OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE
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possess increasingly competent government, without having to spend
much energy getting it. Many intellectuals and non-intellectuals
feel uncomfortable in this situation and wish for parties and pro–
grams that would provide election Armageddons and "meaning–
ful" issues- as many once "found" such issues by applying Marxist
stereotypes to events. But here, as in the economic area, the Euro–
pean model has been quite misleading and has caused us to regard
as vices such things as lack of doctrine, "racial balance" on muni–
cipal tickets, and non-cabinet government that in a different per–
spective may appear as actually suited to our big country which,
like other big modern countries, has had to face a civil war.
In the area of mass culture, evaluation is difficult; we have
an enormous country, much is going on, and only a tiny fraction
comes to our attention. Even the term "mass culture" may beg
the question; it is better to speak of "class-mass culture," because
what I think we have is a series of audiences, stratified by taste
and class, each (even that of PR-devotees) large enough to con–
stitute, in psychological terms, a "mass." Moreover, I believe there
is more critical judgment, at more of these levels, than is generally
realized. And on one level there is perhaps too much. Our intel–
lectuals do not, for instance, allow themselves to praise Hollywood
movies as much as, in my opinion, they deserve; they are like psy–
chiatrists who do not dare give a patient a clean bill of health lest
some other doctor find a hidden flaw.
Moreover, I see no evidence of the alleged increasing power of
the mass media producers. The American cultural spectrum seems
more interesting and no less diverse today than at earlier times.
The various audiences are not so manipulated as often supposed:
they fight back, by refusing to "understand," by selective inter–
pretation, by apathy. Conformity there surely is, but we cannot as–
sume its existence from the standardization of the commodities them–
selves (in many areas a steadily diminishing standardization) with–
out knowledge of how individuals and groups
interpret
the com–
modities and endow them with meanings. In fact, the really men–
acing conformity lies in the ability of particular peer-groups and
subcultures to supply such meanings and to extirpate idiosyncratic
ones. At the same time, such cultural commodities as movies and
periodical fiction have the potentiality of dissolving as well as rein-
