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The Arts forums on Gaia are clogged with dross.

Does anythone here keep the torch burning for real human culture in the face of slapdash, disposable, unthinkingly lowbrow 'culture'?

Have you been to a ballet? Do you have an educated position of the relative merits of Wagnerian and Romantic opera? Do you regularly attend art galleries and expositions?

Would you rather read a novel than a manga, and watch arthouse or independent film rather than the newest big blockbuster?

Please, do let me know.


Flawed but roughly accurate definitions here:
High.
Low.

I think that's a kind of stupid, snobby point of view. Art is art. It has nothing to do with culture. And you shouldn't like something just because it's "high culture." You should like something just because it appeals to you. To do otherwise would be to stereotype yourself.

Like, I have to say that I love reading novels. But I also love manga. I like independent films, and blockbusters. I have been to operas and ballets, but I also like to watch anime. You know? I don't think you have the right to say that the art forums here on Gaia are "lowbrow culture."

Ugh. That sounded really mean. My apologies.

While I do agree that the general populace has been unmercifully dumbed down (especially by the media and the great pile of suck that is the American public education system), I find your post amazingly narrow minded.

It seems that you've bought into the lie that unless you belong to the high culture, you must necessarily belong to the low culture. Highbrow vs. lowbrow is a false dichotomy in every sense of the word, because in reality, there is no clear, established line between the two.

Ballet and opera, for example, don't really interest me that much. I respect the fact that it may be part of the high culture, but my desire to avoid most pop culture isn't going to magically change my opinions. The fact that I don't regularly attend ballets, art galleries, or magnificent dinner parties doesn't mean that you'll find me at home, eating Cheetos and watching Jerry Springer and COPS.

It's kind of silly to base your opinions on culture alone. I find it more logical to judge art forms on their own merits, and not necessarily on what culture produced them. Can one listen to metal and watch CSI without being labeled an uncultured philistine? Sure. Can one attend ballets and operas without being considered an elitist snob? I think so.

I recognize the difference between high and low culture. I'm just not so naive as to believe that one has to completely belong to one or the other.

"Melissa listens to Opera but she is not certain where it came from, she just listen to it and enjoy. However at the moment she is listening to Disturbed, a heavy metal band who right now is singing about taking what ever you go through, no matter what tests you face that you push through it and try to make it.

She also likes ballet, and wants to learn it along with tap dance and is currently learning belly dance, how ever she also dances to rap like a hoochie mama, why because it is fun and it is something she enjoys.

She is an artist and likes to visit art galleries when she can but many places do not have those, only larger cities really have a lot of them. She draws and paints very acurate people, dancers, how ever she also takes from ehr imagination monsters that never existed and are so gruesome that high brow culture would never enjoy it. She also reads manga and watches anime because the art is excellent.

Melissa is also eighteen, and has read over seven hundred novels, she has also read almost a hundred mangas and comics. She has watched old Film Noir like the Elephant Man, and new popular movies like Transformers.

Melissa thinks that you are just as bad as the "Low brow" people you speak of who refuse to look at the past, because you refuse to look at the future, the true beauty in art is that there is no "right" with it. There will always be something new that can be just as beautifl as the old."