Culture & Art

[Dr. Rat]

Below I quote pretty extensively from an exchange between myself and Simon Weil from a week or so ago. (He's the primary quotee, but he quotes me within the passages he writes, so the quotes within quote are me-- I hope this all makes sense).

But, anyhow, I had been on about Albert Murray, his disciples and how we might learn something from them if we are careful (as opposed to the old Bill Cosby show, where you only learned if you weren't careful).

My interlocutor pointed out a number of sources for the Murray line of thinking, and I've been reading some of them--Nietzche's attacks on Wagner, some Murray aside from Stompin' the Blues, and some Herder, and some Lewis Mumford and Greil Marcus (who, like Constance Rourke mentioned below, are/were big into the idea of an "American vernacular" in the arts).

Now Herder had some scary moments for me--on the subject of minoroty cultures and purity, for instance.

But am not finding the other folks--Murray, Mumford, Marcus--to be nearly as scary, mostly because they all embrace, either explicitly or implicitly, the idea of America as a pluralistic culture.

Certainly they seem to think the arts to be of critical importance, worth fighting about, and even that it is linked in some inexorable way to what I'll loosely call "the national experience," but I'm not terribly put off by this stuff.

So, Simon and/or anyone: as I continue this little incomplete reading project, what sorts of things ought I be looking for? What ought to be sending up flags. If culture isn't what these guys seem to think, what better way do we have of thinking about it?

I'll hopefully have time to put up some primary quotations (from Murray, et al.) in the near future.

Here's the rundown of where we've been:

(WNMC @ Feb 4 2004, 01:31 PM)

I guess what I'm saying is that the Crouch/Murray line of thinking is also analagous to a lot of cultural preservation movements which we would probably agree are generally harmless, or at least not comparable in level of perniciousness to Naziism.

It's very intense. That's the main difference between guys like Murray and Wagner, to lump them together, and your more average "culture is at the heart of society" guys. They really think everything is at stake if their form of art does not win through. It's quite scary just how intense they are. There is also a parallel to do with degeneration, which is not really present in a lot of your standard preservation movements. The conception of this evil, dreadful, horrible culture-destroying degenerate fake-art is really quite central to both the Lincoln Center view and Wagner (to take one example). This is why Wynton would get so aggressive about avant-garde Jazz/fusion. He felt that it was rotting away at the core of American identity - by pretending to be Jazz when it was not. You get exactly the same stuff in Wagner - except it's German identity.

The importance of this "negative ideal" in both the Lincoln Center conception - and Wagner - is one of the most striking parallels between the two.

On the other hand, one of Murray's big influences is Malraux - and Malraux was minister of Culture in France when they were doing their Frenchness is to be found in culture thing. So it's pretty likely that Murray was influenced by the French approach. I'm not going to deny that one can make parallels with other guys like that.

 

Murray does seem to have the same sorts of ideas about the content and function of culture as did Wagner.

They both come out of Herder. That's one thing. Murray gets it via Constance Rourke, but probably directly as well. Also he's mad keen on Thomas Mann, who was a Wagner obsessive in his formation. And actually, there's probably some getting in there via Malraux as well. It is difficult to absoutely pin it down, because Murray's not about to destroy his mystique as an heroic elder by going into the nuts and bolts of his sources. But my personal feeling is that the guy hasn't got enough critical distance from whatever sources he's used.

 

To speak just to the (admittedly important) "general cultural" thrust of this line of thinking, rather than to it's more particular import to someone who sees himself as a black american cultural leader:

America has a problem with cultural identity formation. I used to teach a course with 19-year-olds focussing on just this point. The usual consensus answer to the question "What does it mean to be an American?" was "Consumptive participation in the cornicopian American economy" (I paraphrase, of course).

While this is wonderfully inclusive (so long as you've got money--love gets you nowhere here), it seems to me to be impoverished, as well.

Well I'm an English Jew, so what I'm doing talking to you about this I don't know. But, anyway... I do absolutely agree that America has a problem with cultural identity. But, to me, it has more to do with the youth of the nation than anything else. I mean the nation goes through experiences - and the way it reacts to those experiences define and deepen and change its cultural identity.

So I mean Big Mac and Coke and stuff like that, archetypally about American consumption, are indeed central to American identity - at least as conceived from this side of the pond. But so are things like optimism, size, dynamism.

I think American culture does lack a depth, that's true. But then I don't know it well. But, to me, the main way a culture is going to develop that depth is not by creating great artworks per se. It's, to repeat myself, by dealing with the problems the culture throws up in the course of its development. It may be that art helps in that, by dealing with cultural problems that otherwise elude definition or solution - maybe they can get worked out, to some degree, in art. But I don't think that, say providing images of what it's like to be a great American (as conceived by the artist) helps a great deal unless these images are dealing with the actual underlying problems. The fact the art deals with the problems is what's going to give the art resonance and lead to it being absorbed by society (if you're lucky).

