As Kaplan concludes, he considers the social functions of popular art. He sees its appeal in finding a common denominator among people. It is popular because it appeals to almost universal tastes. As to its function, popular art is no longer associated with serious cultural concerns, such as religion, love, war and politics, and the struggle for subsistence. Instead it has become, in Dewey’s words, “the beauty-parlour of civilization.” In other words, popular art is where we go to indulge our love of self, to enjoy ourselves, to escape into worlds of our own making.
Kaplan does not feel particularly alarmed by the rise of popular arts, seeing a limited place for it. He ends by saying, “If popular art gives us pleasant dreams, we can only be grateful-when we have wakened.” In other words, popular art is no more real (or significant) than our own night-dreams, but if they are pleasurable, who’s to complain? As long as we wake up, Kaplan seems to urge. A life lived in dream-state is pitiable and sad.
Of course, Kaplan is arguing as an aesthetician, and not as a Christian. While Kaplan is enormously helpful in identifying the nature of popular art – and therefore popular culture – he cannot help us determine its appropriateness for worship – or indeed, its effect on Christian discipleship. Here we must take his descriptions of popular art, and then compare it with what we know of worship and Christian living. To summarize Kaplan’s argument, popular art
* schematises and reduces art into an easily recognisable stereotype. Whether musical, poetical, literary or visual, the art is pre-digested so that its consumers instantly recognize the stereotype and fill in the outline with their own feelings.
* replaces perception with mere recognition. Popular art is essentially formless, it is simple in the sense that it is easy. It reminds us of what we know, it prompts us to feel what we already feel. Our familiar feelings are simply reinforced. Through its stereotypes, we associate certain feelings with the work, while not being transformed in our own emotions.
* moves in a close circle around the self. The art only has significance in light of the viewer. He sees himself in its materials, with the art providing easily recognizable prototypes to project himself upon. The result is wallowing in our own feelings: feeling, without understanding of our feelings. This is sentimentalism.
* creates an escape into childish versions of reality which exist nowhere, and which return us to reality unchanged.
In essence, popular art represents childish and immature taste. It appeals to narcissism and infantile self-obsession. It flatters an impulse in every human.
If Christian worship is the admiration and adoration of a beautiful God, will this art enable or disable worship? Is it compatible with benevolent love, denial of self, ordinate affection and realism? If the culture needed to cultivate a Christian epistemology will emerge from Christian worship – and Christian worship will emerge from Christian art – what kind of culture will emerge from narcissistic worship? What kind of epistemology will be shaped by the art of popular culture?
