STATE OF CRITICISM
67
which people feel competent to judge. This judgment is as to whether
or not something has given pleasure, sometimes known as entertain–
ment. There is no authority on popular culture, only a perpetual
running guide.
In terms of "criticism," popular culture provides for most people
their first taste of the act of distinguishing X from Y, or relating X to Y,
of describing and evaluating. That is because popular culture is
directly related to the market place; at its origin is the impulse
to
consume culture. The criticism of popular culture is a sort of buyers'
guide, and it is the only form of contemporary criticism in which those
who take part in the cultural act of devouring the works of culture are
also involved in discussion about the works. Almost all objects of
popular culture are simultaneously shared by an audience and dis–
cussed critically. Few people come out of a movie without saying, "I
thought that was good," or " that was bad."
It
may not be sophisticated
criticism, but there is nothing wrong in letting the consumer have
some say in criticism. Feet won't move to a sluggish beat, television
that does not entertain is switched off.
Because of this relation to the market place, popular culture is,
today, directly related to a set of needs. There is the need of the artist to
eat, not at the expense of foundations, but because he has earned his
bread by providing what an audience wanted; there is the need of the
audience
to
have that which will give it that peculiar alternative
to
daily life which we call culture. The relationship between these needs
was, in the past, a fairly common thing. In happier days, high culture
and low were not so far removed from each other: from a
liindler
to a
Haydn quartet was no great step.
But popular culture in the twentieth century is not folk culture.
Only children create that today, and the objects of their rhyming games
are the cultural
objets trouves
of masscult, of "Star Trek" and " Pea–
nuts" and Punk. I suspect it was ever so: the transmission within the
child's global village has always been faster and more efficient than we
acknowledge, hence the feast of variations in their words and games.
And their common sources.
It
is not folk culture today because it is not
spawned from below, nor very much derived from tradition, but
deliberately and consciously created from above. Folk gestures
remain-sport is a particular and interesting example-but they too, at
least in advanced societies, are quite superbly organized happenings.
But popular culture shares a heritage with folk culture. For
instance, it is a culture without authors.
It
is true that the audience
listening to rock music knows who performs it, but it is unlikely to
