grew out of an earlier character and an earlier social situation.”
83 In contrast to what he considered the “puritan” critique of mass culture, Riesman argued that the “great variety” of cultural products made possible by the standardization of the production process allowed for liberation from imposed characterological conformity. Riesman pointed in particular to Hollywood films as “liberating” agents—“even the fan who imitates the casual manner of Humphrey Bogart or the fearless energetic pride of Katharine Hepburn may in the process be emancipating himself or herself from a narrow-minded peer-group” (291). Where high modernists saw standardization, conformity, and manipulation Riesman saw complexity, discovery, and liberation. Of course Riesman was neither promoting anti-intellectualism nor espousing populist rhetoric; indeed, his defense of popular culture bore little resemblance to the uncritical democratization of popular tastes associated with certain forms of postmodernism in the 1960s. Instead, Riesman was trying to move beyond the simplistic dichotomy between elitism and populism, choosing instead to portray American culture not en masse but as divided into a series of audiences and tastes. This was the challenge he posed in his contribution to a
Partisan Review symposium, “America and the Intellectuals.” He sensed within the highbrow rejection of American culture resentment against the success of the project of high modernism. As more and more members of the upper-class and middle-class strata became cultural aficionados themselves, intellectuals such as Dwight Macdonald and Clement Greenberg began to “[fear] the shifts in middlebrow taste which might leave [them] in the position of liking something also liked by a
New Yorker or
Harper’s audience.”
84 Lingering battles over literary and artistic canons were, according to Riesman, merely signs of confusion on the part of high modernists over the surprising popularization of such works.
