Court of Reason; 4; The Mass Media: Do They Debase Culture

music National Educational Television presents Court of Reason.

An exciting member, Robert K. Merton, chairman of the Department of Sociology, Columbia University. At issue, the mass media, do they debate culture? For years now, some observers have been affirming and others have been denying that the mass media erode the standards of traditional culture. Two advocates who are prepared to assume that their opposed views can be freely aired on Channel 13 are Dwight McDonald, film critic for Esquire, staff writer for the New Yorker,

and author of the recently published book against the American grain. And Gilbert Selldes, dean of the Annemburg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of the Public Arts. Visiting members of the court who will examine arguments with me are Daniel Bell, Professor of Sociology at Columbia, and editor of the new book, The Radical Right, and William Phillips, literary critic, co-editor of partisan review, and Professor of English at New York University. The two advocates will begin by briefly stating their opposed points of view, and then our more general discussion will begin. First, we'll be hearing from Dwight McDonald.

Well, I think that the mass media do the base culture. First, a little historical background. Something new in cultural history has happened in the last two centuries. Up to about 1750, there was only one culture, which is the kind that you read about in textbooks. And this was the consign of a minority, and I lead, if you like, and it excluded the masses who were poor, ignorant, and powerless. With the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, the masses for the first time began to come on to the stage of history. Mass industry, implied mass consumption of cultural as well as material products. And democracy for the first time gave the masses something to say in what happens politically. Popular education in the 19th century completed the process. We now have a new kind of culture, a second kind of culture, which I think is a spurious and ersatz culture, which is manufactured for the mass market, and which I call the mass culture a mass cult. Interesting enough, the first signs of this historically came in England about the same time the Industrial Revolution began in the middle of the 18th century.

And that was the rise of Grubb Street, which was an assembly of hacks, really, who produced cultural goods for the market. Alexander Pope, at the very beginning of this process, wrote a prophetic poem called The Dunciad, and it was an attack on this whole vulgarization and massification of culture. He ends with an apostrophe to the goddess of dullness, which is what roughly is the goddess of the mass media today. She comes, the sabre-throne behold of night primeval and of chaos old. Before her fancy is gilded, clouds decay, and all its varying rainbows die away. With shouts in vain its momentary fires, the meteor drops and inner flash expires.

Thus at her felt approach in secret night, art goes out and all is night. Low thy dread empire chaos is restored, light dies before thy uncreating word. Thy hand, great anarch, let's the curtain fall, and universal darkness buries all. This is a good description of what I think the mass media. Almost everybody except a Madison Avenue type now agrees there's a lot more with mass culture, even my opponent Mr. Saldi agrees with this. Question is what to do about it. I see two possible solutions. One of them is an attempt to raise a level of mass taste to integrate the masses into high culture. This seems to me not realistic. The second is an attempt to define more clearly two separate cultures. One for the masses, the other for the minority. Those peculiar people who are really interested in arts and letters. I favor the second for practical pragmatic reasons.

Historically culture has always been a minority business. Up to the 18th century the mass of the population played no part in culture. Excluded from this as much as they were from politics. Nor did the rise of popular markets in popular education in the 19th century change things really. The great majority were fed the kind of fake cultural products that they are now. But generally this isn't really even. It's not only a past historical question and it's not a class question. It seems to me that in general. The great majority of human beings throughout history I'd make a rather racist statement here. Have never been really interested in what I call high culture or serious culture. I think most of the noble sentence in the Renaissance, which was a great cultural period,

were much more interested in hunting and making war than they were in doing something about culture. In my class at Yale, very few of my classmates ever went to the library when they went forced to. I think that in the meeting we were now engaged on, namely television, the debate in effects of mass media are especially clear. In fact, what's happened in television is that since the middle 50s, the middle 50s were the golden age of television. And what's happened since then is that the competition of mass programs, of mass aimed programs, has knocked out all these live dramatic programs and so on. That Paddy Chayevsky, so on, that made what they call the golden age of television.

And television has been getting worse in ways with the exception of a few stations like the present one ever since. Well, I have to stop now. So Dwight tells part of your case, as you see it, for you go on, why don't we hear from Gilbert Seldas? In one, to my absolutely essential aspect of our culture, the mass media do tend to debase the material they use and to make it almost impossible for people to comprehend its true nature and its significance. That aspect of our culture is science. The mass media use science for entertainment and excitement, as if the only response to the Einstein theory of relativity would be G-Wiz. The mass media have not yet found the means to convey the significance of science

as a whole and of certain sciences in particular. Now, if science is not considered part of our culture, I am disqualified for the rest of this evening. If we have to think of it only as arts and letters, then I am stuck with an idea which I proposed about 40 years ago, which led me then and leads me now almost almost to the proposition that culture debases the popular arts. The base of that idea or principle is that apart from true genuine folk art, which isn't exactly what we are getting nowadays, there are three kinds of art. There's the eternal classical, the fine arts, which transcend time and transcend national boundaries, and at the other extreme, because there's a middle, there are the popular arts, which are made to be enjoyed only for a brief time, and respond more to local than to all human conditions.

