softgrey said:
the concept of fashion as frivolous is something else...
are music and museums and art and films and books frivolous?...
art and design adds to our lives in an intangible way, i think, and makes the struggles of day to day life bearable...
To many people yes, these things are frivolous and not a meaningful part of their lives in any way. Artists are considered crackpots, blasphemers, or layabouts. Some people are proud of the fact that they never read, considering it an effete waste of time. In my opinion, this is an appalling cultural position, but a lot of people I have known have taken that stance. A great deal of the negative attitude toward high culture is due to lack of access to it. If you live way out in the boondocks, you certainly can't see original paintings in a gallery. You may not have TV access to see art films or televised plays, and you are even less likely to be able to go see a real, live play in a theatre. Symphony? Yeah right...the closest you can get is probably the highschool marching band playing Louie Louie at halftime at a school football game. If you never get a chance to familiarize yourself with the arts, it is easy to write it off as "rich people pretensions" or think that it must be pretty boring and trumped up--not a really big deal, since it's not shared/promoted across the country and across class lines. Then there's the leisure problem...a lot of working-class people, especially rural working class people, don't get much downtime, and when they do (and this is especially true for rural folk) they may have to travel a considerable distance to get to whatever the nearest cultural center is available. For example, my parents would have to go 30 miles to see a play at the local state college, but for anything more posh, it would be a 5 hour drive to Denver, CO or a 10 hour drive to Omaha or Lincoln, NE.
Then, there is the way art is frequently taught in the schools which renders the subject very dull. Ditto music appreciation. Many kids are brought to the subjects unwillingly, and made to see culture as an onerous duty...something one might pay dues to in order to fulfil a courseload, not something enjoyable for its own sake. More effort needs to be made to tie in more traditional media, such as painting and poetry with the sorts of media that kids in school appreciate already, like videos and popular music. For example, as a teenager, I came to a broader appreciation of literature via the heavy-metal road of Iron Maiden. For kids who don't come from a class or cultural millieu that values the arts, a relevant tangent is vital for hooking their interest. Finding subject matter that appeals to young people would be a good starting point, too. For instance, Robert Herrick's
The Vine, which is all about waking up with a boner or Marvell's
To His Coy Mistress, which is basically a "come on baby, let's get dirty, pleeeeeeease" poem. Culture need not be dry...and most classics are classics for a good damn reason, however the presentation of much of this material, in the schools, leaves a LOT to be desired!
I'm having a little trouble articulating my point.. I think what I'm trying to say is that just because my grandmother wears a sweatshirt and jeans everyday means she is lazy or uncultured. In fact my two grandmothers are the two most intelligent women I have ever met.. It's part of the moral structure of there being.. Fashion is seen as just another material evil.
pointup makes a very good point here. Fashion and/or a love of beauty are not mutually exclusive, and some very aesthetically inclined people do not choose to express their ideas of beauty via their wardrobes. I submit my own mother as example. She is a very intelligent, self-educated woman, fascinated with history and with other cultures (Russia and China in particular) but she has never travelled outside the US, she wears jeans and tee-shirts or sweaters most of the time, and prefers the Rolling Stones over Mozart any and every day. Fashion is not that important to some people, and high fashion is like another planet when you have to wait for a sale at Sears or Penney's.
I think one thing that people on the elite end of the cultural scale need to take in mind is that all levels of culture have some amount of intrinsic value. Even if you, personally don't like Professional Wrestling or Tchaikovsky doesn't necessarily indicate that you're a hoity-toity snob or a knuckle-dragging inbreeder. Those examples taken, Pro Wrestling involves some amazing feats of acrobatics and crowd-working and Tchaikovsky is probably one of the most compelling composers to have ever lived.
There is too much snobbery and reverse snobbery on either end of the cultural spectrum. More people should come to learn about, undestand, and possibly appreciate more aspects of high, middle, and lowbrow culture. There's some damn cool stuff out there, in every level.
im in over my head in this thread... trying to take everything in 
