This week's lecture included the first ten minutes of a documentary on 'mass culture' and some of its critics. Here's the link (only available on campus) to the full video:
The Intellectuals and the Masses
And a few quotes for you to think about:
this and that body of men, all over the country, are beginning to assert and put into practice an Englishman's right to do what he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes. All this, I say, tends to anarchy
Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. ... It seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light
- Matthew Arnold (1869), Culture and Anarchy
[culture] ... includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the 12th of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th-century Gothic churches and the music of Elgar. The reader can make his own list.
- T. S. Eliot (1948), Notes towards a definition of culture
This pleasant miscellany is evidently narrower in kind than the general description which precedes it. The ‘characteristic activities and interests’ would also include steelmaking, touring in motor-cars, mixed farming, the Stock Exchange, coal mining and London Transport. Any list would be incomplete, but Eliot’s categories are sport, food and a little art – a characteristic observation of English leisure.
- Raymond Williams (1961), The Long Revolution
Why must the list stop here? Why not also include, as “characteristic activities”, strikes, Gallipoli, the bombing of Hiroshima, corrupt trade union elections, crime, the massive distortion of news, and Aldermaston marches? ... The “whole way of life” of European culture in this century (as the Eichmann trial reminds us) has included many things which may make future generations surprised at our “characteristics”. But not one example is included in Eliot’s nor in Mr. Williams’ list which forces to the front the problems of power and of conflict.
- E. P. Thompson (1961), review of The Long Revolution, New Left Review 1(9)
"When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my revolver" - Hermann Göring (attributed)
