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MIDCULT

                                         Dec  2, 2012

                                           DWIGHT_MAC

From "Masscult and Midcult", p.34,
Dwight Macdonald lays out the grand
thesis, such as it is:

        "A whole middle culture has come into
        existence and it threatens to absorb both
        its parents.  This intermediate form -- let
        us call it Midcult-- has the essential
        qualities of Masscult-- the formula, the
        built-in reaction, the lack of any standard
        except popularity-- but it decently covers
        them with a cultural figleaf.  ... Midcult
        ... pretends to respect the standards of
        High Culture while in fact it waters them
        down and vulgarizes them.  ... "

        "The enemy outside the walls is easy to
        distinguish.  It is its ambiguity that makes
        Midcult alarming.  For it presents itself as
        part of High Culture.  Not that coterie
        stuff, not those snobbish inbred so-called
        intellectuals who are only talking to
        themselves.  Rather the great vital
        mainstream, wide and clear though perhaps
        not so deep.  ..."

     I find myself wondering what these
     "standards" are that the High Culture
     guards and the Mass and Mid lacks.
     I don't suppose Macdonald ever bothered
     to state something so obvious, eh?

     The boundaries he uses are pretty amusing:
     John Cage, for example, is apparently
     supposed to be one of those Midcult phonies,
     but one suspects the middies would want
     nothing to do with him, and regard him as
     a member of a coterie, if not The Coterie.

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