of brow-ness I have yet to attain.
By the end, I felt confident that the article itself was a form of brow-based performance art; multilayered; even calculated. I mean, it performed its function- it expressed its premise and supported it, but there was more. It did so in a manner that revealed itself to the "educated' reader- meaning, one with just enough capacity to grasp most of the the points and understand most of the (many) next-level vocabulary words used- that this reader was (whew!) on at least an upper-brow-adjacent level of taste; because otherwise how could one parse these sentences and connect these Pollockian dots? Well-played, Mr. Christman.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:59 AM on April 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
Just for the sake of clarity, I don't think that's the author of the essay's take,
No it is not; if I made that unclear, thanks
posted by thelonius at 4:08 AM on April 12, 2021
No it is not; if I made that unclear, thanks
posted by thelonius at 4:08 AM on April 12, 2021
well played, i_love_bananas :) you have raised an important question - i think -: how to write an essay about the stratification of culture without taking this stratification as a starting point and relying on it as a support, even when we (?) assume its obsolescence
posted by sapagan at 4:44 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by sapagan at 4:44 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
We are barely two years removed from Green Book winning Best Picture. Let's not proclaim "Middlebrow" an obsolete term just yet. And it is absolutely a loaded, judgy, value-laden term, but that doesn't make it without value either. In some cases it's going to say a lot more about the critic than the piece, for sure, but it still means something, so I'm going to attempt a couple of definitions to throw into the mix.
1.) Entertainment that aims for both mass appeal and artistic merit, in a way in which the "artistic merit" feels trite, clichéd, or obvious to the critic. Basically, the critic is beyond this and has no use for it, but the same isn't true for the mass audiences who find a lot in it.
2.) "Basic" as applied to entertainment rather than to a person.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:51 AM on April 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
1.) Entertainment that aims for both mass appeal and artistic merit, in a way in which the "artistic merit" feels trite, clichéd, or obvious to the critic. Basically, the critic is beyond this and has no use for it, but the same isn't true for the mass audiences who find a lot in it.
2.) "Basic" as applied to entertainment rather than to a person.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:51 AM on April 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
also, in 1980, umberto eco wrote an essay "culture as show business", which seems relevant here. can't find the essay online, but it's in the collection "travels in hyperreality". basically his point was that culture as (collective) entertainment is nothing new, and neither is it somehow inferior. it rather has to do with the intensity of experiencing culture, its part in life, life's intensity in culture. problems arise when the spectacle becomes empty, separated from life. the audience is asked to invest in spectacles which have nothing to do with them, to which they can have no meaningful - consequential - response. so, it's probably good to ask - why do we (?) take contemporary empty spectacles so seriously, why do we invest in them? what's at stake?
posted by sapagan at 5:04 AM on April 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by sapagan at 5:04 AM on April 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
I think middlebrow culture is or offers a kind of conformism both comforting and stultifying. If middlebrow solidifies community bonds like the article suggests, it also fixates individuals within that community, like cardboard cutouts in a pleasing diorama, and there seems to be something terrible about people reduced to smiling, waxen figurines, merely going through the motions and keeping up appearances.
On the other hand, what's wrong with having a vocabulary of familiar gestures and appearances? Why is it bad to seek shelter from the raging cacophony of life in an empty pleasantry or a common refrain? Surely we don't need to let art & life rattle and unsettle us until we're fully broken? Is the best ar(t)istocrat the one who most fully loses themselves, like this bit about Woolf seems to suggest?
Virginia Woolf depicts an idealized relationship of mutual dependence between high- and lowbrows, menaced only by the “busy-bodies” in the middle. A Woolfian highbrow, who “rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea,” needs the lowbrow, who “rides his body in pursuit of a living at a gallop across life.”
