CULTURAL DEMOCRACY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 418, 27 June 1947, Page 18

CULTURAL DEMOCRACY

LETTERS FROM LISTENERS

(continued from page 5)

Sir,-It seems that your discussion of Priestley’s assault on "cultural democracy" has suffered from an initial lack of clarity on the exact meaning of "dictation" in the original context. That the uncultured should not be allowed to "dictate" to the cultured as to what the latter shall enjoy is so much beyond controversy that no one has bothered to defend it. But how are we to think, whether favourably or otherwise, of the cultured as "dictating" his tastes to the uncultured? ~ Short of an actual ‘totalitarianism, neither Lord Reith nor any other champion of Good Things can really ensure that the public are getting an exclusive or predominant diet of what is good for them: Nor will all the subsidising of national theatres, national orchestras, Arts Councils and the like ever amount by itself to forcing high standards on the masses. There are two worlds in this matter, and where is it that any real clash of standards ‘can or does take place? Surely the point of contact that matters is that afforded by the critics, especially those operating through such mass media as. the press, radio or such Magazines as your own. Trouble arises when the critic is able to express judgments by his

standards and these judgments are brought to wide popular notice. For the mass-man, be he proletarian or peer, asks from the arts mere enjoyment, gained gregariously with the minimum of mental exertion on his part. Then comes the critic. He does the work of Socrates; he challenges the mind’s acceptance of something as good; he demands that we understand ourselves as well as the works of art we see or hear; he compels the awakening of the faculties of analysis and discrimination. Inevitably, he measures by his own standards, which may not be ours; but this is secondary to the main function of this Socratic gadfly, which is the shock and stimulus -he gives our minds and the response of greater activity: which he calls forth. But in all this the mass-man sees nothing but an unprovoked and malicious attempt to rob’ him of his pleasures; and his reaction may resemble that ‘of a hog aroused from his mudhole. So it was in Athens; and as I write, the theatrical critic of a local paper is being attacked in its correspondence columns with something not unlike hatred. There will also be those interests in commercial entertainment who find their dividends safer if people don’t. It seerns to me that criticism and the attempts periodically made literally to

intimidate and repress it form the real issue of the discussion. But the critic need riot try to dictate. He should know better, He won’t succeed except at the price of destroying the very things he believes in. Indoctrination, the bludgeoning of the mind, can’t call forth appreciation, which is the life and sensitivity and discrimination of the mind. If the critic resists attempts to write him off as/a spoilsport and frighten him off the field he has made the only contribution that needs making towards the solution of Priestley’s problem.

J. G. A.

POCOCK

(Christchurch).