That Band Was Good Before They Were Popular

by: Chris Bowers

Mon Apr 13, 2009 at 23:03


In a short article criticizing Rachel Maddow, Brendan Nyhan laments the stupidity of the mass audience (emphasis mine):

The only way for a pundit to assemble a large enough audience to succeed in prime time is to pander to their audience's ideological sensibilities and to dumb down their content to the lowest common denominator.

The notion that popularity is earned through stupidity can't die a fast enough death. Not that the notion is actually dying, just that it is an idea that needs to go away. The implication of such sentiments is that people are generally pretty dumb, or at least dumber than the person doing the evaluating. It is fundamentally a statement of elitism over the masses.

More in the extended entry.

Chris Bowers :: That Band Was Good Before They Were Popular
The very notion of "high" culture, incubated from the market economy by non-profit foundations and the academy, but containing an aesthetic and intellectual property absent in mass, largely market-based, "low" culture, is an idea that has been around for a great deal of time. Centuries, really. And even before mass culture, as long as there has been some form of social elite which enjoy a different set of cultural activities from the great mass of the people, the sentiment that stupidity equals popularity has been prevalent.

As someone who has spent several years studying avant-garde poetry in graduate school and trying to make a living, at least in part, by acquiring a large audience for my puny little independent websites, I can honestly say that a hell of a lot of brain power are required for both. I mean, if it was easy to get hundreds of thousands of people to listen to you, then why wouldn't just about everyone do it? And don't say that most people don't want to, because there are probably at least a few times in everyone's life when they wish more people would listen to them.

The fact is that it is very, very hard to acquire a large audience. This is because, in the final analysis, humans are actually very clever. We may not have the purest of intentions, but we are definitely clever. Really, our innate intelligence should be obvious, given that you are reading this article on a self-directed medium both used, and created, by billions of people around the world. Being able to impress several hundred thousand, or even millions, of humans long enough to have them stop and listen to you is a remarkable achievement.

Granted, certain institutions, due to their economic position, will always have an easier time getting large numbers of people to listen to them. And, yes, even cultural products can be put together in a cheap, shoddy fashion like so many lead-infested Chinese toys. However, to make a blanket statement that a large audience requires dumbing down your content is hard to read as anything except social elitism. Hell, such a statement is a pretty good definition of social elitism.

If you think it is easy to acquire a large audience through stupidity, then really, give it a try it sometime.

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That Band Was Good Before They Were Popular | 49 comments
No so much dumbing down (4.00 / 1)
But a broadening does seem to occur.  You usually don't aim for a niche audience if you want to appeal to more people than belong to that niche.  Many things do not scale well (like say beer and many forms of humor).  I would not call an attempt at mass appeal dumbing down, but it often attempts to find a common denominator.  Sometimes a least other time greatest.

My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington- Obama
Philly for Obama
This is astute. (4.00 / 3)
Something changes when cultural forms go big. I think it's mostly a matter of perspective.

Some of those things (obviously, even tautologically) can be the loss of local particularity, or attunement to a particular subculture. If that kind of particularity is valued, then sure, one can see how it could look an awful lot like 'dumbing down,' from a certain, limited, point of view.

Think about it like the candidates moving to the center in the general. In the primary, they have a narrower range of opinion to appeal to, so they can appeal to that taste more completely/coherently. To the base, the compromises required to broaden appeal for the general can be a little nauseating.

I liked Chuck Todd better on the HotlineTV video podcast than I like him on MSNBC. He could nerd out full throttle, competing a bit with John Mercurio for who knew more about the local wrinkles of obscure Arkansas congressional districts, and I was way into it. On TV, he has to slow down and explain more procedural and big-picture stuff: it's a function of audience. It's not that they're dumb, it's that he has a commercial imperative to appeal to non-nerds, also. (I also think his new role doesn't play to his strengths as well, but that's another matter entirely...)

