great

I’m gonna beat my favorite antique drum here.

Ross Douthat asks, “Can We Make Pop Culture Great Again? — and the answer, of course, is Nope. Absolutely not. Just as our algorithmic culture enforces inflammation in the political sphere, it enforces mediocrity in the cultural sphere. Great works of art can still be made, but if they are great their social status will be marginal at best; anyone capable of appreciating them will be hard put to find them. (It’s not impossible, mind you; but it’s not easy.) And many people who could in time make great work will be deterred and, reasonably enough, give up before they get started and work instead for hedge funds.

If the truth of this assessment is not obvious to you, I’m not going to try to convince you. But I will say this: I’d bet a large sum of money that if you were to spend a year breaking bread with the dead, immersing yourself in the great works of the past, then at the end of that year the truth of my assessment would be obvious to you.

The good news is that there’s never been a better time to break bread with the dead. A vast cultural inheritance is ours for the taking, and to access is almost all we need is a computer with a web browser. We all know this, but I don’t believe we reflect on it often enough. Think of Project Gutenberg, Google Books, Google Arts and Culture, the websites of the world’s great museums, music of every kind available on dozens of platforms, the astonishing range of cultural achievement available in the BBC archives and the Internet Archive. Many of us can check out e-books from out local libraries and get access to the great collection of films at Kanopy.

Talk about an embarrassment of riches! When the algorithms are trying to sell you mediocrity (or worse) on the sole ground of its novelty, my suggestion is: Vote for something else. Vote with your attention … whenever you’re ready to stop eating grass.