MacDonald Assails Mass Culture, Calls for Separate 'High Culture'

Toppling idols and enjoying himself thoroughly, journalist Dwight MacDonald spoke on American culture last night, in a talk sponsored by the Advocate.

"American mass culture is a kind of parody of high culture," he declared. MacDonald described art in a high culture as an expression of the artist and standards of discipline. "Commercial mass art is anti-art," he said, "because there is no real communication between the artist and the public."

MacDonald charged that the customer's reaction was built into mass art. "Liberace visually underlines appropriate sentiments as he plays, so that even the most musically illiterate can tell what the music means."

"The middle culture is mass culture with a fig leaf," he continued, "While it pleases a crowd, it has high cultural pretensions." MacDonald cited the Saturday Review, Herman Wouk's novels, J.B., and his own New Yorker as examples of "midcult."

"The danger of this middle culture," he said, "is that it may permanently debase our standards, as the revised Standard Bible has replaced the King James Version." MacDonald attacked J.B. for its "mid cult approach," which mixes dramaturgy, the Bible, and melodrama to produce a play that "works twice as fast as real poetry."

To produce a living art, instead of a passive acceptance of "great names," America must separate its high and middle cultures, MacDonald warned. "Let the majority eavesdrop if they wish," he said, "but their tastes in art should be ignored."