Saturday, April 10, 2021

"What You Can't Accomplish in Life, You Repeatedly Do in Symbolism, Until It Becomes a Neurosis"

"Why have we settled for this strange cultural compromise—lowbrow genres, done with middlebrow earnestness, in revolt against a thoroughly defunded highbrow regime? Perhaps it is because we have accepted the idea of the democratization of culture—we have accepted, rightly, that, say, opera is not inherently worthier than jazz, that superhero comics are not inherently dumber than Greek mythology, that ancient epic poetry is not automatically loftier than rap (with which, indeed, it shares some features)—without accomplishing democracy. I mean this in a dully straightforward way: We are not all equally in control of our lives, and we are afraid of what becoming so would entail, of the costs of democracy, of the mess of it. We are divided by class, race, and gender, and united only in being the objects of a ceaseless corporate effort to accomplish our complete commodification. 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."

Phil Christman at The Hedgehog Review discusses the "Strange Undeath of Middlebrow."

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