MASSCULT AND MIOCULT
615
The increase in "art" movie theaters, from 12 in 1945 to over
550 today. The existence ' today of some 5,000 community
theaters and the development, in the last ten years, . of '. a:
vigorous off-broadway theater. Finally, the beginnings, in the last
year; of what might
be
called an Off-Hollywood cinema-Iow–
budget serious films made and financed outside the industry,
such as
Pull My Daisy, Jazz on a Summer's Day, The Savage
Eye, Weddings and Babies,
and the forthcoming film version of
The Connection.
This is all very well and indeed extremely well. For this
is·not Midcult but for the most part the unadulterated article.?
The books are the complete texts, the music is uncut and well–
performed, the art works the best going, the movies usually
interesting (though there is an admixture of Brigitte Bardot,
you gotta live), the off-Broadway plays usually serious and
the community theater ones often so.
Nor is this all that can be said.
It
is probably no easier
today to make a living in the marketplace by serious writing
or painting or composing than it ever was, but since 1945 there
have come into existence a whole new category of what the
trade unionist calls "fringe benefits." Institutional support of
the poet, writer, artist, composer now goes far beyond teaching
jobs to (1) foundation grants, (2) prizes and awards by all
kinds of arts-and-Ietters groups, (3) lecture fees (one wonders
how some people ever get any work done at all), (4) luxury
junkets to East-West, North-South, Up-Down cultural gather–
ings all over the world, (5) Fulbright and other fellowships,
(6) fees for advising literary aspirants at ·what are misnamed
7. Although the two are often confused, it is one thing
to
bring High
Culture to a wider audience without change; and another to "popular-
.. iZli"
it' by sales talk in the manner of Clifton Fadiman or Mortimer
J.
Adler, or by pastiches like
J.B.
and
John Brown's Body,
or by hoking.
it
uP
as ip Stokowski's lifelong struggle to assimilate Bach to Tchai–
koWsky or those Stratford, Conn., productions of Shakespeare, which
surpass those of London's Old Vic in showmanship as much as 'they
. fall short of them in style and intelligence.
