I am a Christian; therefore, I am a poptimist. My understanding of my faith compels me to take a stand in favor of poptimism, and against elitism, in the arts. By “poptimism,” though, I mean much more than the strictly defined sense of the term as used in reference to modern recorded music. I include within “poptimism” the ideas that all genres and styles of art are worth studying; that all artwork, regardless of style, medium, or genre, has the potential to convey value; that all well-made and sincere art is worthy of serious attention; and that there is no “canon” of works that is more worthy of consideration than any other.
There are many Christian thinkers, especially within the Classical Christian Education movement, who encourage the study of “The Great Books,” “The Western Canon,” or whatever you want to call it. To be clear, I’m not saying that a person shouldn’t read those books, nor am I, as a Christian, against them in any way. Rather, I argue against the belief that the canonical works of Western culture—the Shakespeares and Dantes, the Bachs and Beethovens, and all the rest—are of universal value to all people in all cultures everywhere across time and space. This “Western Canon” is often promoted quite forcibly to people who would otherwise be uninterested in it. Why is this? A defining feature of elitism is insisting that one’s idea of what is valuable is more important than anyone else’s, and it is very close to idolatry to state that one’s own cultural products have universal value. As a Christian, I can’t endorse any such veneration of the works of human minds.
To repeat, I am not saying that the “Western Canon” is not worth studying. But whatever greatness they have is not objective or intrinsic to them. The greatness of Shakespeare or Beethoven is not of a kind that requires them to be perpetually studied by everyone, everywhere. The value of the canon—whatever “greatness” is contained within its works—is culturally mediated; it cannot be any other way. And cultures change. It is okay for Shakespeare’s writings to go in and out of fashion. That’s happened before, and if it happens again, it won’t be a disastrous loss.
A common elitist refrain goes like this: “This is what is good, and this is what is not, and you must listen to us because we said so.” I simply can’t swallow that line of reasoning. Shakespeare? Sure, I’ll admit he’s better than Ben Jonson. But is he better than Arthur Miller? Better than Charles Dickens? Better than Tom Wolfe? Better than Stephen King? Well… it depends on what you want.
Who is the common reader, anyway? What motivates them to pick up a book? Speaking for myself—a common reader, I suppose, since I am part of neither the academy nor the elite—I read because I want to be informed and entertained. When we common readers wish to be informed, we sometimes want to learn things that were never dreamt of in our philosophy; sometimes we want to know the psychology of our fellow human beings a little better. (Shakespeare, by the way, is very good for this sort of thing.) But when we want to be entertained, sometimes we common readers just want a good page-turning, story-grip-inducing narrative to captivate our attention while at other times, we want to marvel at a virtuosic turn of phrase or a clever structural feature. We want artistry and craft as well as amusement—form as well as content.
In some respects, we respond to art as one of the elites would presumably do; we want our art to be “good” by some more-or-less articulable standard, and we are prepared to admit that Shakespeare is indeed deeper, richer, better reading than, say, John Grisham. But sometimes, we just want to read John Grisham. Does this make us philistines?
My understanding of my faith compels me to take a stand in favor of poptimism, and against elitism, in the arts.
Let’s open up our scope to music and the rest of the arts. I myself would rather listen to Bach and Mozart than Guns ‘n’ Roses; am I, then, an elitist? But while I type these words, I’m listening to a playlist which contains big radio hits by the likes of Madonna, The Weeknd, and Creed. Does this make me some kind of philistine, since I’m not filling my head with Bach and Mozart? I’d rather look at Salvador Dalí’s paintings than those by Thomas Kinkade, but I’d rather look at Kinkade’s paintings than those by Damien Hirst or Jackson Pollock. Am I a philistine? I’d rather watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off than The Seventh Seal, but I’d rather watch The Seventh Seal than Shrek. Am I a philistine? Or an elitist?
Implicit in the elitist outlook are the twin beliefs that (1) art can have intrinsic value and (2) art is where to find the truth.
I reject the first proposition because art is made by fallible humans. In Tolkien’s memorable phrase, all human artistic work is an exercise in sub-creating—a response to and reflection of the supreme Creator’s work. If human art is sub-creative and subsidiary to the Creator, then it will have, at most, contingent value. But—that does not mean our human art has no value whatsoever. Art obviously has value here on earth, but though I’m not as certain as Reformed theologian Karl Barth—who said that when the angels praise God in heaven, they play only Bach, but when they get together and play music for each other, they play Mozart, and God listens with special pleasure—his view is perhaps the logical outcome of what I am trying to say. That is, good art could—and maybe even should—be an attempt to create something that gives pleasure to the heavenly host. I’m not confident enough in my own abilities as a critic to claim that any specific work of art earns the respect of that audience, but human art could achieve that height of glory—and, perhaps, some of it will.
