210
DWIGHT MACDONALD
pulled toward a magnet working on · the one quality they have
in common. Its morality sinks to the level of the most primitive
members-a crowd will commit atrocities that very few of its
members would commit as individuals-and its taste to that of
the least sensitive and the most ignorant.
Yet
this
collective monstrosity, "the masses," "the public,"
is taken as a human norm by the technicians of Masscult. They
at once degrade the public by treating it .as an object, to be
handled with the lack of ceremony of medical students dissect–
ing a corpse, and at the same time flatter it and pander to its
taste and ideas by taking them as the criterion of reality (in the
case of the questionnaire-sociologists) or of art (in the case of
the Lords of Masscult). When one hears a questionnaire–
sociologist talk about "setting up" an investigation, one realizes
that he regards people as mere congeries of conditioned reflexes,
his
concern being which reflex will be stimulated by which
question. At the same time, of necessity, he sees the statistical
majority as the great Reality, the secret of life he is trying to
unriddle. Like a Lord of Masscult, he is-professionally-with–
out values, willing to take seriously any' idiocy
if
it is held by
many people (though, of course,
personally .
.. )
The aristocrat's
approach to the masses is less degrading to them, as it is less
degrading to a man to be shouted at than to be treated as non–
existent. But the
plebs
have their dialectical revenge: indifference
to their human quality means prostration before their statistical
quantity, so that a movie magnate who cynically "gives the
public what it wants"-Le., assumes it wants trash-sweats with
anxiety if the box-office returns drop five per cent.
Whenever a Lord of Masscult is reproached for the low
quality of
his
products, he automatically ripostes, "But that's
what the public wants, what can I do?" A simple and conclusive
defense, at first glance. But a second look reveals that (1) to
the extent the public "wants" it, the public has been conditioned
to some extent by his products, and (2) his efforts have taken
