One Culture and the New Sensibility
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"One important consequence of the new sensibility [is] that the distinction between "high" and "low" culture seems less and less meaningful." "If art is understood as a form of discipline of the feelings and a programming of sensations, then the feeling (or sensation) given off by a Rauschenberg painting might be like that of a song by the Supremes. The brio and elegance of Budd Boetticher’s The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond or the singing style of Dionne Warwick can be appreciated as a complex and pleasurable event. They are experienced without condescension." --Susan Sontag, 1965. |
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"One Culture and the New Sensibility" is an essay by Susan Sontag first published in Mademoiselle in 1965. It was later collected in an expanded version in Against Interpretation of 1966. The essay is often referenced for noting that the boundaries between low culture and high culture were disappearing.
Many have seen in this essay a defense of popular culture. However, this is not necessarily the case. As noted by Greil Marcus in The Dustbin of History and Camille Paglia in Vamps and Tramps, which both quote Sontag from a Time interview of October 24, 1988 in which she was rather dismissive of popular culture:
- “As for equating high and popular culture, she explains: ‘I made a few jolly references to things in popular culture that I enjoyed. I said, for instance, that one could enjoy both Jasper Johns and the Supremes. It isn’t as if I wrote an essay on the Supremes.” --"Cowboy Boots and Germans", Greil Marcus.