Mass Culture—a Cri de Coeur

Is mass culture an abomination, a harmless anodyne, or a blessing? These are the real, if often merely implicit, questions in an interminable and ferocious debate.

Is mass culture an abomination, a harmless anodyne, or a blessing? These are the real, if often merely implicit, questions in an interminable and ferocious debate. No one yields. Even now, when most of us are tired of each other’s polemics, the issue will not go away. And why should it when so much is at stake?

I was once chided by an eminent art critic for sullying myself with this subject matter. He said to me and people of my captious disposition, as though addressing himself ...