Popular Culture

POPULAR CULTURE.

An important if little understood element of the Left experience in the United States during the last hundred years, popular culture ‘aan be defined, quite simply, as culture that is consumed by large numbers of people, “largeness" being, relative to activity and milieu. The term itself has been.

used to describe everything from the cheap novels prormoting the vietues of the work ethic that proliferated following the Civil War to the words, phrases, and jie sles that enter common patlance via television com‘mercials today. The term should be distinguished from folk culture, which refers specifically to nonlkterate cub ture that is laterally bartered by members of a preindustrial society, and from mass culture, which isa term cof opprobrium used to deseribe cultural items that are tailored by an economic elite to sell the greatest number of units without regard to aesthetic sacrifice, During the late nineteenth century, American socialist movements consolidated their power in im‘migrant communities by offering Left alternatives to the dominant Anglocentric culture. Quasi-religious forms, including martyrology, holiday feasting, litursical music, and iconography assumed revolutionary ‘identities in linguistically and religiously Isolated ‘communities struggling to maintain familiar customs against the pressures of hegemonic assimilation, The ‘group of workers’ picnic, reputedly launched by Ger‘man American freethinkers to circumvent blue laws

that closed public houses on Sundays and thus further restricted the precious little free-time allowed by sixty-hour work weeks, brought together families, neighbors, and co-workers in an environment that allowed for beer drinking and general camaraderie, but also often included political speeches or even didactic theatrical pageants. The establishment of eth‘nlc “social clubs” for entertainment, education, and the promotion of organized sports can be seen as institutionalizations of “picnic” culture. The social club phenomenon persists among recently arrived immigrant groups today.

By the tum of the century, radical immigrant ‘movements increasingly expressed themselves in the press, Virtually every ethnic group of size developed atleast one inexpensive, widely distributed organ that Drought together Old World cultural themes with im‘mediate political, social, and economic causes. Dally ‘newspapers served not only as conduits for news and editorial opinion, but as the cultural patrons of local poets, cartoonists, and fiction writers. Many papers translated popular European and American novelists {nto the languages of their constituencies. In some ethnic subcultures, notably Iallan (but also Finnish), the mockery of religious institutions and personalities Provided a mirror alternative to official culture; catechisms were a favored form of parody. In some cases, this kind of ethnic political activism survived into the radio age. In New York, the Yiddish-language radio station was identified by the call letters WEVD (or “Eugene V. Debs”).

Mainstream commercial popular culture, which ‘posed a threat to ethnic identity, appeared as a Janusfaced symbol to many immigrants. On the one hand, it was a threatening vessel of characteristically racist xenophobia. But at the same time, an appreciation ‘f popular songs, films, books, plays, and other works seemed essential to finding one’s place in the New ‘World. Charlie Chaplin, greatly loved by the immi‘grant masses, suggested the universal and progressive Possibilities of the cinema and of popular culture in ‘general.

‘Native-born American radicals generally took 2 ‘muuch less eclectic approach to popular culture, tendJing to focus their energies on literary forms. Walt ‘Whitman, in Democratic Vistas (1871), stressed the point that the existence of any democracy is absolutely dependent upon the vitality of its popular ‘culture; that is, the medium by whieh ideas are cit‘culated and discussed among the masses of citizens.

But even Whitman used the term “divine literatus” to describe the ideal artist of such a culture, Abolltlonists could proudly claim Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin in this respect. Christian utopian Socialists, woman. suffragists, and agrarian protest movements all produced popular and would-be poplular literary works, as did letish strains of spinitualism and temperance.

Native-born labor traditions, rooted in the repubHcan prerogatives of the skilled worker, fostered the ‘translation of popular songs into socialistic poems, ‘which appeared widely in labor publications, James ‘Whitcomb Riley, the “Hoosier Poet” whose works attracted a vast audience, brought the central themes Of republican virtue together with piety in a lyric for the 1900 presidential campaign of his intimate friend:

‘An’ there's ‘Gene Debs, a man ‘at stands

‘An’ jst holds up in his two hands

‘The kindest heart that ever beat

Betwixt here an’ the jedgment seat

But in neither the immigrant nor the native-born encounters with popular culture did the concept of culture a the locution of mass consciousness—as the expression of a yearning for a better lfe—emerge on any theoretical of ideological bass. In Europe, quite the opposite was true. Such theoretical agumentation about the role of popular culture in revolutionary consciousness pervaded the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci and the theater of Bertolt Brecht.

