“Elite culture” is a dubious thing. It can often feel like a harmful construct designed to keep control of those who already have it. If this view is correct, then there’s nothing excellent, or even especially better, about elite culture – it’s only a code deployed by those “in the know” to exclude others.
Not surprisingly, this deplorable version of “elite culture” assumes its most crystalline form among teenagers. And it was on full display at my daughter’s middle school this past spring. As the weather warmed and inhibitions crumbled in anticipation of graduation, I beheld an unbridgeable social divide grow between students who had access to social media and those who didn’t. The “social media kids” couldn’t help reveling in their insider knowledge while cruelly – and maybe deliciously – excluding their peers. At a Christian school, this dynamic was no doubt especially loaded with past comparisons and resentments and a foggy desire to “stick it to the man.”
In this setting, knowledge of even the most puerile TikTok in-jokes put some kids in an elite class that flourished precisely because it was exclusionary. And because this Christian school had a stable population of kids blocked from social media, the “out group” had no chance to catch up. Teachers, having lost the appetite to enforce norms only weeks before graduation, just tried to minimize the damage. Allowing the “social media kids” to milk those last delectable weeks as edgy elites with privileged access to a rare product.
Insider knowledge creates a sense of thrill, exclusivity, and ego gratification. And some kinds of insider knowledge have nothing going for them EXCEPT exclusivity – even if that exclusivity is generated unintentionally through very artificial conditions, like at my daughter’s school. This type of “insider knowledge” can seem special, arcane, and sophisticated for a while, but once it becomes widely available, it loses all reason for its existence. Hence, the rapid, tedious turnover of online fads.
The TikTok cabal at my daughter’s school substantiates critiques against the existence of so-called “elite culture.” It was indeed a phenomenon based only on carefully guarded codes, completely detached from real excellence. And it was by no means unique. I am an art historian, and I have seen dynamics just like these in the big-ticket contemporary art world, which often caters to the egos of dilettante millionaire (and billionaire) collectors. It’s comparatively easy to build an “insider art code,” share it with a collector, and then charge top-dollar for “insider-coded” objects. It’s much more difficult, on the other hand, to help frenetic billionaires actually develop a feel for art. These abuses explain why conservative opponents of contemporary art will always find worthy targets.
A Better Kind of “Elite Culture?”
“Elite culture,” however, can have other, better meanings. Think about “elite culture” in the context of the United States’ recent 250th birthday. Though I live in Seattle, I celebrated this milestone with my family in America’s “heartland” – specifically, a rural farming town in southern Indiana. And for me, this experience was particularly vivid, as I had just come to southern Indiana from a three-week jaunt in London and Edinburgh – both ancient and highly sophisticated cultural capitals. The sense of dissonance was palpable. In the space of several hours, I went from a grand, wealthy, world-class city (London) to a dwindling “colonial” town with a shaky economy. Emotions from my youth came rushing back.
A Cultural “Inferiority Complex”?
Growing up, I felt that my small town suffered from a cultural inferiority complex. Nobody really talked about it; in fact, it was something you denied or blustered over. But after thirty years, it feels like nothing much has changed. Small towns like my hometown can feel cut off from “elite culture” for various reasons – some valid, others rooted in “big city” prejudice.
When I was in high school, the “smart” kids vaguely shared the following paradigm: there was the East Coast, with its complex, dignified, time-tested things that seemed vaguely European, and then there was the West Coast, with its technology and glitz. Our home in “Heartland America,” we sometimes felt, had only an ersatz culture exported from those two poles and packaged in what seemed like disingenuous ways.
What did this look like, practically speaking? Well, instead of the nice-looking clothes in magazines, we got last year’s fashions in cheap, ill-hanging fabrics. Instead of finely-crafted home goods made of wood or porcelain, we got their melty-looking doppelgangers made from resin or plastic. Our community theater couldn’t afford the royalties to stage major shows, so we opted for on-the-nose knockoffs. Needless to say, this factory-made, imported culture destroyed local manufacturing and creativity in the same way it has destroyed other, land-based cultures all over the world.
But there is a bit of local pride left, like a ghost of its former self. We still have our limestone industry, which has faint echoes of its old grandeur. There are pockets of surviving artisanal traditions like woodcarving, leatherwork, and quilting, and a small local folk music scene. There is also the culture organically generated by the local churches (musical, liturgical, architectural) – though that too is increasingly watered down and mass-produced. All of these are shadows of what they once were, thanks to the advent of Walmart, Amazon, and mass media, but we prop them up, and they hang on.
A Paradise Lost?
Yet there’s another side to the story. Around me as I grew up, and still today, there are relics of something greater – a lost “golden age,” as it were. There had been a time, it turns out, when our town’s location on a major railway had truly produced a kind of “elite culture” that felt complex, excellent, and rather organic. (That’s why the current doldrums ache so much.) There’s the local courthouse, for example – built from the nearby limestone in an elegant, neoclassical style that suits the medium and shows a high-level of craftsmanship. There’s the beautiful outdoor theater surrounded by rustic fieldstone walls built by the CCC during the Great Depression. And there’s the Neo-Gothic Catholic Church with its exquisite carving, stained glass and paintings – perhaps the finest monument in the town. (Other fine buildings, like our grandest hotel, haven’t survived the neglect and have been torn down.)
It is these surviving, beautiful monuments that take pride of place in the ambit surrounding America 250. These are structures, both complex and beautiful, shining proudly in their own right. They fit their settings; they were made by local hands, and they are not blind copies of something else. They resonate with history while still being themselves. They also showcase beautiful materials and meticulous labor in a way that does not feel cost-cutting, fake, or shamefaced. These things, for me, supply the most charitable explanation for the power of “Make America Great Again” sloganeering. They point to a real time when there was self-produced excellence in America’s small agricultural communities.
And importantly, this craftsmanship-based version of “elite culture” is not, I think, essentially exclusionary. Here, “elite” does not mean “inner circle,” but rather “magnificent.” There is no chasing after esoteric codes, because the beautiful results speak for themselves. And because the products of this “elite culture” are forthright and public, they seem like they are – or at least can be – for everyone. Generally speaking, nobody remembers when they were built, everyone enjoys their magnetic beauty, and nobody wants to see them demolished. At a time when there’s little to celebrate, they give the whole community, including diverse newcomers (like the sizable Latinx population), something to rally around.
Structures like these absolutely are culturally specific. They stem from the memories and values of the area’s first white settlers, from the sensibilities of later Scotch-Irish immigrants, and from the influence of Italian stone workers who came during the area’s limestone boom. Only here and there do the echoes of indigenous traditions exist in certain handicrafts and building techniques – and much work could be done to recover the area’s indigenous heritage. But this doesn’t detract from the excellence and complexity of places like the courthouse or the Catholic Church, together with the witness they bear to prosperity, collaboration, and high ideals. How can monuments like these point the way forward today?
…Because it can feel, today (as my daughter’s experience shows), that Italianate architecture is being traded for “Italian Brain Rot.” (The YouTube channel? Anyone?)
Meanwhile, recent analyses suggest that even online content is declining in both diversity and complexity, as discerning human gatekeepers cede more and more ground to click-generating bots.
Real excellence requires patience, concentration and a diversity of comparative experiences – both for its production and appreciation. But these are the very qualities that today seem in the lowest supply.
How can higher education, and the liberal arts in particular, stop this death spiral? How can we unashamedly promote a winsome “elite culture” – defined by truth, beauty and complexity – that both inspires fickle teenagers and revives depressed small towns?
It’s a tall order! But more than a lot of institutions out there, Christian colleges at least have the tools to try.
