Dana Gioia says, "I don't think that Americans were smarter then, but American culture was."

June 26, 2007 10:38 AM

Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

The prepared text of the speech delivered by Dana Gioia at Stanford University Commencement on June 17, 2007.
posted by cgc373 (153 comments total)

The prepared text of the speech delivered by Dana Gioia.

Who?
posted by three blind mice at 10:43 AM on June 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

Old Man Thinks Things Ain't What They Used to Be, Ignored By American Culture.
posted by muddgirl at 10:45 AM on June 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

Gioia is a poet, evangelist for the public virtues of poetry, and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
posted by MattD at 10:46 AM on June 26, 2007

The irony is that by this metric, the American people are "smarter" today than 50 years ago - in that they can name even more entertainment figures than ever before.
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:49 AM on June 26, 2007

But how many websites could they name? Oho!
posted by DU at 10:51 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Is a better speech than that, muddgirl, and a necessary one for graduates at elite schools, where enlightened self-improvement is a distant third behind behind making money and causing social change in terms of public goals. I do think that he's too alarmist by half in terms of the alleged death of arts programs in high schools. Even in 2007, most high schools have bands and drama programs, and those that lack them do so because of lack of size or prevalence of gross social pathologies, not because of lack of priorities.
posted by MattD at 10:51 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Dead link, or is it just me?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:52 AM on June 26, 2007

I'm pretty certain that fifty years ago those people were still alive, thus popular culture icons of their time.

On the other hand, I suspect that the guy baiting lobster traps or working the production line at GM did not know who most of those people were.
posted by SteveInMaine at 10:52 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

We had stadards back then but did not (alas) have Michael Jackson. And that makes all the difference
posted by Postroad at 10:52 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ah, now it's loading. Carry on.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:53 AM on June 26, 2007

There is an experiment I'd love to conduct. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and American Idol finalists they can name.

Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name.

So what do NBA players, Major League Baseball players, American Idol finalists, poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors and composers have in common? They're all entertainers.

So I don't exactly get why it's taken as a given that one group is somehow more 'cultured' then another. I mean really the only difference is that the second group is carrying on old traditions while the first group is doing newer things. But how can you say one form of entertainment is intrinsically better then another.

I think the major difference is that before the "the masses" didn't have the income to create their own entertainment markets, and the media to distribute it. Now they do.

And anyway, what is rap music if not poetry set to music. You may not like the subject matter but that's pretty much what it is. In which case most Americans can probably name several "poets"
posted by delmoi at 10:54 AM on June 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

There is an experiment I'd love to conduct. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them...

Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named...

In other words, he has no idea whether, on average, people were familiar with a broader range of people fifty years ago, but since several of the teenagers around him can't name as many classical musicians as he can he's gonna just assume some facts and make an argument from there.
posted by straight at 11:02 AM on June 26, 2007 [4 favorites]

I agree with delmoi - Also is it not sad that the (current) NEA chairman falls into the far too common trap of looking back wistfully to a past that never was, rather than extolling the virtue of today’s “art” and its unbelievable omnipresence and variety?
posted by 2bucksplus at 11:04 AM on June 26, 2007

On the other hand, I suspect that the guy baiting lobster traps or working the production line at GM did not know who most of those people were.

Well, since he says that he encountered those people by watching Ed Sullivan, I'd say that there's actually a pretty good chance that the guy baiting lobster traps happened to hear of those people on the most watched show in America at the time. I think that's his point: the non-commercial arts have been pulled out of popular culture entirely, and he's not wrong.

They're all entertainers.

This is simplistic to the point of absurdity. Art doesn't necessarily entertain, and no the definition of entertaining is not "whatever a person happens to like." I like steak, but it's not entertaining. There is a marked difference between poets who, among people who read poetry, are massively successful but still hope for a teaching job at a nice university that they can actually feed a family on and rappers who are massively successful for a year or two and then retire early to live a life of leisure on their bajillions of dollars (note, this is not an indictment of hip hop or all hip hop artists.) The fact is that there are people who create art for the sake of art regardless of whether or not it will make them rich. Those people are non-commercial artists, and they've been marginalized practically out of existence.
posted by shmegegge at 11:04 AM on June 26, 2007 [6 favorites]

50 years ago I wouldn't have wanted all the kids 'OFF MY LAWN!"
posted by sfts2 at 11:09 AM on June 26, 2007 [3 favorites]

Mr. Goia, please name as many people as you can from each of the following categories:

- Popular Japanese musicians from the 1960s to 1990s
- Web cartoonists
- Actors who have played Count Dracula
- Comic book writers from the United Kingdom
- Pirates, circa 1680 to 1740

If you cannot name as many people from these categories as I can, I must assume you are not as intelligent and cultured as I am. QED.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:11 AM on June 26, 2007 [5 favorites]

Goia Gioia. Damn.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:15 AM on June 26, 2007

This smacks a bit of "get off my damn lawn kids," but the man's got a point. Ever see Groucho Marx's old game show "You Bet Your Life?" The contestants on the show were usually just regular working-class Americans, but seemed much more engaged in intellectualism, whether in the higher quality of the banter with Groucho, their general knowledge in the game, or in introducing themselves and explaining their interests and hobbies. The audience too seemed to appreciate a drier and wittier humor than you can find on TV these days. It's pretty striking to watch (apart from being wildly entertaining in its own right).
posted by SBMike at 11:16 AM on June 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

delmoi, there is a difference between rap music and poetry, and there is a difference between slam poetry (which in my opinion is often significantly better seen performed than read) and poetry written for paper, for lack of a better term (which in my opinion is often better on paper than seen performed). They may all fall into similar categories, but the differences are vast. This might not be the best analogy, but I think I can make a decent comparison with film; I doubt that you would argue that "American Pie" or "Scary Movie" are the same as "Citizen Kane" or "Life is Beautiful." Sure, they're all movies, but very different ends of the spectrum.

Anyway. I don't know any children who have imaginary friends anymore. I know a large number who will only read a book if their parents make them, and even when they do, they can't visualize the characters. They don't know what Harry Potter or Hermione look like until they see the movies. I do think that's sad, and I do think that at least a part of that comes from the fact that electronic forms of entertainment have become such a prevalent part of our lives. Perhaps that's just me and my wistful nostalgia toward childhood, but I am intrigued to see what sort of paths these children raised on electronics will take once they've grown. I think that we'll probably see more advances in technology and entertainment, which certainly isn't bad, as long as the traditional art forms don't fade with it.

I don't think that art is disappearing, and I don't think that it will. But I do think that it's prominence in the general culture has faded quite a bit, and I hope that it's importance is not underestimated in the future.
posted by plaingurl at 11:18 AM on June 26, 2007

Sure, its true. Thats not the point, the point is to spend an entire commencement address at one of the most prestigious universities in the country whining about something so obvious. No wonder he works for the Government.
posted by sfts2 at 11:20 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Apropos of SBMike's comment, I wonder how many of today's Americans could tell you who's buried in Grant's Tomb.
posted by Rangeboy at 11:21 AM on June 26, 2007

and no the definition of entertaining is not "whatever a person happens to like."

Well what is it then?

There is a marked difference between poets who, among people who read poetry, are massively successful but still hope for a teaching job at a nice university that they can actually feed a family on and rappers who are massively successful for a year or two and then retire early to live a life of leisure on their bajillions of dollars

First of all most rappers don't make that much money. A lot of the "cash money" stuff is just artifice designed to project an image of wealth.