They respond to certain national differences as a popular song and England or France is not necessarily a popular song in the United States, as American vote will differ enormously from the English musical. But between these two kinds of art, there was something else which I disliked so much that I couldn't even find a name for it. The French forebomb came near it and I used it. That is the forgery of the real thing, or the only word I found in English that approximated what I wanted was the bogus. Perhaps Miss McDonald's, Kitch or Mitt Pelt are the modern versions I wouldn't be sure. Now since that time, I have to see, and I have to concede that the popular arts, they have turned into the mass media, and they have lost their charming innocence. But I would say this, that it is certainly not the mass media, that create the objects which are chiefly the objects of Miss McDonald's contempt,

such as the new translation of the Bible, the great books with their centopicon, the new dictionary, all of which he has attacked with brilliance and venom, I think. All of these are the works of dedicated scholars. It is only the product that they give out, the books that they prepare that are really handed to us by mass production. Now those who hold, the mass media, the base art, have a great tradition behind them. The invention of movable type was denounced for precisely the same reasons for people who now denounced television, the movies, because they felt that the authority of great thought and great art was for them alone. Doctors still occasionally write prescriptions in Latin, and I think that such defenders' protectors of the great arts, as Miss McDonald, ought to prescribe the same way.

We ought to be talking Latin here, because we are debasing the classics and a classic culture by talking in English. The popular arts do, as they begin, reduce what they take to their own terms. Beginning the movies, there was a one-real version of Tostor's Resurrection, I think. The other hand, a couple of years ago, BBC did, a whole month of an hour a night to doing war and peace. An early television, I once saw a one-man hamlet. In the movies, I've seen Olivia's hamlet, which I assure you, is better than two at least of the five stage versions I have seen. I don't think that high-fives, debasing the classics or even modern music, as seriously they've often been debased in small halls where bad orchestras played for devout music lovers. 30 years ago, under Malrow said,

we've got to come to terms with the printing press. I don't think we have done it yet. I think we have to improve the press, but I think if we try to reverse the direction in which we're going, we will destroy all the possibility of any kind of culture because you are not going to have, I think, and I trust a nation with two cultures, two separate kinds of culture, one, a post of the other, and the vast majority of people excluded from the one that we think is great. I think it was Celsius. It's clear from the outset that we're not basking in the sun of unanimity here, but perhaps it would be helpful to try to find out where the basic differences are between the positions expressed by Dwight McDonald and Gilbert Celsius. I'd like to begin what I hope will be a forceful, forceful debate by asking Mr. McDonald

if he'd be a little more explicit than he was able to be in his preliminary statement about the ways in which the mass media debates high culture as you describe it. As are you saying for one thing that there are fewer people proportionately who now have access to high culture within the heyday of the middle of the 18th century? No, no, I'm not saying that. There are many more that do. And furthermore, I have no objection to the distribution on a mass scale of cultural objects. It seems to me the more good records, the more quality paperbacks that are sold, the better. I'm not in favor of excluding anybody from culture. My point is that I think most people don't have any very serious interest in it. But this is not a class question. This is not a question of which people and so on.

I'm in favor of the utmost education and distribution of real works of art. The way in which the mass media seemed to me to be the basing culture, well, you can take it very simply by thinking about what happened in television. And I'm sure that the Saudis know this much more than I do, but I've done a little research in the recent hearings of the FCC in Washington on what happened there. And what happened roughly was that in the middle of the 50s that you did have the rise of a certain kind of television drama, kind of an aesthetic for television. You had the fill-up playhouse, the studio one craft theater, playhouse naughty, and so on. And you had these directors in playwrights, Chaefsky, Seryling, Cinell and Matt John, Fagnhamer. They were all working, and it was quite exciting business. And then what happened in 1957? ABC, a new network came along,

and they did what they called counter programming. And this meant that, well, for example, playhouse naughty was driven off the air in a few months by putting in the same time slot obstinate something called the Untouchables, which I guess still goes on. As a matter of fact, Why may I ask you this? I'm a little confused. I think you would have said 10 years ago that Seryling, Lumet, Fagnhamer, et cetera would not represent serious culture. Therefore, I don't understand what it is now that's being debased. They only represent serious culture in the context of television. In other ways. Now we're raising a problem of different context of suggestion of Seryling. Obviously, but I mean, the point is... My obviously. No, but television at one time was developing something that was lively and serious. Well, let me put to what the company plays. They're not as good as actual Broadway plays, but they weren't bad, and they were going towards something. Well, let me argue this proposition with you and this respect. My difficulties with the way you formulate your problem is this.

