61~
DWI6HT MACDONALD
seems ·to have been mislaid in the process, perhaps their
raison
·d'etre.
Hollywood movies aren't as terrible as they once were,
'but they aren't as good either; the general level of taste ·and
{;taftsmanship has risen but there are no more great excep–
tions like Griffith, von Stroheim, Chaplin, ·Keaton; Orson
Welles was the last, and
Citizen Kane
is twenty years old.
An
enterprising journalist, Vance Packard, has manufactured two
best-sellers by summarizing the more sensational findings ·of -the
academic sociologists, garnishing the results with solemn mOi'al–
izings, and serving it up under catchy titles:
The Hidden
Persuaders, The Status Seekers. Bauhaus
modernism has seePed
down, in a vulgarized form, into the design of our vacuum
cleaners, pop-up toasters, supermarkets and cafeterias. .
The question, of course, is whether all this is merely grow–
ing pains--<>r, in more formal language, an expression of social
mobility. Don't rising social classes always go through a
nou–
veau riche
phase inwruch they imitate the forms of culture
without understanding its essence? And won't these classes in
time
be
assimilated into High Culture? It is true that this has
usually happened
in
the past. But I think there is a difference
now. Before the last century, the standards were generally
agreed on and the rising new classes tried to conform to thetn.
By now, however, because of the disintegrative effects of Ma.ss–
cult I described in the first part of this essay, the standards .are
by no means generally accepted. The danger is that the values
of Midcult, instead of being transitional-"the price of pro–
gress"-may now themselves become a debased, permanent
standard.
I see no reason Midcult may not be stabilized as the norm
·of our culture. Why struggle with real poetry when the Boyls–
ton Professor of Rhetoric can given you its effects in capsule
form~works
twice as fast and has a "Blow on the coal of-the
heart" ending? Why read the sociologists when Mr.Pa'ckard
:gives' you their gist ·painlessly?