‘The writings of T. W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and other members of the Frankfurt School group would bring these issues to bear in “America only after World War IL

Direct leftist involvement in mainstream Amerlcan popular culture reached its apogee during the Popular Front era of the mid- and late 1930s. During this period a wide variety of political progressives helped promote a genuine appreciation of Afro-Amer.

jean music (specifically, the blues) and of liberal and Left-leaning elements in film (such as the Warner Brothers films of social conscience). Even sports he08s, such as Joe Louis, were enshrined as Cincinnatus figures. A hostile reaction to the acceptance of these popular forms by highbrow Left intellectuals galvanized in the pages of the Purtisan Review. The ‘masses, according to this bookish analysis, needed to be uplifted to the great (ie, European) works, not pattonized with such capitalist consumer schlock as un-

tutored music, Hollywood movies, and professional sports, Clement Greenberg's 1930 essay “Avant-garde and Kitsch” rejected the American popular cultural imagination as a nightmare of degradation.

‘Twenty years later, Dissent's unremitting hostility, toward popular culture reaffirmed that nothing essential had changed the minds of the now highly prestigious liberal-socalist intelligentsia. Among the popular arts film alone had been allowed to graduate from “degradation” status into the arena of sympathetic discussion, largely because a new béte noire, television, had lifted it out of the cultural basement.

wight Macdonald, who in 1953 had claimed that it was structurally impossible for Hollywood to produce worthwhile film, actually became a film critic before the end of the decade. The surrealist-minded film critic Parker Tyler, who shared Macdonald's Trotsky{st leanings. was perhaps the single exception to this condescending view (see especially The Hollywood Hallucination)

One of the arenas of popular culture where the Left, particularly Communists, played a dynamic role ‘was in Hollywood. Communist leaders had few clear Ideas about what film might do. They demanded little more of their several hundred movie industry members than financial conteibutions. Thus, left~ ‘wing writer, directors, and actors had to devise their ‘own methods through discussions among themselves ‘on how to influence films to the degree that was possible within the studio system. Until the 1930s, relatively few opportunities emerged, even though a handful of left-wingers had already written some of Hollywood's classic crime, horror, and humor films.

The rise of Hitler, the emergence of an antifascist cli ‘mate, and World War II gave the Popular Front mi lieu increasing means to experiment within the limIts of studio guidelines. Adding to the intellectual environment was the founding of the Hollywood (Quarterly in 1946, Unti its purging in 1949-1950, the ‘magazine, in effect, served as the theoretical publi‘ation of the film industry's Popular Front.

‘Across the full spectrum of genres, from "1B" comedies and westerns to social realist noirs to children’s films, the influence of left-wing scriptwriters was often buried in hack formulas or too subtle for easy detection, Nonetheless, dozens of writers, a few direc tors, and lyricists made notable contributions to films seen during their time at neighborhood theaters and Widely available since on television or as video rentals, Leftists made significant contributions to ‘more than nine hundred Hollywood films. 4 short list of left-wing scriptwsiters and their bestremembered films, including a handful after the blackist hhad been lifted, would include: Ben Barzman (The Boy with Green Hair, Back to Bataan, and Give Us This Day), Leonardo Bercoviei (The Bishop's Wife), Walter Bernstein (The Molly Maguire and The Fron, John Bright (Public Enemy, He Done Her Wrong, and Back Door to Heaven), Hugo Butler (Lasie Come Home and Adventres of Robinson Cruse), Edward Chodorow (Mayr of Hell and The Hucksters), Howard Dimsdale (National Velve), Guy Endore (The Devil Doll and Sinba),Francis Faragoh (Little Caesar and My Friend Flicka), Cart Foreman (High Noon), Paul Jatrico (Tom, Dick and Harry), Gordon Kahn (Buy Me This Town), Howard Koch (Casablanca and Mission to Moscow), Alfred lewis Levitt (The Boy with Gren Hair and The Mon4ey’s Uncle, Ber. Maddow (ntmuer in the Dust and AS‘halt fnge), Mortimer Offer (SyviaScaret and Alice Adams), Maurice Rapt (Song of the South and Cinderella), Marguerite Roberts (Dragon Seed and True Grip, Waldo Salt (Shopwom Angel, Midnight Cowboy, and Coming Home), Donald Ogden Stewart (The Philadelphia Story ana itty Foyle), Frank Tao (Schoo!

for Scoundrels and Father Goose), John Wexley (Angels with Dirty Faces and The Roaring Twenties), and the ‘writing team of Robert Lees and Fred Rinaldo (Abbott and Costello hits Buck Privates, Hold That Ghost, Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and others). A siailat ist of directors and their best-known work would include: John Berry (He Ran All the Way and Claudine, Jules Dassin (Naked City and Never an Sunday), Joseph Losey (A. Doll's Howse and The Romantic Englisiwoman), Abraham Polonsky (Force of Evi, and Martin Ritt (Norma Rae).