That somehow you judge culture by the use made of it, by the audience. I would always assume that culture historically, despite your sketch, was always a commodity. It was always paid for by people who used it for snob value. The meta-chees who paid for culture made snob value out of it. But culture is not a function of an audience. It's a function primarily of a community of artists who have some community which reinforces each other. That the problem, therefore, is to what extent are their conditions for the creation of serious culture by serious people. And the second problem, which is the use made of it. I think there's a very serious problem regarding the use made of it, but I think the way you formulate it, you simply obscure the differences. Because I think, for example, in the United States, or in the Paris, or Rome, or Berlin, or the last 40, 50 years, there's been an extraordinary serious culture in music and painting and such. Yeah, sure. So that the problem then is the serious culture may be independent of the mass culture. And the questions the use made of it would be the issue we're talking about tonight then. Yes, the serious culture is certainly done in opposition to mass culture.

That's true, yes. It exists independently of it, and that's not necessarily torn down by it. No, not completely independent independently of it. As a matter of fact, it's affected by it. Or would you say the Joyce or Picasso or Stravinsky were affected by mass culture and therefore somehow they were deflected by their purposes or intentions? I would say that by the very necessity of pushing so hard against the mass culture or the general bourgeois culture of their time, the market culture, let's say, that they were, to some extent, perverted, really. Perverted as well, as well. Joyce was perverted as a creative artist. Look at the categories. Well, no, I'll explain to you. Look at the way that it seems to me that Joyce's last work, which he spent 15, 20 years of his life on, Fillingen's Wake, this is a very peculiar book. It has some great things in it and so on. But it seems to me it's a very odd kind of a thing. And I think he was pushed into that thing because he didn't have a general audience.

I think that even the most serious artists have been affected by this. Like, lack of communication. Dan has not let you talk. Let me. Thank you for talking just a minute. Are you saying that a Joyce working on Fillingen's Wake was diverted because he was concerned with not having a sufficiently large audience? Oh, no. No, no. He was isolated. He was isolated. What, really? He was isolated. Well, of course he was. He was working for two small and audience, really. Well, this is a complicated question. I'm in favor of his doing that, as it gets, working for a mass audience. But let me get back to the point about the Medici. About the Medici. Why isn't all art a commodity? Oh, right. In the sense it is. The Medici, however, knew what was good. And they had taste. They had knowledge and experience of art. And the mass audience today doesn't have. And this gets back to what I was interrupted in this horrible thing about television. What happened was, when they put up an adventure program against a serious program

like Playhouse 90 or these other ones, immediately the mass is obviously voted for the adventure program. So in this sense, in the most immediate way, television, in a television example, here you have a debatement of television. But isn't this one form of entertainment against another form of entertainment? What does this have to do with culture? The Shakespeare was entertainment. George Bernard Shaw is entertainment. You mean you make no distinction between entertainment and culture this way? Definitely not entertainment. Well, again, I was trying to get into the problem. But this is a clear. I'm getting to the problem, whether you're, which I think is the problem between us, that you define culture solely by the uses made of it. And I would say that there's a definition of culture, which has been the traditional one, by serious critics who've always stood outside the mass, whether we Matthew Arnold or Lenzhinus or anybody else, who've had standards, who've not depended upon the mass. So culture is not depended upon the uses made of it. Of course it does.

Of course it depends also on whether the creators of culture are expressing something individual of their own, and also whether they are living up to certain general traditional standards. That's true. Those two things have to be true. Well, I'll pass this to Phil at the moment since I've been slanging the way so hard. So much. Who do I interrupt at this point? No, I assume that what you're saying is that television, in its only effort to try to put on something decent, was unable to. You're not trying to say that what television, that the soap operas, were competing with James Joyce. I'm assuming that's what you're saying. Oh, these were soap operas now. Or even more serious. Or works by Chia F. You're saying that as I understand you, I'm not quarreling with you. I'm just trying to get it straight. So what you're saying is that let's say that even attempts to do something on the level, let's say people like Chiafsky, really didn't succeed. That's what you're saying.

So television really couldn't produce anything that was really of any high quality. Well, simply because of this counter-programming in 1957 by ABC, which the other networks followed, and which has now become the common thing. So now you have none of these, even these feeble efforts to make something interesting. Well, that's what I assumed you were saying. I'd like to pursue two other questions, because this seemed clearer than me than I did to Dan apparently. Two other questions. It seems to me that you would have to outline a more general way just how the mass media have debased or prevented the creation of high products of culture. In other words, you have to talk about not only Joyce, but talk about what you have to say the novel today, for example, could be in a better state than it is if not for the mass media. Now, I recognize that's a pretty difficult thing to do, and certainly on a program like this, you couldn't point that out, but it seems to me in some general way that would have to be your position. However, I assume that you mean it's not the media themselves that are affecting the production

of what we've called traditional art, the novel of poetry, you're really talking about society. When you talk about Joyce, for example, you mean the whole society which produced the mass media and produced Joyce also created certain difficulties for somebody like Joyce. That's what I assume you're saying. Can I ask you to specify something with him? Are you saying that the poor state or the good state, whatever the state of the novel is today, is really a function of the mass audience rather than some internal crisis of the nature of reporting on society? Well, if you're asking me what I think at this point. I'm trying to get your question back. I'm trying to get your question back. Yeah, all right. It seems to me that we can't make these simple unilinear connections here. We can't say mass media puts on gun smoke and patty Cheyewski, let's say television, does that. And therefore, John Updike is or isn't a good novelist or Philip Roth is or isn't a good novelist. I mean, you can't make these causal connections. But it seems to me that anybody who is defending the mass media, and I don't know whether you are by implication or not, I mean, I'm not very clear as to what your line of questioning is here. Just question.