But really, the "marked difference" between the two is popularity. If poetry books were as popular as mass-market pop novels then you'd see lots of rich poets like you see rich authors like J.K Rowling, Steven King, Micheal Creighton. Now if that were the case then would that make poetry any less poetic? Obviously not. The difference in lifestyles is not due to a difference in art. Of course rap is set to background music, but still it's primarily the same.

The fact is that there are people who create art for the sake of art regardless of whether or not it will make them rich.

Are you saying people like Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright didn't make any money? I'm sure there are plenty of pop media artists who create things because they love doing it rather then for the money, they're just obscure. Look at all the original content on youtube.
posted by delmoi at 11:22 AM on June 26, 2007

Gioia was a favorite of George W. Bush to lead the NEA, which tells you a lot about him. He would do better to direct his pensées on the state of education, childrearing, and the imagination to his Republican buddies in Congress and the White House, who granted him his title and are apparently much enamored with the corporate good sense he's brought to the agency.

A former VP Marketing (Marketing!) at General Foods Corp. delivering a Jeremiad on education and imagination! What gall! He should have been egged off the stage by the good students of Stanford.
posted by ori at 11:24 AM on June 26, 2007

Number of Americans who believe Saddam-9/11 tie rises to 41 percent
posted by homunculus at 11:25 AM on June 26, 2007

I also have to wonder at the appropriateness of this venue for this speech, as Stanford hardly seems to be a haven for anti-intellectualism and mediocrity.
posted by SBMike at 11:28 AM on June 26, 2007

I doubt that you would argue that "American Pie" or "Scary Movie" are the same as "Citizen Kane" or "Life is Beautiful." Sure, they're all movies, but very different ends of the spectrum.

Well you're comparing the relationship between types of poetry with the relationship between specific movies. A more proper comparison would between hip-hop and literary poetry and the relationship between, say, dramas and romantic comedies. There is plenty of crap in both sets. And there is plenty of bad poetry out there, just look at myspace and livejournal.
posted by delmoi at 11:28 AM on June 26, 2007

Good speech. Sad comments, mostly.

I really liked the line from his poem, "lovers swear loyalty in a careless world."
posted by blacklite at 11:29 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well Mr. Gioia, why don't you walk into your bosses office and tell him to take back the airwaves from the corporations who are abusing them for profit. Those wistful days you remember so fondly were brought to you because the government mandated that each and every show on the air have some sort of redeeming and enriching segment. That's the reason variety shows used to have at least one music act (as many still do today) so they wouldn't get yanked off the air the people who granted them the privilege.

His beef is with Disney, GE and Viacom. The people will just consume what they are fed. Corporations will always find it more lucrative to appeal to base instincts instead of our more noble (less consumer-driven) nature so they must be forced into providing more cultural programs.
posted by any major dude at 11:35 AM on June 26, 2007 [3 favorites]

straight: In other words, he has no idea whether, on average, people were familiar with a broader range of people fifty years ago, but since several of the teenagers around him can't name as many classical musicians as he can he's gonna just assume some facts and make an argument from there.

I present you:

The Method of Cautious Inquiry
as understood by Dana Gioia

1. Come up with an experiment you'd like to try.
   
2. Guess the results of this experiment.
   
3. Worry a great deal about these results.
   
4. Ponder aloud various vague solutions to mitigate these results.
   

posted by ori at 11:36 AM on June 26, 2007 [3 favorites]

Well what is it then?

For the willfully obtuse.

affording entertainment; amusing; diverting

Can art be amusing? yes. can it be diverting? yes. can it entertain? yes. must it? no on all counts. I wouldn't call Paradise Lost or the paintings of Rothko amusing, but ymmv.

no, i never said that all rappers make a lot of money, and I'd be interested in seeing where you believe I said that. additionally, I never said that robert frost et al. did not make money, and I'd be interested in seeing where you believe I said that. I would also be interested in hearing your response to what I did say.

If you want to talk non-commercial hip hop, I can shoot the shit with you all day about the likes of Aesop Rock, El-P, Acey Alone, doesone, odd nosdam Atmosphere, Edan, clouddead and a host of other brilliant underground and independent hip hop artists. If you want I'll sit with you and we can talk about biggy and pac and the Game and Akon, too. This is because neither I, nor anyone else, has to hate rap to recognize the simple truth that as I said above non-commercial artists are far more marginalized than they used to be.
posted by shmegegge at 11:38 AM on June 26, 2007

A more proper comparison would between hip-hop and literary poetry and the relationship between, say, dramas and romantic comedies.

You're right, that's a significantly better comparison. My brain couldn't grab on to it after staring at spreadsheets at work all day, but it's what I was after.

Anyway, my point is still that I think that they're at opposite ends of the spectrum, and are difficult to lump into one broader category because of that. I don't think that I would necessarily connect/compare hip-hop and slam poetry, either. I think that the usage of music makes a big difference.

To me, and I have an admittedly limited knowledge of hip-hop, the difference always seemed to be that in hip-hop the words are manipulated to fit the music, and because of the necessity for the proper fit with the music, sometimes the quality of what's said is sacrificed. Granted, the same thing will happen if a poet is struggling with his or her meter. It seems like in hip-hop the focus is on the music, and in poetry the focus is on the language. I'm not saying that one is better than the other, as I think they're vastly different, but rather that I think their differences make it difficult to make such a broad statement of comparison. Certainly not all hip-hop artists could be poets, and certainly not all poets could be hip-hop artists.

...I think I'm ranting and I think I've lost my point. And really, even if I haven't, it's off the topic of the original post so I think I'll stop now.
posted by plaingurl at 11:38 AM on June 26, 2007

A more proper comparison would between hip-hop and literary poetry and the relationship between, say, dramas and romantic comedies.

delmoi, rap isn't poetry, it's popular song, just as Stephen Foster wrote popular song and Barry Manilow writes popular song. Now, slam poetry is poetry, and not rap, so perhaps you want to talk about that instead.
posted by OmieWise at 11:40 AM on June 26, 2007

Paris Hilton is a sculptor . . . of my heart.
Lindsay Lohan is a scientist . . . of cocktails.
Tom Cruise is...........................still fucking crazy.
You win again Gioia.
posted by mattbucher at 11:42 AM on June 26, 2007

You're right, that's a significantly better comparison.

No it's not. delmoi is trying to claim that popular entertainers are the same as artists, and that isn't true. It wasn't at the time Gioia was talking about, either, it's just that artists were more respected in the mainstream.

delmoi's argument is profoundly anti-intellectual, and as much as I hate the inherent conservatism in Gioia's speech, delmoi's responses here serve to justify it.
posted by OmieWise at 11:43 AM on June 26, 2007 [5 favorites]

The people will just consume what they are fed. Corporations will always find it more lucrative to appeal to base instincts instead of our more noble (less consumer-driven) nature so they must be forced into providing more cultural programs.

This argument is way scarier than any perceived cultural deficit. Keep the government away from "forcing" the media to provide "noble" content, please.
posted by brain_drain at 11:44 AM on June 26, 2007

on non-preview:

A more proper comparison would between hip-hop and literary poetry and the relationship between, say, dramas and romantic comedies.

I disagree. I think a more proper comparison would be between, say, Atmosphere and Fabolous and between, for example, Accepted and Little Miss Sunhine. There are certainly people and organizations against hip hop, for instance, but there is no overarching trend in american culture toward its removal from common society. there is one for poetry.
posted by shmegegge at 11:45 AM on June 26, 2007

Excellent speech, I find the criticism of it in this thread strange.
posted by ageispolis at 11:47 AM on June 26, 2007

delmoi is trying to claim that popular entertainers are the same as artists, and that isn't true.

i disagree completely.

not all popular entertainers are artists, and not all artists are popular entertainers. that doesn't mean that the two categories are mutually exclusive.

i'd be willing to be that there are some hip-hop artists out there who write what could easily be considered poetry. just because someone is a popular entertainer does not somehow "disqualify" them from artist status.
posted by plaingurl at 11:48 AM on June 26, 2007

No it's not. delmoi is trying to claim that popular entertainers are the same as artists, and that isn't true. It wasn't at the time Gioia was talking about, either, it's just that artists were more respected in the mainstream.

delmoi's argument is profoundly anti-intellectual, and as much as I hate the inherent conservatism in Gioia's speech, delmoi's responses here serve to justify it.

