My take is the middlebrow culture was aspirational, as you note. That is, people felt they were moving up from a tenement-dwelling working class who scrapped for a living, to a middle class American, an actualization of something called the American dream. Middlebrow was about bettering oneself, much as the nouveau riche sought to acquire some culture (or at least have their children do so) so as to fit in with their new peer group.
When Neoliberalism was installed, the American dream of unremarkable Americans ended. There was no need for middlebrow material anymore, what was needed was bread and circuses.
I studied STEM and have an engineering degree. But I also consumed a lot of the humanities on my own time. There may not be much new middlebrow culture out there now, but the older stuff is easy enough to obtain for those willing and interested. But the desire to do so is missing from most people. How can we get that aspiration back?
I truly think it's the same process as self-help. There are people in the culture who will tell you how to live a better and more meaningful life. I think we need to tell them this is how: you have a duty and opportunity to become a better citizen.
In this uncertain world, people are always listening for advice about how they ought to live. We start by converting one person at a time, until we are a group. Gradually, it's cool, and it gets you status. Then we convert everyone!
Frank, thank you for writing this and your previous essay regarding civic virtue. Our democratic republic depends on a knowledgeable and wise citizenry. Although many Americans of all education levels generally have good common sense (which is too often disregarded or not understood by highbrow elites), the more education people have in history, political and economic theories, and logic, the less susceptible they are to deceit, manipulation, and shortsighted decision-making. However, I don’t know how you get the masses engage in middlebrow educational experiences without force-feeding it to them. The changes in programming seem to be giving the people what they want.
As I just wrote in a different note in this thread, I think it's the same process as self-help. There are people in the culture who will tell you how to live a better and more meaningful life. I think we need to tell them this is how: you have a duty and opportunity to become a better citizen.
We convert one person at a time, until we are a group. Then we convert everyone.
Well said. The point about learning French feels particularly significant. I remember in the 2004 election how knowing French counted *against* John Kerry, a way of painting him as hopelessly out of touch. Since then we've sunk so much further that even the term "élite" – which is supposed to be high praise, mark you as the best of the best – has become a pejorative.
Very thought provoking Frank. Glad to have found your Substack and I appreciate being able to read your thinking for free as a limited income senior, who has to pay for eggs, butter and bacon with ever decreasing buying power. I hope to someday be able to buy you some eggs.
As a kid in the 60s I enjoyed Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson and Steve Allen.....I don't watch talk shows anymore, Substack is the new talk show, with a lot less commercials.
I need to pass this article on to many friends who suffer from the same uncanny valley experience that young people are addicted to.
I think everyone should be reading and subscribing to Frank. If you can afford to send some money his way please do so as I really enjoy reading him and hope to be able to do so.
I remember when I used to be home sick from grade school (ca 1970) and would turn in Phil Donoghue and see interesting shows with interesting guests. May years later when I was in grad school (1980's) I watched a couple of his then shows and was shocked at the inanity of them.
And yet people haven't changed. The folks I worked with throughout my career in the labs in the shops, on the production floor were just as smart (or not), just as honorable (or not) as they ever were decade by decade. There has been no change in the raw quality of Americans, at least as far as I can tell.
FDR and JFK would be aghast at what passes for policy in their beloved Democratic Party. Although both were upper class they understood that victory for their party depended on working class (lowbrow) voters. Current party leaders distain the “deplorable” and “racist” members of the working class.
A laundry list of things for Democrats to keep and to dump if they ever want to win again nationwide.
Keep a woman’s right to choose for the first trimester. Dump abortion until birth unless the mother’s health is at risk.
Keep a concern for climate change and grow nuclear power. Dump intermittent, unreliable renewable energy.
Keep and develop new effective vaccines. Dump vaccine mandates.
Keep equality of opportunity for all. Dump equity of results based on discriminating against men, whites and Asians (aka D.E.I.). Recognize that D.E.I. Is unconstitutional.
Keep the protection of gay and lesbian rights. Dump men in women’s sports, private spaces and prisons. Oh, and mutilating children who might grow up to be gay.
Keep an opportunity for selective high value immigration. Dump sanctuary cities and open borders.
Keep helping the homeless find jobs and a place to live. Dump camping in cities, shitting in the streets and allowing open drug use.
Keep a concern for due process in criminal justice. Dump letting shoplifters and other petty thieves off the hook.
Do all of the above and the middlebrow might find their way back to power.
I think we're starting to see this with hip-hop with the Drake/Kendrick Lamar beef. Kendrick has a Pulitzer for a reason. With his famous track "not like us" he combined party ass beats with a diss track and history lesson. There's a whole verse talking about the history of Atlanta comparing Drake to the white people.
I am not a rap fan but hip hop at his best is high level poetry.
Robert Frost (a true middlebrow’s poet) weeps at the thought that rap is “poetry.” The “reason” Lamar was given a Pulitzer was that a certain type of very left wing person (brilliantly skewered in American Fiction) has captured institutions like the Pulitzer committee. It’s the same reason that the movie portrayed a black author being given extravagant praise by these types for the ridiculous book We's Lives in Da Ghetto. In fact, I’m pretty sure the film’s writer was mocking the Lamar Pulitzer with this (although there were plenty of similar targets).
The closest I see to middlebrow culture is prestige TV. Unfortunately these days we have a lot of TV adopting the style and tropes of prestige TV but don’t require the same level of analysis, or indeed, content worth analyzing. The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire, Deadwood, and Halt and Catch Fire are all our closest equivalents to “the next great American novel,” but there’s little out there on that level today.
My take is the middlebrow culture was aspirational, as you note. That is, people felt they were moving up from a tenement-dwelling working class who scrapped for a living, to a middle class American, an actualization of something called the American dream. Middlebrow was about bettering oneself, much as the nouveau riche sought to acquire some culture (or at least have their children do so) so as to fit in with their new peer group.
