D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism 
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 46:
I do not want to succumb to the elitism that makes sharp distinctions between popular and high culture.
[Footnote] See, for example the telling review of Kenneth A. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture (Westchester: Crossway, 1989), written by William Edgar and published in Westminster Theological Journal 53 (1991): 377–80.
From Bill Edgar’s review:
Despite the many attractive features of this book, and the welcome emphasis on apologetics for the ordinary modern person, this reviewer has serious reservations about some of its basic assumptions. The most questionable is the concept of popular culture itself. Myers divides the cultural world up sharply between those things that belong to basically good high culture, and those that belong to basically problematic popular culture. He equates high culture with tradition, and attributes to it such characteristics as focusing on timelessness, encouraging reflection, requiring training and ability, conforming to the created order, referring to the transcendent, etc. (p. 120). By contrast, popular culture focuses on the new and instantaneous, is a leisure activity, appeals to sentimentality, is individualistic, and tends toward relativism.
This view has many advocates, including such strange bedfellows as C. S. Lewis and Jacques Ellul. But at best it is an élitism, and at worst it is Marxist or dialectical. Myers believes popular culture is a child of modernity in general, and of the Industrial Revolution in particular. His thesis is that modernity creates an atmosphere of boredom for society, and that in order to escape from the meaninglessness of technology, exciting distractions are needed (pp. 60–61.). While it is true that the Industrial Revolution affected art in various ways, the real picture is not so simple. Some high art was escapist, perhaps far more so than low art. And much popular culture is deep, rich, and full of meaning. Partly through technology, art of all kinds has been made available to all kinds of people. But this democratization does not lead inevitably to degeneration, as Myers contends.
One of the difficulties is an assumption that confuses the greater degree of density of high culture with depth of meaning, and mistakes the seriousness of high art with beauty. . . .
In his brief closing chapter, Myers anticipates the criticism of his being too negative. He reassures the reader that it is possible to enjoy popular culture without falling into its idols (p. 180). Yet he has not given us any positive elements to enjoy.
Update: Cf. D. A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 1:
Not very long ago, “culture” commonly referred to what is now meant by “high culture.” For instance, we might have said, “She has such a cultured voice.” If a person read Shakespeare, Goethe, Gore Vidal, Voltaire, and Flaubert, and listened to Bach and Mozart while reading a slender volume of poetry, all the while drinking a mild Chardonnay, he was cultured; if he read cheap whodunits, Asterix, and Eric Ambler—or, better yet, did not read at all—while drinking a beer or a Coke, all the while listening to ska or heavy metal and paying attention to the X-Box screen with the latest violent video game, he was uncultured. But this understanding of “culture” must, sooner or later, be challenged by those who think of “high” culture as a species of elitism, as something intrinsically arrogant or condescending. For them, the opposite of “high culture” is not “low culture” but “popular culture,” with its distinct appeal to democratic values. But even the appeal to “popular culture” is not very helpful for our purposes, because it appeals to only one part of “culture”: presumably there are various forms of “unpopular culture” out there too.
I just happen to be reading Myers for the first time, and he doesn’t make it as cut and dried as Edgar suggests:
“Of course, few works of popular culture are as bad as Kaplan’s theory describes. After all, it is a theory that holds true generally speaking. If one defined what a work of high culture was, it would be impossible to find something that completely fulfilled all such criteria perfectly. The purpose of such theorizing is not to argue that no work of popular art has any redeeming value. There are numerous films, television programs, rock songs, or detective novels that are splendid productions as entertainment and as art.” (p. 86)
And Myers would agree that today’s high culture is quite degraded as well. I think his point that prior to mass media high art forged ahead by the light of centuries of tradition that served as a measure of excellence (and that the excellent was the only thing that “stuck around” before modern means of information storage). That this is different than the way popular culture functions, at least in the main, seems simply manifest.
I’d recommend that you read Edgar’s entire review before you critique his analysis. The entire review seems sufficiently nuanced.
Fair enough.
I would not label the distinction between popular and high culture elitism. Consider this analogy: Is Carson a better NT exegete than I? I’ll go ahead and answer that: Yes, much better. But it is not elitism (or defeatism) that makes me say that. I recognize that Carson has more exegetical skills than I do and can make judgments that I cannnot. In the same way, some cultural critics are more adept at making cultural distinctions, especially with reference to beauty, than others. I do not consider this elitism, and I take their analysis seriously just as I do when listening to Carson lecture on some nuance of NT Theology.
Thanks, Richard. Granting what seems to be an unstated presupposition that we should trust the “experts” here, I still disagree with how you pigeonhole Carson. He’s not just a NT exegete. See, for example, this book (among many other works).
Dittos, Mr. Winston.
What in God’s universe is wrong with elitism? Sure, if by it one means a self-righteousness attitude, that’s one thing; but if by \elitism\ one simply means the ability to recognize superiority–to make hierarchical distinctions–well, only the equalitarianism of our age would make a man uncomfortable with that.
I bow to the academic superiority of Dr. Naselli, to the homiletic superiority of John Piper, to the spiritual superiority of many folks, etc. The only reason that these obviously appropriate distinctions are not popularly attributed to culture is that we have, by and large, imbibed the strange doctrine that forms don’t mean anything. Never mind that Augustine and Pascal and the Puritans and Lewis and Eliot disagreed (I won’t mention Postman or Myers since, apparently, nobody else finds them compelling).
Scott, just to clarify, neither Carson nor Edgar (nor I) argue that “forms don’t mean anything,” nor that the people you mention make valuable contributions.
I think most people would agree (excepting certain sophomores at community colleges) that distinctions of superiority exist between various expressions of culture. What seems, to me at least, to be more under consideration here is the accepted categorization of popular culture and high culture.
What creates these categories? If it were truly a division based on sophistication and aesthetics, then those in favor of such a distinction might have an argument. But many times the distinction is in fact based upon such factors as medium, novelty, or a range of other random and even arbitrary factors.
Consider Bill Watterson, who lamented the rigid categorization of high and low art based solely upon the medium. Tomorrow, however, some of today’s popular culture will become high culture. Perhaps our grandchildren will gaze disinterestedly at a selection of original “Calvin and Hobbes” prints in an art museum.
Furthermore, I think we all realize that the force behind the division of the categories is at least occasionally a form of reactionary elitism (in its more popular, pejorative definition), where we cling to something currently unpopular with the masses to give a sense of meaning and superiority to our little coterie.
So think I understand where Carson and Edgar are coming from and agree with them, from what I’ve read here at least.