And this relates to what Mr. Selly's was saying. It seems to me that any attempt to prove that the mass media do not the base culture has a burden, has to accept the burden or the following burdens. One, it has to, for example, prove that these things are not bad in and of themselves. Because even if you can't prove a direct effect, let's say, on any given novelist or any given poet, you might, it's rather simple, in fact, they can all almost assume that there is some kind of effect on the general quality of our existence, the quality of our culture. Now, if one is prepared to say that the quality of our culture has nothing to do with the kind of art or poetry or literature is produced, well, I assume you wouldn't, Mr. Selly's wouldn't maintain opposition or Dan Bell wouldn't maintain opposition. Well, can I try to get the traffic flowing in perceptible directions? As I understand it, well, you're putting a question in the first place to Dwight McDonald. You're asking him to indicate how he sees the mass media directly, the basing high art, in what ways he sees that happening.

And then after Dwight has had his say, I take it, we'll want to hear from Gilbert Selly's, whether he accepts your question as you formulated it, that in point of fact, that the mass media have in any way managed to obscure or prevent or distort the emergence of high art, which would otherwise be produced where it not for the mass media is. Yes, but it could be indirectly. In other words, by debasing the quality of our culture. Don't we let the advocates advocate for a moment? Dwight? Well, I really, it's a different question. Certainly we have had extremely good art, books, music, and so on in the 20th century. In spite of the fact that this is a century in which mass culture is dominant in a statistical way. My opinion has been due to the fact that the people who have done this kind of work have turned their back on the market and have insisted on, you know, saying they're all having their own say and have really been rather snobbish about it,

have really gone back to the elite conception of culture, if you think of the of the avant-garde movement of Elliott, Yates, Savinsky, Joyce, and so on. So in that sense, I suppose it's possible to survive in this. It is possible, in fact, of course, it's done all the time. The main point, I really want to make though, is that this idea that, which Mr. Sellys is the most prominent protagonist of, this idea that the way to improve things is not to have two cultures, but to have one culture and to raise the level of the masses. This is what seems to me to be a fallacious idea. That the only thing that will happen if you do that is that the good talent will be absorbed in the movies and television and so on. And nothing will come out of it. It seems to me that what happens is 1945 is that we've discovered that you can have,

in every field except television, you can have separate individual audiences. And this is a very big discovery. You don't have to appeal to the whole mass audience. You can appeal to the quality paperback audience, to the classical record audience. Even in the movies, in fact, the rise in the last three years of the art cinema is extraordinary. It's now possible to produce serious movies outside Hollywood and have them profitable. Aren't you on the cutting gear argument, why? Because we have... Well, no, I'm not... You're saying the effect of several different cultures. I'm over here saying there are several different cultures now, which do have a viability. Yes, that's my point. I want to have several different... I want to have two cultures. In the movies, did you have the art cinema culture? And you think you can bring people into the different minority cultures, where do they come from? I mean, did I have... They come from the culture. Did somebody college graduate since 1946? Of course, I think that's the main... But doesn't this come out of mass audience? No, it's not a matter of culture. There were 600 art cinemas in this country now. There were 15 in 1945.

Now, this is still not a mass audience in Hollywood terms. Cleopatra couldn't make money that's why. But you can make money with these good films that have come up in the last four years. Oh, yeah. Well, as a result of all this, Gilbert, are you prepared to abandon your position that there's a prospect for raising the popular arts? If it makes things easier, I prefer you willing to abandon it. But not before I've mentioned two things that have been said. One about the heyday of television when half a dozen dramatists, very close to the professional dramatists in Broadway, were working. Mr. McDonald seems to think that first place of the quality of something depends on where it is being shown, which is not true. And secondly, a four better series of plays was put on in the last three years than that group. Some of the plays were not new, some of them were. The play of the week, which was extraordinarily successful after being done on a small television station here, was done by commercial stations elsewhere.

And secondly, I understand about the art houses for the movies. But there, my point is that we have just begun to use the media. Ten years from now, you may have six, eight, or as high as 15 television stations. If Mr. Mino has his way and you get all the stations moved to the ultra high frequency, the technological difference will mean that you will be able to have a competition. I am not sure that the competition will bring you great works of art, but at least you will have something parallel to the art house. But I am not sure about that. Precisely. Then, as I, as someone said a moment ago, Mr. Bell, your argument really forced pieces. Because you can have the flow of audience from one thing to another, in Britain you had the third program, very high-brown D, less than one half or one percent of the total audience. They put on a series of programs.

