CULTURAL DEMOCRACY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 411, 9 May 1947, Page 6

CULTURAL DEMOCRACY

Priestley Condemns it. and Starts an Argument

A DISTINCTION was drawn recently by J. B. Priestley between what he called "political democracy" and "cultural democracy." What he said seemed to us so important that we have asked for opinions about it from a selected body of people directly concerned -artists, writers, publishers, educators, musicians, and so on. This issue we print some of their replies, and over the next week or so we shall be publishing others. We have no space here to quote in full what Priestley said, but have taken out a few salient passages, as follow:

WRITERS HE situation outlined by Mr. Priestley is a difficult and ‘complicated one; it raises questions of enormous importance about modern social organisation, its value, values, etc. I don’t think there is any doubt that the situation is very serious, but I do think. that Mr. Priestiey’s comments may be somewhat over-simplified-though this has at any rate enabled him to put the matter quite bluntly. He is talking about England of course, but it is quite easy to appreciate most of his points at this distance. Many of us have had the dismaying experience, repeatéd for far many years now,

of trying unsuccessfully to buy some volume in, say, Everyman’s Library — and if things are as bad as Mr. Priestley says, what irony in that title! . This kind of experience is, I think, an examnle of how the

situation in England may affect us in New Zealand. Aian biakey pnore But what is the situation in New Zealand? Well, speaking very broadly, I should say that it is a great deal worse. Nor is it a situation that is at all new to us-it has always been with) us. It is, moreover, the situation that you might reasonably expect to have developed over the 100 years that the European has been established here. Whether it isgetting better or worse at the moment, I\ hardly like to say. From my personal experience as a writer I should say it is tending to improve, even if only very slightly. It is true that if you occupy yourself with writing as a wholetime job, you may quite well find yourself literally surrounded by people whose only . measure of your ability is the amount of money you may make-or fail to make. But that is by no means the whole story-one encounters so many pleasant and encouraging surprises. I am afraid that I haven’t any worth‘while suggestions. It has for a long time seemed to me that one of the toughest problems to be solved is how to convince physically active people that it is not necessarily virtuous to be mentally and emotionally lazy.

Frank

Sargeson

‘ [N principle Mr. Priestley is quite right. This has been described as the ‘era of the common man, which means that his voice is being heard and his interests considered as never before, But ‘in culture as well as politics, the com‘mon man should be led by the uncommon man. The artist (in which term I include the writer), the critic, and the ‘trained appreciator of the arts, are the » uncommon men. They are not necessarily better men than the common man; they may be worse. "There is no more merit," _ Seys Somerset Maugham, "in having a thousand books than in having » ploughed a thousand fields." But the uncOémmon’ man ig these "categories has

special gifts of expression or apprecia-tion-special equipment. The doctor, the engineer, the architect, the man who services your car or your plumbing, also have special equipment. What we may call the sciences deal with facts, and the arts with opinion, with taste. Men are more ready to defer to experts in facts than. to experts in taste. They are loth to admit that their own taste may be deficient. They don’t realise that taste, like everything else, has to be cultivated. This is one reason why we have bad , pictures in galleries and _ bad ‘memorials. Nor do they understand that skill in the arts comes from hard work,

oiten agony and sweat. "Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?" said a royal person to the author of the Decline and Fall. So if culture is to be healthy in a democracy, there must he an arictocracu of

Spencer Digby photo, taste, which sets

standards, just as the University does in scholarship. There are, however, certain difficulties to be faced. Dictation has grave dangers. Will peoples who, have resisted it at so much cost in politics, submit to it in culture? Mr. Priestley cites the determination of Lord Reith, but the head of the BBC had an assured finance and no local competition to meet. Editors are differently situated. They feel the tug of opposing forcesthe compulsion to give the public what it wants or go out of business, and the desire to give the public what they think it should have. There must be compromise. Editors with ideas and courage assign to serious subjects more than their relative selling value. Mr. Priestley refers to "trash," but what is trash or near-trash? It is something which even the man of taste may like sometimes. And he may object strongly if he doesn’t get it. Besides, what is considered trashy or ephemeral to-day, may be placed on a pedestal to-morrow, and yesterday’s idols may be cast down. Martin Tupper’s sales exceeded those of his contemporary, Tennyson, but he has long been just -a comic museum piece. Three Men in a

