Popular Culture And High Culture Collide
The debate between low culture and high culture is not new in literature. For years, authors and poets were trying to change mass consciousness and thinking in a way, which would distance the public from the by-products of mass culture and would drive them closer to the benefits of higher aesthetics. For centuries, the distinction between high culture and low culture has been discussed in terms of aesthetic quality, but in her Shiloh, Ann Mason creates a different cultural vision. The character of Norma Jean in the story is the bright example of how an individual can work to create his own ideal life. Norma Jean exemplifies the gradual spiritual change, which a woman undergoes in the process of her moral and mental maturation. As a result, where high and low cultures collide, and where Norma Jean finally realizes the dramatic difference between her inner world and the inner values of the people around her, she finds it impossible to exist and perform in the atmosphere of low cultural values. For Ann Mason, high culture is associated with the gradual human transition to independence, self-realization, and self-confidence.
It is difficult to deny that the discussion of high and low culture is usually limited to the questions of quality and aesthetics. In other words, “their distinctions centre on questions of aesthetic quality; that is, on judgments about beauty, goodness, and value” (Barker 63). In this dramatic difference between high and low culture, the former was always praised while the latter was continuously excluded due to its inferiority and low level aesthetics. For example, in the context of discussing the collision between high and low culture, the artistic object of high culture was always associated with complexity, authenticity, and artistic soul, while mass culture was limited to something aesthetically unsatisfying and even superficial (Cowen 44). That means that high culture always involved and required skills and knowledge necessary to understand its meaning and works, while low culture was oversimplified and actually, designed to entertain society. In reality, however, the boundary between high and low culture is increasingly blurred, and where one speaks about quality and aesthetics, these are nothing but the signs and the concepts of one’s cultural taste. That means that the meaning of high and low culture in literature is more than relative, and in different cultural traditions, the meaning of high and low culture may vary. Moreover, there are no universal criteria for judging what high and low cultures are and how they impact mass thinking. In reality, “a universal distinction between high and low culture is unsustainable. This argument, combined with the rise in visibility and status of popular culture, has led critics to suggest that ‘High culture becomes just one more sub-culture, one more opinion, in our midst” (Baker 66). This flexibility and this lack of a clear boundary between the two is something Ann Mason used in her Shiloh: for Mason, the collision between high and low culture is exemplified through the collision between Norma Jean’s vision of the world and her gradual spiritual maturation as compared to the vision, which her family members hold. This collision results in the immediate disruption of spiritual ties between Norma Jean and her husband and gives her a unique opportunity to change her life for the better.
Needless to say, that Mason’s Shiloh is nothing else but a successful story of a female gradual transition to independence and self-confidence. Through the loss of the valued and dearest in her life, and through the difficulties which she experiences in her personal life, Norma Jean gradually realizes the lack of aesthetic and spiritual value in her relationships with her husband and other family members. Being heavily influenced by her mother, who “inspects the closet and then the plants, informing Norma Jean when a plant is droopy or yellow” (Mason), and having nothing to do in her life except cooking and cleaning the house, Norma Jean risks degrading to the lowest levels of the mass culture and turning into a hollow creature, with no values and no moral stem inside. Her mother and her husband are the brightest representatives of the low culture, who do not see beyond their critical remarks and who are not willing to improve their wellbeing. And everything would remain unchanged, if not for an electric organ, which Leroy buys for Norma while she is spending time at home. This organ, a sign of the gradual Norma’s liberation and her continuous striving to freedom, probably becomes the first step in the gradual and very difficult movement toward higher culture. Leroy does not realize the significance of that purchase, but for Norma is becomes the sign of her gradual liberation and her becoming a member of the higher cultural class.
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