Oh, please. Why aren't popular entertainers artists? Some of them are fairly bad artists, but really, what's the difference besides quality?
posted by SBMike at 11:48 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

What an idiotic speach. The opportunities for access to art, culture and science have increased exponentially over a period far less than 50 years. Perhaps his complaint is that the average person no longer looks to organizations and public figures to decide for them what constitutes artists worthy of merit. Gotta love the NEA getting pissy about being ignored or, even worse, circumvented.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 11:51 AM on June 26, 2007

Can we add a "getoffmylawn" tag?
posted by mrnutty at 11:54 AM on June 26, 2007

there is no overarching trend in american culture toward its removal from common society. there is one for poetry.

people have been saying this for years. years and years. poetry has always been in a better state than it is now.

Donald Hall wrote a great essay on it:

"Worship is not love. People who at the age of fifty deplore the death of poetry are the same people who in their twenties were "taught to exalt it." The middle-aged poetry detractor is the student who hyperventilated at poetry readings thirty years earlier--during Wilson's "Pound-Sandburg era" or Epstein's aura-era of "T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams." After college many English majors stop reading contemporary poetry. Why not? They become involved in journalism or scholarship, essay writing or editing, brokerage or social work; they backslide from the undergraduate Church of Poetry. Years later, glancing belatedly at the poetic scene, they tell us that poetry is dead. They left poetry; therefore they blame poetry for leaving them. Really, they lament their own aging. Don't we all? But some of us do not blame the current poets."
posted by plaingurl at 11:55 AM on June 26, 2007

delmoi is trying to claim that popular entertainers are the same as artists, and that isn't true.

I think the argument is more that it doesn't make sense to draw lines between artists and non-artists based on either classical conceptions of art (sculpture, poetry, painting, etc.) or on the perceived "quality" of the work. Steven Spielberg, Kanye West, and Gary Trudeau are artists, and good ones. And most people know who they are. Jerry Bruckheimer, Vanilla Ice, and Cathy Guisewite are artists too, just not so good. I don't see the argument as anti-intellectual so much as recognizing that the nature of art has evolved. Sure, poetry is fading in prominence, but that doesn't mean that creative expression is being devalued more generally.
posted by brain_drain at 11:58 AM on June 26, 2007

sfts2: spend an entire commencement address...whining about something so obvious. No wonder he works for the Government.

Just because something is obvious doesn't mean it's not worth whining about. For example, Darfur. It's obviously a problem - that doesn't mean it's going to be fixed.

I liked the speech. Art/entertainment that challenges the mind is harder to consume than art/entertainment that doesn't. In an increasingly competative entertainment market, people appear to be drawn to something they know will entertain them (something easy to consume). That is why the Regal Cinemas near my apartment is playing Pirates of the Carribean 3, Ocean's 11 3, Shrek 3, Bruce Almighty 2, Fantastic Four 2, Die Hard 17, and only two movies that aren't sequels: Waitress and A Mighty Heart. Art/entertainment that is harder to consume is pushed to the margins, even though it also offers as much excitement, insight, wonder, wisdom and joy as the easy stuff. As American culture is increasingly unwilling/unable/pushed away from paying the barrier to entry to less-consumable works, it is cut off from a huge range of experienc and ideas. And that's a shame.
posted by taliaferro at 11:59 AM on June 26, 2007

Ridiculous, people of great political and cultural import change throughout the times. We can't name great classical musicians, playwrights and poets because we don't have those anymore. Several hundred years ago we would have been naming merchants, mapmakers, theologians and frilly shirt makers. Now, we can name David Chase, John Williams, Stephen Spielberg, Ben Kingsley, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Malcolm Gladwell and Guillermo del Toro.

Think those names represent just the best of popular culture? A generation ago a mom went to see A Glass Menagerie and talked about how great it was when her son just rolled his eyes, put on a Miles Davis album and read William S Burroughs new book. Kind of like when some kid a couple thousand years ago was all over Livy's latest work and his dad was complaining no one knew who Heroductus was.
posted by geoff. at 12:00 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

brain_drain wrote:

This argument is way scarier than any perceived cultural deficit. Keep the government away from "forcing" the media to provide "noble" content, please.

Good boy brain drain, Ronald Reagan taught you well. Don't trust the government - let the free market tell you what you need. They look out for your best interests much more than the big bad government. Why don't you give the free market your social security as well, I mean, they've done such a wonderful job with healthcare haven't they?
posted by any major dude at 12:03 PM on June 26, 2007

plaingurl,

donald hall was defending artists from people saying that modern poetry is worse than poetry used to be, near as I can figure. This is absolutely valid. I'm speaking more of the movement in popular culture away from appreciation of poetry, painting, art house film, etc... which certainly does exist.

I think the argument is more that it doesn't make sense to draw lines between artists and non-artists based on either classical conceptions of art (sculpture, poetry, painting, etc.) or on the perceived "quality" of the work.

I think it's important to point out that Gioia actually doesn't draw that line, and the first person to point out that particular line in this particular discussion was, in fact, delmoi. Gioia simply identifies particular forms of art which are losing ground in mainstream culture, and then points to athletics and american idol as being the kind of thing mainstream culture has replaced those particular forms of art with. In other words, non-commercial art (or simplistically, art for art's sake) has been replaced by not-art. not-art does not, in his speech, include Kanye West or Steven Spielberg or Gary Trudeau. This is what is so frustrating about delmoi's arguments so far. The best they accomplish for this discussion is to muddy the issue and confuse everyone as to what Gioia actually said. here's an examplary statement from the speech that more closely gets at the heart of his point:

Today no working-class or immigrant kid would encounter that range of arts and ideas in the popular culture. Almost everything in our national culture, even the news, has been reduced to entertainment, or altogether eliminated.

he's saying that popular culture has narrowed its range, and it has done so by eliminating perfectly valid and worthwhile forms of art and expression from mainstream every day exposure to be replaced specifically by entertainment only. this is a very good point, though as has been pointed out it sort of falls into the "no shit sherlock" category.
posted by shmegegge at 12:07 PM on June 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

examplary? meh. going out for a smoke.
posted by shmegegge at 12:09 PM on June 26, 2007

PUSHPIN! POETRY! PUSHPIN! POETRY!

I CAN'T DECIDE!
posted by chlorus at 12:09 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Sure, its true. Thats not the point, the point is to spend an entire commencement address at one of the most prestigious universities in the country whining about something so obvious. No wonder he works for the Government.

Agreed. What a lame speech, overriden with cliches, an exaltation of the past (isn't that a conservative view) and no real salient points. Here was his chance to present a vision, a discerning comment on the current forms of Art and its distribution -thanks to YouTube I can finally see all those incredible short films I had to wait to see at film festivals or on late night TV. His chance to present a roadmap, an inspiring call to arms to Artists of all kinds (architects, designers, video artists, performance artists, photographers) that gets them excited about the future.

