high culture/low culture

[Diana York Blaine]

Perhaps the fellow who suggested that Speilberg and Tarantino really *do*
entertain some people has a point.  I'm reading too much
nineteenth-century *science* right now to be entirely comfortably with
railing about the unevolved masses.  BUT anther version of this argument
might involve the way corporate movie-makers are the ones doing the
condescending--they refuse to put their considerable ad budgets behind
anything that doesn't seem like easily-digestible and
recognizably-stereotyped *pulp.*  Given that most people make decisions
about what to see based on said advertising, why blame them for viewing
what they're expected to view and enjoying what they're expected to enjoy?
The pity is any lack of willingness to expand these expectations.  Too
many of my students tell me it's *human nature* (a word I personally
cringe to hear invoked, including on this list as it was recently in terms
of prejudice) to want to see blood and gore at the flicks.  Hmmm...How do
they know?  It's that "personal opinion" phantom again--after Darwin and
Spencer declared a lack of individualism to be the sign of the enevolved
(that would be all women and native "savages" of course), we have been
coerced into insisting that we are making up our own minds about
everything.  That's patent bullshit, but like most patent bullshit it has
an extraordinary appeal and shelf-life.

Let's admit most of our crappy tastes are learned (this includes the
dreaded Babs and her howlingly sexist "Mirror Has Two Faces).  There's no
shame in this.  The shame is refusing to believe that "non-academics"
_could_ have a sensibility greater than Spielbergian and refusing to
market anything better to "them."  (I'm aware of the elitist overtones of
this post but am attempting to construct a position more complicated than
either "unwashed masses have no minds" or "there's no accounting for
taste."  There most certainly IS!)

Diana (like John M., also too busy to breathe. Underpaid academics unite!)