Culture is Ordinary - Midterm

The real growth will be slow and uneven, but state provision, frankly,
should be growth in this direction, and not a means of diverting
public money to the preservation of a fixed and finished partial
culture. As the same time, if we understand cultural growth, we shall
know that it is a continual offering for common acceptance; that we
should not, therefore, try to determine in advance what should be
offered, but clear the channels and let all the offerings be made,
taking care to give the difficult full space, the original full time,
so that it is a real growth, and not just a wider confirmation of old
rules. (92-93)

In this passage, Raymond Williams explains his prediction of the future through the eyes of his self-created "Culture is Ordinary" inspired manifesto. Williams, after extrapolating on the tenants of the culture-forwarding proposition itself, warns his readers of the anticipated struggle, but justifies the effort with his ideas of what should be, that ordinary and valuable culture in of all sorts might be embraced.

The whole essay, "Culture is Ordinary," seems to be written in a highly intelligent stream of consciousness style, in that while the entire text is well-worded and precise in meaning, the author jumps about--from family anecdotes, to collegiate readings, to personal theories and experiences--with loose, easily read structure. This way of writing forwards the theme stated in the title, argued by Williams as he explains how every society has culture by necessity, and judgment of better or worse, lower or higher culture is antithetical to the point of culture in itself. Culture, Williams believes, is found in the acts of observing, of analyzing, of learning, and the quality of the material from which one learns, as decided by some other power, is relatively irrelevant to the existence of culture itself.

After Williams explains his ideas on culture in general, he summons his readers to help him change the worldview of culture for his theme. The passage at the top of this post is one of the most rousing in the text, as he shows the reader how things can be better, should we work for change, for the enhancement and spread of all culture, regardless how good or bad any judge deems it. Williams, earlier in the essay, defies the suggestion that bad culture drives out good culture, countering the analogy with the fact that good culture has, thus far, maintained itself, specifically in the case of the New York Times. Because he believes in an embrace of all culture as a positive development in every equally ordinary society, Williams demands that more money be devoted to all these sorts of equally ordinary cultures.

This passage carries strains of the apocalyptic in that it is a call-to-arms, and whenever arms are involved, there's always a chance that the world could end. Williams wants real change, dynamic change, and a definite breaking down of the current structure to happen, in an explosion of learning and the arts that could indeed prove apocalyptic to the world as it is right now. Imagine if, as suggested on the same page as the aforementioned passage, the amount of money spent on advertising and that spent on libraries, galleries, museums, and orchestras were indeed reversed. The social hierarchy that so firmly proclaims the fate of the starving artist and the wealthy businessman would be turned on its head. Children who wanted to go to college for business would worry their parents sick; those who chose to embrace their artistic passions would be universally celebrated. Such a world is hardly imaginable in our current culture--so many stories, biographical and fictional, depend on adversity in art.

What if artists were successful? Would the resulting work carry the poignancy of the battle to express that it does now? Would this cultural apocalypse end in an explosion of art without the necessary heart and passion of tribulation? Or, would the resulting art, no matter the circumstance in which it was created, be ordinary, and thus, to Williams, equally ordinary?