Instead we get a regret that people aren't familiar with more "conductors." Conductors, really?
posted by vacapinta at 12:11 PM on June 26, 2007

Gioia is just another superfluous government bureaucrat going in front of a sympathetic audience and complaining that his agency is underappreciated. His speech is a thinly-veiled plea for more tax dollars.
posted by three blind mice at 12:12 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

shmegegge,

did you read the entire article? it was written in response to people saying that poetry is dead and that it's not appreciated anymore. he points out that more poetry is now being published than has ever happened before. (among other things.)

i agree completely that it's moved out of the mainstream culture, though. it's moved significantly more into the academic world, where mfa programs are in high demand and readings take place on a regular basis. unfortunately those readings are mostly attended by other people in academia. slam poetry, as a contrast, has been doing a great job of bringing poetry back to mainstream culture, but i do think that slam and written verse are very different things.

there are a few poets who have been able to bridge the gap into popular culture--such as billy collins who remains one of the few contemporary poets to have best selling books. billy collins has also complained that too many people are writing and publishing poetry, so it's hard to find the good stuff because there's simply so much out there. (this was in the introduction to the best american poetry 2006, which he guest edited.)

if poetry is fading as much as many people would like to suggest, i don't think that such arguments would be made by people such as mr. collins.
posted by plaingurl at 12:16 PM on June 26, 2007

Gioia simply identifies particular forms of art which are losing ground in mainstream culture, and then points to athletics and american idol as being the kind of thing mainstream culture has replaced those particular forms of art with.

But see, that's a ridiculous comparison. American Idol isn't replacing Robert Frost, it's replacing American Bandstand. If you want to talk about the death of modern literature, talk about Dan Brown or Tom Clancy.

I know a large number who will only read a book if their parents make them

Few kids ever wanted to read, either now or in the past. It's ridiculous to say that any children were consumers of literature.
posted by muddgirl at 12:17 PM on June 26, 2007

"Entertainment: agreeable occupation for the mind."

I would just like to say that the steak I had last night was both delicious and--by this definition--entertaining. It was so good I was just closing my eyes and thinking about nothing but the flavor.

I need to marinade my steaks more often.

Oh, er... carry on.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 12:17 PM on June 26, 2007

shmegegge is right. There is a big difference between art that is rewarded for commercial viability and art that is not. No one ever talks about the number of tickets sold for the opening weekend of a MOMA exhibit.

Watch this clip of John Cage on a 1960s gameshow and tell me anything like this still happens. This would be like Bruce Andrews being invited to read his poetry on Deal or No Deal, and Howie deciding to forgo the game to give him time to read. Instead, we have Bruce being screamed at by Bill O'Reilly.
posted by roll truck roll at 12:26 PM on June 26, 2007 [7 favorites]

Vacapinta and Geoff. are right - we have more access to cultural events, performances, artworks, etc. than ever before. And, thank goodness, we do have our own have our own artists and thinkers who have pierced into the pop-cultural realm - particularly Malcolm Gladwell. And The Daily Show and Colbert Report feature philosophers and writers on TV every day.

But shmegegge and Gioia are right also that "the range of arts and ideas" in popular culture is diminished - or at least the range that is fed to the public for passive consumption, primarily on TV and through movies and videogames, is diminished. Yes, you can find whatever you want on YouTube, but it's hard to find what you don't know about.
posted by taliaferro at 12:26 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Fifty years ago, I suspect

I don't really give a shit what you suspect. Can you prove that bold statement? (HINT: no, you can't).
posted by teece at 12:28 PM on June 26, 2007

muddgirl: Few kids ever wanted to read, either now or in the past. It's ridiculous to say that any children were consumers of literature.

!!!?!?!?!?!?!??! Umm...I read voraciously as a child. I know many other people who did as well. Why on earth would you say what you just said?
posted by taliaferro at 12:29 PM on June 26, 2007 [4 favorites]

We can't name great classical musicians, playwrights and poets because we don't have those anymore.

not true.

there have been poets since the dawn of recorded history. and there still are. many people just don't read as much as they used to in our culture, which is a whole separate problem, and i think symptomatic of a more general intellectual laziness that's infected virtually every strata of society.

even our gov't's highest-placed foreign policy leaders often don't bother to do the intellectual heavy-lifting their duties require, as has been amply demonstrated elsewhere.

we're lazy. intellectually, morally, spiritually, and physically. face it. why shouldn't we be? we've got literally thousands of marketers reminding us on a near hourly basis from the time that we're toddlers through adulthood how important it is to get what we want quickly, easily, and with a minimum of inconvenience.

not to mention reinforcing the idea that nothing we consume should make us uncomfortable, or challenge our core belief in the supremacy of our own individual preferences, beliefs and desires.


Few kids ever wanted to read, either now or in the past. It's ridiculous to say that any children were consumers of literature.

Yeah, and we have always been at war with Eurasia.

That claim is ridiculous--for the better part of history, since literacy first became widespread with the advent of the public education system, reading was just about the most popular form of entertainment going.

Reading and letter writing used to be favorite pastimes among the middle class in America, and yes, kids actually liked reading--stories like Mark Twain's Celebrated Jumping Frog... and Huckleberry Finn were hugely popular among young readers. What the hell are you basing this claim on? If you've got anything more than just intuition to back it up I'll let it slide, otherwise it seems like an outrageous claim to me.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:29 PM on June 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

did you read the entire article? it was written in response to people saying that poetry is dead and that it's not appreciated anymore. he points out that more poetry is now being published than has ever happened before. (among other things.)

I did not, I'm sorry. You raise a good point.

if poetry is fading as much as many people would like to suggest, i don't think that such arguments would be made by people such as mr. collins.

This is another good point, and I won't be able to say one way or the other that I can prove anything. I happen to be one of those people who is consistently frustrated by Mr. Collins as a poet and as a figure within poetic circles, but that's beside the point. The thing that I think Mr. Gioia is saying is that it's a shame that poetry and the like HAS moved out of the mainstream, and become cloistered among academics. It may be that he's imagining it, but I find it hard to believe.
posted by shmegegge at 12:33 PM on June 26, 2007

Wow. shmegegge crushes on this one.

Look, the difference between commercial and non-commercial entertainment, even if one of emphasis, is a substantial one, and Gioia is right to note the passing and sublimation of the latter to the all-encompassing might of the former. In an age when even poetry must meet a minimal number of "buys," it is harder and harder for poetry to find an outlet. I hardly think this is controversial, and the various ad homs against Gioia and the sundry collapse of all art into entertainment does more to bolster the argument than it does to deflate it.

There may be some value in undermining or deconstructing the assumed authority that particular cultural motifs have, just as there might be some real reason to undo the stranglehold that certain types of entertainment have, in favor of new and maybe less conventionally accepted forms of entertainment. I cannot imagine any reason why one must be familiar with classical music or jazz, for example, but I do not think that this lack of necessity necessarily explains or justifies the absence of any sustained opportunity to encounter these forms of entertainment on most commercial radio. Internet radio changed some of this, but we all know that story. XM is also changing it, though again, that is far from a problem-free enterprise right now.

The larger and more interesting questions, of course, are whether or not the abundance of entertainment carries the cost of a declining educational content, and what standards are used to adjudicate educational content. Those can be answered at your leisure, but it's silly to pretend as if certain presumptions negate a general failure on the part of the mainstream media conglomerates to provide interesting outlets for intellectual life, be it in the form of poetry or physics or what have you.
posted by hank_14 at 12:34 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

But see, that's a ridiculous comparison. American Idol isn't replacing Robert Frost, it's replacing American Bandstand. If you want to talk about the death of modern literature, talk about Dan Brown or Tom Clancy.

