review
All people have the right to their preferred culture, regardless of whether that culture is of high quality or popularity.
Author
Herbert J. Gans (1927) is one of the most influential and prolific sociologists of his time. He focuses in his book ??Popular Culture & High Culture, an analysis and evaluation of taste ?? on three pillars. First, the book does sociological research into “popular culture”. and ?? high culture ??. Second, it is a critical study in defense of “popular culture”. Third, the book focuses on cultural policy and is a plea for more cultural diversity in the cultural sector.
Relevance
Gans emphasizes the relevance of his research from an explanatory sociological framework; what has changed, what has not and why? To find out, he suggests that the differences between ?? high culture ?? and ?? popular culture ?? exaggerated and that the similarities are underestimated. He helps the reader with a helicopter view by first indicating the difference in taste cultures (taste culture: conservative, progressive, age, skin color, etc., seen from 1960) and then giving examples of a similarity between these taste cultures. After all, low culture is just as important to low-educated Americans as high culture is to highly educated Americans. Every taste culture has its own music, literature and art.
Actors
Gans involves and dissects the following actors in his analysis and evaluation; public (homogeneous, heterogeneous), consumer, artist, provider, medium (individual, mass or group medium), society, politician & policy maker. On the one hand he skilfully and value-free dissects these different actors and associated taste cultures from each other, on the other hand he ensures that you as a reader see the common denominator between these groups. He describes the bottlenecks between the actors, but shares his term ?? taste culture ?? all under one roof at the same time. The fact that different taste audiences are housed under this roof seems as natural as the differences in taste that can be found between friends.
Discussion
Where the discussion is often about stereotypes such as ?? the lonely artist who only makes his work for himself ?? towards “popular culture makers who suppress their own values and norms in order to earn as much as possible”, Gans says that both actors express their personal values and taste in almost equal processes. The artist is always looking for a compromise between his own values and those of the intended audience, and the popular culture maker sees himself as a moral and didactic educator for the people.
Within this equal relationship, talking about culture from a value judgment, according to Gans, is not useful and he prefers to talk about differences in marketing strategy and cultural policy. The uncertain and often dependent position of, for example, small ?? high culture ?? organizations makes it impossible to make art around art alone (in this sense the word art can also be replaced by the word culture). Great ?? popular art ?? organizations, on the other hand, contend with the reality of “dumbing down”. (oversimplification of information, so that an art product becomes comprehensible to the general public), whereby one may wonder what remains of the original work of art.
Finally
Gans writes fascinating, easy to follow, free from value judgments and makes you think. This thinking is not only limited to the cultural climate of America in the 1970s, but knows no boundaries and can also be found under the smoke of the current Dutch (cultural) climate.