----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Marvin Smith asks about the use of the word, "elitism" in the PBS debates. As I see it, elitism is surfacing in at least three different senses which as is often the case in such debates, keep getting wraped around each other. First, the original conservative critics of PBS have charged its programing with "elitism." What they seem to mean is that it speaks to and for the so-called "elite liberal establishment." In some senses, it is an ideological term there, which pits elite liberals against down-to-earth conservative populists (like, we suppose, Mr. Jarvik and Mr. Gingrich.) It seems bound up with the ideological critique of programs like TONGUES UNTIED or Bill Moyers or TALES OF THE CITY, as using tax payers money to speak to "narrow special interests." Second, liberal proponents of PBS charge that the conservatives are themselves being elitists in a more economic sense. When some one argues that we don't need PBS because the same kinds of programs are shown on cable or when they suggest that people CHOOSE not to subscribe to cable, etc., then they are ignoring some pretty basic economic realities. They seem to operate in a world where everyone is basically middle class or higher and therefore don't face economic challenges, or they make the assumption that intellectual capital (i.e. the interest in programs on PBS) is somehow magically linked to economic capital (i.e. the ability to pay for cable) so that those without money couldn't or wouldn't like/understand/benefit from those programs anyway. Third, as a cultural studies scholar, I see a different kind of elitism entering into the debate, one with a long history in struggles over taste hierarchies. Proponents of PBS present themselves as producing "better television," "quality television," etc., as conveyers of Matthew Arnold's conception of culture as enlightenment and sweetness and light. Arnold's model assumed that the higher classes are the best arbiters of taste and cultural value and that they benefited society by spreeding their particular conception of culture outward to the less refined masses, who by definition had no culture of their own. This rhetoric surrounds PBS in ways that I consistently find offensive and insuportable. It isn't as if PBS was a center for the artistic avant garde, which was on the cutting edge of cultural development. They are most often presenting "middlebrow culture," important because it is a literary adaptation or presented with a british accent or offered in a slow, lushly scoreds style without much spectacle or emotional excess. Frankly, I don't think it is very creative in its use of television as a medium, offering works which soothe rather than challenge or entertain their viewers. If I ask my MIT students what programs excited them about science, they don't cite NOVA or READING RAINBOW or MR. WIZARD, they cite STAR TREK. PBS too often makes Charley the Tuna's classic mistake: we don't want tuna with good taste; we want tuna that tastes good. The PBS rhetoric, on the other hand, assumes that popular taste is necessarily banal and vulgar, that what the people want isn't what they should have, that commercialism invariably spoils art, and that there is some arcane moral distinction to be drawn between the merchandising and commodification of SESAME STREET and that offered up by HEMAN, MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE or NINJA TURTLES etc. (I would argue that they are all "program-length" commercials which should be judged on the basis of their contents and not their economic funding.) How do we teach a sense of excellence in our students without engaging in elitism of any of the three flavors I cite above? We do it best by being open-minded, and teaching them to respect and value a range of different aesthetics and cultural traditions, popular as well as elite, and teaching them to think creatively about how different programs relate to the aesthetic traditions from which they emerge. When we talk about painting, we are quite good about recognizing the different evaluative standards one would apply in looking at Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Renassaince, German Expressionist, French Impressionist, Pop, Indian, Native American, etc. art. Why, then, do we judge television with a one-size fits all set of criteria. The pursuit of excellence does not require elite or rigid standards; it requires creative and open-minded evaluations of works within the aesthetic terms that produced them. I think we can best teach evaluative judgement to our students by taking seriously their own tastes and the evaluative criteria they are already employing. And what really bugs me about having to defend PBS is that I see such a level of arogance from PBS about this whole issue of taste and what consitutes quality television! Sorry, Charlie, but I do want tuna that tastes good, when push comes to shove. --Henry Jenkins