Woolf's patrician sensibility about the inherently justified thrill of pursuit is starkly at odds with the blinkered pragmatism of the middlebrow, its blindness to life beyond the diorama. Where Woolf exhorts "I am Icarus!" the middlebrow asks, "What is your flight plan?" Not because it is ignorant of Icarus, but on the contrary, precisely because of what it does know about Icarus. And it's maddening because it raises the uncomfortable question, is you galloping towards anything in particular, or merely away from it all?
... transgressive art will always be outflanked by reality. That, say, Henry Kissinger possesses a Nobel Peace Prize is a greater offense than anything ever done by any confrontational film director or self-harming performance artist ...
posted by dmh at 5:10 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
On the other hand, what's wrong with having a vocabulary of familiar gestures and appearances? Why is it bad to seek shelter from the raging cacophony of life in an empty pleasantry or a common refrain? Surely we don't need to let art & life rattle and unsettle us until we're fully broken? Is the best ar(t)istocrat the one who most fully loses themselves, like this bit about Woolf seems to suggest?
Virginia Woolf depicts an idealized relationship of mutual dependence between high- and lowbrows, menaced only by the “busy-bodies” in the middle. A Woolfian highbrow, who “rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea,” needs the lowbrow, who “rides his body in pursuit of a living at a gallop across life.”
Woolf's patrician sensibility about the inherently justified thrill of pursuit is starkly at odds with the blinkered pragmatism of the middlebrow, its blindness to life beyond the diorama. Where Woolf exhorts "I am Icarus!" the middlebrow asks, "What is your flight plan?" Not because it is ignorant of Icarus, but on the contrary, precisely because of what it does know about Icarus. And it's maddening because it raises the uncomfortable question, is you galloping towards anything in particular, or merely away from it all?
... transgressive art will always be outflanked by reality. That, say, Henry Kissinger possesses a Nobel Peace Prize is a greater offense than anything ever done by any confrontational film director or self-harming performance artist ...
posted by dmh at 5:10 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Sooo last cent, can we update this accepted myth to Guardians of the Galaxy.
-diverse
-truly heroic in theme
-extends geographic identity
-great tunes
-no one wants to let them to enjoy their tunes or freedom or continued existance
-underdogs
-dance off
posted by sammyo at 5:41 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
-diverse
-truly heroic in theme
-extends geographic identity
-great tunes
-no one wants to let them to enjoy their tunes or freedom or continued existance
-underdogs
-dance off
posted by sammyo at 5:41 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Thanks for sharing this, this is a topic I find myself spending far too much time thinking about. I feel like this line towards the end is really important:
Why have we settled for this strange cultural compromise—lowbrow genres, done with middlebrow earnestness, in revolt against a thoroughly defunded highbrow regime?
This really hits home, and it's a position that I see reflected on Metafilter all the time, particularly when it comes to classical music. No one listens to classical music (or jazz for that matter, and it's amusing that these two genres still serve as a source of contrast in the article even though they pretty much occupy the same cultural position at this stage) anymore, but we still often talk about it as though it has some kind of stranglehold on modern musical culture.
This article also made me realise just how much of an Anglo-American phenomenon this tension between "brows" is - I have spent a lot of time in Germany and these anxieties about where one's cultural interests fit seem much less pronounced.
posted by The_transcontinental at 6:15 AM on April 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
Why have we settled for this strange cultural compromise—lowbrow genres, done with middlebrow earnestness, in revolt against a thoroughly defunded highbrow regime?
This really hits home, and it's a position that I see reflected on Metafilter all the time, particularly when it comes to classical music. No one listens to classical music (or jazz for that matter, and it's amusing that these two genres still serve as a source of contrast in the article even though they pretty much occupy the same cultural position at this stage) anymore, but we still often talk about it as though it has some kind of stranglehold on modern musical culture.
