Lutsen

No, a new blogging hiatus is not already on the horizon. I just spent a good part of this last week up at Alice's parent's cabin in Lutsen, right on the shore of Lake Superior. It was still a bit brisk up there (though I guess its the proximity to the lake rather than the latitude that makes it so much cooler); lilacs were just beginning to bloom there, about a month later than in Minneapolis. The Lepperts have a lovely, truly cabin-feeling cabin with a little gazebo perched right near a small cliff of the lake shore. We played lots of badminton. I learned to play spades, and most curiously, I learned that the supposed divide between wild and domestic animal may not be so great. Alice's dad has feed a chipmunk, who lives in a hole near their garage, for several years. Sunflower seeds and walnuts. Now he is so grateful that he lets us pet him while he eats or stuff his cheeks with seeds for later.

I got into a couple of discussions with Alice and some of our friends about popular culture and art. Now, I'm not happy with these categories (right now, resisting a temptation to throw them in some quote marks), but none of us could find more convenient terms. I was basically arguing that I don't think that because one cultural product is more commercially successful than another product, this doesn't mean that the greater selling product (or some might say more popular) says something more about the cultural moment than the other. I certainly agree that for a movie, a song, or a dance (the macarena as defining expression of the mid-90s?) to become a hit, there must be a certain degree of cultural resonance. But I think that this resonance is only one factor in a much more complex equation that involves a lot of market-based variables. This argument got me in some trouble because some of my interlocutors took it as a way to deny that what is most typically considered to be pop culture says more about the desires of most people in our society than what might be considered art or an expression more of a subculture. Does anyone know of any writers who really tackle this question of what a cultural theorist can extract from the popularity of a work in a market context? I'm especially interested in someone who would take seriously the numerous difficulties of this problem.