"Popular Culture" and the "Rock Aesthetic"

Fellow blogger and Hobe Sound veteran Randy Huff sent me a thought-provoking essay by Mark Steyn writing in The New Criterion on the 20th anniversary of Allan Bloom's seminal book The Closing of the American Mind in response to my post a few days back on Tori Amos. Steyn specifically praises and expounds on Bloom's chapter on music. It's an enjoyable piece and I commend it. I'm familiar with Steyn, having once been a faithful reader of both National Review and The American Spectator magazines for which he also writes. Bloom and Steyn both agree that the advent of rock and roll music in the 1960s virtually erased the last vestiges of the older "high culture" (i.e. classical music and literature) from the American mainstream and has progressively degraded the popular culture in the process. Steyn writes:

I don’t really like the expression “popular culture.” It’s just “culture” now: there is no other. “High culture” is high mainly in the sense we keep it in the attic and dust it off and bring it downstairs every now and then. But don’t worry, not too often. “Classical music,” wrote Bloom, “is now a special taste, like Greek language or pre-Columbian archaeology. Thirty years ago [i.e., now fifty years ago], most middle-class families made some of the old European music a part of the home, partly because they liked it, partly because they thought it was good for the kids.” Not anymore. If you’d switched on TV at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999 you’d have seen President and Mrs. Clinton and the massed ranks of American dignitaries ushering in the so-called new millennium to the strains of Tom Jones singing “I’m gonna wait till the midnight hour/ That’s when my love comes tumblin’ down.” Say what you like about JFK, but at least Mrs. Kennedy would have booked a cellist.

Steyn's point is well-taken and one I'm in sympathy with. There's a vast gulf between, say, the popularity of a Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra vs. Britney Spears or Fifty Cent. However, I think it's all rather beside the point. I'll come back to that. The strongest part of the piece in my opinion is Steyn's protest against the ubiquity of the "rock aesthetic" which assaults our ears everywhere we go.

But Bloom is writing about rock music the way someone from the pre-rock generation experiences it. You’ve no interest in the stuff, you don’t buy the albums, you don’t tune to the radio stations, you would never knowingly seek out a rock and roll experience—and yet it’s all around you. You go to buy some socks, and it’s playing in the store. You get on the red eye to Heathrow, and they pump it into the cabin before you take off. I was filling up at a gas station the other day and I noticed that outside, at the pump, they now pipe pop music at you. This is one of the most constant forms of cultural dislocation anybody of the pre-Bloom generation faces: Most of us have prejudices: we may not like ballet or golf, but we don’t have to worry about going to the deli and ordering a ham on rye while some ninny in tights prances around us or a fellow in plus-fours tries to chip it out of the rough behind the salad bar. Yet, in the course of a day, any number of non-rock-related transactions are accompanied by rock music. I was at the airport last week, sitting at the gate, and over the transom some woman was singing about having two lovers and being very happy about it. And we all sat there as if it’s perfectly routine.

Although I don't share Bloom's (and presumably Steyn's) disdain for everything post-Beatles, it is a noxious phenomenom, and what does it say for the spiritual health of a society that can't stand silence? One has to be mighty disciplined to combat this pervasive effect. It's an instructive exercise for me to forego the radio or iPod during my 15-minute commute to work each day! But back to the main point. Yes, I'd be very pleased if we lived in a culture where Bach was more revered than The Beatles and where blue-blooded politicians didn't feel they had to feign an interest in hip-hop ala John Kerry, but as one seeking to live out my calling as a Christian in contemporary society it's not worth getting too upset about. Perhaps I can explain with a little autobiography.

At the time I was reading NR I listened exclusively to classical music and looked with disapproval at my brother who was listening to The Cure and playing electric guitar in a garage band. At that time I agreed 100% with Bloom's views on music, and admittedly I would be spiritually impoverished if not for my exposure to classical music and love of some aspects of "high culture" (for lack of a better term). But if I had not later begun to appreciate and love some aspects of "pop culture"/"rock and roll culture" (whatever), I believe I'd be less able to engage as a Christian with the contemporary world. I feel blessed to be able to sing the praises of Brahms' four symphonies or Wilco's last four studio albums with equal fervor.

Any critique of culture that leaves out the triune God and the gospel will be incomplete. The history of Europe in the 20th century amply illustrates that without a Christian worldview it doesn't matter how impeccable one's taste in music and art is. I think of the chilling scene in Schindler's List where the German soldier participating in the ethnic cleansing of the Krakow ghetto, sits down at a piano and plays a few bars of Mozart as the machine guns fire and the dogs bark. And though the Enlightenment that Bloom celebrates brought us many great things in art, culture and society, it's legacy is problematic in other ways. Bloom quotes Enlightenment thinker Lessing to make a point about art's effect on society:

Allan Bloom quotes Gotthold Lessing on Greek sculpture: “Beautiful men made beautiful statues, and the city had beautiful statues in part to thank for beautiful citizens.” “This formula,” writes Bloom, “encapsulates the fundamental principle of the esthetic education of man. Young men and women were attracted by the beauty of heroes whose very bodies expressed their nobility. The deeper understanding of the meaning of nobility comes later, but is prepared for by the sensuous experience and is actually contained in it.”

I appreciate what he's saying, but would note that Lessing (most famous for his view of an "ugly great ditch" between history and faith that can never be bridged) is the godfather of liberal theologians who deny the reliability of the Bible and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. That's what I mean about this kind of conservative critique (which I once wholeheartedly endorsed) being incomplete and beside the point looked at from a Christian perspective. Steyn spends a lot of time on hip-hop and the awfulness of 'gangsta rap'. I agree! I've seen in my own community the sickening consequences when young black males act out what they hear in gangster rap music or see in videos, but it wouldn't do any good if the urban missionaries at Urban Youth Impact (in trying to reach kids immersed in the "hip-hop culture") snatched away their Tupac CD's and replaced them with Mahler symphonies, but it might do some good if they tried to get them to listen to CD's by my friend Proverb, who seeks to use hip-hop to lift up Christ, or Voice, who raps about God delivering him from a life of crime and drugs. Unfortunately, I suspect that conservative critics like Steyn would throw the Christian rapper out with the bathwater.

Nevertheless, Steyn is right -- Bloom's jeremiad against rock and roll's steamrolling of culture is still valid 20 years later. Just this morning, I heard a news story on the upcoming Russian elections in which a slick, pop group in mini-skirts sang "we want someone like Putin" before a soccer stadium full of fans. Yes indeed, "we are ALL rockers now"!