This article also made me realise just how much of an Anglo-American phenomenon this tension between "brows" is - I have spent a lot of time in Germany and these anxieties about where one's cultural interests fit seem much less pronounced.
posted by The_transcontinental at 6:15 AM on April 12, 2021 [7 favorites]
One can do very well with middlebrow work.
posted by jscalzi at 6:20 AM on April 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by jscalzi at 6:20 AM on April 12, 2021 [12 favorites]
I feel like a big part of this is the academy. We have these big educational institutions that we're told are the gateway to the middle class. They devote a lot of resources to studying and extolling mostly highbrow art. "No one listens to classical" but everyone studies it in academia. I identify with what thelonius said about absorbing a lot of churchy piety about literature and art from my education.
posted by little onion at 6:27 AM on April 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by little onion at 6:27 AM on April 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
On the other hand, what's wrong with having a vocabulary of familiar gestures and appearances? Why is it bad to seek shelter from the raging cacophony of life in an empty pleasantry or a common refrain?
If the things you find comforting and pleasant don't match the things the rest of your community finds comforting and pleasant, you end up feeling uncomfortable and everyone else looks at you weird.
(Exhibit A: My entire adolescence in my small town.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:31 AM on April 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
If the things you find comforting and pleasant don't match the things the rest of your community finds comforting and pleasant, you end up feeling uncomfortable and everyone else looks at you weird.
(Exhibit A: My entire adolescence in my small town.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:31 AM on April 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
No one listens to classical music (or jazz for that matter...)
I am that no one! I'm also someone who has always been too prone to think of artworks in brow-position terms and I should cut that out as it's about as useful as rating something with one, two or three stars.
The class:brow relationship surely isn't neatly clear-cut : QE2, for example, still for now at the apex of the UK's class system, reportedly has Dick Francis & Georgette Heyer as her favourite authors, neither one highbrow.
Is there such a thing as an 'intelligentsia' nowadays? Are they (we??) the ones with the raised-est brows?
The article is food for thought: many thanks for posting it, gusottertrout.
posted by misteraitch at 6:32 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
I am that no one! I'm also someone who has always been too prone to think of artworks in brow-position terms and I should cut that out as it's about as useful as rating something with one, two or three stars.
The class:brow relationship surely isn't neatly clear-cut : QE2, for example, still for now at the apex of the UK's class system, reportedly has Dick Francis & Georgette Heyer as her favourite authors, neither one highbrow.
Is there such a thing as an 'intelligentsia' nowadays? Are they (we??) the ones with the raised-est brows?
The article is food for thought: many thanks for posting it, gusottertrout.
posted by misteraitch at 6:32 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
little onion, I completely agree with you and it's why I mentioned jazz, which has been, in most North American university music programs, taught alongside classical music for decades. They now occupy the same institutional position but we talk about these genres as though the "classical" people are looking down on the "jazz" musicians.
I should also note that, at least here in Canada, there are places like Humber College in Toronto that offer degree programs in contemporary music and the music business.
posted by The_transcontinental at 6:47 AM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
I should also note that, at least here in Canada, there are places like Humber College in Toronto that offer degree programs in contemporary music and the music business.
posted by The_transcontinental at 6:47 AM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
^ That being said, I have a musician friend in New York who tells me you can get paid well for classical gigs in the area but virtually nothing for jazz. So I think there is still a lot more institutional scaffolding for classical in New York / New England.