So, Chris is totally right. Considering this phenomenon "dumbing down" is precisely elitist: it is a very naïve and untroubled way of claiming your personal perspective is the best.  

[ Parent ]
Racheal Maddow is Pretty Dull Stuff. Apparently Appeals to the some elements in the American Mentality (0.00 / 1)
Well you have to have a critical sense. That's developed by being able to do something as well as or better than the people you criticize.

So....You can say that Paula Abdul is very talented. I've been told by musicians who have worked around her, that she does not sing, however. Her voice is manipulated by the engineers. That's true for a ton of these young singers.

I mean...so much in art, business and science is not quality.

in business, art and science you will find the most talented people at the top, the middle and the bottom.

The idea that someone who is able to get people to listen to them shows they are "talented or intelligent"...is just confusing marketing with talent.

Do you think the best Jazz musicians are the most famous? Or even the best actors...or the best business people?

I don't. And I have direct experience.

How does someone acquire an audience?

Why does someone want an audience? That's a better question.

Why does Rachel Maddow want an audience?

To help people become more informed? To improve their lives?

To have her own show, fame, excitement, notoriety and money?

Oh I think it's the last one.

Now, who knows how she is able to get her own show... Who knows how many talented people fail to get an audience. Maybe your ugly, maybe your too introspective, maybe your not interested in having an "audience".

It isn't on the basis of her intelligence that she has her own show, it's on a lot of things that have to do with the current times we are living in.

She not too sharp.

So, doesn't your post exactly typify the elitism Chris describes? (0.00 / 0)
You're basically saying, the "best" at something are rarely, if ever, the most popular.  Who decides what the "best" is? The cultural elites of that field, of course, because the masses are just too stupid and/or easily manipulated to determine what greatness is.
 
[ Parent ]
ls democrat...are we reading the same thing? (0.00 / 0)
Chris Bowers said:

"As someone who has spent several years studying avant-garde poetry in graduate school and trying to make a living, at least in part, by acquiring a large audience for my puny little independent websites, I can honestly say that a hell of a lot of brain power are required for both. I mean, if it was easy to get hundreds of thousands of people to listen to you, then why wouldn't just about everyone do it? And don't say that most people don't want to, because there are probably at least a few times in everyone's life when they wish more people would listen to them.
The fact is that it is very, very hard to acquire a large audience. This is because, in the final analysis, humans are actually very clever. We may not have the purest of intentions, but we are definitely clever. Really, our innate intelligence should be obvious, given that you are reading this article on a self-directed medium both used, and created, by billions of people around the world. Being able to impress several hundred thousand, or even millions, of humans long enough to have them stop and listen to you is a remarkable achievement."

I interpret this to mean that if you are able to get an "audience"...meaning commercial success...you must be pretty smart.

Am I missing something?

[ Parent ]
Watch the Video....This is how convoluted and contrived it all gets. (0.00 / 0)
Here's ...to my mind a TWISTED VIDEO...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

An unbecoming lady appears before a panel of "judges" one from American idol and she can sing....and everybody starts crying because she doesn't "look" like she has any artistic capablity...then she starts to sing....it's hard for me to hear her voice clearly what with all the idiots in the audience yelping....who apparently would rather her their own yelps than the sound of a voice that seems to be in tune, hold a note....but I don't hear a DIVA here...just someone who can sing.....

The appeal here is that the lady is presented as a NOBODY and all this pathos is created by the presentation people who engineer what appears to be a person who can sing...not extraordinary....but at least somewhat capable and everybody goes nuts.

ITS REALLY TWISTED. It confounds the public and the viewing audience serves only to confuse, in addition the "audience" cannot stop to listen to the person, but prefers to hear the sound of it's own hands clapping.

The whole thing, like American idol is contrived

[ Parent ]
Good art is contrived. (4.00 / 2)
So is bad art.

And I think this thread really gets to the heart of what Chris is discussing.

