Back
in college, I had a professor who I would clash a lot with. I thought my
professor was a nice guy, however, I felt his approach towards criticism and
literature was very pretentious. He reminded me of William and Jimmy, my high
school classmates who would have very fixed ideas of what counted as good art
and what didn’t.
I
feel that while these people are well intentioned they are turning art into an specialist subject and alienating the common people from it. They are not
seeing art as a way of educating others but rather as a way they and their
friends can have a common interest. Art stops being for the people and becomes an specialist discipline for close-minded people.
Its time to reclaim art to serve as an educational tool for the masses. A
lot of hipsters and literary critics complain that the masses are dumping down their culture. How the masses prefer: Jersey Shore, 16 and pregnant, and the Real World over Austen, Fitzgerald or Salinger. However, what are you doing to change this?
Absolutely nothing. You only interact with close-minded individuals who condemn and
stereotype anyone who disagrees.
I
strongly believe that the common people dislike all the pretentious nonsense
that the left champions, because its inherently elitist. Common people
gravitate towards forms of education—reality television—were they feel
respected. They want to have the opportunity to learn, however, if you are a
snob looking down on them they will gravitate towards other forms of
learning.
In
our society today, there’s a bridge between the specialist and the layman; One
that’s currently unbridgeable. My aim,
therefore, is to make culture—high or low—accessible to everyone. In order to
do this, I plan on using plain English and strive for clarity in my argument as
opposed to flowery language. We need to reappropriate art, from a circle jerk by
the self-declared connoisseurs to a source of education for all of us.
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