Party members could rightly claim (though they rarely did) that the commercial rise of “folk music,” black and white, from the 1940s to the 1960s, owed ‘much to them, Similarly, the Party could take some credit for the introduction to the public at large of black artists and of Affo-American cultural themes Various film directors dated their political sensibiltiesto specific Communist-inked movements, especially to the early Sereen Actors Guild. During the years of the blacklist, such attachments were suspride or secreted. But rarely, even at times of great ‘optimism and openness (such as during the years immediately following World War I}) did these personal ‘engagements translate into theoretical explorations ‘ofthe popular culture isue. Sidney Finkelstein’ azz:

A People's Culture (1949), with its clumsy aesthetic formulae, marks what must pass for a high point relative to the low level of theoretical discussion.

Ironically, the popular culture explosion of the postwar era contained many events that proved to be Of radical character, though these were rarely recognized as such as they happened. Bebop, an. immed ate precursor of rock and roll, touched off a blackWhite youth rebellion whose importance to the civil rights movement remains underestimated. Major league baseball was at long last integrated. Beat Generation poetry and fiction revived the Whitmanian dream of rediscovering, through the celebration of common experience, what Allen Ginsberg called “the lost America of love." The satires of Mad struck back at the monochromaticism of television. All of these phenomena, occurring ina virtual vacuum of Left in: erpretation under the upturned noses of the highbrow intellectuals, contributed greatly to the education of the baby-boom generation (L., the social rebels and war resisters of the sixties).

It was not until the late sixties, with the mammoth entertainment industrial complex now firmly established as a factor in the lives of virtually all Americans, that popular culture finally began to win recognition as a fertile field for interpretive study.

Even avant-garde creative expression—nonnarrative painting and film, guerrilla theater, acid-rock music, mimeo-press poetry—tapped popular cultural icons for subject matter. “Pop art,” as practiced by Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, for example, was not so much popular art as it was art that offered a critique of popular culture.

Blacklisting, which had been instituted during the birth of television and had thus had a particularly traumatic effect on that medium’s development, was finally eclipsed during the early 1970s by the pur chasing power of anti-war, antiracist, and profeminist baby boomers. Ring Lardner, Jc’s M"A*S"H was adapted by Larry Gelbart for television into the form of the much maligned medium’s most maligned genre: situation comedy. It became one of TV's greatest commercial successes. Norman Leat, 2 sitcom aufew whose didactic dramatic style smacked of Popular Front theater, dominated the ratings during the seventies with a string of politically liberal sitcoms, including Allin the Family, Maude, and Good Times

Rock and roll, whose very existence was a remarkable historical convergence of black rhythm and blues with poor white southern music, carried an in-

trinsic progressive polity that peaked during the Vietnam War. The always explicit messages of sexual freedom were joined by calls for draft resistance, racial harmony, and ecological perseverance. Crosby, Sills, Nash and Young, for example, put out a string of national hits—*Chicago", “Ohio,” “Woodstock"—that can be seen as a series of virtually instantaneous anlytical responses to the immediate issues of the day.

‘With the end of the draft and the war, the rock establishment soon ossified into a formulaic corporate entity. Even so, the emergence of reggae, of Bruce Springsteen, and, to a lesser degree, of punk and politicized Afto-pop, all rowed against the otherwise politically apathetic current of the post-Vietnam petiod, thus underlining the continuing vitality of rebellious culture during an increasingly conservative era,

Theoretical discussion of popular culture has not kept pace with the expansion of interpretive belle ttistic writing on the subject that emerged during the 1980s in publications stich as the Village Voice and small-circulation “fanzines” devoted to individual arts, especially film. The margins of popular culture criticism contained only a sprinkling of Althusserian or Frankfurtite abstraction here, or an occasional dis guisition on the revolutionary virtues of a rock and roll band there, This situation 4s likely to change, however, because of increasing academic activity in the field. As the political children of the sixties gain tenure in the professoriate, the academic legitimacy of popular culture study continues to grow. Though some institutions, notably Bowling Green State Untversity in Ohio, have attempted to formalize popular culture study into a discipline, such work is more often carried out as a subject area in any of a half dozen or more departments and programs, including ‘American studies, semiotics, sociology, anthropology, and in some places, even history or English, Theoretical fermentation and methodological argument is just beginning to result, Feminist analysis was the first radical strain of popular culture criticism to have ‘made anything like a broad impact on academic thinking,

In Popular Culture and High Culture, sociologist Herbert Gans makes the point that all people of all classes ‘have aesthetic preferences and yearnings, a point not conceded by conservative erities from José Ortega y Gasset to Hilton Kramer. The general premise underpinning the entire enterprise of popular culture study isan intrinsically progressive and optimistic one: that

‘culture has been and can become more inclusive and democratic:

{See also Dissent; Folk Music; Guthrie, Woody; Hollywood Left; Lardner, Ring, jr; Lawson, John Howard; Marcuse, Herbert; Partisan Review; Spiritualism; Surrealism]