posted by little onion at 6:50 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by little onion at 6:50 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
In some cases it's going to say a lot more about the critic than the piece
I would say that in almost all cases it's more about the critic, and specifically the critic in relation to someone else or a group, real or notional, than it is about the actual art or genre in question. "Middlebrow" is usually used by people with a palpable horror of being considered middlebrow themselves, and who want to make it very clear who the real middlebrow people are. It's not just about the specific type of entertainment being consumed, but whether or not, you know, you really get it. (Thomas Harris, whose books are determinedly middlebrow, is best known for creating the highbrow serial killer Hannibal Lecter, who makes a point in one of the books of sneering at Jack Crawford quoting Marcus Aurelius in a commencement speech; you see, if Crawford really understood Aurelius...) For many years, my default radio stations play mostly classical and jazz--it's literally what I woke up to this morning--but I like to listen to it, not overanalyze it, so that would disqualify me from being a real classical snob or jazzbo.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:55 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
I would say that in almost all cases it's more about the critic, and specifically the critic in relation to someone else or a group, real or notional, than it is about the actual art or genre in question. "Middlebrow" is usually used by people with a palpable horror of being considered middlebrow themselves, and who want to make it very clear who the real middlebrow people are. It's not just about the specific type of entertainment being consumed, but whether or not, you know, you really get it. (Thomas Harris, whose books are determinedly middlebrow, is best known for creating the highbrow serial killer Hannibal Lecter, who makes a point in one of the books of sneering at Jack Crawford quoting Marcus Aurelius in a commencement speech; you see, if Crawford really understood Aurelius...) For many years, my default radio stations play mostly classical and jazz--it's literally what I woke up to this morning--but I like to listen to it, not overanalyze it, so that would disqualify me from being a real classical snob or jazzbo.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:55 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Our local easy listening radio station in the 60s and 70s, WJIM-FM, had the slogan "Music For The Middlebrow".
posted by rfs at 6:57 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by rfs at 6:57 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
It is still "if you knew more you would not enjoy this" and, well, no.
Speaking only for myself, I enjoyed many movies in the 80s and 90s that, now that I know more, I definitely do not enjoy anymore.
posted by mhoye at 7:07 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Speaking only for myself, I enjoyed many movies in the 80s and 90s that, now that I know more, I definitely do not enjoy anymore.
posted by mhoye at 7:07 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Is there such a thing as an 'intelligentsia' nowadays? Are they (we??) the ones with the raised-est brows?
Thought: American "upper-brow" is in retreat from the surge of populism post-millennium, and has nearly been extinguished by its anti-intellectual push. Snooty is one of the worst modern American insults.
Being characterized as an "elite" is a swift ticket these days to cultural irrelevance.
It is no longer something to strive for as it was mid-twentieth century, but something to be denied and disavowed.
posted by bonehead at 7:58 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Thought: American "upper-brow" is in retreat from the surge of populism post-millennium, and has nearly been extinguished by its anti-intellectual push. Snooty is one of the worst modern American insults.
Being characterized as an "elite" is a swift ticket these days to cultural irrelevance.
It is no longer something to strive for as it was mid-twentieth century, but something to be denied and disavowed.
posted by bonehead at 7:58 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
The essay is very strange to me, in that it seems ahistorical--there was a whole bunch of conversation around all this in the 1990s/2000s, but the term then was 'nobrow' rather than 'middlebrow,' and the conversation was mostly about how we were moving beyond any high/low framing (or wailing and gnashing teeth that 'high' culture was losing its authority), and that talking about culture and creative works in any version of a high/low framing was increasingly anachronistic.
In fact, I haven't really seen much along the lines of this argument for the past couple of decades at all, so this essay is kind of quaint and very 20th-century in its intellectual framing, and I work in academia (where out-of-date cultural framings go to never die), in music, no less--I haven't heard or read an argument or defense about any music that attempts an objective justification of its intrinsic merit in years, even in texts wholly about, e.g., western concert ("classical") music. Musicologists not only no longer advocate the 'great person' mythos of artistic creation, they are actively debunking it in many texts. They, along with music theorists, are also currently working to create decolonized approaches to the subject matter, so my expectation is that music education and music departments in universities will be very, very different a decade from now...at least, I hope so, because I'm part of the reform movement. And we stopped talking about Great Music a long time ago (thank goodness, and I say 'we' meaning musicians who are paying attention; there are dinosaurs everywhere, unchanged since their youth, but in my field as everywhere else we just work around them, like a river changing course).