[ Parent ]
Good Art isn't Contrived (0.00 / 0)
Good art isn't contrived. If it's really coming from the individual and it comes from a feeling, rather than an intellectual conspiracy...it's good art...it's good for the person, evidently...healthy thing for them...and that's what matters

Art doesn't have to be elegant, sophisticated, it simply has to come from a feeling and be beneficial to the artist.

The rest of this stuff is all about acclaim, recognition...Americans are so confused by all the hypela...they can't enjoy anything...they have to sit there and consider...like the people on American Idol whether a person is "any good or not".

I understand Chris to say...if an artist has an audience they are some how pretty intelligent because they managed to get an audience...that's called marketing, not art.  

[ Parent ]
Of course good art is contrived. (4.00 / 3)
Do you think it just falls down out of the sky? It is made by people, i.e. contrived.

The distinction to be made is "contrived well" versus "contrived poorly" and we could argue all day long what that means.

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent ]
Sadie (0.00 / 0)
You don't know the meaning of the word.

It has a NEGATIVE CONNOTATION.

It means forced, unnatural, probably made up from other sources and presented as original, pieced together, not original.

I'm sure there are other definitions, but I don't have to look them up to know...and neither should you...to know that anytime somebody says something is contrived....it's negative....it's not honest..

C'mon!

[ Parent ]
Connotation is not denotation. (4.00 / 2)
Art is the opposite of nature. It means things made by humans as opposed to things not made by humans. Like in the word "artifice?"

Like I said, we can argue all day about what makes good art versus bad, (for example, your idea that good art comes from "the feelings" of "an individual" makes my skin crawl, because it makes me think of macrame and hand-painted breadboards) but that's another conversation.

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent ]
Oh, Really Sadie (4.00 / 1)
I happen to be a world renown Macramaist having exhibited my work all over Europe. I have an office in the Louvre and my hand painted bread boards never feel the burnt edges of a single crust of commoner bread.

As to art,

I feel the regenerative amalgamation of sensationalism is frought with an obsequious latitudinal responsiveness and my artistic endeavor reformulates the duality of an already outdated form with a constancy of purpose and movement that only reflects the ominvorous omnipotence of obstreprerous ostinancy over occassional ossefication of opaque oratory.

Anyway that's the way I FEELl about it.

[ Parent ]
Bravo! (0.00 / 0)
Somehow I feel YOUR breadboards would meet even my stuck-up standards.

Montani semper liberi
[ Parent ]
I was referring more to these paragraphs in relation to your post: (0.00 / 0)
"The notion that popularity is earned through stupidity can't die a fast enough death. Not that the notion is actually dying, just that it is an idea that needs to go away. The implication of such sentiments is that people are generally pretty dumb, or at least dumber than the person doing the evaluating. It is fundamentally a statement of elitism over the masses.

The very notion of "high" culture, incubated from the market economy by non-profit foundations and the academy, but containing an aesthetic and intellectual property absent in mass, largely market-based, "low" culture, is an idea that has been around for a great deal of time. Centuries, really. And even before mass culture, as long as there has been some form of social elite which enjoy a different set of cultural activities from the great mass of the people, the sentiment that stupidity equals popularity has been prevalent."

I'm not saying that the world is a pure meritocracy in that popularity is the best indicator of talent, just that if someone does become popular, then that is an indication that they do have some sort of talent.

Yes, popularity can be achieved through non-positive talent, like the ability playing to your audience's destructive fears and instincts.

I suppose we also have a different opinion on how Rachel Maddow has become popular.  While the ability to raise the level of discourse on cable news may seem like a depressingly low bar to clear, I think she clearly does that with the quality of her guests, her willingness to hold elected officials to account, and her willingness to challenge her audience's sensibilities.

