1. Crucial as the differences are in other respects, popular culture is a by-product of indus trialization whether under democratic or dictatorial auspices, and regardless of whether the economy is planned or unplanned. Totalitarianism would compel composers to compose in the popular manner. A non-totalitarian system induces them to do so by rewards rather than positive punishment. In human terms, the difference is enormous; but popular culture may be produced in either way. (However, in a non-totalitarian industrial society, individuals not sharing popular culture can survive physically. Totalitarian industrialism makes survival even in the interstices of society doubtful.)

2. There is no actual proof of the diminishing "utility" of successive additions to income, particularly when the comparison is interpersonal. The idea becomes doubtful indeed once the income of the poor is high enough to satisfy the most compelling needs.

3. Fewer hours per day are spent working than before, and fewer days per week. As a pro portion of the lifespan, work time has shrunk beyond this. People live longer but start work later and retire earlier.

4. Mass production is distinguished in this respect from work on small farms and in small firms. The farm population has dwindled as has the share of total output produced by small firms and farms. Note further that specialization has reached a high degree in the surviving small unit.

5. T. S. Eliot. "Burnt Norton," Four Quartettes, III, 15.

6. Though physically fewer, working hours become psychologically longer through the repetitiveness of tasks.

7. To call popular culture heterogeneous is correct with reference to its origins but incor rect with reference to the smooth blend that constitutes it, and that makes American society remarkably homogeneous. Social distances dividing groups horizontally and vertically are smaller than within any European country. The contrary impression comes about because fluidity is great and contacts frequent. Thus individuals experience differences more intensely and more often though the differences are fewer and less steep than elsewhere. Hence the illusion shaped by many sociologists. (The latter may magnify group differences also because of occupational and ideological bias.)

8. On Liberty, chap. iii.

9. This threefold classification is meant to be exhaustive. However much cultures differ, they fall into one or several of these types. For instance, all American Indian cultures were folk cultures; and Europe had a combination of folk and high cultures in antiquity and from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Note that folk cultures fall in the first half of the usual dichotomies (Weber's "traditionalistic-rationalistic"; Tönnies' "community-society"; Redfield's "folk-secular"; Becker's "sacred-secular"). The second half of the dichotomies is one characteristic of all popular cultures. High cultures, finally, straddle the dichotomies by grow ing from the first into the second half But the process affects only a small stratum of society— unless it is spread through industrialization. When this occurs, popular culture replaces both high and folk cultures. Finally, note that some elements of each culture type are usually con tained in the other. Thus, wherever there was an urban proletariat, or some form of mass production, there also were elements of popular culture. But they did not prevail until the machine age came.

10. Fragments may be conserved, however, and mounted as quaint tourist attractions (for instance, Henry Ford's Greenfield Village and the great English country estates).

11. Remaining differentiation or privilege stimulates resentment the more for it sticks out on an otherwise level plane; yet it does not stick out far enough to remove the privileged from invidious comparison. Envy and the craving for equality feed on their own success.

12. The idea that the custom-made article is better is based chiefly on the snob appeal of rarity and expensiveness. Often both quality and taste are worse.

13. Santayana recounts in his Character and Opinion in the United States, how he was made aware of this at Harvard University.

14. We shall turn to compromises below.

15. The molding oftaste may be among the motivations ofindividual advertisers—though at least in the long run they are often as equally motivated to mold the product to the prevail ing taste. At any rate, we are interested in function, not motivation, and in aggregate cumula tive effects, not in a particular campaign.

16. In a capitalist system, some men might use their wealth to express a personal, even though unprofitable, taste. This is less likely under socialism. Socialist planners would be under moral obligation and political pressure to use public money to satisfy the most widely shared taste. Further, capitalist producers can take risks which they might not be allowed to take with public money under socialism.

(If planners have not been subservient to mass desires in Russia, it is because the Soviet Union is not a democracy.)

17. The average taste cannot be easily calculated. It is subject to fashion. Indeed, popular culture is far more fickle and eager for the new than any other type of culture. There would be no risk for song-writers or movie producers if appeal could be calculated mechanically. But there is. Indeed, it takes a special talent to sense what might appeal-the talent the editor of a popular magazine and the advertising man and the "stylist" must possess, and an equally special talent to produce it—the talent of the writer of bestsellers and the popular entertainer.

18. Though books on "How To Become an Individual," "How To Acquire a Personality" —books in short that insist that by following a general recipe you will bake an original cake-abound in popular culture, as do restaurants advertising "home-cooked" meals.

19. Modesty is spared ritualistically. But in a suggestive, voyeuristic, and, at times, nau seatingly coy way, programs can be quite pornographic. It is actually the sentimentality and the clichés of the audience that are spared religiously: "To hell with Christmas" causes more of a television scandal than the sexiest wiggle.

20. Note the controversy when Oliver Twist was filmed. And controversies over dialect stories, etc.

21. Note further that within institutionally set limits, non-commercial stations try to en large more than to instruct or delight their audiences. Classical music—but whenever possible, the popular classics in popular versions-and with all the advertising techniques, including the "theme" (trademark) stripped from some symphony to introduce all "symphony hours," including also the outrageous mutilations of works of art, etc.

22. Again, non-commercial stations do the same thing, though more insipidly, by mixing dentistry and Dante.

23. Classics can be presented occasionally since they are sterilized by remoteness. Tolerance is a tribute ignorance pays to reputation.

It is remarkable that the original censor objected to the possibly subversive political implica tions of Rigoletto. Victor Hugo's play was suspected of casting aspersions on monarchy or monarchs. It did not occur to the censor to object to the essential content ofthe play, to its view of the human predicament, of love, crime, violence. The situation has been significantly re versed. We could not wish for a better illustration of our argument.

24. They are not always right in their estimates. But who would be? They have an interest in gauging correctly—apart from fairly small side interests favoring organized opinion. On these we invoke de minimis non curat scriptor.

25. Though they do not necessarily observe these standards in practice.

26. Past audiences were fairly homogeneous and accustomed to the artistic traditions being developed, whereas the mass audience comes from many traditions or no tradition. Therefore, some segments of it would be shocked by a presentation which, though not actually offering anything new, offers what is new and shocking to them. Hence, the mass media usually present even classics in mutilated form, sometimes to the point of disembowelling them or reversing the moral. For instance, Tolstoi's Anna Karenina had to be recalled to the studio to make it palatable by introducing a happy ending.

27. It is not suggested that the new view is better. Only that it is new.

28. The understanding of art has always been troublesome. "Wise beyond doubt, I hold him who divines what each word in my song means," the Provençal troubadour, Marcabru, wrote. The average Athenian hardly understood the tragic mysteries (any more than the aver age Roman Catholic fully understands the Mass) or the average Roman, Horace, who indeed wrote: "Odi profanum vulgo et arceo." No; modern poetry is not more obscure per se than poetry has always been. What has happened is that more people less well equipped demand to understand it without wanting to take the necessary trouble. And ifthey find it hard, why it's the poet's fault. The evidence is very plain in, for instance, I. A. Richards' Practical Criticism.

29. There was censorship at times and desires of specific patrons had to be considered. But though they restricted expression, they seldom prescribed it. And, in particular, they did not insist on things being made easy.

30. The distance between the elite and other groups was greater and the mobility less than today in all major pre-industrial societies.

31. As well as protecting them from other robbers and each other.

32. The increased power of consumers noted here is the major point of Ortega y Gasset's Revolt of the Masses. De Tocqueville too speaks of the ascendancy of "public opinion" though focussing on political causes and effects.