When Neoliberalism was installed, the American dream of unremarkable Americans ended. There was no need for middlebrow material anymore, what was needed was bread and circuses.
Well put. I think that's entirely right.
I studied STEM and have an engineering degree. But I also consumed a lot of the humanities on my own time. There may not be much new middlebrow culture out there now, but the older stuff is easy enough to obtain for those willing and interested. But the desire to do so is missing from most people. How can we get that aspiration back?
I truly think it's the same process as self-help. There are people in the culture who will tell you how to live a better and more meaningful life. I think we need to tell them this is how: you have a duty and opportunity to become a better citizen.
In this uncertain world, people are always listening for advice about how they ought to live. We start by converting one person at a time, until we are a group. Gradually, it's cool, and it gets you status. Then we convert everyone!
Frank, thank you for writing this and your previous essay regarding civic virtue. Our democratic republic depends on a knowledgeable and wise citizenry. Although many Americans of all education levels generally have good common sense (which is too often disregarded or not understood by highbrow elites), the more education people have in history, political and economic theories, and logic, the less susceptible they are to deceit, manipulation, and shortsighted decision-making. However, I don’t know how you get the masses engage in middlebrow educational experiences without force-feeding it to them. The changes in programming seem to be giving the people what they want.
As I just wrote in a different note in this thread, I think it's the same process as self-help. There are people in the culture who will tell you how to live a better and more meaningful life. I think we need to tell them this is how: you have a duty and opportunity to become a better citizen.
We convert one person at a time, until we are a group. Then we convert everyone.
I like that.
Well said. The point about learning French feels particularly significant. I remember in the 2004 election how knowing French counted *against* John Kerry, a way of painting him as hopelessly out of touch. Since then we've sunk so much further that even the term "élite" – which is supposed to be high praise, mark you as the best of the best – has become a pejorative.
Very thought provoking Frank. Glad to have found your Substack and I appreciate being able to read your thinking for free as a limited income senior, who has to pay for eggs, butter and bacon with ever decreasing buying power. I hope to someday be able to buy you some eggs.
As a kid in the 60s I enjoyed Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson and Steve Allen.....I don't watch talk shows anymore, Substack is the new talk show, with a lot less commercials.
I need to pass this article on to many friends who suffer from the same uncanny valley experience that young people are addicted to.
Thanks, Marc! Really glad to have you here.
I think everyone should be reading and subscribing to Frank. If you can afford to send some money his way please do so as I really enjoy reading him and hope to be able to do so.
I remember when I used to be home sick from grade school (ca 1970) and would turn in Phil Donoghue and see interesting shows with interesting guests. May years later when I was in grad school (1980's) I watched a couple of his then shows and was shocked at the inanity of them.
And yet people haven't changed. The folks I worked with throughout my career in the labs in the shops, on the production floor were just as smart (or not), just as honorable (or not) as they ever were decade by decade. There has been no change in the raw quality of Americans, at least as far as I can tell.
FDR and JFK would be aghast at what passes for policy in their beloved Democratic Party. Although both were upper class they understood that victory for their party depended on working class (lowbrow) voters. Current party leaders distain the “deplorable” and “racist” members of the working class.
A laundry list of things for Democrats to keep and to dump if they ever want to win again nationwide.
Keep a woman’s right to choose for the first trimester. Dump abortion until birth unless the mother’s health is at risk.
Keep a concern for climate change and grow nuclear power. Dump intermittent, unreliable renewable energy.
Keep and develop new effective vaccines. Dump vaccine mandates.
Keep equality of opportunity for all. Dump equity of results based on discriminating against men, whites and Asians (aka D.E.I.). Recognize that D.E.I. Is unconstitutional.
Keep the protection of gay and lesbian rights. Dump men in women’s sports, private spaces and prisons. Oh, and mutilating children who might grow up to be gay.
Keep an opportunity for selective high value immigration. Dump sanctuary cities and open borders.
Keep helping the homeless find jobs and a place to live. Dump camping in cities, shitting in the streets and allowing open drug use.
Keep a concern for due process in criminal justice. Dump letting shoplifters and other petty thieves off the hook.
Do all of the above and the middlebrow might find their way back to power.
I think we're starting to see this with hip-hop with the Drake/Kendrick Lamar beef. Kendrick has a Pulitzer for a reason. With his famous track "not like us" he combined party ass beats with a diss track and history lesson. There's a whole verse talking about the history of Atlanta comparing Drake to the white people.
I am not a rap fan but hip hop at his best is high level poetry.
Robert Frost (a true middlebrow’s poet) weeps at the thought that rap is “poetry.” The “reason” Lamar was given a Pulitzer was that a certain type of very left wing person (brilliantly skewered in American Fiction) has captured institutions like the Pulitzer committee. It’s the same reason that the movie portrayed a black author being given extravagant praise by these types for the ridiculous book We's Lives in Da Ghetto. In fact, I’m pretty sure the film’s writer was mocking the Lamar Pulitzer with this (although there were plenty of similar targets).
I just checked out the lyrics. Is this the verse you refer to"
Once upon a time, all of us was in chains
Homie still doubled down callin' us some slaves
Atlanta was the Mecca, buildin' railroads and trains
Bear with me for a second, let me put y'all on game
The settlers was usin' town folk to make 'em richer
The closest I see to middlebrow culture is prestige TV. Unfortunately these days we have a lot of TV adopting the style and tropes of prestige TV but don’t require the same level of analysis, or indeed, content worth analyzing. The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire, Deadwood, and Halt and Catch Fire are all our closest equivalents to “the next great American novel,” but there’s little out there on that level today.