[ Parent ]
Educate (4.00 / 6)
Maddow makes a serious effort to educate her audience. It's pretty silly to criticize her for dumbing down. I'd say she's trying to broaden her own audience by cultivating their taste for more complex discussion, and doing a good job of it. This seems harder on TV than it is on a blog, since most people don't pay as much attention, on a per-minute basis, to TV as they do to something they are reading.

Chris does a lot of educating, too. Numbers, charts, clearly identifying theories, etc. It's a nice approach, and wears better than relying on rhetoric, humor, outrage, or other things that bloggers use to hold attention.

I agree with Chris that people are clever. If you ever get tagged for jury duty, pay attention at the end to hear what everyone else on the jury perceived. There's always a dummy or two, but they are the outliers. Never count on outsmarting anyone you don't know. It's better to just not be noticed than to actively try and trick people, because they are very clever in general.  

ec=-8.50 soc=-8.41   (3,967 Watts)

I suggest you (0.00 / 0)
and others take a look at the actual criticisms of Maddow on which Nyhan primarily based his own comment.

That critique may be found on The DailyHowler. It is devastating on the point of the low quality of Maddow's commentary.

It's one thing to defend Maddow in abstraction from what she actually does. It's quite another to see her engaging in bald, self-serving lies, and inventing memes that only serve to clown and rile up the rubes.

Here are a couple of links -- and there is a lot more commentary from Somerby on Maddow if you hunt about.

Link 1

Link 2

[ Parent ]
You should post some poems on Openleft (4.00 / 6)
That would make a good Sunday feature.

(now everybody recommend my comment until he does it)

Libertarians just aren't that deep (0.00 / 0)
Sincere, not deep.  Oh, to be 16 again.
[ Parent ]
Clever producers of stupid content (0.00 / 1)
Although I don't agree with Brendan Nyhan's criticism of Rachel Maddow, it seems to me that Chris Bowers has conflated "stupid content" with "stupid producers," and then attacked a straw man that Brendan Nyhan didn't actually set up.

Nobody thinks that a gang of "intellectually challenged" individuals recruited from a sheltered workshop could produce "The Dukes of Hazzard," and excuuuuuuuuse me if I sound like an elitist, but "The Dukes of Hazzard" is as dumb as dirt.

I enjoy Rachael's show (4.00 / 7)
I think what makes her popular is not just that she's VERY smart, but she also tries to be HONEST.  You don't see that combination very much.  Plus, I am one who totally enjoys her upbeat style.  I think she has one of the best shows on tv, absolutly the best among political type shows.  And she's starting to get some big guests and interviews.  I hope she keeps this up for a LONG time!
I whole heartedly agree (4.00 / 1)
It's not just, or even primarily, her that's the appeal, she gets some of the best guests out there.  Very few vacuous establishment pundits or third-rate party strategists pollute her stage, instead we get a heavy dose of actual elected officials, academic experts, and types of people that are all too often shut out of other cable news shows.
[ Parent ]
Racheal Maddow is More TV Garbage (0.00 / 0)
I think she's awful. Grubby, sarcasm with out the casm. Always making "cute" overly intellectualized points and never FUNNY.

Who the hell is she? She's got nothing.

Why don't you ask yourself why Colbert or John Daly aren't in her time slot?

The reason is....the American Public doesn't want them. And the reason is...the networks don't want them at any higher profile.  

[ Parent ]
Really? (4.00 / 1)
First of all, in terms of higher profile, Comedy Central is available to more viewers than MSNBC, which is not a top 20 cable network.

http://www.ncta.com/Stats/TopN...

I also wouldn't accept that Colbert is necessarily all that great. Yes, about one segment per week is absolutely brilliant, must see tv, but then about a quarter of the time his segments are just the hackneyed sketches, like "Cheating Death" that could pass for Saturday Night Live filler, the rest tends to be only mildly funny and mildly insightful.  While he does occasionally have some quality guests, most of the time he only lets his guest get about 1-2 sentences of serious material in, wasting the rest of the time with, at best, mildly funny banter and jokes.