Boat and The Diary of a Nobody have become minor classics. I have just read that in the first 20 years of his writing, Mark Twain "was considered something as slow and unimportant as a comic strip." If the world is given plenty of time, says Mr. Priestley, it will discover the best. Yes, but that means proceeding by trial and error, and necessarily there will be a gaod deal of error. Society must have freedom to sample and judge. There is a type of intellectual who would give the public only what lies within the narrow range of his likes. Devoted to "schools," and intolerant of what lies outside, he may damn culture among common men instead of blessing it. It is a garden of freedom that we cultivate. Let us do it with sweet reasonableness. -Alan Mulgan ok bo a F Priestley’s argument is applied to letters it leads to dangerous conclusions. He speaks of trash published during the past six years while good books remained out of print. The Government, he says, "could not make a qualitative judgment." But what is the difference, in those circumstances, between a "qualitative judgment" and a censorship? If it is wrong in principle for the masses to dictate to the experts, on questions which are entirely ‘subjectiwe, it is also wrong for the experts to dictate to the masses. Guidance must come from the higher levels of taste;

but when it becomes | self-comscious, with the State in the background, it de--velops into supervision; and control usually passes into e wrong hands. though experts know more of their subjects than farmhands, they are divided among them-

selves, and indulge vigorously — sometimes ferociously — in the assertion of opinion which apparently Priestley would deny to ordinary or unintelligent people. Critics are by no means infallible; they have damned many good books in the past, and they would do it more frequently in the future if we had autocracy in the arts. Aesthetic taste is not necessarily associated in the same mind with moral judgment’ and practical wisdom. i Bad work does not matter if at the same time good work can be published. It may be.true, as Priestley would point out, that all good books cannot be printed while there are technical limitations; but this is true also of bad writing: a hungry market could absorb much more trash than is at present available. I think we should remember, too, that although many people read nbdthing but rubbish all their lives there is a constant movement from lower to higher levels of taste. I was an avid reader of. comics and schoolboy weeklies in childhood, and (continued on next page)

ad HERE are two democracies, and I admire the one and detest the other. The first is political democracy, which is based on the belief that all the citizens have a right to decide what kind of government they will have. "But there is: another kind of democracy, which is gaining ground in many parts of the world now, that I detest. This might be called cultural democracy. It professes to believe that the ordinary man or woman is the best judge of everything. It recognises quantity but not quality. It is ready to count heads on every possible issue. It would put anything and everything to a rough and ready vote: ignorance and knowledge are all the same to it. "Now I believe that if the world is given plenty of time, it will discover the best. Thus, Shakespeare is acknowledged everywhere as a master’ dramatist. Wherever European music is understood, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven are truly appreciated for their magnificent genius. But this takes time. There has to be first, a good deal of enthusiastic propa_ganda on behalf of such genius by per.sons of taste and special knowledge.... "Shoddy commercialism is of course ‘greatly in favour of cultural democracy ‘if only because one man’s shilling is as good as another’s. The average run of ‘Hollywood films strongly advocate cul_tural democracy. In these films it is far more important to write a successful

dance tune than to compose a symphony, and anybody who does not want either to perform or sit about in night clubs is a prude or an eccentric. ... "When Reith was in charge of the BBC he used to announce that he proposed to give the listening public what he thought was good for them to hear, end for my part I admired him for taking this stand. *"There is a great danger in playing down to a_ half-witted level. Whole masses of people may be confirmed and rooted in their mental laziness and bad taste. Both films and radio, two admirable new techniques, have done far more harm and far less good than they might have achieved, just because they have been ‘democratic’ in the wrong way... . "The farm-hand down the road has a vote that is equal to my vote. That ,is as it should. be. But just as he knows far more about hedging and ditching and shooting rabbits than I do, so I know’ far more about books and plays and music than he does, if only because I have given these things my serious attention for the last 35 years. (And he himself ‘would not dispute this). It is not democracy, but just lunacy, if he and his kind are to be encouraged to dictate to me in the cultural spheres in which they do not even pretend td know anything. And the danger is, that if only the lowest levels of taste and _ intelligence are allowed to survive, then succeeding generations may find themselves exiled from whole worlds of wonder and delight."

(continued from previous page) there must be thousands of my own generation in this country who shared the interest and who are now able to digest something better. The important thing is that, within the limits fixed by material shortages -- which presumably will not remain rigid — publishers are free to serve an intelligent public. I believe, therefore, that no safe distinction can be made between political and cultural democracy. Political freedom is pervasive. It implies, among other things, the right of an artist to think, to write, and to publish without reference to any authority except his own integrity. I admit that if culture in a democracy fell too much into decay there would be political reactions unfavourable to writers. But if standards of taste cannot be saved while everybody — including "the farm-hand down the road"-is free to argue about them, I do not think they could be saved under an aesthetic dic-

tatorship.

M. H.

Holcroft

FROM THE THEATRE OF course he’s right. People’s taste in plays is largely formed by the diet served up to them.’Left to themselves they will probably choose badly. An unrelieved soft diet induces a_ sluggish appetite. An audience that has never been asked to think will resist a thoughtful play with the passionless inertia of a collection of sandbags. Luckily, however, thinking in a playhouse can also become a habit, and the inclination to go to a show seems to be endemic. If undiluted soft-tack could be kept out of our*theatres and cinemas I consider that the falling-off in attendance would be less marked and of shorter duration than the commercial pundits would have us believe.