Oh, I have! But the truth is that it's not that straightforward a replacement. As Gioia mentions in his speech, once upon a time the most watched television show in America, Ed Sullivan, had poets on it. That doesn't happen any more. Things like poetry, sculpture, painting, architecture and all that simply don't have the footprint in mainstream culture that they used to, and they have, as a group, been replaced by entertainment as another group.
posted by shmegegge at 12:36 PM on June 26, 2007

!!?!?!?!?!?!??! Umm...I read voraciously as a child. I know many other people who did as well. Why on earth would you say what you just said?

!!!!?!??!?!???!?!??!!! Umm, I read voraciously as a kid, too. But my brother only read comic books. My mom hated to read until she was 20. My dad was a voracious reader, but none of his friends liked to. So let's continue looking at anecdotes and presenting them as facts.

stories like Mark Twain's Celebrated Jumping Frog... and Huckleberry Finn were hugely popular among young readers

Yes, and Harry Potter is hugely popular among young readers today.

Perhaps "few" was the wrong word. My point was that just as many kids today are voracious readers as kids in the past. It's "golden agism" to assume that kids today hate to read more than kids in the past hated to read.
posted by muddgirl at 12:37 PM on June 26, 2007

Meant to add: "kids today just have more entertainment to consume"
posted by muddgirl at 12:39 PM on June 26, 2007

muddgirl,

I think what stuck in some people's craws was more this:

It's ridiculous to say that any children were consumers of literature.

this is a bold statement to say the least.
posted by shmegegge at 12:43 PM on June 26, 2007

I happen to be one of those people who is consistently frustrated by Mr. Collins as a poet and as a figure within poetic circles, but that's beside the point.

it seemed to me like there was a reason that i liked you ;) billy collins drives me crazy. 'the trouble with poetry' (the poem not the book) succeeds in doing absolutely nothing except make me angry. and i'm one of those silly people in those poetic circles.

The thing that I think Mr. Gioia is saying is that it's a shame that poetry and the like HAS moved out of the mainstream, and become cloistered among academics. It may be that he's imagining it, but I find it hard to believe.

anyway, i think that what we're really doing here is violently agreeing. i haven't really disagreed with anything you've said and think that you're making points that i would like to make better than i could. i think that literary poetry has founds itself snuggled into the world of academia, and it makes me sad. i also agree with what gioia said, though, that it's the artists who find themselves stuck in academia who need to make more of an effort to "get out there," so to speak.

gary mex glazner has a book out called 'how to make a living as a poet.' it gives a lot of examples of ways to get poetry back into mainstream culture, although he's doing so as ways to make money. for example, he worked out a partnership with a hotel and left poems on everyone's pillows with mints. he also encourages people to do poetry-diner type benefits, where people are able to "order" from a menu of poetry and the poets, who are present, will go around and perform what they ordered. ideas like this are splendid, and i wish that they happened more often.
posted by plaingurl at 12:44 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

I too think that American culture was much better when white men controlled it.
posted by ozomatli at 12:48 PM on June 26, 2007

"Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name.

I'd even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name."

oh yes, if they can't name all the important people in the world like playwrights, painters, sculptors...let's give them a second chance with the less important scientists and thinkers.

What a dick.

On a related note, I was wandering around the downtown area near Syracuse Uni, and asking students if they knew the starting lineup of the basketball or football team, or any of the 3 nobel laureates teaching at the time. 0 on the nobel laureates, about 50% on the sports teams and everyone knew at least one player. (disclaimer: I don't go to the school and could no longer name off anyone from either group.)

That being said, hero worship sucks no matter what. Lets get them to stop worshiping the athletes and pop stars rather than worshipping the prestigious members of society instead. It's the ideas they've put forth, not the names that are important
posted by kigpig at 12:49 PM on June 26, 2007

I too think that American culture was much better when white men controlled it.
posted by ozomatli at 3:48 PM on June 26 [+] [!]

You mean we don't anymore?
posted by shmegegge at 12:50 PM on June 26, 2007

Perhaps "few" was the wrong word. My point was that just as many kids today are voracious readers as kids in the past. It's "golden agism" to assume that kids today hate to read more than kids in the past hated to read.

Don't get me wrong--"golden agism," to use your term, is definitely problematic. I'm not saying things were all wine and roses in America's cultural past (uh, lynchings come to mind for starters). However, to gloss over obvious recent changes in the cultural landscape seems silly to me. Modern attitudes toward reading are unique. At one time in history, people were actively deprived of opportunities to learn how to read by ruling elites because the ability to read was seen as such an inherently desirable and culturally valuable skill. Children who could read, did so at every opportunity; children who couldn't, did everything in their power to learn how. Not so anymore. So, for good or bad, a lot of people's mental muscles don't get the same kind of work out they used to, and that's bound to have broader effects.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:56 PM on June 26, 2007

"Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name."


Why only "classical" musicians composers and conductors? Why playwrights over screenwriters?
Why architects instead of interior designers?
Why no chefs?

He chose a list of professions either very carefully or he's so out of touch with reality that he thinks conductors are actually something we think everyone should know. Basically his rant is about how people should like the same things he does.
posted by ozomatli at 12:59 PM on June 26, 2007

muddgirl: Perhaps "few" was the wrong word. My point was that just as many kids today are voracious readers as kids in the past. It's "golden agism" to assume that kids today hate to read more than kids in the past hated to read.

Sorry I dookied a shooter there, muddgirl. I'm at work and foolishly trying to actually be productive and read MeFi at the same time. And consequently doing a poor job of both.

Anyway, "golden ageism" may not be wrong in this case, and for the very reason you point out: kids today just have more entertainment to consume. So they read less and play video games more. And reading, I would hazard, provides less easy stimulation to many of them than video games. I don't have statistics here, but it seems like a fair assumption.
posted by taliaferro at 1:00 PM on June 26, 2007

Late to this thread, I know, but it's worth noting that Dana Gioia is an aesthetically reactionary formalist writer who has made a second career (his first was as an executive at General Foods) publicly dithering (most famously in his book Can Poetry Matter?) about the relevance of his academic poet peers and being dismissive toward poets working in more innovative styles. So the speech is pretty much his standard schtick (no big surprise, since his standard schtick has gotten him a long way in academic poetry and government funding circles).

shmegegge: do you know what poets Ed Sullivan actually had on his show?
posted by aught at 1:00 PM on June 26, 2007

I don't really give a shit what you suspect. Can you prove that bold statement? (HINT: no, you can't).

It's that special quality that makes him a bush appointee!
posted by delmoi at 1:01 PM on June 26, 2007

I also have to wonder at the appropriateness of this venue for this speech, as Stanford hardly seems to be a haven for anti-intellectualism and mediocrity.

Perhaps not today. But in 10 or 20 years, how many of those kids are going to be deep in the fold of rampant consumerism, focused only on making piles of money and amusing themselves with popular entertainment and technological gadgetry? That's what he's warning them against.

Hell, I know for myself it's been a long time since I've read any kind of serious, intellectually challenging literature (in other words, not Stephen King or J.K. Rowling) simply for personal growth and the enjoyment of it. 99% of my reading materials consists technical manuals and journals, focused on my work. And that's to my own detriment.

I don't think the man is being alarmist at all. I think he's dead on. When school children in the 11th grade can't find Russia or China (for godsake) on a map, and their experience with "the arts" is some rapper talking about how he likes to do his women from behind, we're in deep trouble. And we are.

Everyone who's saying "Nah, he's overblowing this" is missing the point. The issue isn't so much what the situation is this very second. It's about what life is going to be like 50 years from now, and what the children and grandchildren of these graduates are going to be inheriting from us culturally.
posted by mstefan at 1:06 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

shmegegge: do you know what poets Ed Sullivan actually had on his show?
posted by aught at 4:00 PM on June 26 [+] [!]

