Culture and the Viewer PDF

large majority of US public opinion but, sadly, the clout of the NRA proved stronger. The 27 strength of opposition from the NRA is reflected in the fact that most political contenders offer utmost respect – if not pay homage – to the association as they campaign for the White House. Je...

large majority of US public opinion but, sadly, the clout of the NRA proved stronger. The 27 strength of opposition from the NRA is reflected in the fact that most political contenders offer utmost respect – if not pay homage – to the association as they campaign for the White House. Jeb Bush and many other Republican contenders spoke at the NRA’s annual convention in April 2015. The gun problem is embedded in American culture on many different levels. Besides the issues just evoked, another aspect consists in underlining that someone has to pay the bill for gun violence (increased medical costs, increased policing) but that it is extremely difficult to bring gun manufactures to justice. The “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” (PLCAA), signed into law by President George W. Bush, basically makes it impossible to sue or hold manufactures accountable. This, in turn, illustrates another problem: the U.S. “culture 2 of complaint”. Other examples concern tobacco manufacturers who long conspired to defraud US consumers by hiding the health risks of smoking, or fast-food chains (and the relationship between “junk food” and obesity), or today’s opioid crisis (painkiller-addiction). Polarization: culture, abortion and death penalty create culture wars The democratic process is taken over by the legal process → lawsuits make policy 3 B. Culture and the Viewer Our understanding of culture depends, to a large degree, on our upbringing and on our subjective interests. To one person, English culture may bring up lofty ideas of Kenneth Clark devising on Civilisation under the vaulted ceilings of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. To another, it may stir up the comic mimics of Rowan Atkinson or the football passes of David Beckham. To one student, American culture may bring up the minimalist 28 paintings of Mark Rothko or the detective novels of Chester Himes. To another, it may stir up memories of Adam Sandler or the more cerebral acting of Lee Strasberg (co-founder of the Actor’s Studio and co-inventor of the “Method”). To press the point, we may focus on eighteenth-century England, contrasting William Hogarth and Thomas Gainsborough. The cultural landscape conjured up by William Hogarth (1697-1764), a “man of the people”, is dominated by public executions, gin-induced squalor, 27 The bill came within 5 votes of being adopted: while 55 senators supported the measure, they fell short of the 60 needed to overcome opposition. The co-sponsor of the bill, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, significantly shifted position in this matter. Whilst the NRA gave him an “A rating” – marking him out to be a strong defender of gun rights – he seemingly came to favor gun control in the wake of the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school. 28 Football, far from being associated with low mob passions, was greatly admired by prominent intellectuals. Albert Camus was goalkeeper for the football team of the University of Algiers (Racing Universitaire Algérois - RUA) and later allegedly said, “After many years during which I saw many things, what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport and learned it in the RUA”. This statement should not be inflated to express Camus’s general philosophy. It has more to do with an ethic of sticking up for your friends and of valuing fair-play. The Russian-born French artist Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955) devoted no less than 25 paintings to football (see most notably his painting, “Parc des princes”). According to Simon Kuper, “The day that England won its only World Cup, beating West Germany 4-2 in the final at Wembley , remains Britain’s biggest cultural event. It was watched on television by 32.3m Britons, a touch more than saw Princess Diana’s funeral. That makes Geoff Hurst’s last goal probably the most shared moment in British history”, in “Memories of 1966 and all that”, Financial Times, November 4-5, 2006, 11 harlots, and plebeian violence. Relying on satire, Hogarth’s view of life is dominated by 29 growing, urban London. His series of eight paintings, A Rake’s Progress (1733-34), tells a story and teaches a moral lesson in its depiction of the rise and fall of Tom Rakewell. All the 30 while, Hogarth makes us feel that we are in a theatre gazing towards an illuminated stage. This is an eighteenth century that English schoolbooks portray as a chaotic mess waiting to be cleaned up by the “Age of Reform” which set in from the 1820s. Conversely, there is the eighteenth century conjured up by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), more aristocratic and naturalistic. Whilst inspired by many a continental artist (Ruisdael, Rubens, Watteau, Murillo, or Van Dyck ), Gainsborough portrays comfortably-off gentry with their wives, offspring and 31 the odd servant who gaze complacently at us from their family portraits. We are no longer staring at an illuminated stage. It is the reverse that is happening now. The characters are staring at us. In the background of Gainsborough’s paintings, we can catch glimpses of a country house, and perhaps another out-of-frame, background, where the process of intercontinental commerce and imperial expansion are taking place: an eighteenth century, essentially which could be portrayed as the cradle of modernity. The pose of Mr and Mrs Robert Andrews is a clear illustration of this. The “problem” with these two perspectives is to create an accurate view of eighteenth-century England where Hogarth’s and Gainsborough’s worlds coexist. Both artists, living approximately at the same time, express a quintessential 32 Englishness in their own separate ways. Much the same could be said of music. A contrast between the operatic gaiety of John Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan and the more cerebral music of Edward Elgar shows equally sharp contrasts whilst expressing Englishness of the most unique kind. C. Ubiquity portée Culture concerns the entire ambit of a society’s activities – increasingly associated with mass phenomena (a). It further has an anthropological deepness (b). a). Mass Culture (Mass Phenomena) Alan Bloom’s definition (supra) fails to take into consideration the popular dimension of culture. Indeed, our approach to world of culture should not be limited to the lofty realms of “high-brow” expression of the arts. It concerns the population at large. “Mass culture is a 33 29 Many of William Hogarth’s works are Internet available on the website of the Tate Museum at http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=265&page=1 (visited September 1, 2020). 30 The eight paintings for the series “A Rake’s Progress” may be ssen in the house and Museum of Sir John Soane, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. 31 On his deathbed, Gainsborough brought Joshua Reynolds, with whom he had quarreled, to his bedside. He is said to have whispered to him: “We are all going to heaven, and van Dyck is of the party”, in J.B. Priestley, The English, op. cit., at 131. It shall be recalled that Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), born in Antwerp and a pupil of Peter Paul Rubens, settled in England where he became a leading court painter under the reign of King Charles I. 32 Examples can be multiplied ad infinitum: the culture of turn of the century France viewed by Zola or by Marcel Proust…. 33 A turning-point in contemporary art consisted precisely in removing the lofty “aura” of paintings and bringing the viewer in a position to interact with the art. Marcel Duchamp is notable in this respect with 12