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PARTISAN REVIEW
of "Heartbreak Hotel," the Elvis Presley song Clinton campaigned with
when he donned sunglasses and wielded a sax on the
Arsenio Hall
Show.
And between musical numbers, television and film stars offered
political homilies: Oprah Winfrey, Liv Ullmann, Jack
icholson,
Whoopi Goldberg.
The reigning principle was the elimination of all cultural and aes–
thetic distinctions-between one style and another, one taste and
another. None was made between the serious and the commercial,
between reverence for Abraham Lincoln and the Hollywood stars who
quoted him. Nor could there be any distinction between the President–
elect and anybody else. Throughout the event, Clinton clapped and nod–
ded and swayed and gave the thumbs-up sign like an undergraduate at
his first rock concert. He was even hailed in a rap as "Big Bill" by
L. L.
Cool
J.
The obsessive leveling was suspended only for the stars of the
entertainment industry, who constituted the sole elite. Otherwise the
display and celebrations of diversity was the primary political and aes–
thetic value. And-most crucially-the diversity was grounded purely in
proportional representation, not in taste or judgment.
I am not objecting to diverse tastes and exposure, but to the estab–
lishment of diversity as the governing standard. This makes for a
strange music of statecraft, quite different from Haydn's efforts for
Prince Esterhazy or Shostakovich's coded proclamations under Stalin or
even Aaron Copland's oddly overblown paean to Lincoln in the 1940s.
Under the pressures of this kind of obsessive diversity-pumped up by
celebrity culture-the music of statecraft can hardly exist unless it is
miscellaneous and unfocused . Much rock and rap is inherently anarchic
or anti-bourgeois; much art music is inappropriate for large gatherings
or popular tastes. Popular music styles tend to define generational
bonds and do not often reach further. In fact, only movies and television
form a common cultural experience in the United States or provide a
bond for Kaffeeklatsch conversations. When it comes to public ceremo–
nial art it is difficult to even imagine public statues showing particular
figures who have had mythic roles in founding or protecting a place.
Until recently, it would have been considered ridiculously sentimental to
conceive of such a statue, even if some hero could be agreed upon. This
changed, in part, after 91r
I,
but the questions remain.
Is democratic culture doomed to atomization, its rigid diversity inter–
rupted only by a few deliberately provocative outbursts of rebellion?
Does this mean that democracy and democratic media prevent the sus–
tained creation of a tradition that aspires to something more than enter–
tainment or outrage? Only, I think, if the ideology of democracy