Never having watched it, I can only go by Gioia's article, which mentions Robert Frost and James Baldwin among other non-poet writers as well as other artists. I can personally think of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac making appearances on the Steve Allen show, as well. Why?
posted by shmegegge at 1:06 PM on June 26, 2007

My point was that just as many kids today are voracious readers as kids in the past. It's "golden agism" to assume that kids today hate to read more than kids in the past hated to read.

It's not only that they're reading (yes, that's a good thing in its own rights), but what they are reading. Harry Potter is not exactly on par with classical Greek poetry like the Iliad, or epics like Beowulf. Heck, how many kids today actually read Shakespeare when it's not part of a homework assignment?

The point being is that while reading is good, it also shouldn't just be pulp fiction, horror and fantasy novels. Actually engaging your brain when you read is a good thing.
posted by mstefan at 1:14 PM on June 26, 2007

I daresay that in 1957, few Americans knew who Sandy Koufax was...
posted by AJaffe at 1:19 PM on June 26, 2007

New things I've learned today:

1) If you are associated with George W. Bush in any way you cannot be intelligent or worth listening to.

2) Rappers like Jay-Z and 50 Cent are 'poets' on a part with Williams, Crane, and Eliot. Nobody's better than anyone else, just different!

3) Old people are cranky and can't see that cultural life wasn't better in their youth, just different!

4) The fact that fewer and fewer people read for literary fiction for pleasure in the United States isn't a problem because TV is the new literary fiction. Novels aren't better, just different!

Hooray diversity and sensitivity training! Hooray our collective intellectual suicide, America!
posted by inoculatedcities at 1:22 PM on June 26, 2007 [3 favorites]

no, i never said that all rappers make a lot of money, and I'd be interested in seeing where you believe I said that.

I don't. I belive that plaingurl said it.

This is because neither I, nor anyone else, has to hate rap to recognize the simple truth that as I said above non-commercial artists are far more marginalized than they used to be.

That's not the point. The artists that Gioia held up as exemplars also made money. Hell Arthur Miller was fucking Marilyn Monroe. I have no idea if Non-commercial artists are more popular or less, my point is that Gioia is basically claiming certain types of art are intrinsically better then other types, and that there is something "wrong" with people if they don't like it.

delmoi's argument is profoundly anti-intellectual, and as much as I hate the inherent conservatism in Gioia's speech, delmoi's responses here serve to justify it.

Anti-intellectual? Well, I would say it's more anti-snooty. But the basic argument is that because intelligent people liked these art forms in the past, people who do not like them now are not intelligent. It defines the past as good because it was the past. Certainly you can be intelligent without likening modern poetry, perhaps even intellectual. I don't think you can measure the intellectuality of the population by the types of art that they like, and I certainly don't think you can make a population smarter simply foisting older types on them. There is intellectual and intelligent art spread out among all types of art, IMO.
posted by delmoi at 1:24 PM on June 26, 2007

plaingurl writes "I know a large number who will only read a book if their parents make them, and even when they do, they can't visualize the characters. They don't know what Harry Potter or Hermione look like until they see the movies. I do think that's sad, and I do think that at least a part of that comes from the fact that electronic forms of entertainment have become such a prevalent part of our lives."

Possibly, but keep in mind that there are also folks like me: I was a voracious reader as a child, but I couldn't visualize characters. Or rather, I stopped visualizing them at a young age. I found that if I visualized them, inevitably, on the next page, or in the next chapter, there'd be some sentence like "he swept the pages off the table with his long, bony hands", and my mental image up to that point had been a short, fat guy, so I'd have to reset my image. And then later on it would mention his meticulous dress, or his brown hair, or his weak chin, or whatever, and I'd have to reset yet again. And not just people: the layouts of rooms. The heights of buildings. The styles of vehicles. Everything. After a while I just gave up on visualizing anything, as the constant resets really disturbed my ability to enjoy the book.

Even now I tend to read a lot, but I don't visualize much at all. If I see a movie version of a book I've read, it's often my first visualization.
posted by bugbread at 1:25 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

“I like steak, but it's not entertaining.”

Well, it depends what kind of lubri - look, I’m not the one on trial here.
Er, the point is, I’m with you on the non-commercial art/etc. being marginalized thing.
Forget what I said about steak. It is entertaining. But it’s not at all educational or complex - attributes which can lead to a refinement and depth of understanding (and thus greater overall entertainment.) Whether that devolves into an argument of snobbery vs. egalitarianism concerning art and other ideas isn’t that relevent to the main point - being that a depth of culture has indeed been lost due to something that is manifestly different than losses following past cultural shifts like those due to a change in media such as the one following the introduction of novels or alterations in ethnic makeup and so forth.

The broadest medium today is relatively the same technologically (television) but the kind of entertainment is obviously different.
There have indeed been - whether due to unfunded mandates or whatever - less music and art programming in schools much as physical fitness has been marginalized in the country - overall. More focus has been put meeting annual yearly progress in the basics.
Some of the critiques here are similar to what Postman’s been writing about. Particularly the Marcus Aurelius reference.
This is not to say arts, music or civic responsibility hasn’t been emphasized or broadened in (some) schools. Out here kids can’t graduate without spending some time volunteering in the community. But those values did exist and were more visible in society (in the broader context) in the past on television and elsewhere.
Whether the values associated with them were of value or not is debatable, as is government involvement in their preservation.
But the results of non-commercial oriented - for lack of a better word - social paradigm, can’t be denied. Hell, you could probably argue the changes in the 60s wouldn’t have occured without the internalization of the basic concept that one had the right and duty to be involved in community events and social concerns on whatever scale.
And indeed, the differences between the kids who volunteer and those who don’t have, as a result, become sharper and more obvious as the social motivations to be involved have diminished.
But that’s (from me) anecdotal. And details other than that central point (whether he’s a dick and whatnot) I concede.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:26 PM on June 26, 2007

To me, and I have an admittedly limited knowledge of hip-hop, the difference always seemed to be that in hip-hop the words are manipulated to fit the music, and because of the necessity for the proper fit with the music, sometimes the quality of what's said is sacrificed. Granted, the same thing will happen if a poet is struggling with his or her meter. It seems like in hip-hop the focus is on the music, and in poetry the focus is on the language. I'm not saying that one is better than the other, as I think they're vastly different, but rather that I think their differences make it difficult to make such a broad statement of comparison. Certainly not all hip-hop artists could be poets, and certainly not all poets could be hip-hop artists.

I think there's a point that a lot of people simply refuse to acknowledge...music, poetry, mostly anything we term as art, sacrifices the actual content of the message for the beautification of the package the message is sold in. It is in this way, intrinsically propagandist.

There's no reason the poet could not say what they wanted to express in a forthright way, but by playing on meter, they can attach an emotion to the meaning of their words and thus influence the gravity of them without regard to the value of the idea.

This is even more pronounced in music where the tone and the harmonies create an associated emotion and in some a form of hypnosis (the unconscious desire to dance being an example) that can actively hinder the ability to critically think about them in some people.

< /end tangent>
posted by kigpig at 1:34 PM on June 26, 2007 [4 favorites]

no, i never said that all rappers make a lot of money, and I'd be interested in seeing where you believe I said that.

I don't. I belive that plaingurl said it.

...what?

i just reread my post, and i'm pretty sure that i didn't mention money at all, actually.

