Mass Culture, Modernism, and the Middlebrow

1. Mass Culture,Modernism, and the Middlebrow Making of the Modern World Week 19: Smyth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE “[A] culture must finally be interpreted in relation to its underlying system of production.” Raymond Williams “Everyday life is defined contradictions: illusion and truth, power and helplessness; the intersection of the sector man controls and the sector he does not control.” Henri Lefebvre

2. Industrialization, urbanization, immigration of 19thC fuel 20thC modernism Rejection of traditional Victorian culture Creation of new select canon Faith in individual work of art Fascination with race and culture: connection with appropriation of 19thC and searches for ‘national’ purity Similar historical context; use of technology Incorporation of familiar themes of Victorian culture Appeal to widest audience Mass-produced image (Walter Benjamin) Miriam Hansen’s term: “vernacular modernism” Modernism and Mass Culture

3. Cultural movement of first half 20thC avant-garde rejection of Victorianism ambivalent attraction to industry and technology form over content: racial implications? benefits from immigrant cultures Walter Benn Michaels: nativism, modernism Paul Strand, Pepper (1932) Modernism

4. Seven Lively Arts (1924) Praises new modern American arts of comic strip, jazz, cinema which supplanted painting, sculpture, poetry, performing, architecture, music, dance American arts do not imitate style, narratives, themes of European art Emphasizes virtuosity and kinetic energy of American arts Gilbert Seldes and the Lively Arts

5. The Liveliest Art

6. Black Responses to Birth of a Nation • Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates (1920) • Retells racial drama in story of white man’s rape of black woman • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1E0NrcnwAE

7. Film (beginning of worldwide Hollywood dominance after WWI; corporate consolidation of industry) Radio (a few mavericks start it; goes corporate in 1920s; ad sponsors) Tabloid Journalism (chain papers, syndicates and Hearst’s ‘yellow’ appeal to the masses Photojournalism (the rise of Time, Life and Fortune) Comics (Krazy Kat national art of America according to cultural critic Gilbert Seldes) Advertising (est. as corporate industry in 19th C but takes off in 1920s as corporations market to an increasingly consumer and image-driven society) All these major industries are concerned with mass production and marketing, constructing the idea of modernity, and often reinforcing mainstream white identities Modern Media, 1920-60 (a.k.a. the Culture Industries)

8. Hollywood dominance • Gilbert Seldes and Charlie Chaplin reject dichotomy between art and mass culture—call themselves “high lowbrows” • Often bifurcates along European/American lines • Critics like William Allen White call for authentic national popular culture; reject modernist canons– and also the rest of the world • Early attempts at workingclass/women’s/integrated culture shift: neo-liberal masculine dominance • Global dominance of Hollywood: appropriation of other national histories; media manipulation; cultural vampirism and cannibalisation of old films

9. North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) Fragility of modern identity and social status Consequences of post-war wealth Cold War cultures Part of a wider fascination with spies, surveillance and the survival of individual in webs of post-national power (James Bond franchise, 1953-) Return of our fascination with allegedly conservative post-war era (Mad Men, 2005-) “Weak Faces” and Flannel Suits

10. The New Empire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xjr2hnOHiM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYgiAmdFjEI

11. Masscult and Midcult • Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939): art versus consumerism • Dwight MacDonald (1960): • Masscult “an instrument of domination,” mechanistic, without standards, popular—not to be confused with “folk art” and working-class culture • Midcult will infect true High Culture, and its values “instead of being transitional —‘the price of progress’—may now themselves become a debased, permanent standard.” • Middlebrows-– Joan Shelley Rubin, 1992

12. Spread of Masscult: Television • 1925 John L. Baird demonstrates his early model for television at Selfridge’s • Broadcast television programmes date from 1928 • 1934 Philo Farnsworth’s electrical television • First commercially manufactured TV set: Germany, 1934 • 1941: First televised ad aired in US during a baseball game • Television takes over after WWII and goes domestic. 0.5% of U.S. households have TV set in 1946, rises to 55.7% in 1954, and 90% in 1962. In Britain, 15,000 television households in 1947, 1.4 million in 1952, and 15.1 million in 1968. • Transcontinental broadcasts, 1951 • Broadcasting from 1950s combination of variety shows, Western serials and soap operas • tv often at mercy of group of producers, shareholders, and ratings • Film profits decline; Hollywood tries to initiate cultural hierarchy of own—tv new “low” • Playhouse 90, Edward R. Murrow programmes attempt to reach select cultural audiences • Entertainment blogs give viewers the illusion of textual participation and productive engagement