The thing about the Lincoln Center is I don't think they give a damn about the underlying problems (social, historical, whatever). They just think that if you create an image of an archetypal existential hero, then society will graciously accept it and get better. Blaaaghh.

But I do think society (and society) needs unifying images and symbols and personalities. And, indeed, can't do without them.

But they're produced by society as a whole, not one guy or one institution.

Simon Weil

Simon Weil Posted: Feb 4 2004, 03:55 PM

(WNMC @ Feb 4 2004, 02:45 PM)

Yes, you're right, he's specifically referring to the national culture generally, but you can't discount the context.

It isn't that he's thinking of restoring "culture" or his idea of it just to the ghetto, but that his sense of urgency on this question derives quite crucially from the position of blacks in this country, where there are proportionately half the number of black men with college degrees as white men, where young blacks go to horrible schools and where blacks themselves often seem to have a very ambivalent attitude toward education.

To people like Marsalis, a lot of this crisis in the ghetto comes down to cultural failings both within the ghetto and in the society at large (blacks, having the least in terms of power and wealth, naturally suffer most when the purely cultural assets of a society wither. If being American is buying lots of neat shit, ghetto blacks are in trouble, because they don't have the economic resources to participate).

So though the culture theme here is directed generally, I don't think it can be looked on apart from the racial context.

--eric 

I have gone over Wynton/Murray's stuff about the black condition, and, honestly, I find it hard to work out. They seem conflicted. I have a correspondant who was at one of Murray's lectures and asked him about blacks in the ghetto. And, to paraphrase, Murray said it was their own fault and they should work harder to get out. On the other hand all the Lincoln Center guys are clearly intensely concerned about the delibitating effects race has on society and on black society in particular.

My personal feeling is that they're not entirely clear what their role is vis a vis black society. It seems like they feel that, if they can convince white Americans to be more democratic (through the music, unbelievable as it may be), then problems for black Americans will work out. But Wynton is really a kind of cocooned guy. Going round in his bubble of gigs and educational events in which he's the great man and people gather round. I don't know, he seems pretty cut off from the average black person (or the average person come to that).

But he doesn't think so, I guess.

Simon Weil

[Simon Weil]

Below I quote pretty extensively from an exchange between myself and Simon Weil from a week or so ago. (He's the primary quotee, but he quotes me within the passages he writes, so the quotes within quote are me-- I hope this all makes sense).

But, anyhow, I had been on about Albert Murray, his disciples and how we might learn something from them if we are careful (as opposed to the old Bill Cosby show, where you only learned if you weren't careful).

My interlocutor pointed out a number of sources for the Murray line of thinking, and I've been reading some of them--Nietzche's attacks on Wagner, some Murray aside from Stompin' the Blues, and some Herder, and some Lewis Mumford and Greil Marcus (who, like Constance Rourke mentioned below, are/were big into the idea of an "American vernacular" in the arts).

Now Herder had some scary moments for me--on the subject of minoroty cultures and purity, for instance.

But am not finding the other folks--Murray, Mumford, Marcus--to be nearly as scary, mostly because they all embrace, either explicitly or implicitly, the idea of America as a pluralistic culture.

Certainly they seem to think the arts to be of critical importance, worth fighting about, and even that it is linked in some inexorable way to what I'll loosely call "the national experience," but I'm not terribly put off by this stuff.

So, Simon and/or anyone: as I continue this little incomplete reading project, what sorts of things ought I be looking for? What ought to be sending up flags. If culture isn't what these guys seem to think, what better way do we have of thinking about it?

It's hard for me to answer this, inasmuch as my flags are so determined by my experience as a Jew. That is to say I am totally, utterly and completely aware all the time just how vicious these sorts of ideas can get. I don't believe that experience is really transferable, but what you can do is, maybe, read books by more intellectually competent people also rooted in that experience. And they can give you flags more rooted in purely intellectual argument - i.e. something that ought to transfer.

There's a book Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder by Isiah Berlin which is a good place to start. He is a legitimate, sound critic - i.e. if he says there's a problem, there probably is a problem. In some respects, I don't like his stuff, but if you want flags...

But I would say to you, there is no substitute for your flags.

Simon Weil

[Dr. Rat]

There's a book Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder by Isiah Berlin which is a good place to start. He is a legitimate, sound critic - i.e. if he says there's a problem, there probably is a problem. In some respects, I don't like his stuff, but if you want flags...

Thanks, I'll check out some Berlin,

-eric

[Dr. Rat]

Thanks Simon Weil for the Berlin rec.

I'd heard of him, of course, but never read him until last night.

He writes very well, and I'm finding his essays to be quite intersting. I recommend him to others intersted in philosophy/political theory.

Couldn't find Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder , but the collection I've got has essays on all three.

Reading about Hamann and the Counter-Enlightenment now.

Proper Study of Man is the collection I've got.

--eric