...And not just people: the layouts of rooms. The heights of buildings. The styles of vehicles. Everything. After a while I just gave up on visualizing anything, as the constant resets really disturbed my ability to enjoy the book.


fair point.
posted by plaingurl at 1:35 PM on June 26, 2007

/Obviously, it seems to me he’s asserting that poets like Frost, and scientists, etc. etc. don’t have modern iconic equivalents because of cultural changes due to commercial considerations not natural or technological or other changes and that the impact that has had on the American culture has narrowed the scope of cultural thought rather than merely asserting the primacy of certain forms of art over another or arguing things were better in the good old days. If I’m wrong in that take than my argument would be invalid since that’d be the premise I’m working from.

//also - Diet Pepsi in the (Sistine) Blue
posted by Smedleyman at 1:39 PM on June 26, 2007

delmoi - The point you don't seem to grasp is that nobody can be an intellectual if they don't read. The art/entertainment discussion is complicated and usually bores me stiff, however, not all forms of cultural expression are equal in depth. It's not that we have "new forms of art", and that it's unfair of Gioia to speak of the decline of poetry...it's that non-commercial creative expression has been devalued and largely dropped from the national conversation. He's absolutely right to acknowledge that in years past the culture was smarter and the fact that it's so obviously dumbed down in the present (so obvious in fact, as to go without saying) is a shame. Philip Roth recently said the following when asked why readership is going down in America:

"I think the core of serious readers still exists, but it’s not huge. I think that talking about books has absolutely disappeared. I remember back in the '50s and '60s among my friends that if you were in a group of people and if someone brought up a book, you could be sure that maybe half the people had read it. Now, I find that no one ever does that. If they talk about a book it’s a comment and then that’s the end of that. Movies, people can talk about endlessly. And they can bank on the fact that people have seen the movie."
posted by inoculatedcities at 1:40 PM on June 26, 2007

no, i never said that all rappers make a lot of money, and I'd be interested in seeing where you believe I said that.

I don't. I belive that plaingurl said it.

That's odd, because you were directly responding to a quote of mine.

The artists that Gioia held up as exemplars also made money.

So? They were writing and creating art without it being for the sake of commercial entertainment.

Hell Arthur Miller was fucking Marilyn Monroe. I have no idea if Non-commercial artists are more popular or less,

less.

my point is that Gioia is basically claiming certain types of art are intrinsically better then other types,

No he isn't, and this is why your points are so frustrating. You're making assumptions that the text of his speech do not support. He's claiming that certain types of art are less available to the public via mainstream exposure, and that that's a shame. If you want to believe that people growing up not knowing who Milton was is ok, then discuss that. But don't do so behind arguments that Gioia never made. Just say it for yourself.

and that there is something "wrong" with people if they don't like it. Again, no. He doesn't say that there's somethign wrong with people, at all. He says that there's a fundamental lack in popular american culture. You can blame it on corporate interests, political issues, anything you want, but he never says that there's anything wrong with the american people.
posted by shmegegge at 1:46 PM on June 26, 2007

...what?

Er, sorry. I got totally mixed up here. It was shmegegge who said

here is a marked difference between poets who, among people who read poetry, are massively successful but still hope for a teaching job at a nice university that they can actually feed a family on and rappers who are massively successful for a year or two and then retire early to live a life of leisure on their bajillions of dollars

And that's what meant to reference. My mistake.

Even now I tend to read a lot, but I don't visualize much at all. If I see a movie version of a book I've read, it's often my first visualization.

Strange. For me, visualization while reading is an automatic, involuntary process.
posted by delmoi at 1:46 PM on June 26, 2007

It's ridiculous to say that any children were consumers of literature.

I think I read more books more frequently as a child than I have in the past few years...
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 1:48 PM on June 26, 2007

You're making assumptions that the text of his speech do not support. He's claiming that certain types of art are less available to the public via mainstream exposure

But why would he make that claim if he didn't think that certain types of art are inherently better or more valuable somehow?
posted by delmoi at 1:48 PM on June 26, 2007

Movies, people can talk about endlessly. And they can bank on the fact that people have seen the movie."

While I can sympathize with the lack of discussions of books, this drives me nuts. I went to school for English literature, but I'm a film and video editor now and I will go to my grave thinking that any disparagement of movies as a proper art form is fightin' words. And that's all I have to say about that.
posted by shmegegge at 1:50 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

And that's what meant to reference. My mistake.

and as I said, I never said that poets didn't make money, or that all rappers do. you're dancing around my point and not addressing it.

But why would he make that claim if he didn't think that certain types of art are inherently better or more valuable somehow?
posted by delmoi at 4:48 PM on June 26 [+] [!]

Because anyone who loves an art form, or several, would lament that culture is marginalizing it? You don't have to say "I hate everything else" in order to say "I love this specific thing."
posted by shmegegge at 1:53 PM on June 26, 2007

What a lame speech, overriden with cliches, an exaltation of the past . . . and no real salient points.

Sounds like it meets all the requirements for a commencement speech then, eh?
posted by spock at 1:53 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

But why would he make that claim if he didn't think that certain types of art are inherently better or more valuable somehow?

why would i claim that i can only get orange juice at the local supermarket unless i thought apple juice and grape juice were inherently better and more valuable than orange juice?
posted by saulgoodman at 1:59 PM on June 26, 2007

While I can sympathize with the lack of discussions of books, this drives me nuts. I went to school for English literature, but I'm a film and video editor now and I will go to my grave thinking that any disparagement of movies as a proper art form is fightin' words. And that's all I have to say about that.

I certainly take your point but I doubt Roth was arguing that film isn't an artistic medium. It's a far more commercialized medium that literature and the bulk of the films that people are wont to discuss are Harry Potter Part 5, Spider Man Part 6, and Pirates of the Caribbean Part 4, not Killing of a Chinese Bookie, La Règle du jeu, and Aguirre: der Zorn Gottes.
posted by inoculatedcities at 2:01 PM on June 26, 2007

Anti-intellectual? Well, I would say it's more anti-snooty.

No, anti-intellectual. You're purposely confusing high art and popular culture. They are not the same thing. I'm certainly not making the argument that pop stars aren't artists of a sort, but they aren't engaged in part of the intellectual pursuit of our culture. This doesn't mean that they aren't intelligent or even that they aren't intellectuals, but it does mean that there is a difference between their pursuits and the high arts. There are also, obviously, differences within popular pursuits.

This kind of knee-jerk flattening of hierarchies is the same move made by people who argue that because their opinion about evolution is different than the consensus of science it should be treated as equally valid. It's tempting to not see it as the same because science deals with fact, but the argument that bluegrass or hip-hop takes place on the same stage as Shakespeare or Noh plays is ridiculous and adolescent.
posted by OmieWise at 2:18 PM on June 26, 2007 [3 favorites]

inoculatedcities: you make a good point. great movies that don't lend themselves easily to marketing tie-ins and cross-promotion essentially don't get any attention, regardless of quality, because they don't generate enough revenue--not movie viewer revenue but revenue from cross-promotion and merchandise deals. so a sexy flick like spider man iii (which i actually liked, btw) gets tons of focus, while an excellent though far more challenging film (both in terms of its content and its cinematic technique) like "children of men" hardly gets noticed.

reminds me of henry ford's famous quip about the model t, which i suspect inadvertently sheds some light on many industry leaders' real attitudes toward consumer choice:

'you can get it in any color you want. as long as it's black.'
posted by saulgoodman at 2:27 PM on June 26, 2007

For me the difference is that the definition of good or worthy has become measured by how much money the activity makes. This just isn't in the arts, but also business, science, sports, and yes, politics.
posted by Eekacat at 2:28 PM on June 26, 2007

I'm late to the party, but I'm struck that I don't see in the comments any discussion of one of Gioia's main claims, and the cliam that I found most interesting: that people who read books and do other high-culture things are better citizens and better people, as measured in non-literary/non-cultural terms (i.e. with regard to civic engagement, volunteerism, etc.). If this is true, I think it rebuts the "hierarchy-flattening" impulses of some of our commentators.
posted by sy at 2:44 PM on June 26, 2007

Harry Potter is not exactly on par with classical Greek poetry like the Iliad, or epics like Beowulf.

