Highbrow, Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America

Highbrow, Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (1988)
By Lawrence W. Levine

Synopsis: Investigates how and why cultural categories come into being, and demonstrates that such categories are products of their time. Looks at the movement of Shakespeare from the realm of popular to "high" culture; the sacralization of culture, partly via the emerging distinction between unique and mass-produced objects - attack on the "inauthentic"; the establishment of rigid rankings. Focuses mostly on the examples of theatre and music. Argues that culture is highly malleable and constantly in flux, thus we should not view categories as fixed and immutable. Americans became obsessed with order and individualization from the mid-nineteenth-century on, and this led to the hushing of the communally-focused bawdy, participatory theatre audiences in favor of the individually-focused and "polite" well-mannered audience. Levine expresses a sense of loss here, over "what I perceive to have been a rich shared public culture that once characterized the United States" (9). This "individualization" was partly a result of the increased chaos and "strangeness" of the city; it made elites want to escape the jumble and either retreat to the private realm or to make everyone more like the elite. The increased separation between private and public led to decreased accessibility and increased "high-brow"-ness. We need to know that "the same forms of culture can perform markedly distinct functions in different periods or among difference groups" (240).

Interesting Specifics:

"Culture is a process, not a fixed condition; it is the product of unremitting interaction between the past and the present" (33).

The Astor Place Riot of 1849 was "a struggle for power and cultural authority within a theatrical space" (68).

Although museums, symphonic halls, and parks, etc, were public places, "they were meant to create an environment in which a person could contemplate and appreciate the society's store of great culture individually. Anything that produced a group atmosphere, a mass ethos, was culturally suspect" (164).

Olmstead's Central Park (1850s) was a "didactic space" in which users had to be taught the "correct" way to use it (186).

"Highbrow" was first used in the 1880s to describe intellectual or aesthetic superiority, and "lowbrow" first used in 1900 to denote that which was not very refined or intellectual; both terms were derived from phrenology of racial types (221-22).

The creation of categories is largely about the struggle for intellectual and cultural authority (236).

Interacts With:

Stuart Hall (Hall seems to believe that categories are fixed - i.e. there is always a "popular" category, but feels that content changes)
Horrible Prettiness (transformation of theatre, from boisterous participation to "respectable" middle-classness)
Is it Eight Hours For What We Will? Basically, any of the books that talk about the rise of the middle class and of the increased separation of work from living space, and work from leisure.
The Lonely Crowd (with the discussion about the rise of "individualism" and the move away from community-mindedness); Bowling Alone;
No Place of Grace (for its discussion of the increasing importance of the "authentic")
That book that talks about John Philip Sousa (Sousa is mentioned here as one who defended his choice to appeal to the largest array of people possible - p. 235 or so).
An attack on those who feel there is a defined and definitive "cultural canon," and who believe the content and categories of such a canon are fixed and unchanging. Basically this fits with all the other books on this list that prioritize the fluidity of culture and of cultural categories.