Thread by @owenbroadcast

there was always “high culture” and “low culture”. now theres no more “high culture”, this distinction has not only been erased but intentionally flipped as academia and former cultural citadels aggressively pander and try to be cool by studying what always was “low culture”.

theres an interesting flip here as i have always somewhat lamented the destruction of the potential for things to be truly “underground” that came with the internet. for example theres really not “underground” music anymore, that wall is totally fluid now and easily permeated.

of course in inverted world theres always a catch so at some point i started to think that the “new” underground thing, perhaps one of the last things to potentially even be able to function as an “underground” “sub”culture, is, paradoxically, parts of the internet. the odd parts

so the same thing that initially, at least materially and in terms of dissemination and access, erased the potential for underground subcultures is now also the keeper of that potentiality and what allows it to potentially exist. interesting, + i do think thats how its played out

theres an interesting second flip here wherein as those cultural citadels aggressively pander and adopt “low culture” as their beacon, for example, studying some pop music in a college setting, the places that were traditionally of “low culture” have adopted what was high culture

so you have a very strange situation where, what youd expect from an underground subculture is low culture. underground music used to be punk, maybe at some point it was electronic music, underground comics (“comix”) were very sexual, dark, edgy, weird, it was “extra low” culture

so now that its been flipped these subcultural spaces, that “underground” naturally responds, (unideal phrasing) and adopts high culture. maybe thats not the exact vector of causality but thats the result. the “underground” space, if u accept that term, is looking at high culture

and the cultural output and general objects of interests of that underground (if you accept that model) reflects this. books, poems, novels, discussion of obscure literature, obscure history, antiquity, theology, classical art, its very interesting, if you think about it.

obviously as my chosen class is illustrator i dont see low culture as something negative. i suppose if you accept that designation which is just useful for casual conversation thats mostly what ive “dealt in”. in my field the gap is normally obvious, not sure how it is in others.

i have the convenience of there being an apparent and slightly obvious very wide gap in terms of basically all qualities when comparing a garfield comic and a cezanne painting. naturally this presumably colors my worldview, i am not sure how this would manifest in other fields.