Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

The cultural field 219
aesthetic difference. The class relations of the cultural field are structured around two
divisions: on the one hand, between the dominant classes and the subordinate classes,
and on the other, within the dominant classes between those with high economic capital
as opposed to high cultural capital, and those with high cultural capital as opposed
to high economic capital. Those whose power stems primarily from cultural rather
than economic power are engaged in a constant struggle within the cultural field ‘to
raise the social value of the specific competences involved in part by constantly trying
to raise the scarcity of those competences. It is for this reason that . . . they will always
resist as a body moves towards cultural democracy’ (220). 50
As we noted in Chapter 1 (see also Chapter 9), for Bourdieu (1984) the category of
‘taste’ functions as a marker of ‘class’ (using the word in a double sense to mean both
a socio-economic category and the suggestion of a particular level of quality). At the
pinnacle of the hierarchy of taste is the ‘pure’ aesthetic gaze – a historical invention –
with its emphasis on form over function. The ‘popular aesthetic’ reverses this emphasis,
subordinating form to function. Accordingly, popular culture is about performance,
high culture is about contemplation; high culture is about representation, popular culture
is about what is represented. As he explains, ‘Intellectuals could be said to believe
in the representation – literature, theatre, painting – more than in the things represented,
whereas the people chiefly expect representations and the conventions which
govern them to allow them to believe “naively” in the things represented’ (5).
Aesthetic ‘distance’ is in effect the denial of function: it insists on the ‘how’ and not
the ‘what’. It is analogous to the difference between judging a meal good because it was
economically priced and filling, and judging a meal good on the basis of how it was
served, where it was served. The ‘pure’ aesthetic or cultured gaze emerges with the emergence
of the cultural field, and becomes institutionalized in the art museum. Once
inside the museum art loses all prior functions (except that of being art) and becomes
pure form: ‘Though originally subordinated to quite different or even incompatible
functions (crucifix and fetish, Pieta and still life), these juxtaposed works tacitly
demand attention to form rather than function, technique rather than theme’ (30). For
example, an advertisement for soup displayed in an art gallery becomes an example of
the aesthetic, whereas the same advertisement in a magazine is an example of commerce.
The effect of the distinction is to produce ‘a sort of ontological promotion akin
to a transubstantiation’ (6).
As Bourdieu says, ‘it is not easy to describe the “pure” gaze without also describing
the naive gaze which it defines itself against’ (32). The naive gaze is of course the gaze
of the popular aesthetic:
The affirmation of continuity between art and life, which implies the subordination
of form to function ...a refusal of the refusal which is the starting point of
the high aesthetic, i.e. the clear cut separation of ordinary dispositions from the
specially aesthetic disposition (ibid.).
The relations between the pure gaze and the popular/naive gaze are needless to say
not those of equality, but a relation of dominant and dominated. Moreover, Bourdieu