Looking back at the essay again, the first sentence would have made me stop reading, had it not been thoughtfully posted here: "It is odd that anyone still uses the word middlebrow." My reaction to that is: citation needed. Who is still using this word, and is it used enough that we need an essay to unpack its contemporary consequence? Just seems like a reflection in need of a cause, because no matter what we think of our cultural behavior or how we label it, the past 20 years have very clearly pushed us beyond any meaningful framing of high/low/middle--we're fully postbrow now (and The Simpsons is the apotheosis of that cultural shift, IMO).
The author's anachronistic framing is most evident in the conclusion: "We could, having done all this, settle down to the task of talking with each other about the art we love in a way that attends to the specificity of that art." This is an aesthetic view of art, in music & music education we call this MEAE, or Music Education as Aesthetic Education, and it's a product specifically of the late 1960s/1970s, and is a consumptive, passive view of creative engagement, i.e., that "music appreciation" is what's needed in education rather than just actually making music. This view was thoroughly debunked and routed out of our field in the late 1990s, and we now speak in terms of a praxial philosophy, i.e., that music is a verb, it's something that human beings do--and we do it collaboratively, which is also important!--rather than a thing, a noun, that we consume. So music education should be the active experience of making music with other people (a praxis) rather than a passive experience of listening to music with other people (an aesthetic one). So in the field, we are coming to view music more and more as a verb rather than a noun, particularly in music education, where we can measure lots of outcomes, and find that developing human beings benefit much more from a musical praxis than a musical appreciation.
This whole framing of 'how should we aesthetically enjoy something properly' or 'how should we culturally position Really Good Stuff' is just so meaningless to where culture and practice is now, that my brain is mad at me for thinking about it all enough even to write this comment.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:59 AM on April 12, 2021 [25 favorites]
In fact, I haven't really seen much along the lines of this argument for the past couple of decades at all, so this essay is kind of quaint and very 20th-century in its intellectual framing, and I work in academia (where out-of-date cultural framings go to never die), in music, no less--I haven't heard or read an argument or defense about any music that attempts an objective justification of its intrinsic merit in years, even in texts wholly about, e.g., western concert ("classical") music. Musicologists not only no longer advocate the 'great person' mythos of artistic creation, they are actively debunking it in many texts. They, along with music theorists, are also currently working to create decolonized approaches to the subject matter, so my expectation is that music education and music departments in universities will be very, very different a decade from now...at least, I hope so, because I'm part of the reform movement. And we stopped talking about Great Music a long time ago (thank goodness, and I say 'we' meaning musicians who are paying attention; there are dinosaurs everywhere, unchanged since their youth, but in my field as everywhere else we just work around them, like a river changing course).
Looking back at the essay again, the first sentence would have made me stop reading, had it not been thoughtfully posted here: "It is odd that anyone still uses the word middlebrow." My reaction to that is: citation needed. Who is still using this word, and is it used enough that we need an essay to unpack its contemporary consequence? Just seems like a reflection in need of a cause, because no matter what we think of our cultural behavior or how we label it, the past 20 years have very clearly pushed us beyond any meaningful framing of high/low/middle--we're fully postbrow now (and The Simpsons is the apotheosis of that cultural shift, IMO).
The author's anachronistic framing is most evident in the conclusion: "We could, having done all this, settle down to the task of talking with each other about the art we love in a way that attends to the specificity of that art." This is an aesthetic view of art, in music & music education we call this MEAE, or Music Education as Aesthetic Education, and it's a product specifically of the late 1960s/1970s, and is a consumptive, passive view of creative engagement, i.e., that "music appreciation" is what's needed in education rather than just actually making music. This view was thoroughly debunked and routed out of our field in the late 1990s, and we now speak in terms of a praxial philosophy, i.e., that music is a verb, it's something that human beings do--and we do it collaboratively, which is also important!--rather than a thing, a noun, that we consume. So music education should be the active experience of making music with other people (a praxis) rather than a passive experience of listening to music with other people (an aesthetic one). So in the field, we are coming to view music more and more as a verb rather than a noun, particularly in music education, where we can measure lots of outcomes, and find that developing human beings benefit much more from a musical praxis than a musical appreciation.
