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PARTISAN REVIEW
American criticism. To declare my own position at once, I am a
partisan of high, elitist, and experimental art. I have cast my lot
with it as a critic, educator, and theater worker. But to avoid the
inevitable misunderstanding, I should add that I believe fer–
vently in the capacity of popular art to enrich and nourish high
cultural forms, and that I am dedicated to cultural pluralism and
diversity.
Cultural pluralism, however, must not be confused with
cultural egalitarianism, which is often simply a strategem for
dispensing with standards. In a healthy society, we should all
have access to the art we like, but should not think it supreme
just because we like it. In other words, the popular will should
not be allowed to dictate to the minority taste. In England, BBC
2-a rather arcane form of television-prospers side by side with
the more commercial BBC I and lTV, which are largely domi–
nated by American sitcoms and game shows; The Third Pro–
gramme, with its experimental drama, music, and political
discussions, survives alongside the commercial radio bands,
despite its tiny highbrow audience; the fringe theater is provided
with subsidies, niggardly to be sure, at the same time the Arts
Council is pouring money into the National Theatre and the
Royal Shakespeare Company, and the paying customers are
supporting the West End.
Here in the United States, cultural pluralism is defined by
racial, sexual, and ethnic identifications more often than by
levels of taste, probably because our diversity proceeds from a
fragmented rather than a unified nation. We have black theater,
music, and literature; we have feminist novels and plays and
magazines~
we have gay culture, etc.-each with its own special
interest audience. The fact is that the socio-political ambitions
of such groups usually take precedence over their aesthetic
concerns. Culture therefore becomes a strategy for validating
group identity, usually through catching the attention of the
media.
Nevertheless, it is still possible to identify patterns of mass
art and pockets of high culture, each with its own standards and
shibboleths, with its own postures, gestures, imageS', and heroes.
It is still possible to enjoy Bach cantatas or the Rolling Stones,