Even after a couple of internet searches, I have no idea who the "John Daly" is you refer to is unless you mean the golfer.

[ Parent ]
Wrong (0.00 / 1)
Colbert is an American I mean, Canadia hero...he's the only person who confronted Bush face to face on just who he actually is.

Rachael Maddow is not in any way comparable to either Colbert or Daly in any way shape or form.

[ Parent ]
The Mayor of Chicago? nt (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
one more thing... (0.00 / 0)
While I'm as critical of the high culture/low culture divide as the next guy, surely we're not in favor of just handing the keys over to the market.

(to be clear: I don't really think Chris was suggesting this.)

I don't see why not. (0.00 / 0)
I mean, if it was an actual market made up of real people instead of the media cartel we currently have.

Did you know that when Anna Nicole Smith died, for instance, a poll was taken asking people if they wanted to hear more, or less about her? Only ten percent said they wanted to hear more. Ten percent. Yet how much airtime/newsprint was dedicated to the story? Seemed like at least 70-80% to me. It was on the TV all day long, and on the cover of every magazine and newspaper for weeks.

You have to wonder what's up with that? Why does our supposedly "free," "market driven" media devote so much time to stories no one really cares about, while missing the ones that really matter?

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent ]
Idiocracy (4.00 / 1)
The best counter-argument to your thoughtful post is Mike Judge's film Idiocracy. It's a hilarious sci-fi satire set in the dystopian future where humanity has devolved after a thousand years of dumbing down.

But the story of the film itself provides an interesting third perspective to this discussion. It was infamously suppressed by 20th Century Fox because of its subversive message, so that it has basically only been seen by a small, devoted audience that grew by word of mouth. It's a very accessible film, well-liked by most who see it, but because of corporate censorship, it paradoxically appears to be an elite art film.

On the surface, it may appear as though Idiocracy is an elitist or niche work, while an escapist waste of time like, say, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, appears to be a smarter artistic endeavor, because lots of people see it and it makes a lot of money. But that analysis would ignore the aggressive suppression of the former and the aggressive promotion of the latter.

We should consider the extent to which the dumbest cultural products are actively promoted by media corporations as a form of distraction or crowd control, and the extent to which worthy, valuable artistic works are ingored or marginalized because of the danger they pose to that very media power. (In addition to Idiocracy, I'm thinking of Mr. Show.)

Conventional wisdom these days is that "people" want escapist entertainment during a painful economic disaster like this. Those pronouncements always come down from the studio chiefs, by way of the lapdog entertainment trades. Could it be that they the studio chiefs are the ones who really want escapist entertainment during a depression?

http://www.funnyordie.com/jame...

Idiocracy is the PRESENT (0.00 / 0)
Idiocracy isn't science fiction...it's the present.

Americans have never been this dumb before. A self imposed dumbnity.

The mistake in watching the film is to assume it's the future...

It's the present.

Look at the war in Iraq....they all admit it was a mistake but they keep on fighting.....and they aren't going to withdraw any time soon....I guarantee it. Don't listen to Obama...listen to his boss Petraues who really represents the MIilitary Industrial Complex and more....they are STAYING.

[ Parent ]
I know the difference between high and low culture -- (4.00 / 5)
high culture is about love and death. Low is about sex and violence.

Montani semper liberi
Tell Me You Didn't (4.00 / 2)
just make that up.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
Sadie Said (0.00 / 0)
I think that's right, Sadie

You don't need to analyze it much more than that.

Again...it's something that isn't that complicated.

But today everybody has been programmed to think the world is complicated, grey and we need to leave it to the experts and use all kinds of 4 syllable words to express ourselves "elegantly". Shakespeare knew how to use words....leave that to him.

That's the rulling powers simply trying (against their own ultimate interest,stupidly) to keep everyone else DOWN.