I must also reject the second proposition—that art is where to find the truth—because it infringes on Scripture’s sufficiency. The idea would be more palatable if it were phrased as “art can speak the truth to us,” but that’s not the case. Art, according to the elites, speaks a species of universal truth about the human condition; but it is a kind of truth that only art can speak. This implies that there is, conversely, some universal truth which Scripture cannot speak; that it is, in some sense, insufficient. But Isaiah 8:20 (NJKV) says, “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Note the logical implication of this passage: if they do speak according to this word, there is light in them. I deny, however, that the light in a work of art is ever more than a subsidiary or reflected light. Art can, should, and does speak truth to us; but the truth in art is outside of, and independent of, the art. Art can’t, shouldn’t, and doesn’t replace Scripture, the ultimate source of all true truth.
For these reasons, therefore, as a Christian I must reject elitism in the arts. But there is yet another reason for my stance.
Elitism in the arts, as commonly encountered, is myopic (i.e., focusing only on the art of one specific culture, that of Europe) and snobby (i.e., ranking and evaluating the rest of the world’s cultures with a European yardstick). In blunter terms, elitism is not loving to the degree that it does not respect other people as fellow human beings with their own interests, tastes, and agency.
What is the purpose of art, anyway? I hesitate to wholeheartedly embrace Oscar Wilde’s famous pronouncement that “All art is quite useless.” I prefer the philosophy of art proposed by Makoto Fujimura in Culture Care, which sees art-making as “giving away useless beauty.” Fujimura describes a vision of the arts in which artists, simply by being artists and making art, bring goodness and blessing to the culture in which they live. Artistic works, he says, “are needed simply because a civilization cannot be a civilization without the arts.” Note that this idea of art’s “usefulness”—which is actually an overflowing, overabundant gratuitousness, and therefore (Fujimura’s words again) “serves no practical function”—is never tied to a specific genre, style, or canon.
The problem with Wilde’s “quite useless” is that it implies that the more useless a work of art is, the better it is. This idea is heard in a variety of contexts, phrased in a multitude of ways. Advertising illustrations are not as good as museum paintings. Symphonies are better than program music. Thorny modernist novels such as those by Joyce or Borges are better than beach reads. Shrek < Ferris Bueller < The Seventh Seal. For Wilde, art’s highest calling is to be an object of pure and unadulterated aesthetic contemplation, unmixed with anything else. The favorite art of the elites is indeed “useless.” You can’t do anything with it other than look at it.
But I want to see a different conception of art’s uselessness: that is, the uselessness of an unexpected gift, given as an act of generous and gratuitous love. This is the uselessness that Fujimura proclaims. This kind of uselessness doesn’t draw attention to itself the way Wilde’s “uselessness” does. Instead, it serves to develop and strengthen the relationship between the giver and the receiver. It is based on a love which doesn’t seek its own glory, doesn’t act with any mercenary motive. Rather, it’s an unmerited favor, a second helping of dessert.
The Bible speaks of the Christian church as being filled with representatives from all tribes and tongues and nations, and nowhere does it suggest that the distinctives of their cultures will go away. People derive meaning from art in similarly varied ways. For a person steeped in the tradition of European church music, jazz might seem a brash and chaotic sludge of noise. For someone else, though, jazz might be an important part of their cultural history and tradition that deserves to be respected and admired while also being appropriated into new work.
I’m willing to trust the commoners to know what they want out of their art; I’m willing to let them use art for whatever purpose comes to hand. As a Christian, I must abide by Scripture’s admonitions to treat all people with love and respect, and I can’t see how to do that while discounting the worth of their artistic and cultural choices.
Therefore, I assert that all cultures and subcultures are free to make whatever styles of art they want, without submitting to the cultural colonialism of the European Tradition or its associated elitism. I’m not condoning sinful content with this assertion; surely art which promotes evil is not to be praised. But a work’s content is different from its form.
I assert that all genres are valid and deserving of equal critical scrutiny since they were created by people who undoubtedly experienced a real need for those genres’ existence. Furthermore, within genres, different works can indeed be considered “better” or “worse” than others, but the concepts of “better” or “worse” do not apply across genres.
Finally, I deny that any work of human artistry has intrinsic value or value applicable to all cultures across time and space.
For me, as a Christian, I can see the issue no other way.
