70
PARTISAN REVIEW
of landmarks, also has its value. The objects of popular culture are
seldom described in terms of
something else.
It
is not necessary when
writing about a new situation comedy on ABC to trace its horrid
lineage-though it is time we had some television critics who began to
understand that
nothing
that is done for the money-culture complex is
ever done without reason or without a thorough study of history and its
pratfalls-it is only necessary to
see
it, to consume it.
The immediateness, the vividness, the strict relevance to what has
been observed, the inclusion of fact and background, that prevail in
pop criticism have something to teach us. As does the authority with
which it is expressed, the self-confidence of judgment with which it is
expressed.
Critics of popular culture know their audience has a short atten–
tion span, therefore their prose style is affected by a need to arrest the
reader 's attention, which in many ways relates them to nineteenth
century high culture criticism. Bolinsky, it is clear, conveyed to his
readers the excitement of discovering Dostoevsky. And if you read him
and didn 't go out and pick up Fedor's book you were just not part of
the scene. So it is that the pop criticism scene has become a breeding
ground for the rather more exciting writing, stylistically, imagistically,
linguistically, in America today. Personally, I'd turn them loose on
high culture, but that would mean taking chances and breaking the
monopoly of the mandarin class and allowing writers,
because
maga–
zines are just ephemera and are themselves more properly a part of
popular culture, to make their mistakes in print and learn from them.
Finally, a lot of popular culture is performance, gesture, public
statement. The audience for popular culture has no visible limits; it is
the totality of all who
can
be reached. That fact-at whatever level
popular criticism exists-is deeply relevant. The critic who cannot
address a total audience is not, in popular culture, doing his job. He
does not thereby have to become stupid, derisory, or simplistic. Just
like his high culture equivalent he is making judgments and encourag–
ing the consumption of the good and rejection of the bad. But he has a
sense of his own power. That's what attracts so many good young
writers to the field. It's a place to exercise influence. It's a way to make
culture live. And because his audience is potentially infinite, the critic
has to speak in a way his audience can understand. The critic of
popular culture is, like any good writer, in touch with the demotic.
That never reduced anybody's mind; it just made writing a bit more
work. It's not a bad thing to have: this idea that we're talking to a real
world out there.
