Twilight of the Cultural Omnivores

Earlier this year, I read an article on NPR’s website called “In Praise of Cultural Omnivores” that referred to a study by the National Endowment for the Arts showing that cultural omnivores—people who enjoy both high and low culture—are on the decline. The article struck a chord with me because I realized that I am a cultural omnivore—I just never knew what to call myself before.

The study, “Age and Arts Participation: A Case Against Demographic Destiny,” examines whether age and generation have a strong correlation to arts participation. The results are a little complicated, but one thing is clear. Cultural omnivores are disappearing, as are highbrows, albeit to a somewhat lesser degree:

“Omnivore representation declined from 15 percent in 1982 to 10 percent in 2008. Highbrows represented just over 7 percent of all respondents in 1985 and 1992 and then declined to 5.3 percent in 2008.”

Much of the literature on these trends tends to focus its worry on the future of traditional highbrow art forms like classical music and ballet, but what worries me in addition to that is the inability or unwillingness of people to cross cultural lines either by ascending or descending through cultural strata.

The NPR article mentions “social status,” but doesn’t explore in much depth the possibility of a connection between wealth and cultural activity. The study also merely brushes against this disturbing possibility, by drawing a connection between higher education and greater cultural participation. In an America with an ever smaller wealthy set, a disappearing middle-class and growing poverty, many people simply cannot afford a night at the opera and they have less access to spheres of influence that would make them want to go to the opera.

Economic conditions—material conditions, to be Marxist about it—may to a certain extent impose constraints determining what people enjoy, but I feel as if at the same time more and more people choose to limit themselves to the perceived dictates of class. Many feel that to enjoy high culture you must be an expert or a snob. If you want to enjoy wine tasting, you must know all the etiquette and be able to wax lofty upon the bouquet or you might as well not even bother. If you want to enjoy classical music, you must be able to facilely discourse upon the sublimity of Brahms’s A German Requiem. It’s never okay to dabble and learn, you must be that guy who knows it all, so it’s better to stick with low forms of culture, which are easier to come to grips with.

I do not, however, really buy that the distinction between high and low art can be determined as a difference between genres or media. The distinction should be one of quality. I find a lot of literary fiction, for example, to be pretentious and uninsightful, while no small amount of genre fiction shows much greater craft and perspicacity into human nature. Likewise, much comic book art today—even the superhero stuff, not just underground or indie comics—is innovative and engaging, whereas the spaces set aside for current visual artists at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is generally ho-hum.

Omnivores have grasped this. There is significant value in all forms of art and sometimes the highest experience is to be had with the lowest art form, making it not so low after all.

I am glad to be an omnivore, and while I would hesitate to say that you should be one, too—for making omnivorous cultural behavior a moral imperative would be the kind of snobbishness detrimental to the omnivore’s cause—I would encourage anyone to be one. It is always good to broaden one’s horizons.