No, but I don't think ancient epics have been popular with the kids for the past few thousand years.

Heck, how many kids today actually read Shakespeare when it's not part of a homework assignment?

How many did in 1957? 1907? 1857?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:47 PM on June 26, 2007

Oh, and one other thing that struck me. I feel like I could have named most of the people Gioia mentioned, in his opening thought experiment, as being prominent American artists and thinkers of mid-century, but that I could name far fewer of their analogues today. This could be because I learned about most of them through formal education, which is inherently behind the times, but it could be because a) complex human achievement now takes place in other genres than sculpture and classical music, and so the fact that I know about the Cohen brothers and Gary Kasparov should "count" or b) that art has become more elitist, arid, specialized, and all-around closed in the last two generations. Alexander Pope, the J.K. Rowling of his day, made serious bank selling his translation of the Iliad because he took a ripping good yarn and put it into catchy couplets. I don't see a lot of tenured poets sending one out to the guys who clean their offices these days.
posted by sy at 2:50 PM on June 26, 2007

I'm certainly not making the argument that pop stars aren't artists of a sort, but they aren't engaged in part of the intellectual pursuit of our culture.

I was curious when someone was going to actually define a measure of what made something high art or not. Unfortunately I'm a bit confused as to what 'engaged in the intellectual pursuit of our culture' means? What heuristic is used to determine if it is engaged in the intellectual pursuit? My immediate thought would be it having increased the net knowledge of the world, the laws of nature, of the human condition, etc...

Of course, this would throw out most of what people call high art as well. In fact I can't offhand thing of any poetry that would pass this standard though I realize it's largely due to my lack of exposure to it. All purely instrumental classical music should be tossed. Paintings and sculpting would be removed.
posted by kigpig at 2:53 PM on June 26, 2007

ROU_Xenophobe: a lot of kids read Shakespeare for fun into the 20th century. Reading aloud in the evenings, as a family or in other groups, was a very common pre-mass media activity even for working-class families. The Iliad and Odyssey were 18th century best-sellers, and anyone who could afford to sent their sons to schools where they were taught to read them in the original before the age of fifteen. That's what the educational system was.

You know what another form of extremely popular 19th century entertainment was? Lectures. People paid to see them. Emerson lived off of giving lectures in small New England towns for much of his life.
posted by sy at 2:55 PM on June 26, 2007

sy - d'ja read mine?
posted by Smedleyman at 2:55 PM on June 26, 2007

Smedleyman-- Sorry, I skimmed it but was still chuckling about your steak joke and missed the point about civic engagement. I think I agree with what you're saying, though.
posted by sy at 2:59 PM on June 26, 2007

Late to the game again, but this sounds to me an awful lot like the handwringing about highbrow culture vs. "Midcult" and "Masscult" that was going on during the fifites. . . but now entertainment from the 50s and 50s (well, of the Norton Anthology vein) is the new exemplar?

I think one of my vacuum tubes just blew.
posted by absalom at 3:09 PM on June 26, 2007

On Preview:

Sy- What's different now? Look how much Rudy and many, many others have made on the lecture circuit. It's still there. It's still popular.
posted by absalom at 3:12 PM on June 26, 2007

You're purposely confusing high art and popular culture. They are not the same thing.

This argument appears several times in the thread, but no one has explained why the two are mutually exclusive. Does great art lose its greatness merely because it becomes popular? To me, The Sopranos was great art by any rational measure of greatness. It was also popular. Reasonable minds can differ as to whether The Sopranos is an artistic work in the same class as, say, Arthur Miller. But it shouldn't be excluded from the discussion merely because it is part of popular culture.

the argument that bluegrass or hip-hop takes place on the same stage as Shakespeare or Noh plays is ridiculous and adolescent.

That isn't the argument I see being made (or at least it isn't one I'd make). It's true that not all art is created equal; some works are better than others, and some genres of art are more likely to produce great works of art than others (i.e., the best books are likely going to be more impressive than the best bluegrass songs). But popularity has nothing to do with this. There's a lot of crap in popular culture, but there's a lot of great stuff too. And there's a lot of crappy literature, poetry, "art" cinema, etc.
posted by brain_drain at 3:19 PM on June 26, 2007

Here's the text of a graduation speech that the late Neil Postman once prepared but, as far as I know, never actually delivered. It makes for a great short read.
posted by New Frontier at 3:24 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

for your consideration and comparison:

To the graduates, their families, the faculty and staff of Hampshire College: Congratulations. I would particularly like to salute the Baldwin Scholars graduating today. James Baldwin delivered the commencement address here at Hampshire twenty-one years ago. That day, he said: “The reality in which we live is a reality we have made, and it’s time, my children, to begin the act of creation all over again.”

In that spirit, I welcome you to the Republic of Poetry. The Republic of Poetry is a state of mind. It is a place where creativity meets community, where the imagination serves humanity. The Republic of Poetry is a republic of justice, because the practice of justice is the highest form of human expression.

--from "The Republic of Poetry," a commencement address delivered by Martín Espada at hampshire college, 19 may 2007
posted by ronv at 3:25 PM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

inoculatedcities writes "If they talk about a book it’s a comment and then that’s the end of that. Movies, people can talk about endlessly. And they can bank on the fact that people have seen the movie.'"

Interesting. I hadn't thought of that, but it's true: whenever I talk books with friends, it's always in this weird circuitous manner, because they inevitably haven't read the book in question, or they have and I haven't, so we're talking about it without giving anything away just in case the other party intends to read it. With movies, the odds that we've both seen it rises amazingly.

But, really, isn't that a function of the fact that there are far, far, far more books published each year than movies? Plus, books take longer to read, so even if you spend equal time reading and watching, you'll see four times as many movies as you read books? Perhaps in the olden days, there was much more StephenKingMichaelCrictonJohnGrishamisation, where everyone read the same books as everyone else?

delmoi writes "Strange. For me, visualization while reading is an automatic, involuntary process."

Yeah, I know it's strange. I didn't mean for my example to be representative, just a "remember the 1% of us weirdos who don't visualize when we read" comment.

The other problem is that I visualize slowly. I've tried visualizing while reading as an adult as a bit of an experiment, but to flesh out a scene, to really get a picture, I need to close the book, and close my eyes for a minute or two. Fun, but if you're doing that every few pages, reading becomes incredibly slow. I can speed up the visualization by visualizing things less creatively, but, then, what's the point?

OmieWise writes "the argument that bluegrass or hip-hop takes place on the same stage as Shakespeare or Noh plays is ridiculous and adolescent."

I dunno. Depends what Shakespeare you're talking about. Some of it is high-faluting stuff, but some of it is pretty damn low-brow entertainment. Titus Andronicus is basically Silence of the Lambs. Noh was a good choice, though (if you'd said Kabuki, I'd have to remind you that it was basically advertising for prostitutes back in the old days).

Eekacat writes "For me the difference is that the definition of good or worthy has become measured by how much money the activity makes."

I think a marked change in approach is that, I suspect, in the old days the thinking would be "It made a lot of money, because it was good", while now it's "It made a lot of money, so it's good".
posted by bugbread at 3:34 PM on June 26, 2007

Nice grab New Frontier
posted by Smedleyman at 3:40 PM on June 26, 2007