The discovery of “low literature”
My friend Christine mentioned over on the NoCategories Forum that she is working on her thesis.
I’m looking at the discovery of “low literature” in the later part of the 20th cent. That shines new light on the Harlem renaissance and where the renaissance actually was happening–with normal people. This is in pretty much direct opposition of what was reported to have been happening then, because people like Locke and duBois were trying to combat old stereotypes and promote a new image of an elite, sophisticated, and intelligent “New Negro.” so i’m looking at some Ellison right now. That’s about it.
Now, I wanted to take a minute to share whatever I can that might be of some use, because I know what a pain all that research can be. I had lots of friendly people point me towards all kinds of stuff, without which I never could have succeeded with my own thesis, so I’m trying to repay the favor.
My ulterior motive here is to try to show Christine, and others, that keeping a thesis log online can do absolute wonders, by bringing treasures from the far flung community of ideas and conversations out there.
I guess, to start with, I would question Christine’s association of the Harlem renaissance and Ralph Ellison with “low literature.” Considering that I have had both subjects explained to me by a Ph.D. and in a classroom, I would venture to guess that even if those things were “low” literature, they certainly aren’t now – and that might be Christine’s point. I’m not sure.
In case its “low literature” she’s after, I’ll start with the assumption that the “low” stuff isn’t the stuff we hear about in class. I found an interesting explanation of the distinction between “high” and “low” in the arts over at pseudopodium. The article, entitled, On the Internet, No One Knows You’re an Ex-Abstract-Expressionist distinguishes between Painting and Poetry vs. Comics and Science Fiction, with an eye toward the unifying these distinctions. After all, art is a verb, not a noun.
A few months ago, there was a firestorm of this kind of discussion, sparked by an article in The Washington Postplebaum’s who observed a divide between “high culture” and “low culture,” The Reading Experience, one notable literary weblog decided “to take up the gauntlet thrown down by Kevin Holtsberry at Collected Miscellany, who apparently agrees with Anne Applebaum” And thus we have a paper trail of the issue explored at some length, possibly useful to students like us.
I wouldn’t be worth my opinionated merit badge if I didn’t throw in my own two cents on the issue, which is a bothersome one, to me. I think that the existence of this distinction between “high” and “low” in the arts and humanities is a very dangerous one, and it makes of a whole lot of art that sucks. The “high” art ends up being too egg-headed to be any good to most people, and the “low” stuff, since its “under the radar” of the critical eye, misses its chance to mature into something better. I devoted quite a bit of my own thesis to the subject, and rather than link to it and force you, poor thing, to read all of it, I’ll throw you these three little paragraphs.
It is Eliot’s contention in the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” that, first of all, there is an aesthetic responsibility to be mindful of whatever expression has come in the past, and secondly, that art “is an expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet” (1374). A contention like this would not find much quality in the vast majority of what passes for cultural expression in the modern world: television, pop music, homepages, etc. These things are all too new to have a tradition, too removed from aesthetic thought to be in keeping with its standards, too product-driven to be more expressive than communicative, and these things are too focused on innovation to share Eliot’s regard for tradition.
These things exist separately from anything in our culture that has a regard for aesthetics. They are products of our culture’s capitalism and are only incidentally artistic. [ … ] Rather than disregard the majority of what passes for culture around us as worthless, it would be better to look, as Heidegger, at the meaningless world into which we are thrown as a world full of things that are potentially useful to us [ … ] It does not make sense to tell those people to disregard the culture of the very world in which they must endeavor to make meaning. That world is the embodiment of their tools for meaning. It does not make sense to say, since “low” culture is meaningless in comparison to “high” culture, that it should be ignored. To ignore it would be to deny it the opportunity to be used for any meaningful purpose, if all those in search of meaning were to look the other way. It would be a huge mistake to ignore a huge supply of potential tools for meaning and expression. [ … ] What if Picasso had drawn Saturday morning cartoons? What if a comic book deserved the Pulitzer by the same old standards? What if the poet laureate was an eloquent rapper?
If any of these were possible, perhaps the modern predicament would not exist. The problem seems to be that the culture of most people is devoid of the meaning inherent in “real” art. However, that very culture is overloaded with things that are almost art, like the Saturday morning cartoon. There is something that separates a cartoon from a “real” work of art, and that something could very easily be nothing more than a prejudice. Remove the prejudice that separates them, and suddenly someone like Picasso can contribute to humanity with a cartoon as easily as with a canvas. Perhaps the Saturday morning cartoon could even offer an improvement to what we now think of as art.