Page 50 - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture an Introduction

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34 Chapter 2 The ‘culture and civilization’ tradition

Although the ‘culture and civilization’ tradition, especially in its Leavisite form, cre-
ated an educational space for the study of popular culture, there is also a real sense in
which this approach to popular culture ‘actively impeded its development as an area
of study’ (Bennett, 1982b: 6). The principal problem is its working assumption that
popular culture always represents little more than an example of cultural decline and
potential political disorder. Given this assumption, theoretical research and empirical
investigation continued to confirm what it always expected to find.

It was an assumption of the theory that there was something wrong with popular
culture and, of course, once that assumption had been made, all the rest followed:
one found what one was looking for – signs of decay and deterioration – precisely
because the theory required that these be found. In short, the only role offered to
the products of popular culture was that of fall guy (ibid.).

As we have noted, popular culture is condemned for many things. However, as
Bennett points out, the ‘culture and civilization’ tradition is not noted for its detailed
analyses of the texts and practices of popular culture. Instead, it looked down from the
splendid heights of high culture to what it saw as the commercial wastelands of popu-
lar culture, seeking only confirmation of cultural decline, cultural difference, and the
need for cultural deference, regulation and control. It

was very much a discourse of the ‘cultured’ about the culture of those without ‘cul-
ture’. ...In short, popular culture was approached from a distance and gingerly,
held at arm’s length by outsiders who clearly lacked any sense of fondness for or
participation in the forms they were studying. It was always the culture of ‘other
people’ that was at issue (ibid.).

The anxieties of the ‘culture and civilization’ tradition are anxieties about social
and cultural extension: how to deal with challenges to cultural and social exclusivity.
As the nineteenth century receded, and those traditionally outside ‘culture’ and
‘society’ demanded inclusion, strategies were adopted to incorporate and to exclude.
Acceptance brought into being ‘high society’ and ‘high culture’, to be distinguished
from society and culture or, better still, mass society and mass culture. In short, it is
a tradition that demanded, and expected, two responses from the ‘masses’ (see
Photo 2.1) – cultural and social difference and cultural and social deference. As we
shall see (in Chapters 9 and 10), some of the debates around postmodernism may be
in part little more than the latest struggle for inclusion in, and exclusion from, Culture
(with a capital C), which ultimately is less about texts, and much more about people
and their everyday lived cultures.