This has happened that there were programs about science. And they attracted so many people that they put them on the home program, which gave them the base audience. And you cannot say that an audience will stick just to one type of thing because the audience flows if it is exposed to other kinds of entertainment, if you're in the entertainment field. The same time, the thing that you completely ignore is that I keep assisting there are other things in our culture than arts and letters. And that television in the last two years has done documentaries about what life is like in various countries and done much better than ever done before. But can I drop off? Let's stick to art for a moment. I'd like to find out, generally, to focus this discussion, to focus the things you've been saying, has a situation improved or is it getting worse? In the mass media, are things getting better or worse?

I mean, the reason I asked this question is what I'm driving at is I sense a kind of not feeling of optimism, but a position of optimism. That is, you have an optimistic position, but not an optimistic attitude. I'm far too old to be pessimistic. I think that if we learn properly how to use the media properly, there is very good ground for it. You can, we have proof that you can alter the taste of an audience and all this discussion about the debasing of culture. The thing that it means most to me is I would debasing the taste of the people themselves. And are we making it impossible for people to let their tastes gradually change? We are not preventing a change. For example, I happen to like, let's say, gun smoke or have gun-willed travel. But I can't for the life of me see any possible evidence that that introduces somebody into the poetry of Robert Lowell in any way. I mean, I don't see these easy transitions that you have.

One audience moving to another. I don't think there's any possible reason why any part of television should introduce the poetry of Robert Lowell. I think that the audience might learn that there is such a thing and find out what they care for. We're all getting into it. Look, can't we assume certain things coexist with him? We may like gun smoke for distraction and entertainment. Simply want to relax. Everybody wants to relax. Some time in my wife likes to look at Dr. Ben Casey or I like to look at Peter Gunn when Peter Gunn was on the air. But I never assumed this was serious culture. I liked it simply for distraction being tired. So that's one problem. So it's not a problem of moving people from one audience to another. The question, however, really is, what are the potentialities for creating an audience for serious culture and to what extent does the nature of the society inhibit people, future choices, if you will, Austro-Vinsky, from applying their trade? You've got two questions in one there. Why don't we let Mike McDonald have some? I just want to say something. Obviously, both Dan and Gilbert, both seem to think that the fact that you have these arts and the fact that you have a third program in England is something, it seems to me this isn't against my position.

It seems to me on the contrary, I don't understand this. My position is that we should recognize that there are two cultures. And it seems to me that the third program is an excellent example of exactly what I mean. In other words, in England, they put on without any regard to their small audience an extremely good program. And I think, by the way, that the one hope for television over here is to have the government finance such a program absolutely unremittingly committed to the highest possible form of art and entertainment to show how terrible these other programs are. But anyway, why isn't this exactly what I advocate? This is dividing two cultures. Can I cite something Dwight to see if you are contradicting yourself not. In 1944, you wrote an essay, which is the first one you've been writing since, called A Theory of Popular Culture. Now, in it, you said, for example, that the appearance of Kay Boyle as a Saturday evening post-serialist, Edmund Wilson's Taking Fatemans Place at the New Yorker, and above all, the recent invasion of the New York Times Sunday book section,

or the province of Rose C. Feld and Percy Hutchinson, said, or indicates, so to speak, the debasement of culture. And you say about the fact that Maxwell Parish yields the Rockwell, can't excuse me. And this itself is an illustration of how bad things are going, except though a mass cult in Mid-Cult, where you use the same line, excuse me, you say an effect that Maxwell Parish has given way not a van going Picasso. Now, to this extent, you're upgrading your own illustrations. The very fact that now, everyone from part of the review, Harold Rosenberg, James Baldwin, Dwight McDonald, Mary McCarty, Hannah Arendt, Appearing in the New Yorker, indicates some kind of shift in the culture. Don't you think you've got it made in one respect? I mean, why aren't you set part of your victory? No, but I don't deny this. I mean, I think there's a, I think, culture, and the semi-escalter has been enormous, is becoming very fast and well in this country. And what do you want to see? I agree. I agree. The question of where you write has nothing to do with it. In Esquire and the New Yorker, these are two magazines that I write for. I write as well as I can for them, and they accept my stuff. That's good.

Now, there's lots of other things in these magazines that I don't at all approve of. I'm not responsible for these magazines. I don't see what the point is. Let's stay with that. Because the middle bar magazines won't show. But your own case is such a useful one to examine. Are you being kept from producing high culture to the best of your ability by the current mascot? Does Esquire say to you that you can't write? No, but it's because I use these magazines, and I'm not used by them. As Lenin said, the political question is, who uses who? But why can't you use them if they're not available? Because they are available, and if they're available, then why do you assume that mascot in your language? I don't think that these are mascot magazines. I mean, these are the middle of the road kind of things. They're not even middle bar magazines. I'd like to put a question. One thing about magazines, it seems to me that what Trotsky said about a magazine was very sensible. He said, a magazine is like a trolley car.

