In a book that veers from Kant to Puff Daddy in the blink of a designer-framed eye, at a time when the avant garde has collapsed into the mainstream and in a world where the old skool strictures of culture are about as relevant as last month's computer game, it's perhaps necessary to step back from the maddening post-modern crowd for a right here, right now masterclass in social anthropology.
John Seabrook, a thirtysomething journalist with the New Yorker, takes a reading on the cultural barometer in his trade paperback, Nobrow, subtitled: "the culture of marketing and the marketing of culture". If you don't dig the somewhat overworked post-ironic gags on the book's cover (Seabrook puts a trademark sign after his name over a faux Warhol-type collage of a face on soup tins) you'd be better off sticking with the greatest hits of F.R. Leavis. But if indeed you are up for it, you can happily double-click your way through a fragmented, inter-textual and indeed referential fun ride through "a tectonic shift in cultural life".
Unfortunately, Seabrook's basic thesis is very two years ago: he asks what happens when the old elite distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow culture no longer apply, and whether these distinctions are as much to do with "caste" as they are of "taste". Sorry, been there, done that and downloaded it already. The late great British magazine, The Modern Review, has already lorded it over this area and if Seabrook genuinely wants to get into some state-of-the-art cultural discussion about the breakdown of grand narratives and their impact on cultural studies, he should really be down with the current, zingy French philosophers (start with Baudrillard, young man, and work your way downwards).
Seabrook offers up the concept of "nobrow" as an all-encompassing explanation of the state of today's cultural play. He argues that a social hierarchy was responsible for separating highbrow and lowbrow culture and now that has collapsed in on itself (thanks to all-pervasive stealth marketing of cultural goods by multinational corporations - Sky, MTV, Time-Warner/AOL etc;) all we're left with is a nifty neologism and the realisation that "good equals hot, excellent means entertaining and celebrity defines quality". His analysis works well when dealing with entities like The Spice Girls who are nine parts marketing campaign to one part musician; less so when he tries to link the Wu Tang Clan with William James.
Coincidentally or not, Seabrook's arrival at the term "nobrow" coincided with the arrival of Tina Brown as editor of the New Yorker, and much space is given over to how the august journal coped with this new female, English voice and how it impacted on the "demo" (demographic) of the magazine. This case-specific example is perhaps the best part of the book; for once he moves seamlessly between the particular and the general, and his observations find common currency with his argument. He writes "the challenge that the New Yorker faced in the 1990s was one faced by many cultural institutions - museums, libraries, cultural foundations. How do you let the Buzz into the place, in order to keep it vibrant and solvent, without undermining the institution's moral authority, which was at least partly based on keeping the Buzz out?". Gosh, sounds like an editorial conference at the Irish Times.
Sent on an assignment by the magazine to get a story on how MTV operates, he says moving between the two media was like going from "Town House to Megastore". "In place of New Yorker distinctions between the elite and the commercial," he reports, "there was MTV distinctions between the cult and the mainstream. In the town house, quality was the standard of value; in the megastore, the standard was authenticity". From here, he sets himself up for some interesting ruminations on the "convergence of marketing and culture" which are particularly apt at a time when buy-outs, mergers and pan-global enterprises crush all in their wake (Microsoft, etc). It's a much flawed book but when Seabrook hits it, it's a case of "Wake up and smell the Caffe Latte".
Brian Boyd is an Irish Times journalist
