AS ANYONE who has ever wiggled in his seat at a classical concertor stared in disbelief at a work of conceptual art can attest,culture in America has usually been imposed from the top down. Media executives, academics, elite tastemakers, and of coursecritics determined what was good and what wasn't, what would havecultural purchase and what wouldn't, what would get rewarded andwhat wouldn't. Which isn't to say that ordinary folks were entirelypassive in this process. Early in the Republic they began a counterpopular culture to challenge the so-called "official" culture, andit survives today to the point where it has often merged with highculture. But the cultural hierarchy held on.
Or at least it did. Among the many effects of the Internet, oneof the most significant has been the democratization of culturalinfluence. No longer does the New York Times or the New Yorker orTime anoint the books we should be reading, the movies and TV showswe should be watching, the music we should be listening to. Apopulist aggregating website like Rotten Tomatoes that awards freshor rotten tomatoes to movies, or Ain't It Cool News, which preemptsmost mainstream film criticism by reporting on movies first,probably has more power than all the tonier critics combined. AndFacebook, Twitter, and MySpace certainly have a great impact. Onehas only to look at "American Idol" to see how regular citizens haveseized control of starmaking.
Naturally, no one relinquishes that kind of control willingly,which is why the old cultural imperialists joined forces recently inseveral bold attempts to show that they still mattered. But what isstriking about these forays is not that they happened but that theywere ultimately unsuccessful. For over 200 years, normal Americanshave longed to exercise their cultural independence and freethemselves from the tyranny of the elitists. Last year they did. Ineffect, the elitist empire struck back and then struck out.
What the commissars were hoping to revive were the days when theycould collectively settle on a movie like "The Social Network," andthe case would be closed. "The Social Network" received all sorts ofaccolades and attention.
But then something startling happened. Audiences didn't bow. Theyyawned. On its face a film about the birth of the country's mostpopular networking site would seem to be surefire even without thecommissars telling us how great it was. Yet it not only failed toignite at the box office it failed to ignite in the national mind.
Similarly, the commissars were all atwitter over JonathanFranzen's novel of domestic dissatisfaction, "Freedom." It wasconsidered the book of its time, the book that captured Americanmalaise, another instant classic.
But without addressing the book's merits, which are considerable,only its cachet, it performed less than overwhelmingly bothcommercially (it soared to the top of bestseller lists but didn'tlinger long) and culturally. There are books, not necessarily goodones, that become pervasive because they strum some national chord:"The Great Gatsby," "Portnoy's Complaint," "The DaVinci Code," toname a few. The tastemakers tried to make "Freedom" into one ofthese signposts. Instead, they found themselves inviting a backlashfrom those democrats who found the book boring and empty.
And the commissars failed again with "Boardwalk Empire," theloudly-touted HBO series about an Atlantic City bootlegger duringProhibition. The critics fell all over themselves to praise it as alandmark to stand alongside "The Sopranos." Except that once again,the tastemakers proved far more enthusiastic than audiences. ThoughHBO, as a subscription service, is not ratings addicted, the show'sratings have plummeted, and "Boardwalk Empire" has hardly made thekind of impression that "The Sopranos" did.
Obviously, even in the days before the Internet, tastemakersweren't always successful in selling their predilections. Word-of-mouth could have a counteractive effect. But what these recentcampaigns demonstrate is that even when all the elitists seemconsciously to combine forces to make their choices ubiquitous inall the traditional media, they can no longer dominate the culture.No single group can.
There are so many forms of connectivity now beyond word-of-mouththat cultural power has been diffused, which had always been thepopulist American dream. So the elitists will still tell us what weought to like, only no one has to listen anymore because everyonehas his own opinions and the means to share them. For thecommissars, it is the end of their run.
Neal Gabler is the author, most recently, of "Walt Disney: TheTriumph of the American Imagination."'
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