This whole framing of 'how should we aesthetically enjoy something properly' or 'how should we culturally position Really Good Stuff' is just so meaningless to where culture and practice is now, that my brain is mad at me for thinking about it all enough even to write this comment.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:59 AM on April 12, 2021 [25 favorites]
I don't exactly get what the author's point is, but he has some killer individual points, like:
"That, say, Henry Kissinger possesses a Nobel Peace Prize is a greater offense than anything ever done by any confrontational film director or self-harming performance artist. Art can never outrage as life does."
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:06 AM on April 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
"That, say, Henry Kissinger possesses a Nobel Peace Prize is a greater offense than anything ever done by any confrontational film director or self-harming performance artist. Art can never outrage as life does."
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:06 AM on April 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
This reminds me of a friend, now a professor of comparative literature, who was once offered a copy of Harper's by another friend who'd finished with it. He acted genuinely insulted and proclaimed that he didn't "go for that middlebrow shit," which he defined with complete sincerity as "anything between academic journals and, like, Hustler."
posted by 7segment at 8:07 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by 7segment at 8:07 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Agree, LooseFilter- on re-read (and thanks to your comment) I think the greatest trick the author ever played in this article was to wholly set up his own premise in that first line, and then so overwhelm us with content that it blew right past.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:08 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:08 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
7segment, it's funny that your friend used Harper's as an example of "middlebrow", given that the Russell Lynes article that the OP discusses appeared in a 1949 issue of Harper's.
His attitude also reminds me a lot of Joshua Glenn's, who actually runs a site called Hilobrow.
As to whether or not these distinctions are anachronistic, I agree that we don't talk about them in this way very often anymore, but a ton of our discursive practices betray a legacy of this mode of thinking, for better or worse.
posted by The_transcontinental at 8:23 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
His attitude also reminds me a lot of Joshua Glenn's, who actually runs a site called Hilobrow.
As to whether or not these distinctions are anachronistic, I agree that we don't talk about them in this way very often anymore, but a ton of our discursive practices betray a legacy of this mode of thinking, for better or worse.
posted by The_transcontinental at 8:23 AM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
His language might be slightly elevated but he still walks around in the summer time saying, "how about this heat?"
posted by klanawa at 8:26 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by klanawa at 8:26 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
the greatest trick the author ever played in this article was to wholly set up his own premise in that first line, and then so overwhelm us with content that it blew right past.
The callout of that one Rian Johnson movie is really telling.
Game recognize game.
posted by StarkRoads at 8:42 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
The callout of that one Rian Johnson movie is really telling.
Game recognize game.
posted by StarkRoads at 8:42 AM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
I thought it was interesting to note the several references to The Sopranos as highbrow since I would think of that as the perfect example of middlebrow. On the one hand it's a tv show about the mob with all the kind of titillation viewers want but also there's this element of "HELLO I AM AN ART ABOUT AMERICA" which it has in common with The Wire and Breaking Bad.
This article also made me realise just how much of an Anglo-American phenomenon this tension between "brows" is - I have spent a lot of time in Germany and these anxieties about where one's cultural interests fit seem much less pronounced.
I've noted this as well and I think it has to do with relatively open class systems which create the possibility of climbing into another social class. The same thing also drives books on manners which are also distinctively products of 19th century onwards Anglo-American society. England may have an actual titled aristocracy but unlike the fossilised aristocracy of Germany or the abolished-haha-now-we-all-go-to-Science-Po system in France, many of the titles were created in the 19th century for industrialists. In other words, social mobility into the "real" upper class was possible if you had the money... and the manners.
See also: The class:brow relationship surely isn't neatly clear-cut : QE2, for example, still for now at the apex of the UK's class system, reportedly has Dick Francis & Georgette Heyer as her favourite authors, neither one highbrow.