You get on it to go to a certain place. You're not responsible for the modern or the people you're fellow travelers, and I agree with that. Well, I don't want to talk about your fellow travelers. I want to talk about you and your kind. What interests me is that on one occasion, you will speak as you have a few minutes ago. I think it's fair to say, I don't know what the transcript would show, glowingly, about BBC, and in some of your writings about the spectator, as representing a reasonable hope for the future. You describe them as moving toward the special culture you want to reserve for a non-class aristocracy. And yet, some of your colleagues abroad, and F.R. Levis, will speak with contempt of BBC Third Program. You will describe the spectator as a publicity agency for the contemptible mass-oriented pseudo-writers of our time who are involved in bogus culture. Now, who is going to make these decisions? Evidently, you're a division into mass cult, mid-cult,

and if one there put it that way, high-cult, that this seems to be a matter of personal taste. But all such matters are things of personal taste, aren't they? I don't see how you can have any... But why the standards... The standards can be elucidated by a lot more time than we have, but I mean, there's no way of being sure about these things. Levis has a matter of fact, published in the spectator, his attack on CP Snow, and he attacks CP Snow precisely as a product of exactly the kind of thing I'm attacking, as a product of mass culture. When I shift my fired him as to sell this because there are a number of things he said which bother me. I sort of detect, frankly, kind of anti-intellectual, populist type of bias in the way you present your arguments as to sell this. In this place, yes. Now, I raise this question. I raise this question. Now, so to speak, who is responsible for culture? A populous implication would say, I think you've written in the public art,

that the people have a valid right over cultural institutions in this respect, which are part of their life. When you assume that the people have a right over the curriculum of a school, would you say that people should have a right to write the curriculum of your school, would they have a right to write the curriculum of a college? What is this notion, so to speak, that the people have a right? What sort of rights do the people have in these terms when you use this kind of populist implication? And connection with schools in general, mine in particular, delegated right they have, somehow it works through, but they're delegated through the faculty of the school or through in other things, through their school boards. Of course, they determine in a sense what goes on. But when I say they have a right, I think really what I mean is that they have an obligation to determine greatly for themselves. I'm hoping you see for more intelligent people to determine more intelligently what goes on the air. But that they have a right, to me means that it is worse than useless. It is very bad for a society to have what is good, the very best, given to people,

and in a sense compelled them to take it, it's just as bad as giving them the worst stuff and compelling them to take it. Well, who suggests them compelling them? I don't get, where does compulsion get into it? Well, it's the only thing you offer people. No, you offer them a third problem. And if you have the government putting on what is best, which is the horrible suggestion, no people don't have to see it, they can look at the other programs. The fact that the government puts it on top of it is total impropriety because it means that people will not be exercising their minds and their judgment. Who is responsible? Who is responsible for raising higher standards? Because you say people, this is too undifferentiated, society is too undifferentiated. They're institutions. They're those who run the television networks and the critics of society, the magazine editors. Is there a definite sense of responsibility, and by whom? Is there responsibility for some people to say this is bad and this is good? Not that we have to compare you to take it, but somebody say, look, this is bad. And we want to tell you it's bad. I've been a critic far too long to deny that. But what I'm saying is that it is useful for us to have more and more and more people aware of what is being offered them, even in the field of the most popular kind of entertainment.

There are more people aware of it, and there are more people participate in saying we want less of this and more of that. I don't quite understand. You might be more concrete. What are the choices that you're talking about? More and more people being aware of what? More and more people being aware of what the total value of television is that's offered to them. More and more people being critical. But wait a minute. But television, well, we're stuck on television at the moment. Let's say television, for example, doesn't offer many things that we consider good or bad. I know it doesn't. I'm trying to find why I don't understand. I explain this point. I think his point is that what he wants is a better informed public to protest when all these banal programs that put out and say, isn't that what you want? And say, give us something better, something like the third program, and I'm glad you say. I think that we have not yet invented social mechanisms to control these vast new machineries of entertainment and communication.

And we need to invent new ways by which more and more and thousand people can be made aware of their obligation to take, to take at least a part in defining what is now undefined the public interest. Well, wouldn't you want subsidies for mags like pause and review and direct subsidies, male subsidies, things of this sort, for example, is one of the ways of doing it to raise standards? I think we need new kinds of machinery. I'm perfectly willing to use any kind of machinery that exists at the present time. I'm perfectly willing to use and what so many people make fun of the parent teaching association. I'm perfectly willing to use the groups of people that are now gathered together in two or three places to exercise some kind of influence on their local stations. I want more and more of that, but I think that what we are trapped in now is that we haven't got, we haven't invented the ways to cope with these enormous inventions, just as we haven't invented the ways to cope with military problems.

