Dynamism, Stasis, and Popular Culture

Virginia Postrel | October 23, 1999

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Cultural expression also depends on knowledge that is inherently difficult to articulate: Why does that song move you? Why do you find that joke funny? What’s so great about that painting? Critics do, of course, develop vocabularies and references that help answer such questions. But cultural meaning still remains deeply personal and highly dependent on unarticulated, often tacit, knowledge.

That’s one reason cultural hits are so hard to predict and so well rewarded. It’s also why risk-friendly upstarts, like new TV networks, are more likely to take chances on experiments. To gain a foothold, they are willing to trust someone’s hard-to-justify sense that a new idea can tap a new audience. Fox gave us The Simpsons and the WB backed Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In Max Frankel’s static, mass-culture ideal, we would have neither of these great shows. (This phenomenon is even clearer when entirely new media emerge.)

The problem of articulation runs throughout our cultural debates. Critics often charge that the creators of commercial culture are "hiding behind the First Amendment" when they decline to justify their work to Congress. By protecting people from having to give a "good reason" for their artistic choices, the First Amendment in fact does allow creators to exercise judgment based on their difficult-to-articulate understanding of audience and storytelling. (What the audience itself does with the stories adds yet another layer of complexity to the knowledge problem.)

Consider Schindler’s List . A few years ago, in the previous round of outrage about popular culture, there was a lot of talk about where to draw the line on violence in the media, particularly TV. Different people had different ideas, but the consensus was clear. As one researcher put it, "We should be distinguishing between Schindler’s List and Terminator 2." Everyone agreed, over and over again, that banning a serious movie about the Holocaust because it contains violence and nudity was utterly absurd. No legal restrictions should cancel out the widespread sense that Schindler’s List is a good, important movie, worthy of being on TV.

Yet the very first show to be broadcast with a TV-M rating–the rating that, once V-chips are installed, would block that show–was none other than Schindler’s List. And the next day Congressman Tom Coburn , a Republican from Oklahoma, blasted NBC for the movie’s "violence...vile language, full frontal nudity and irresponsible sexual activity." He said, "It simply should never have been allowed on public television."

The clash between Coburn’s assessment and the general public sentiment that broadcasting Schindler’s List was not just tolerable but morally good illustrates the significance of local knowledge to popular culture. Tastes and values differ, often profoundly. Some parents worry about sexual innuendo, some about violence, some about political or religious content, some about general mindlessness. No label can ever give enough detail. What’s unacceptable sexual innuendo to one person is a mild joke to another. Nor can ratings of any sort evaluate how to trade off "redeeming social value," or just plain good art, against otherwise problematic levels of sex or violence.

Even if everyone did agree that that the V-chip should not keep viewers away from Schindler’s List, what about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , which has often been the week’s most violent broadcast show? What about America’s Funniest Home Videos? E.R.? The X-Files? What about Terminator 2? Some people treat it as a touchstone example of trash, but I think is a perfectly fine movie, though not as good as the original. The Schindler’s List problem is simply inescapable. We cannot impose a single standard, even of labels, without denying the diversity and dynamism of popular culture.

In the end, the debate between dynamism and stasis is a dispute over how civilizations learn, and whether they should. It is a struggle between those who believe they already know "the limit of human felicity," and those who trust the pursuit of happiness to go in many different, and many unexpected, directions. And it is a conflict between those who believe culture is too dangerous to be left alone and those who believe it is too precious to be controlled.