The British upper class has a small number of people with highbrow interests, a very much larger number whose tastes run to horses, outdoor sports, and popular entertainment, and very little middlebrow. Who would they be status signalling to?
Middle-brow to me is about status-anxiety. So the New Yorker, Harpers, prestige TV, these are all classic middlebrow.
Why have we settled for this strange cultural compromise—lowbrow genres, done with middlebrow earnestness, in revolt against a thoroughly defunded highbrow regime?
It's a weird kind of revolt by what passes for an elite against a straw-elite which doesn't actually exist. "Actually, rap has just as much cultural value as Homer", says the NYRB reviewer, rolling up his sleeves for a fight with the snobs that defend "highbrow" culture. Except that the chair is empty. All his colleagues, his editors, his peers, and his readers agree with him already and have for his entire adult life.
There is no tweedy professorial establishment that disagrees with him, the last professors who he might have argued with are long-dead and emeritus professors now long retired agree with his point. They also remember looking to fight with a completely theoretical "establishment" which was moribund even then.
posted by atrazine at 9:07 AM on April 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
This article also made me realise just how much of an Anglo-American phenomenon this tension between "brows" is - I have spent a lot of time in Germany and these anxieties about where one's cultural interests fit seem much less pronounced.
I've noted this as well and I think it has to do with relatively open class systems which create the possibility of climbing into another social class. The same thing also drives books on manners which are also distinctively products of 19th century onwards Anglo-American society. England may have an actual titled aristocracy but unlike the fossilised aristocracy of Germany or the abolished-haha-now-we-all-go-to-Science-Po system in France, many of the titles were created in the 19th century for industrialists. In other words, social mobility into the "real" upper class was possible if you had the money... and the manners.
See also: The class:brow relationship surely isn't neatly clear-cut : QE2, for example, still for now at the apex of the UK's class system, reportedly has Dick Francis & Georgette Heyer as her favourite authors, neither one highbrow.
The British upper class has a small number of people with highbrow interests, a very much larger number whose tastes run to horses, outdoor sports, and popular entertainment, and very little middlebrow. Who would they be status signalling to?
Middle-brow to me is about status-anxiety. So the New Yorker, Harpers, prestige TV, these are all classic middlebrow.
Why have we settled for this strange cultural compromise—lowbrow genres, done with middlebrow earnestness, in revolt against a thoroughly defunded highbrow regime?
It's a weird kind of revolt by what passes for an elite against a straw-elite which doesn't actually exist. "Actually, rap has just as much cultural value as Homer", says the NYRB reviewer, rolling up his sleeves for a fight with the snobs that defend "highbrow" culture. Except that the chair is empty. All his colleagues, his editors, his peers, and his readers agree with him already and have for his entire adult life.
There is no tweedy professorial establishment that disagrees with him, the last professors who he might have argued with are long-dead and emeritus professors now long retired agree with his point. They also remember looking to fight with a completely theoretical "establishment" which was moribund even then.
posted by atrazine at 9:07 AM on April 12, 2021 [16 favorites]
QE2, for example, still for now at the apex of the UK's class system, reportedly has Dick Francis & Georgette Heyer as her favourite authors, neither one highbrow.
Anything is permissible to the high-brow, so long as it can be couched in irony.
posted by klanawa at 9:11 AM on April 12, 2021
Anything is permissible to the high-brow, so long as it can be couched in irony.
posted by klanawa at 9:11 AM on April 12, 2021
My reaction to that is: citation needed. Who is still using this word, and is it used enough that we need an essay to unpack its contemporary consequence?
