Pop versus High Culture

[Paul Murphy]

Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt writes:

>I was saying that the proles' (or preterite) culture was less and less
>vital, alive, a refuge from Their stamped and approved and dead
>culture, since the preterite are now themselves, with the help of the
>tube, configured, 'made over' in Their image, and so is most of the
>garbage they churn out in response to their, ahh, situation. So what
>appears as cultural democracy in action, a long-awaited conflation of the
>high/low devide, takes on much more sinister implications. The gun
>behind the moving image is now hidden, and thus more effective.
>

If I'm not confounded somewhere, you're rehashing Horkheimer & Adorno's
(largely Adorno's) chapter on Kulturindustrie from _Dialectic of
Enlightenment_, whose main line of argument still holds true (for me)
50-years on ... Not that I'm accusing you of anything, your argument is
well-put ... Just that Adorno always left some space for the madcap, the
zany: e.g., the Marx Brothers, and I think TRP's pop-culture riffs are just
as comedic as they are critical. Cf. the punk band in VL -- "Fuck your ma,
fuck your pop, Hey I'm a cop." Puerile comedy to be sure, but the puerile
can be a counter to Their spirit of gravity ...
Cheers,
Paul