I agree "high culture" doesn't have to be dour, but it's the way you tend to present it, rather agressively too, I might add. (also, I'd be wary of equating "adult culture" and "high culture" even if, or particularly because, I'm not entirely sure what anyone means by those terms).
And while distinctions and details are obviously necessary to discussion, I think high and low culture are crappy, artificial and ultimately meaningless distinctions, because we pretend they are absolutes, when a variety of artforms, subject matters and producers of entertainments have been categorized at different ends of that spectrum at different times, even as the material has not changed.
Opera, which we generally consider to be high culture these days, was often the trash of its time. When Puccini wrote Boheme it was a scandal that he would compose an opera about ordinary people, leading ordinary and tawdry lives. As came up in a discussion with my roommate earlier, "don't you know Mimi was a ho?" And Puccini is far from an isolated case of many operas being the trash of its day, it's just what I happen to know about with any detail right now, and something sykii could in particular speak to more knowledgeably. The bawdiness of Shakespeare is another excellent example, especially if you're at all well-read on the nature of the theatre going experience of the time.
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Re: Bait?
Date: 2003-07-06 03:45 pm (UTC)And while distinctions and details are obviously necessary to discussion, I think high and low culture are crappy, artificial and ultimately meaningless distinctions, because we pretend they are absolutes, when a variety of artforms, subject matters and producers of entertainments have been categorized at different ends of that spectrum at different times, even as the material has not changed.
Opera, which we generally consider to be high culture these days, was often the trash of its time. When Puccini wrote Boheme it was a scandal that he would compose an opera about ordinary people, leading ordinary and tawdry lives. As came up in a discussion with my roommate earlier, "don't you know Mimi was a ho?" And Puccini is far from an isolated case of many operas being the trash of its day, it's just what I happen to know about with any detail right now, and something