I think audiences can and will develop digestions equal to hard-tack, and, having acquired the taste, will become intolerant. of a sloppy diet. But it is doubtful if they will do so in our time unless some kind of control or guidance

more positive than propaganda is established. And if such control were possible, who is .to define the standard? Not, as Mr. Priestley rightly insists, the public. A reputable body of experts? Perhaps. But this itself will be a democracy, pulled this way and that by individual preferences, sociological and political bias, aesthetic and technical discriminations. One expert may hold that the purest and most direct medium for an actor of comic genius is the music-hall turn. Another may dislike clowning altogether and particularly the vaudeville clown. For one the box-office success must be condemned out of hand. Another: may reserve his judgment. A fifth may feel that drawing-room comedies are, ipso facto, to be counted out. A sixth may accept them as a legitimate medium and be ready to admit them on their own merits. So they will disagree and must ballot.. They will be a democracy of experts. Who will appoint them? The Government? We would then have remote control by the democracy Mr. Priestley admires over something for which he finds democratie control detestable. It’s not my business to ask if the appointment of a politician, in these times, any

less than that of a dramatist, is a job for an expert, or to wonder if Mr. Priestley’s farm-hand is very much more reliable in the election of the one than he is in the choice of the other. Politically I am a democrat and must assume

‘that he is.

Ngaio

Marsh

a *% SPACE is limited, so Priestley’s article cannot be discussed in detail. All that can be done is to jot down a few of the ideas which came to mind when reading it and hope that in the finish they make up some kind of coherence. The vulgarity of the current film and radio programme is deplorable, admittedly, but this is the result not so much of a cultural democracy as of a boxoffice dictatorship. The general public is not so mentally moribund as Priestley would have us believe. It supported Henry V. and Brief Encounter in spite of the all-talking, all-singing, all-baloney which was showing at the same time. Shakespeare wrote for the groundlings as well as for the fine gentlemen sitting on the stage and he was appreciated by both. Priestley’s farmer docs not understand Beethoven because he has never had an opportunity to listen properly, not because he is incapable of interpreting the music.

Priestley, I am sure, does get more "wonder and delight" out of. living than the many who know not Mozart, and, as he is an honest man, we know that his desire to share this feeling is a genuine wish to. share with his fel- | low men something

which he considers valuable and important. But this sharing will never come about if he merely says so, loudly, in the newspapers. He hints at some form of censorship, some suppression of the things which so offend him, but I do not think that he will do much by tackling the problem in this way. The only way, as I see it, is to catch them young. To let the present generation go, for what it’s worth, and to concentrate on the younger fry. We must devote more time in an already overburdened school curriculum to. musical appreciation, to visits to art galleries, to the playing over and again of the accepted classics. We must discuss and ridicule all the phoney craftsmanship we see about us-the crude carvings, the pseudo art, the bad design. It will be a long and slow process needing unlimited patience and an enduring enthusiasm, but in the long run it should work. The general level of art appreciation should rise. In part anyway. Just as there are varying degrees of capabilities and intelligence there will be verying degrecs ot acceptance. But those who are capable of seeing-will see. For the others-well, as far as that gues, I wouldn’t like a wold which cenceatrated solely on symphcnies and where dance tunes were frcewned on. Me -I like to dance too.

Isobel

Andrews

= ~~ _ | HAVE been asked to comment as "a producer of plays." This I am notyet. If I may speak as an artist whose work has been directed mainly towards the theatre, I agree with Mr. Priestley. Were artistic criteria reduced to the lowest, or even the middle common

denominator, artists would lose even their present much debated: value to the community. Art is a lengthy business; the theatre particularly so. For in the theatre all the arts are together involved, making an artistic mechanism unique in its com-

‘plexity and at once, in ‘function and effect, the most democratic of the arts. It may seem odd to suggest that the arts, difficult, and at times incomprehensible to the layman, should become less obscure when assembled in concert. But I | believe this

to be a fact. In the theatre the arts work together, as the parts of an orchestra, to clarify the author’s conception. I believe this force to be irresistible in its combined onslaught on the most democratic audience, singly and collectively, provided only, and always, that the highest standards are sustained. "Shakespeare," says Mr. Priestley, "is acknowledged everywhere as a master dramatist." In the schoolroom and in the closed volume of the collected plays, yes — and, but for the energies of Miss Marsh, where else, in our country, in action? Can we not redeem this neglect, accelerate the process of "discovery," and dispel the spectre of study groups protracted into eternity, by carrying a living theatre, as good as the best our combined talents can make it, to a people almost literally "exiled from worlds of wonder and delight’?

S. M.

Williams