I stumbled on your blog on Notes, and I am having a great time reading through older posts when I take a break from work during the day. Thanks for your writing.
Anyway, here's one perspective from someone who's working in an English department: academics really want to avoid seeming like elitists. In my discipline, this attitude stems from the long "canon wars" of, largely, the 80s and 90s. Scholars focusing on women's literature, African American literature, and literature from other marginalized groups began arguing that many "artistic" judgments (e.g., "women's literature from the 19th century is sentimental and psychologically shallow") were actually prejudicial and parochial. In many, many cases, I think they were right. Unfortunately, this substantive debate was eventually simplified into the assumption that any kind of artistic judgment, especially of popular art or literature, was potentially classist, racist, misogynistic, and so on. But, as the lit critic Michael Clune argues in his book A Defense of Judgment, this often means that the only method left for valuing art is by how it performs in the marketplace and in consumer culture. To avoid seeming biased or elitist, I think that some academics avoid criticizing things that are very popular. The results, as you suggest, can often be a studied credulity among academics, a refusal to transcend or criticize the dictates of consumer taste. Which is precisely what you'd hope academics would be capable of doing.
& I very much appreciate your insights! Someone else mentioned that many of these institutions are really "for profit" so they too are part of the marketplace and need to appeal to consumer culture.
I've heard of many journalists who are too scared to be even slightly critical of human brands because of the aggressive response from stans--no doubt many colleges find themselves in the same boat.
And Max Martin has surpassed John Lennon, this past March!
This post reminds me of bible classes in my high-school (in Israel), where I had very good teachers and the text was studied as a human artifact, treated as a document created at a time and place with a political agenda, and compared to such other texts as the Tale of Gilgamesh and the law code of Hammurabi as literary precedents/ context. These were much more interesting than the classes that just took the bible to be sacred, transcending/ beyond/ apart of history and our world.
People whose opinion I respect keep telling me that Swift is very talented but I don't hear it. I've tried. What annoys me most is that she gets so much press that she eclipses everyone else. There's lots of incredibly talented people out there making great music that no one's ever heard of because the media is so focused on Swift.
One example that comes to mind is Esperanza Spalding, a once in a generation talent who continues to make great music even though she's dropped off the media's radar.
I see no difference between the TS brand and other corporations such as McDonald's that mass produce a product for mass appeal. There's no artistry there.
And yes, it crowds out so many deserving creatives. The winner takes all approach has flattened culture to a depressing degree.
I'm a relatively old-fashioned music historian--I have only ever written about dead musicians, and I do share your puzzlement at how some academics have become tools of corporate branding.
We used to separate historians (who work on the past) from critics (who work on the present), but that distinction is collapsing. The rise of the concept of "haters" means that it's become more difficult for folks to critique artists they love.
At this point, I actively discourage students from doing projects about the artists they stan.
Tools of corporate branding is a great way of putting it. I've written about the intentional effort to consecrate fandom, and a lot of it also feels like an extension of that, professional evangelizing.
I understood the way young kids would be encouraged to write about things that interested them because it was a way to get them engaged, but that was supposed to be a gateway to engaging that way with other content, not just burrow deeper into that obsession, imo.
I stumbled on your blog on Notes, and I am having a great time reading through older posts when I take a break from work during the day. Thanks for your writing.
Anyway, here's one perspective from someone who's working in an English department: academics really want to avoid seeming like elitists. In my discipline, this attitude stems from the long "canon wars" of, largely, the 80s and 90s. Scholars focusing on women's literature, African American literature, and literature from other marginalized groups began arguing that many "artistic" judgments (e.g., "women's literature from the 19th century is sentimental and psychologically shallow") were actually prejudicial and parochial. In many, many cases, I think they were right. Unfortunately, this substantive debate was eventually simplified into the assumption that any kind of artistic judgment, especially of popular art or literature, was potentially classist, racist, misogynistic, and so on. But, as the lit critic Michael Clune argues in his book A Defense of Judgment, this often means that the only method left for valuing art is by how it performs in the marketplace and in consumer culture. To avoid seeming biased or elitist, I think that some academics avoid criticizing things that are very popular. The results, as you suggest, can often be a studied credulity among academics, a refusal to transcend or criticize the dictates of consumer taste. Which is precisely what you'd hope academics would be capable of doing.
& I very much appreciate your insights! Someone else mentioned that many of these institutions are really "for profit" so they too are part of the marketplace and need to appeal to consumer culture.
I've heard of many journalists who are too scared to be even slightly critical of human brands because of the aggressive response from stans--no doubt many colleges find themselves in the same boat.
And Max Martin has surpassed John Lennon, this past March!
This post reminds me of bible classes in my high-school (in Israel), where I had very good teachers and the text was studied as a human artifact, treated as a document created at a time and place with a political agenda, and compared to such other texts as the Tale of Gilgamesh and the law code of Hammurabi as literary precedents/ context. These were much more interesting than the classes that just took the bible to be sacred, transcending/ beyond/ apart of history and our world.
Ah, I love that approach! Context provides so much more depth than projection. It seems so obvious, and yet....
People whose opinion I respect keep telling me that Swift is very talented but I don't hear it. I've tried. What annoys me most is that she gets so much press that she eclipses everyone else. There's lots of incredibly talented people out there making great music that no one's ever heard of because the media is so focused on Swift.
One example that comes to mind is Esperanza Spalding, a once in a generation talent who continues to make great music even though she's dropped off the media's radar.
I see no difference between the TS brand and other corporations such as McDonald's that mass produce a product for mass appeal. There's no artistry there.
And yes, it crowds out so many deserving creatives. The winner takes all approach has flattened culture to a depressing degree.
I'm a relatively old-fashioned music historian--I have only ever written about dead musicians, and I do share your puzzlement at how some academics have become tools of corporate branding.
We used to separate historians (who work on the past) from critics (who work on the present), but that distinction is collapsing. The rise of the concept of "haters" means that it's become more difficult for folks to critique artists they love.
At this point, I actively discourage students from doing projects about the artists they stan.
Tools of corporate branding is a great way of putting it. I've written about the intentional effort to consecrate fandom, and a lot of it also feels like an extension of that, professional evangelizing.
I understood the way young kids would be encouraged to write about things that interested them because it was a way to get them engaged, but that was supposed to be a gateway to engaging that way with other content, not just burrow deeper into that obsession, imo.
Yes to all of this. The religion comparison is interesting--I have to read more of your stuff!