[ Parent ]
I appreciate the support (4.00 / 2)
but I was joking. What I meant was, how is sex different from love, really? How is violence different from death?

Isn't most art about those deepest of human concerns, the fear of death and the hope for love? Sometimes we address the fear of death with a car chase. Sometimes we talk about love using images of attractive naked people.

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent ]
What? (0.00 / 0)
How is sex different from love?  How is violence different from death?  There are some relatively shallow answers to both questions.  Sex is a certain kind of activity and love is the name for either a type of relationship, an emotion and/or both.  Violence again is a kind of activity, and death is a state.

So I assume you were asking the question at some deeper level than the level at which I just answered, but I cannot understand what that is.  Certainly you are not claiming that having sex is a necessary and sufficient condition of being in a loving relationship or feeling love towards someone.  That would be horrifically shallow.  And of course some deaths are not violent and not all violence leads to death.  I am having trouble imagining what is behind your question.

As for your definition, that seems far too easy a definition of the difference.  I haven't ever been interested in having an account of the difference between high and low culture (I have no use for the distinction myself), so I don't have an alternative definition to offer, but I would be surprised (like you I take it) if that were the whole story.

[ Parent ]
I guess the point I was trying to make (4.00 / 1)
is that to me, the high culture versus low culture divide seems capricious and arbitrary.

What is pornographic to one person, or even one generation, is a beautiful love story to another. Likewise what some see as a story filled with gratuitous violence is, to others, a story about human triumph.

It seems like we say, "high culture is what I like, low is what other (lesser) people like."

Montani semper liberi

[ Parent ]
Chris -- I didn't know that about you (0.00 / 0)
If obscurity bums you out, then being a change agent via the arts is almost always guaranteed to be a downer.

But, if having a meaningful, purposeful life is what you're after, then art is a great way to go.

I've been pursuing the life of the mind since I was a kid and I'm about as obscure as they get. On the other hand, I've done a lot of good work and some of the coolest (not the most famous, just the coolest) artists (and other general purpose creative types) on the planet are my friends.

I wish you well in your work and your art. Churchill said it best, "Never, never, never, never, never give up."

Yes, Folks Are Clever, And Gaining Mass Appeal Is Hard (4.00 / 5)
But most mass success is gained via trade-offs, and sacrificing sophistication and subtlety is often--though not always--necessary.

The mistake is in attributing this to individual stupidity, when the reality is that this is itself a mass effect that would still occur with an audience of much smarter individuals.

People simply have different frames of reference, and shared frames of reference are key to communicating.  The more frames of reference shared, the more sophisticated the communication can be.  Elite audiences draw on the shared reference frames of elite culture, which enable a more sophisticated discourse--but one that's limited by what is shared.

But sharing reference frames is just as likely to promote groupthink, broadly conceived, as it is to promote more sophisticated (much less intelligent) thinking.  Elite thinking about terrorism is a case in point.  It's been about as stupid as a bunch of 10 year-olds deciding to declare a war on hornets, and then going around, knocking down nests and getting themselves stung, over and over again.  In fact, every time I hear the phrase "war on terror", I think "war on hornets".  Brilliant.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

p.s. (4.00 / 1)
It often is the case that "the band was good before they were popular" for unrelated reasons.  Beginning in relative obscurity, most bands pour all possible passion and intelligence into their first cultural productions.  This produces work of high quality in terms of passion and intelligence.

But it sets a high bar subsequent work.  (We're all heard of the sophomore slump.) OTOH, the more time they play together, the more technically proficient they become, and the more attuned to audience likes, which tend to be influenced in turn by broader tastes--thus inducing an often unconscious bias toward sounding more like others.  The end result is more proficient music-making that's often less distinctive and compelling.  Put simply, it's harder to maintain a distinctive voice than it is to create one or two distinctive pieces of art.

So there's a very real phenomena there, as well as frequent imagining, particularly from those whose fandom is bound up in their identity and need to feel special.



