But Popular Culture is com–
pletely at the mercy of the laws
hastening corruption and decay.
Popular Culture must
go along.
No
other road is open. Unlike High
Art, it cannot fall back on at–
titudes of recalcitrance for survival.
Lloyd Hamilton, W. C. Fields, Bus–
ter Keaton-comedians of wit, hu–
manity, and situation, for instance,
give way to verbalizing gagsters:
Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Red Skel–
ton.* The comic strip evolves into
a series of continued stories that
are linear replicas of soap operas
and the pulps; and similar patterns
tiredly repeat themselves in every
field of Popular Culture.
If
the laws of which I have
spoken could themselves speak,
however, their proudest boast
would be reserved for the debase–
ment of popular music. Here is
total capitulation. The period from
the end of the First World War to
about 1936 was one of enormous
productivity of first-rate tunes;
month after month accounted for
numbers that are still fresh after
a decade of repetition. Even David
Rose has done his worst and left
them relatively untouched. The
period represents a flowering that
*
Fields, toward the end of his life
(like Chaplin today) became increas–
ingly savage in his satire, and an au–
dience that wanted nothing but re–
assurance could only respond uneasily,
baffled and repelled; eventually it
turned away from him. Along these
lines, the reception of Chaplin's last
film has been very instructive.
615
has few comparable examples in
the Popular Arts. But after 1936
the drought set in. The last ten
years, so far as popular music is
concerned, have been bleak. From
around 1920 to 1936: Exactly Like
You, Thou Swell, Tea for Two,
My Fate is in Your Hands, Hon–
eysuckle Rose, April in Paris, Ava–
lon, Get Out of Town, I Never
Knew, Nice Work if You Can Get
It, Baby Won't You Please Come
Home, Fascinatin' Rhythm, The
Man I Love, Just One of Those
Things, Yesterdays, On the Sunny
