> Give me trailer park trash and gang bangers from the hood over woke intellectuals and anti-SJW crusaders any day.
Why would you choose to trust someone who is not exposed to a topic and hasn't put much thought into it over those who have?
Why would you choose to trust someone who is not exposed to a topic and hasn't put much thought into it over those who have?
You're sadly misinformed. A huge amount of culture came out of these institutions, including pop culture. As one tiny example, Lady Gaga went to an elite private school in Manhattan. Spike Lee got his start at NYU.
Let me address your two cherry-picked examples though. Lady Gaga is overrated. Without the aesthetic (which is an amalgamation of many creative energies from different backgrounds), she would be another formulaic pop artist. Sorry to any Gaga fans, but her music is not that interesting on its own. She's no Björk or Nina Simone or SOPHIE. Her time at an "elite private school in Manhattan" apparently didn't teach her how to color outside the lines. Give me the name of her magnum opus and I will gladly stack it against any number of great albums, both indie and mainstream, from the past 10 years. She won't fare well.
Spike Lee is a more interesting example. I love Spike Lee. He does come from a relatively well-to-do background. But you have to admit, the subject matter of his work tends to focus on disenfranchised people and communities. We also can't ignore the racial prejudices of people in Hollywood that may have made his story a bit more turbulent. I'd have to look into this a bit more but I'm willing to bet it's not as simple as you think.
Final note, I apologize if any of my arguments here have come across as insensitive. I believe that personal struggle plays a huge role in the creation of important artists and creators but I absolutely do not see that as a valid excuse for social injustice. My original point was only targeted to OP's post. The Yale professor mentioned in this article and the students calling him "disgusting" are largely insignificant in my view, and I considered it a waste of a click (especially considering NYT only gives you three free reads a month).
Can you name anything like that besides music? I'm genuinely curious.
When I mention "modern art" one might be quick to associate it with the type of people I was criticizing in my original post; rich, well-adjusted individuals who go to Ivy League schools and end up spending more money on paintings than you or I will ever see in our lives. But it didn't start this way. If you trace modern art back to its roots, you'll find a trend among most of the foundational artists and painters of this period: personal turmoil and careers which were almost universally dismissed by the art schools and museums of the time.
Vincent van Gogh's last words before shooting himself in the chest with a revolver is reported to have been, "The sadness will last forever." Indeed, van Gogh lived a troubled life of alcoholism, poor academic performance and psychotic episodes. He is also widely credited as being one of the most important 19th century painters and an artist whose works serve as an underpinning of expressionism, one of the foundational stylistic movements of modern art. We see similar lives of turmoil among other important post-impressionists during this period. Paul Gauguin, who witnessed domestic abuse and death in the family at an early age, ended up broke and living in a hut in Panama when he produced some of his most important works.
Of course there were other key post-impressionists who lived less tragic lives, such as Henri Matisse who was lucky enough to be non-Jewish during the Nazi occupation of Paris. He and other artists of this movement were harshly criticized and rejected by the art establishment of the time, however, which considered their rejection of tradition an affront to art. Nonetheless, it's this artistic movement that led to an entire era of artistic experimentation; expressionism, cubism, surrealism, abstract art, pop art and other genres would follow.
Those "rich pricks at Yale, Harvard, etc" make up a tiny fraction of society, likely far less than 1%. Accordingly, it would be crazy to think they create a majority or even a plurality of culture.
However, they do have a very outsize influence. They make up less than 1% of the population, but contribute much more than that percentage to culture (I'd unscientifically gander somewhere between 2 and 8%).
So here are a few more "cherry-picked" pop musicians, surely some of them would qualify under your rubric:
- Tom Morello - Rage Against the Machine - Harvard
- Lauryn Hill - Columbia (dropped out, but released The Score while still a student)
- Alicia Keys - Columbia (dropped out after growing fame)
- Greg Graffin - Bad Religion (punk band) - Cornell PhD
In the non-pop world, at least classical and much avante garde, much of the new activity is based out of these "elite institutions".
People 'on the street' often do think about it, just in a more instinctive, applied manner.
People who 'have time to think about it' put things in entirely constructed contexts, that may make no sense in the real world.
This is evident in business as well, it's shocking how different the reality of business from all of the even more applied aspects of anything one might learn in bschool.