"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
It isn't the words that affect people it's the feeling behind the words (0.00 / 0)
What you have written Paul Makes no sense.

"Sharing frames of reference"  "elite culture" ...which enable a more sophisticated discourse"

Then something about "elite thinking" about terrorism.

You guys are just using wurds....there is no such thing as "elite culture"  or "elite thinking"

If there's anything I can't stand it's this idea of using "frames"....I'm not saying your saying that...but in any case....this "framing" idea for the purpose of communication is awful..

What's missing in human communication isn't the "elite" wurds...it's emotional content. Sensation to go with the words. That's what give the words meaning.
and credibility and you don't need schooling for that. The idea that educated people are somehow more "intelligent" than "illiterate" people is one of our greatest myths.

It isn't the words that affect people it's the feeling behind the words. That's what really matters.

[ Parent ]
Feelings, nothing more than feelings.... (4.00 / 1)
Have you never seen a play full of deep and sincerely-felt emotion that was nevertheless crap?

Emotion is not enough, and the intellect is not elitist, even if not everyone appreciates the intellectual to the same degree.

Humans are not perfectly empathic, and there's just no way you can convey any kind of feeling in pure form without packaging it up in some form or another with craft and artifice.  Look at all the conservative pundits out there who feel very deeply their nonsense, but are still just spouting nonsense.  Look at the tears of a Glenn Beck.  Do these people move you?  They certainly don't move me.  They're totally incomprehensible and affectless to those who aren't already steeped in their idiosyncratic worldview...Their frame, if you will.  Their emotional message can only be transmitted via a shared intellectual framework.  (Not a good one, but still.)

[ Parent ]
C'mon (0.00 / 0)
That's not true..

You can look at a person and see what they are feeling all the time...there' is no need for words.

[ Parent ]
Whoops! (0.00 / 0)
I can't argue with that.

Let's not waste any more time with words.  Everything we need to say we can say with an emoticon.  ;-p

[ Parent ]
I love it when Nyhan lets loose his inner Adorno (0.00 / 0)
;)

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I'm not sure… (0.00 / 0)
...if the concept of "dumbing down" is shorthand for believing there's a high/low culture divide, but having worked at several magazines I do know that some extensively lettered folks in publishing truly believe they're smarter than everyone else. It's a drag.

I don't watch Rachel Maddow regularly, but I'm impressed by the clips I've seen. Unless you're a wonk who's always tuned into policy debates or events, some things need to be explained. Otherwise, for example, you just end up in the "Ding-Dong-the-pirates-are-dead!" camp, when there's a lot more to most stories than that. Maddow seems to do a good job of elucidating the things she takes on.

"This ain't for the underground. This here is for the sun." -Saul Williams

Dumbing down, indeed. (0.00 / 0)
First, Nyhan didn't say anything about high/low culture.  You omit the context:

"The inescapable conclusion of reading Somerby is that the problem with cable news is structural, not ideological. The only way for a pundit to assemble a large enough audience to succeed in prime time is to pander to their audience's ideological sensibilities and to dumb down their content to the lowest common denominator."

His complaint is cable news, not culture.  Are you incapable of grasping rudimentary context, or are you just playing your audience for fools, in an effort to increase your popularity?

Second, finding ideas distasteful doesn't disprove them, as:

"However, to make a blanket statement that a large audience requires dumbing down your content is hard to read as anything except social elitism."

Of course, one can say make the statement that increasing audience size DOES require dumbing down content and say NOTHING about the intelligence of the average American - because popularity consists of developing an emotional connection with a subculture, not appealing to the rationality of the average person.  A certain percentage of young girls identify with Millie Cyrus.  The same three to ten million people watch Bill O'Reilly and read Ann Coulter.  MANY celebrities and pundits - probably most - become popular by throwing the same red meat, every day, to an engaged fan base of several million.

(That, by the way, was what Nyhan was observing - that popular shows gain a consistent audience by pandering to ideological sensibilties, not analysis.)

