High and Low Culture
Questions:
Throughout the twentieth century, culture was viewed as a hierarchy from low culture to high culture, which is imagined as a skyscraper with higher floors (high culture, “good taste”) containing museums and ballets, and lower floors (low culture, “questionable taste”) containing reality television and teen pop music.
Refer to figure 1.3 “Culture as a Skyscraper” in the textbook (and shown below). Look at the arrangement of the culture here and answer: Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Include some of your own examples of “high” and “low” cultures.
Why do we categorize or classify culture in this way? Who controls this process? Is control of making cultural categories important? Why or why not?