How does one determine what is high-class and low-class literature? How does one tell the difference between classy and trashy films or TV shows? What makes music good or bad?
It is all the same question, really, and a crazy-complicated one that I will never have time to fully solve or even discuss in this format, partially because nobody agrees on criteria for highbrow or lowbrow art. I can’t decided for myself if I want to consider things like structure or purpose exclusively or together.
There are a lot of things that go into making a story or an essay or a column or music — things like structure, purpose, audience, style and more. Questions of low art versus high art seem quickly solved if I decided to eject all of these things except one. I could say, “Class is what you get when your story has a complicated and coherent structure.” But complications arise almost immediately because Harlequin Romance novels are clearly on the side of trash and are often more structured than many literary novels.
I could say that the author’s purpose is what determines the difference. If he is writing to elevate us, then it is high-class art. If he is writing to entertain or make money, then he is making low-class hack work.
But this can’t be right either, because you run into people like Anthony Trollope who wrote purely for money, and he was open about it. And if entertainment is low class, then Shakespeare is as low class as they come because his characters say repeatedly that all they wish to do is entertain.
I could say that the audience is the thing that determines what class of work is in. If it is written for the educated or elite, then it is classy. If it is written for the poor, it is low class. But that’s incredibly insulting and we must then discount pretty much every novel written after 1890 and a great deal before. No Moby Dick, for instance.
None of these simple, singular approaches is enough to determine what is classy or not. We almost universally can call a modern-day action flick trashy. “It has no redeeming value.” “It’s too violent.” “They swear.”
However, if we want to discount lurid, violence-ridden sexual filth from the hallowed halls of art, then we must reject the works of Homer and Chaucer. Can I or anyone else say that “South Park” isn’t art because of fart jokes? Fifty years from now, it may be remembered as emblematic of our times and as one of the turn of the century’s greatest pieces of satire. Even an artist like Ke$ha might be remembered in ways far different than what we imagine.
Or great works that everybody praises might not be remembered at all. Will Infinite Jest be remembered? How could it, if most of the people on the street have never heard of it? There appears to be no true way to determine what is good and what is not except by majority vote.
I can’t stand Moby Dick. I find it tedious, the sections on whaling distracting, and the love the author has for theme, metaphor and allegory overwrought and pretentious. Yet most people who have sat down and read the thing agree, over my objections, that it is a masterpiece. The key here appears to be personal preference. I know people who would put Stephen King far down on the scale of respectability. I would rank his works higher: still lowbrow but increasing in respectability — depending on the story, of course.
When a large number of people agree that something is good, it gets put in the classic section. If a large amount of people hate it, it gets put in the bargain bin and forgotten about. If two groups disagree, then you get Twilight.
If personal preference is the only thing that determines what is classy and what isn’t, then why have these distinctions at all? Or is there more to it? I don’t have the answer. But I welcome any and all opinions on this subject. Except from you.
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