Letter: The lowdown on pop culture
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: I must congratulate Niall Ferguson ("Drivel that deserved to self-deconstruct", 5 June) for stating in print exactly what many of us have been thinking: that the Modern Review folded because it was a very bad magazine, and that the press coverage of the ensuing Punch and Judy show has been irrelevant at best, irresponsible at worst.
I would like to press Mr Ferguson on one point, however. The Modern Review was a bad magazine not because it dealt with popular culture, but because it enshrined that same high culture/low culture dichotomy ("Low Culture for High Brows") that Mr Ferguson himself seeks to invoke as a corrective. In fact, the spread of the word "pop" from the early 1960s marks that very moment when the concept of high/low culture became obsolete. Although I'm in sympathy with Mr Ferguson's diagnosis of the sickness epitomised by the Modern Review, a return to this archaic opposition is no solution.
Indeed, the Modern Review's idea of pop as "low" culture gives the lie to why it was so bad. Apart from the work done by a couple of young journalists, the Modern Review was marked by a deep contempt for its subject, its readers, and finally, itself. That's why it was such a sensation in Fleet Street and nowhere else: it provided anti-pop coverage, under the guise of being "young" and "hip" (a deep misrepresentation, I'd say) for editors who are at best uneasy with, at worse hostile to, popular culture.
Taking Mr Ferguson up on his own argument, it is possible to make a strong case for popular music in traditional high art terms - transcendence, resonance, social relevance. But I'd rather ask him to be aware of the distinction between (youth) marketing and the social and anthropological function of music, whether it be today's pop or the 18/19th century pop that we now call classical music. And please: to consider Hornby's baby- boomer banalities or Burchill and Young's self-destructive spleen as in any way emblematic of pop is to do all of us a real disservice.
Yours,
JON SAVAGE
London, W9
5 June
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments