Comments on: Trash Art, Equivocally Trashed

By: Mark IV

Mark IV — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:17:42 +0000

I also think it is good to realize that there is not much sense to our highbrow-lowbrow pigeonholing. Specifically in the context of our church, we are probably all very quick to pick up any hint of judging and understand it as disapproval. I have always admired those who have the ability to work with everyone, regardless of personal achievments, tastes, education or financial status. They are able to convey love and acceptance, something I aspire to do as well.

By: s

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:47:34 +0000

JWL, I definitely think there’s a modern association between aesthetic classifications and class, though I don’t think things were as simple in olden days as you paint them (i.e. everyone went to see opera or the theater). For instance, while playwrights such as Shakespeare may have performed for both royalty and the common masses, I don’t think royalty typically went to see theater in the actual theatre–it was usually performed for them in their palaces, manors, etc. Anyway, I don’t know that they had “highbrow” vs. “lowbrow” art back then, but they certainly had aesthetic theories and standards that affected who saw what art and when (many of them based on religious morality). Of course, I am in no way a specialist in anything prior to the 20th century, so I could be highly mistaken.

By: Kiskilili

Kiskilili — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:03:49 +0000

Like JWL, I think it’s worth keeping in mind that at least some of what is now coded as high-brow, sophisticated art is nothing more than the popular art of previous centuries. (Granted, we hope it’s quality popular art of previous centuries.) It’s fun (and salutary) to think that Handel once had approximately the status of Elvis, or that the Iliad may have been the equivalent of our comic books.

By: Katya

Katya — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:02:50 +0000

JWL,

I think it’s wrong to assume that something can’t be both high quality and highly popular, but I also think that there’s a lot of popular drivel out there.

I currently have a job which involves cataloging 19th century books. I really like literature from that time period, but I’ve been amazed at how bad some of these novels are. My theory is that the good stuff gets reprinted and reread, even when the style is no longer current, and the bad stuff gets forgotten, even if it was really popular at the time (some of these books went into a dozen printings, or more). So, yes, sometimes great work can be also be highly popular in its own time, but for every Harry Potter there are a lot of Da Vinci Codes.

By: Eve

Eve — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:45:53 +0000

JWL, what a great question! Wish I knew. (Someone in this family, or on this blog, needs to go into classics. Volunteers? Maybe we can dragoon a classicist, and an eighteenth-century specialist while we’re at it.)

The highbrow/lowbrow distinction does seem to have undergone a lot of challenges in the last few decades–I regularly get conference announcements for Harry Potter and Joss Whedon. I love your rallying cry. I’m being gripped by another of those vivid fantasies in which I’m starting a twenty-minute testimony of aesthetics, morality, spirituality, and the gospel with it. I will, of course, credit you and all other sources.

By: JWL

JWL — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:35:41 +0000

All of you great scholars of the humanities are much more qualified than me to speak to this point, but isn’t our distinction between highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow art a modern development? In ancient Greece, didn’t everyone go to the theatre and listen to Homer recited, didn’t the groundlings as well as the aristocrats go to the Globe, didn’t everyone in Vienna love the opera in Mozart’s day? It seems to me that our modern distinction between high and low art has as much to do with signifying social class as aesthetic standards. In the name of latter-day egalitarianism, I say throw off the chains of bourgeois pretension and celebrate your appreciation of Buffy without apology or embarrassment.

By: AmyB

AmyB — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:14:56 +0000

RT, thanks for the clarification. Saying that the shows are complex and watching them is a mental exercise is much more clear and precise than “good for you”. Now I know what you mean, although I would also have agree with Katya’s point that there can be moral or other pitfalls.

I wholeheartedly empathise with you on the point of the church’s treatment of media/pop culture. There is plenty of good stuff out there and I don’t think we should be made to feel guilty or shamed for enjoying it. I think you have an excellent point that this stance could distance younger people in the church. I think for some reason the church tends to create an “us and them” and the popular media, representing “the world” (now why is the world bad, again?) gives us something against which to pit ourselves. I’m not down with that.

When I was taking a group dynamics course in grad school I loved watching reality shows. It was a fun way to see what I was learning in class put into action. Many of those shows create a crucible in which the group dynamics come out quickly and intensely, and they make for a very interesting study.

By: RT

RT — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:29:55 +0000

You’re right. There are the two different components to it that Eve addressed–the first being whether such art is a waste of time in light of the high art that is also out there, the second being the moral component to pop culture. My posts were primarily focused on the first.

By: Katya

Katya — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:52:06 +0000

RT, I agree that many video games, movies and TV shows are intellectually stimulating, but one of Eve’s points was that “trash” art can be morally degrading, as well. There are plenty of clever, sophisticated shows and games that are still incredibly violent and graphic or disturbingly amoral.

By: RT

RT — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:41:38 +0000

For clarity, I guess I should explain my perspective on the issue a little further. I’m a late 20’s male, active in the church, married. As part of the entertainment generation, I openly admit that I like video games (thankfully, I married a girl who likes them too), I like a lot of what’s on TV, and I like movies. I do my best to avoid both fluff and filth, but I like the escapism and the entertainment of a lot of what’s out there.

With all that said, it’s sometimes difficult to deal with the constant harping that goes on in the church about how we should be avoiding Babylon by throwing out our TVs and preventing our kids from having access to playstations. My parents, for example, are of the firm opinion that all video games are evil and a waste of time, and no amount of reasoning from my end has been able to shake them from that hard-line position.

Personally, I think that one of the reasons that a lot of the youth are tuning the church out is that they simply can’t relate to the constant parade of speakers who are telling them that SimCity, Halo, and CSI are Satan’s tools on earth (almost a direct quote from a talk I heard a few weeks ago in church). I’m at least old enough and grounded enough to filter that stuff out, but I wonder how I’d have reacted if I’d been 17 instead of 27.

Thus, while Buffy clearly isn’t Shakespeare, I just don’t like the suggestion that it and its companions are “trash” or anything like unto it. I think there’s definite value in a lot of this stuff…