Culture as a Process in Levines Highbrow, Lowbrow Essay -- Highbrow L

Culture as a Process in Levines Highbrow, LowbrowIn Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine argues that a distinction among game and low culture that did not exist in the graduation exercise half of the 19th century emerged by the turn of the century and coagulate during the 20th century, and that despite a move in the last fewer decades toward a more ecumenical interpretation of culture, the distinction among senior high school art and popular entertainment and the revering of a canon of sacred, inalterable pagan workings persists. In the prologue Levine states that one of his central arguments is that concepts of cultural boundaries have changed everyplace the period he treats. Throughout Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine defines culture as a execute rather than a fixed entity, and as a product of interactions between the past and the present. Levines first chapter presents evidence that 19th century Americans of every social classes enjoyed Shakespe are as an integral part of their culture and entertainment. Shakespeares works were familiar enough to the populace that a variety of parodies were written and performed for prodigious crowds that displayed their engagement with the works by applause, vegetable-throwing, interruptions, and commands to the actors. Shakespeares plays were performed in frontier communities and in cities, in churches and theatres and make-shift stages, attended by people of all classes. He describes the consolidation of Shakespeare into the Americans language and imagination, and explains Shakespeares popularity on the basis of its compatibility with 19th century Americans viva rhetorical style and their ability to see their own cultures emphasis on individualism and morality reflected in Shakespeares characters and stories. Levine ex... ... and others whom Levine treats are a different breed of reformers because they are concerned only indirectly with morality. But when brown laments that todays youth are keenly wanting and have no connection with their cultural heritage, he uses gauzy phrases such as junk food for the soul, indicating that the erosion of appreciation for high culture is changing not only the common forms of entertainment simply the character of todays youth. Another parallel exists in Browns conception of culture and the Springhalls reformers concept of morality as something that youth can access if they choose to break away from the hellish influences of mass or popular culture with the help, of course, of their moral or intellectual superiors, who long to inculcate their own (perhaps technologically or culturally outdated) ship canal of thinking into the next generation.