Gilbert Seldes - The Public Arts

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The Public Arts

Classics in Communication and Mass Culture Series

Arthur AsaBerger, Series Editor

Agit-Pop, Arthur Asa Berger

The Astonished Muse, Reuel Denney

Beyond Words, Kurt W. Back

Communication and Social Order, Hugh Dalziel Duncan

Everyday Life in the Modern World, Henri Lefebvre

The Flow of Information, Melvin DeFleur and Otto N. Larson

The Hollywood TV Producer, Muriel G. Cantor

Mass Media in Modern Society, Norman Jacobs

The Play Theory of Mass Communication, William Stephenson

Political Culture and Public Opinion, Arthur Asa Berger

Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, Leo Bogart

The Public Arts, Gilbert Seldes

Television as an Instrument of Terror, Arthur Asa Berger

Television in Society, Arthur Asa Berger

T.V.: The Most Popular Art, Horace Newcomb

The Uses of Literacy, Richard Hoggart

The Public Arts

Gilbert Seldes

With a new introduction by Arthur AsaBerger

Originally published in 1956 by Simon and Schuster, Inc. First published 1994 by Transation Publishers

Published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

First issued in hardback 2020

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1994 by Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 94-395

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Seldes, Gilbert Vivian, 1893- The public arts / Gilbert Seldes; with a new introduction by Arthur Asa Berger. p. cm. (Classics in communication and mass culture series) Originally published: New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956. ISBN 1-56000-748-6 1. Television broadcasting. 2. Radio broadcasting. 3. Motion picutres. I. Title. II. Series. PN1992.5.S38 1994 302.23'4'0973dc20 94-395 CIP

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-53798-9 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-56000-748-7 (pbk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429339325

CONTENTS

1. The Lovely Art: Movement
2. The Lovely Art: Sound
3. The Lovely Art: Magic
4. The Lovely Art: Space
5. The Useful Art
6. Sounds and Echoes
7. Personality Business
8. The Threshold of Entertainment
9. The Anatomy of Misery
10. Domestic Manners in the 49th State
11. What a Work Is Man!
12. The Incomparable Bing
13. The Prevalence of Comedy
14. The Good-Bad Berle
15. Ave, Vale, and Wait
16. Mr. Benny
17. The Gleason Case
18. Me and the Camera and the Folks...
19. What'll We Do for Laughs, Celeste?
20. The 52-Minute Hour
21. The Consequences of Time
22. Blessed Necessity
23. The Situations of Edward R. Murrow
24. A Primer of Problems
25. Rights and Duties I: Freedom of the Air
26. Rights and Duties II: The Right to Persuade
27. Rights and Duties III: The Limitations of Freedom
28. Problems of Power I: The Politics of Color
29. Problems of Power II: The Ultra-Highs
30. Problems of Power III: Programs for Pay
31. Problems of Power IV: The Educational Nexus
32. A New Approach
33. The Trinity of the Arts
34. The Public Arts

1. The Lovely Art: Movement
2. The Lovely Art: Sound
3. The Lovely Art: Magic
4. The Lovely Art: Space
5. The Useful Art
6. Sounds and Echoes
7. Personality Business
8. The Threshold of Entertainment
9. The Anatomy of Misery
10. Domestic Manners in the 49th State
11. What a Work Is Man!
12. The Incomparable Bing
13. The Prevalence of Comedy
14. The Good-Bad Berle
15. Ave, Vale, and Wait
16. Mr. Benny
17. The Gleason Case
18. Me and the Camera and the Folks...
19. What'll We Do for Laughs, Celeste?
20. The 52-Minute Hour
21. The Consequences of Time
22. Blessed Necessity
23. The Situations of Edward R. Murrow
24. A Primer of Problems
25. Rights and Duties I: Freedom of the Air
26. Rights and Duties II: The Right to Persuade
27. Rights and Duties III: The Limitations of Freedom
28. Problems of Power I: The Politics of Color
29. Problems of Power II: The Ultra-Highs
30. Problems of Power III: Programs for Pay
31. Problems of Power IV: The Educational Nexus
32. A New Approach
33. The Trinity of the Arts
34. The Public Arts

Guide

INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION

In the early sixties, when I first started working on popular culture, the subject was considered a marginal one by most scholars. If hundreds of millions of people did something, such as read the comics or watch television, many scholars, for a variety of reasons, considered these matters unimportant or irrelevant. How can you take the reading comics in the morning seriously, they suggested, when you use them to wrap garbage in the evening? (Ironically, we now take garbage seriously and archaeologists study it and use it to help gain information on everyday life in America and other countries.)

The situation has changed, radically, in recent years and the study of popular culture, the mass media, contemporary culture, or as Seldes put it, the public arts, has become a central concern, if not a preoccupation, for academics in areas (and departments) as varied as philosophy, literature, history, communications, political science and sociology. That is because we now recognize that culture, in the anthropological sense of the term, has consequences and popular culture is a kind or form of culture. In recent years, as a matter of fact, the distinction between popular culture and other kinds of culture, elite culture, or as Ive described it elsewhere, unpopular culture, has been attacked. Except at the extremes, such as professional wrestling on television and Finnegan's Wake, I would argue, it is difficult to distinguish between popular culture and elite culture.

We study popular culture because we think it has aesthetic significance and because we believe it has a great deal to tell us about the values and beliefs of members of society, as a whole, and of the numerous subcultures that exist in any given society.

SELDES AS A PIONEER

It is remarkable, then, that as early as 1924, in The Seven Lively Arts, Gilbert Seldes was writing about popular culture and taking it seriously. He did not dismiss it as subliterary, ephemeral, junkthough much of it is, of course. A good deal of so-called serious art, he points out, is second or third rate, if not worse. As Seldes wrote in A Personal Preface to The Seven Lively Arts:

My theme was to be that entertainment of a high order existed in places not usually associated with Art, that the place where an object was to be seen or heard had no bearing on its merits, that some of Jerome Kerns songs in the

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