13. Is Mass Culture Dangerous? • Chicago exhibitors censor Jesse James films, 1908 and Jack Johnson fights, 1910 • Film’s Production Code Administration (1930, 1934) and other national censor boards threaten to ban films from theatres unless industry follows prevailing moral ‘codes.’ Pornography goes mainstream in 1970s when old censorship restrictions and ratings are obliterated • Literature from Hamlet to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Gone with the Wind banned by community educators beginning 1870s • 1939: Billie Holliday’s record company, Columbia, refused to release recording of Strange Fruit for fear of alienating mainstream racist audiences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs • Radio and TV in US regulated since 1934 by Federal Communications Commission (UK’s equivalent of ITC). TV adopts Hollywood’s old Hays code. Sponsors support network programming and withdrawing support can be its own form of censorship • Censoring the internet difficult because of free speech claims, transnational flow of information and pseudo-anonymity

14. The ‘New’ Interconnected Media • Blockbusters (supported by product ads and multinational corporations) largely pre-sold content and audiences (adaptations of best sellers) • MTV (Music Television: video ‘narratives’ have ties to films; theme songs; iTunes) • Video games (b. 1958, with Tennis for Two; 1980 Pac-Man Arcade game;1989 Nintendo Gameboy; biggest markets Japan, UK, US); ties to major blockbusters like The Lord of the Rings trilogy; Rockstar Games, 1998-

15. The Hollywood Blockbuster • b. 1975 with Spielberg’s Jaws • Aimed at global rather than national market; broad audiences, simple action stories; the franchise • Violence integral to genre; often adaptation from best-selling novel or comic-strip • Now with theatre attendance down (US:, UK: Global), Hollywood has made most of its money in past decade through network contracts, foreign distribution rights online and DVD sales • Even with censorship boards gone, trend has been toward children’s entertainment: between 1989-2003, the average gross of an R-rated film was 7 million (US); G-films make an average of 79 million (US) • Hollywood challenged in recent years by national cinemas with art market niches and China and India. However, Hollywood still has entrenched mechanisms to maintain its dominance: Bollywood sold 3.6 billion tickets and had total revenues (theater tickets, DVDs, television etc) of $1.3 billion, whereas Hollywood films sold 2.6 billion tickets and generated total revenues (all formats, DVDs, streaming, etc) of $51 billion. • The franchise

17. Lucas/Spielberg and the Age of Blockbusters Left: Grauman’s Premiere of Star Wars (1977) and above, Alec Guinness as Obi-wan (mass culture hires high art) Above: Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

18. Have blockbusters traditionally been prick flicks? Were things different once upon a time…

19. Classical theory sees women as victims of visual system—looked at, exploited But: films cater to women’s specular fantasies (male stars) 40% Hollywood employees women 1930s-50s Female stars: empowerment– women are made not born—de Beauvoir #MeToo (2017--) Women, Modernism, and Hollywood

20. Postmodernism (1945-) • Above: Marilyn and Madonna as Marilyn • Above and below left: Marilyn in 1953 and reproduced by Andy Warhol shortly after her death in 1962 in the first of his assembly-line silkscreens

21. The return of the past

22. Reconciling Mass Culture? • mass culture has overtaken art in academic study; rejection of elitism • post-structuralist deconstructive criticism breaks down unified works of art, canons, and the meta-narrative) • middlebrow creed fractures along conflict between creating a great cultural canon and selling it—reconciling desire for both high and low; now, w/o cultural authority/canons, there is only the marketplace • in a postmodern age, are all cultural texts simply a function of the demands and controls of global capitalism? Your illusion of choice in a corporate super-marketplace of culture (Fredric Jameson) • Surveillance Capitalism (Shoshana Zuboff, 2018): “a coup from above”