STATE OF CRITICISM
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relation to other things, above all call our attention to the complex
interrelatedness of everything we call culture.
As I said before I don 't believe there's a war between popular
culture or entertainment and "high" art, if indeed the adjective means
anything now; I would prefer to use the description "serious " instead
of high. But at the same time I don ' t think the two kinds of culture can
live in great comfort together. There will always be a tension between
culture that is simpl
y
possessed and that which is earned after an effort,
a tension between the merely entertaining, that which, as the hapless
interviewers of Ozzie and Harriet rightly said, makes one forget the
drudgery of life, and that which puts one in touch with the mysteries
and painfulness and astonishments of life.
One is free to choose as one wishes, and most of us choose both, the
swift obliterations of entertainment and the lasting though no less
entertaining actions of art. I think this division will remain and as long
as it does criticism, hierarchical or elitist, or shedding such conditions
by acting from a desire not to defend but simply to make known, will
have a place. Camus once said that if the world were clear we would not
need art, to which I would add that if art were always clear we wouldn't
need criticism. The unclarity of art is the cost of its detachment from
the obvious clarities-the received wisdom-of life ... and criticism at
its best helps us pay that cost.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
I do not really share Mr. Gilman's concern that we shall lack
an adequately sophisticated criticism of popular culture. Popular
culture may still command inadequate critical attention, but it is
beginning to generate a fair ly sophisticated criticism. The trouble is
that that criticism-in which I am not including reviewing-is heavily
objectifying. The pioneers in the criticism of popular culture include
not merely Barthes, but also the Birmingham School, following the
leadership of Stuart Hall, and the semiotic film critics such as Chris–
tian Metz and the group around
Screen.
Even the luminaries of Yale are
contributing their bit with the work of Fredric Jameson and David
Grossvogel.
The main difficulties with the criticism of popular culture lie
elsewhere and remain closely entwined with questions of attitude-