He cites half a dozen people still using this word in the article: Daisley, Hassenger, Hu, Mani, Bastién, Driscoll. It seemed to me that the genesis of this piece was in him encountering a bunch of people still using the word, and it seeming anachronistic to him, too. I think you're kind of reiterating his point (or part of it).
posted by demonic winged headgear at 9:22 AM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
He cites half a dozen people still using this word in the article: Daisley, Hassenger, Hu, Mani, Bastién, Driscoll. It seemed to me that the genesis of this piece was in him encountering a bunch of people still using the word, and it seeming anachronistic to him, too. I think you're kind of reiterating his point (or part of it).
posted by demonic winged headgear at 9:22 AM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
That being said, I have a musician friend in New York who tells me you can get paid well for classical gigs in the area but virtually nothing for jazz. So I think there is still a lot more institutional scaffolding for classical in New York / New England.
"classical gigs" probably means playing harp or classical guitar or even a string quartet at expensive wedding receptions
posted by thelonius at 10:29 AM on April 12, 2021
"classical gigs" probably means playing harp or classical guitar or even a string quartet at expensive wedding receptions
posted by thelonius at 10:29 AM on April 12, 2021
(Also Nutcracker performances and church gigs, especially deep-pocketed churches around Christmas and Easter. I have brass-player friends who earn half or more of their annual incomes playing Nutcracker performances and church gigs from mid-November through Christmas Day. Pre-pandemic, of course. Now? We'll be lucky to retain half of the professional performing artists we had pre-pandemic.)
posted by LooseFilter at 10:39 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by LooseFilter at 10:39 AM on April 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Interesting essay; speculation about how mass culture and class intersect is fascinating and subject to interpretation, so the essayist kinda knows that he's wrestling with a chimera, and he has a bit of a sense of humour about it.
posted by ovvl at 10:53 AM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by ovvl at 10:53 AM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
a wealthy, famous author of books for teenage girls engaged in a public feud with a woman student who had, in a college newspaper, described that author’s books, accurately, as books for teenage girls
"Woman student"? Better than "co-ed," I suppose.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:00 PM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
"Woman student"? Better than "co-ed," I suppose.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:00 PM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
"Woman student"? Better than "co-ed," I suppose.
Be grateful it wasn't "undergraduette".
posted by BWA at 1:06 PM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Be grateful it wasn't "undergraduette".
posted by BWA at 1:06 PM on April 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
i mean sure middlesbrow got relegated a couple of seasons ago but they’re still in the championship that’s not really death
posted by Huffy Puffy at 1:50 PM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Huffy Puffy at 1:50 PM on April 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Having lost the economic battle to economic and political elites, we celebrate, again and again, our victory over the mostly-imaginary cultural elite that would scorn us for watching 90 Day Fiancé.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Also Navelgazer's first comment seems to me the obvious one that the essay dances around but never quite reaches:
1.) Entertainment that aims for both mass appeal and artistic merit, in a way in which the "artistic merit" feels trite, clichéd, or obvious to the critic. Basically, the critic is beyond this and has no use for it, but the same isn't true for the mass audiences who find a lot in it.
posted by blue shadows at 11:35 PM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Couldn't have said it better myself. Also Navelgazer's first comment seems to me the obvious one that the essay dances around but never quite reaches:
1.) Entertainment that aims for both mass appeal and artistic merit, in a way in which the "artistic merit" feels trite, clichéd, or obvious to the critic. Basically, the critic is beyond this and has no use for it, but the same isn't true for the mass audiences who find a lot in it.
posted by blue shadows at 11:35 PM on April 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
I couldn't even get through the article.
I like what I like.
posted by markbrendanawitzmissesus at 6:40 AM on April 13, 2021
I like what I like.
posted by markbrendanawitzmissesus at 6:40 AM on April 13, 2021
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I'd go with Road House, but it's not my essay.
I have lost more and more patience with the sort of almost churchy piety about Literature and Art that, I guess, had its high-water mark in midcentury academia. It's hard to shake the suspicion, reading the quoted denunciations of the middlebrow, that what is being objected to isn't that people like the wrong kinds of art, or that they like the right kinds but not in the right way (straying off the path to indulge in "life" sometimes, I suppose), but that they are not the right sort of people.
posted by thelonius at 1:45 AM on April 12, 2021 [9 favorites]