But - assuming the above wasn't true, and the popularity of celebrities, politicians and pundits actually reflected in some way the intelligence of the Average American - what is the example of people being "clever?"  The fact that nearly half the population STILL voted Republican after two failed wars, international disgrace, and a demolished economy, maybe?  The current television line up?  Maddow herself?  I'd LOVE not to be a cultural elitist (it doesn't seem a trendy thing to be), but I'm at a loss for retorts to cultural elitists at parties.

Do you wanna be a rock and roll star? (0.00 / 0)

Disagree very much (0.00 / 0)
Your quote talks about the content of the message, not the skill or intelligence required to make that content popular.  No one thinks that Britney Spears became popular without the application of intelligence.  Its just that the intelligence all seems to be in the marketing and PR part of the operation.  The content of the music doesn't reflect any intelligence or depth, though the slickness of the presentation probably does.  The very common sense idea at play here is that the kind of real and in a way impressive intelligence that goes into modern marketing has nothing to do with the quality of the art/thought.  So I don't see how your response that popularity usually requires intelligence is on point.

But more importantly I want to take issue with the idea that any kind of elitism needs to be opposed.  I am one of the people who thinks that for any art, if it is popular, it is likely, though not certain, that it is going to be of low quality.  I admit that this makes me an elitist.  I think most people have degraded taste.  When it comes to food I think most people have very poor taste, and I consider myself among the people with poor taste.  When it comes to poetry and jazz I think the same thing.  Good poetry and good jazz engage the intellectual and creative faculties in ways that most rock music does not, but for whatever reason I have never appreciated the experience of listening to good jazz or reading good poetry (this isn't exactly true, but I don't do that stuff enough).

So one point to make is that one can be an elitist, in that one has the belief that for any creative activity most people both aren't good at it and don't properly appreciate it, while not thinking that one is a member of the elite.  And I don't see what the immediate problem is with that.  It seems to me just to amount to knowing your limitations.  As long as you don't slip into the view that most people aren't creative at all, or that most people aren't properly appreciative of creativity at all, I don't find what you have identified as elitism to even be insulting.  Not everyone is creative in every area and not everyone can really appreciate and understand the quality of every creative feild.

But even if you take yourselves to be part of the elite, I again don't see the problem, or at least I don't see the problem with regards to the kind of issues generally discussed here.  I take it that in identifying the thought as an elitist one you are implicitly critisizing it as counter-democratic, and this I think is deeply wrong.  For one thing if you are committed to a constitutionalist view of democracy you are already accepting some measure of legitimate elitism.  The 1st Amendment guards against the state intefering in expression and religious activity in certain ways.  It is clear from the justifications given of the 1st Amendment that people think that without it the public would make lots of really bad decisions with regards to restricting expression and religious activity.  So I think some measure of what you are calling elitism is already built into constitutional democracy.

Another case worth thinking about is that of the attitude of some agnostics and atheists towards religious believers.  It is not that uncommon to find agnostics and atheists making claims about how the belief in God is unjustified by the appeal to evidence, but is explained by appeal to deep psychological needs that most people cannot stand not being fulfilled.  The idea is that only the few can really face the truth, while the majority are stuck clinging to beliefs that have been shown (the agnostic or atheist thinks) to be false.  I admit that such a view sounds patronizing and insulting (and I am not saying that all agnostics or atheists have such a view, just that some do.  Bill Maher and Daniel Dennett come to mind), but it does not seem incompatible with a robust commitment to progressive values or populist politics.  Even if you think that the majority are lacking intellectually, you can still think that no one has the right to make decisions for them on these issues.  Or you might think that even if the enlightened few have a right to make such decisions, giving that kind of power away is too dangerous to ever be prudent.  

If I was reading too much of a political point into this comment, I apologize.

That Band Was Good Before They Were Popular | 49 comments
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