It is very easy to respond stereotypically to the question of the genius’s connection, or rather disconnect, to the very notion of mass culture. Genius and commercial success? Give me a break!
In fact, nothing here is that simple. First, let us specify mass culture as a product of the modern democratic society. The culture of yesteryear was predominantly elitist, as the only persons who could afford “culture” were the social “elite,” such as the royalty, the nobility, the financially privileged, etc. Needless to say, their culture was not necessarily aesthetically unimpeachable, but somehow we have managed to make the point that, at least technically speaking, theirs was not a “mass” culture.
Thus genius in the service of the old nobility, or even in the service of the nouveau riches of his time, was not engaged in aesthetic prostitution, although he could occasionally achieve a modest level of commercial success: not as a goal per se, but as a pleasant down-to-earth consequence of his heavenly effort.
Which leaves us with the proper understanding of mass culture as something relatively cheap, and enjoying a broad popular appeal.
There are two kinds of situations we can distinguish here. A genius produces an elitist work that ignites the public spirit and is appropriated by the masses as a rightful part of their culture. Financial success is more or less reassured, but once again not as a result of the genius’s pandering to the public taste, but rather as an unintended outcome of his creative effort.
The discussion above has still so far failed to raise the most challenging point: can there be a genius creator out there who creates specifically for the needs of mass culture, yet without pandering to its basest tastes?
Cinematography is a good example of this. (Do the names Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Bondarchuk, etc. ring a bell?...) Comrade Stalin used to value cinema for its “mass” appeal, yet he was never a champion of low taste. The classic Soviet films made on his specific instructions and under his close supervision have all been masterpieces of elitism, and their creators universally recognized geniuses: script writers, directors, actors, music composers, etc.
If the Soviet example above is not enough, the plethora of classic Hollywood movies, created and acted out by some bona fide geniuses, should provide some valuable extra corroboration. (Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, Stanley Kubrick, Blake Edwards, etc.)
(Even though the above examples are plenty, I cannot omit the constellations of others, such as Antonioni, Fellini, Kurosawa, Riefenstahl, Wajda, the inimitable Britishers Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock, etc., etc. from this consideration. Of many geniuses of cinematography whom I have failed to mention here, I beg their pardon.)
In fact, nothing here is that simple. First, let us specify mass culture as a product of the modern democratic society. The culture of yesteryear was predominantly elitist, as the only persons who could afford “culture” were the social “elite,” such as the royalty, the nobility, the financially privileged, etc. Needless to say, their culture was not necessarily aesthetically unimpeachable, but somehow we have managed to make the point that, at least technically speaking, theirs was not a “mass” culture.
Thus genius in the service of the old nobility, or even in the service of the nouveau riches of his time, was not engaged in aesthetic prostitution, although he could occasionally achieve a modest level of commercial success: not as a goal per se, but as a pleasant down-to-earth consequence of his heavenly effort.
Which leaves us with the proper understanding of mass culture as something relatively cheap, and enjoying a broad popular appeal.
There are two kinds of situations we can distinguish here. A genius produces an elitist work that ignites the public spirit and is appropriated by the masses as a rightful part of their culture. Financial success is more or less reassured, but once again not as a result of the genius’s pandering to the public taste, but rather as an unintended outcome of his creative effort.
The discussion above has still so far failed to raise the most challenging point: can there be a genius creator out there who creates specifically for the needs of mass culture, yet without pandering to its basest tastes?
Cinematography is a good example of this. (Do the names Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Bondarchuk, etc. ring a bell?...) Comrade Stalin used to value cinema for its “mass” appeal, yet he was never a champion of low taste. The classic Soviet films made on his specific instructions and under his close supervision have all been masterpieces of elitism, and their creators universally recognized geniuses: script writers, directors, actors, music composers, etc.
If the Soviet example above is not enough, the plethora of classic Hollywood movies, created and acted out by some bona fide geniuses, should provide some valuable extra corroboration. (Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, Stanley Kubrick, Blake Edwards, etc.)
(Even though the above examples are plenty, I cannot omit the constellations of others, such as Antonioni, Fellini, Kurosawa, Riefenstahl, Wajda, the inimitable Britishers Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock, etc., etc. from this consideration. Of many geniuses of cinematography whom I have failed to mention here, I beg their pardon.)
After which we can safely “jump” to the following conclusion. Yes, geniuses of mass culture do exist. They are those who successfully pull the public taste up towards the pinnacles of aesthetic elitism, rather than go along with it, satisfying it with ever more “new and improved” shocks of sleaze and depravity.
No comments:
Post a Comment