This week saw the demise of two contrasting artists

Girish Karnad - an epitome of "high culture" and "establishment" taste

Crazy Mohan - a purveyor of mass culture and ingenious comedies

Who will age better?

I suspect in 2100, MMKR will still have more viewers than Utsav
"High culture" always tends to look down upon mass culture

E.g. In the 1940s, an author like John Steinbeck was more seriously regarded than a "suspense" film maker like Alfred Hitchcock
But today, nobody really reads Steinbeck. Nor is he regarded as an indispensable read for students of American literature. Important yes. But hardly a Mark Twain

Whereas Hitchcock is indispensable. Taught in film schools. Amenable to both serious study and mass consumption
Hitchcock is regarded as being among the top dozen artists of the 20th century by many fine judges

Steinbeck has no such reputation

Nobody could've guessed that back in 1940s
Let's take another example - Shakespeare

No doubt a "popular" artist

By most accounts he lacked the same reputation that great litterateurs like Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon enjoyed in the 16th century

Shakespeare was not in that league
Today Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest playwright in the English language

Who reads Philip Sidney? Or Francis Bacon?

Some specialists do. But not a huge readership
The larger point one is making is -

We ignore popular art at our peril

And we consistently tend to overrate the influence of "high culture" - works that tick all boxes of what a "serious" work ought to be, but yet are much less profound than we think
Sport is sort of immune from such miscalculations and mis-ratings. Because it has objective measures built into it

E.g. Sure, in the 1930s many regarded Archie Jackson or Walter Hammond to be technically more correct than Don Bradman
But the objective measure (99.94) ensured they were not taken seriously in their own time

Art lacks such objective measures. So what we get is a persistence of skewed, misguided elite opinions for decades, in defiance of popular reception of the art.
If sport were like art, you would have connoisseurs rating "wonders" like Sanjay Manjrekar and Mark Ramprakash extremely highly - marvelling their technical virtue

While looking down upon Virendra Sehwag or Adam Gilchrist

But sport doesn't let such nonsense prevail
Missing some Tweet in this thread?
You can try to force a refresh.

Like this thread? Get email updates or save it to PDF!

Subscribe to Śrīkānta Kṛṣṇamācārya
Profile picture

Get real-time email alerts when new unrolls are available from this author!

This content may be removed anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!