Gilbert, I don't want to introduce something that might look like a set of facts that might get in the way of our discussion. But all the evidence we have as rough estimates indicates a paradox without wanting to decide with the angels with Dwight McDonald. I don't see any solution here. The facts point to a degree in his direction. And that is that in the evening hours of television in the United States, it just turns out with great regularity that these college graduates to whom Dwight McDonald was referring as the hope of the future, potential hope of the future. In fact, by and large, look at exactly the same programs as those in the lower educational brackets that they don't even begin to look at the programs on news and public affairs, let alone something of the kind that's going on here tonight. And if that's so, how do you see the pressure coming from these people in the direction which you advocate? And is aren't you making a big assumption that they're motivated to want the sort of thing that you would like to see them want?

Yes, the assumption is that they can be motivated. You can do certain things. You can scare people. You can seduce people. You can somehow make them say, you can do something about this. If you understand that you have the right to do it, you have in all of the mass media, you have a natural tendency to create inertia, public epithet. I don't think this means operating the public interest. I think we have to find ways to counteract the apathy which the mass media do, do induce. And I don't think we have begun even to look for it. I myself am not an inventor, but I wish that I were. I think we need a way to work. I wanted to check the one point because it seems to me we're also confusing art and entertainment, if I may. This has bothered me almost throughout this whole discussion.

Are we trying to raise the level of entertainment? Are we talking about the production of works of art? Or are we talking about getting people who look at, I don't know, soap operas to re James Joyce? I'm really, I don't know. There's no difference. I mean, art is entertainment. Why do you say there's a difference? Well, do you agree with Mr. Sully's definition? I don't. Of the popular art is art. I don't think there are. Well, there are minor arts if they're good. And I mean, great art can be entertaining too. I think that's a first, definitely Mr. Phillips. Well, let me quote you the experience of an editor long before your time in very different. It was Edward Buck, the editor of the Ladies Home Journal, which was a laughing stop for 50 years. And yet, Mr. Buck, accomplished something. He said, we're giving them what they like, but we're giving it to them in a higher quality, very gradually raised the quality of what we're giving them. And the result of that was, the result of that was that what we used to call summer fiction, which was the mainstay of one side of the Ladies Home Journal, eventually rose up to the point of a fairly good novel by Edith Wharton,

which no doubt is kitsch of the worst order, but it's a downside better than anything you've gotten before. He had gotten a lot of people to accept and to like something perceptibly better in quality by every intellectual standard than they'd ever thought they'd like. And the same thing was true about music, when the Philharmonic was put on the air here, there were probably 20,000 people that went to symphony concerts. The Philharmonic was put on the air and it got to a total audience possibly of 10 million people. And there was a genuine audience because when a CBS tried to shift that to a different time, they got such a violent protest because people wanted it when they wanted it. That you had the absolute certainly that here a whole race of people who appreciated whatever the Philharmonic was doing and that was not second rate music. I think therefore you can, if you find the ways, you can raise the level and I don't think it's a bad thing to do.

Well, on the Ladies Home Journal, certainly Edith Wharton was one swallow that doesn't make a summer after all. You can't pretend that the ladies are killed. The whole quality of the magazine rose up. Oh, sure. It rose up 20 years. It was a fake ball when it was something, but anyway, go, but what I understand is this. It seems to me the most obvious way to stimulate this audience that you want to stimulate and so on. And get them on their feet and demanding better stuff is to put out a uncompromisingly high brow kind of a program like the third program. And yet you absolutely don't want it. No, look, look, what you want to do is to raise the general level of CBS, NBC, ABC and so on. This seems to me to be a whole, hopeless kind of thing because they're dedicated to the whole audience. But why not give the people who want something better, give it to them. It can be done partly through these educational stations such as this one here.

This is a first step. Even better step would be a lavishly subsidized, federal station, which people are not compelled. You know, there's no law that you have to turn them on, turn it on and give them an alternative. Why wouldn't this be the way to do it? On that hopeful note and recognizing that it's not a rhetorical question, but that Dwight wanted to hear what you had to say. I have to announce that one of the problems of this particular form of mass culture is we're time bound. And so I want to thank both Dwight McDonald and Gilbert Seldos for what was an excruciatingly short time. But we have no option. There's still a few minutes left, Dan. William, for us to review what we've heard. To poke holes into it if we find any and to elaborate on the positions that have been expressed, Dan. Well, I would say, my feeling is that Dwight got new off to a bad start. I would say by making what I think is a fundamental confusion by this notion of joining art and entertainment. Because I think very quickly in practice that art may be entertainment, that entertainment is also art, which is not the case.

And the example I think in television, this respect was rather poor one, frankly, because years ago Dwight would have attacked. And I think did attack Chaefsky and the others as mid-culton, probably the worst in not examples of mid-culton. It's still on. And this becomes on a golden age. And it reminds me of all the modishes in which now the old Hollywood movies are how it hawks and all the old bang-bang. The Terce Hollywood now becomes the golden age of art when at that time Hollywood was attacked. I think this is a bad confusion to start off this way. I would say this. It seems to me that crucial question, and I don't know if there's any way of wholly settling it, not just a question tonight, but within the limogen knowledge we have, is whether there is a transition historically, what may be called a state of semi-literacy to literacy, which takes place over generations. Whether there really is a question of raising, so to speak, taste, and the creation of many multiple markets. I know, simply as a personal note, I didn't inherit a serious culture. I've tried to be serious in my appreciation of culture. This is an aspect I've learned out of going to school and contemporary life.

I would assume that this is part of the possibilities of a good democracy. And the real question for me is, is this a period of transition? And what are the possibilities of perhaps increasing this aspect of the transition process? This seems to me the kind of issue that I would have tried to join in the discussion tonight. Yeah. Well, I have the feeling that we didn't face sufficiently the reality of the situation. I think Dwight's position is really the position of the idealist who's not facing the reality. And therefore, he doesn't really face the, I mean, I think his position is highly commendable because he's castigating, or it should be castigated, and saying what we all should be saying is that something's bad is bad, and not find some excuse for its existence. But, on the other hand, the question might be raised as to how, if we're going to have, let's say, two cultures, how are you going to have it in the democratic culture? I mean, how would you enforce two cultures? You would have it like now. But, William, I would say one thing which is important. Yeah, but it's rather saying that things are bad as bad, because all of us know how bad things are.

I'm objecting to the way he's saying it is bad, which is this. There used to be that there were certain standards, critical standards, aesthetic standards. We now substitute for it a basted form of popular sociology in which you're damned by category, and the problems to identify by category, and instead of examining works of art in terms of specific aesthetic standards, which you can try to define and argue about, you now substitute categories, and therefore all of us becomes modish. I agree with you. It becomes a game of in and out. Can I cut across that? The saying that it seems to me the function, or at least our function anyway, people like us, or anybody's function should be then, to simply act as a literary, good literary critic, or a good critic of society. That's what I mean by pointing out something is bad. In other words, to maintain standards. That's been the traditional function of all literary critics, of all literary men, of all creative. Well, I think what Dan is saying is that when you start dealing in categories such as mass cult, whatever veterans out to be, or mid-cult, or high-cult, you're just prejudicing the whole discussion. Apparently, there's no, I agree with you. I wish I hadn't thought of it.

Do I remind you of this? You call that you cite Clement Greenberg with affection and regard in his early discussion of this subject we're touching on tonight. And I just can't help but remember, because I went back to check a memory, that in the very essay which you cite, that Clement Greenberg refers to the New Yorker as high-class catch. Now, apparently, there's no catch like your catch. That is to say, what you have here are categories, not an effort to appraise works individually, not only works of art, but works of information, works involving knowledge on their own merits, but this effort to get this fashionable categorization in, which settles the problem because you have these categories ready made. You can be on the side of the answers you can announce your feedback. And I think if nothing else is achieved tonight, and we can erase that title of mass cult mid-cult, I think that will be one step forward, because this kind of stereotyping gets in the way of presenting the very case.

It becomes a game sort of, yes, a service game, yes. Well, so we'll do that in a second. You can have more than a second. Yeah, but it seems to me that I agree with you. I mean, that these terms have become sort of ends in themselves, and they did form part of a game. They were used as a game. I remember in Life Magazine and Hoppers and so on. But on the other hand, we shouldn't deny the kind of phenomena that exist in society, which people try to define by using these terms. So in other words, let's not throw out the phenomenon with the categories. But the fact is that we have these large social and cultural differences in our society, and there are something, I think Dwight's right when he says in effect there are, maybe there are three cultures, I don't know how many cultures there are, but there are several cultures. If we could get Dwight in a more congenial mood, and that might take some doing, but if we could, I think he would be willing to say, in an American society today,

there are more diversified audiences for what you consider the art of our time and traditional art than there have been in societies of another time. And so we come around full circle to the question of the evening, what can we really mean by saying that the mass media or mass culture debases high culture? What I think we're saying, in fact, is we don't like this stuff out there and we're persuaded to contaminate the other. But not that we have any evidence indicating that your proof story or your choice has been precluded from doing what he wants to do by the existence either of mass media or a mass culture. No, but it takes a lot of doing to fight against this kind of corruption. Well, that's the point. The effort may have a function, but also the substance should be one that one can defend in its own right. Any rate on that pious note, I suspect we better draw this to a close. You want to thank the visiting members of the court, the annual bill of Columbia, and William Phillips of the partisan review.

And I know I'm not overstating when I say our most eloquent and expressive advocates. Dwight McDonald of the New Yorker and other journals and Gilbert Sellers of the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you and good night. . . .

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