Comment by Ivaylo Noizi Tsvetkov:
Why in our country is "culture" mainly understood as the so-called high culture? Why do we trample on one media outlet how only high culture would save us - while we collectively cry that it has been underfunded all our lives? And why in the modern world is it not and cannot be such a central populist topic as it is in our country?
These questions may sound philosophical - almost in the style of Hume's "Is there an innate moral precept?" - but in fact it should not be so complicated. Because first, "culture" is everything related to the ennoblement of the human soul (the word comes from Latin and was used for the process of growing plants), and secondly, in the broader sense it can be summarized most roughly as "shared community values", with the key word here being "shared".
In this sense, "culture" seems to be neither healthy nor productive to be perceived solely and necessarily as a way of elevation, but rather as both the basis and continuation of group identity, psychology and taste.
Cultures are both boutique and mass
Kits and pop folk (on our soil, but far from only) are also types of cultures. I even hopelessly insist that the Ministry of Culture should be called "Ministry of Cultures" for greater clarity. Very simple why - culture is not the only one (by our presumption - high), and all types of culture, more boutique or more mass, have the right to life. Anyone can admit this, even if they are stuck in the high, terrible cultural degradation like me.
The second question here is more or less the following: High culture, to which we are sworn adepts, has suffered immensely from the digital revolution and the image revolution, after which pictures are not worth a hundred, let alone a thousand words. Should high culture in this environment necessarily strive to be dominant? For a die-hard fan of pop folk (where there are a bunch of specific behavioral models and subcultures), Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" is probably some unbearable noise with deafening cymbals. On the other hand, for someone who has heard that it is good to be highly cultured, going to any theater is not just acceptable, but a kind of self-indulgence.
Aren't we overdoing high culture?
High culture requires, first, a family environment, secondly, an educational one, and thirdly - a state concept for the slowest process in the world after the half-life of uranium - enculturation. What worries me greatly is that everyone is beating Stravinsky's populist and deafening cymbals only about the underfunded high culture. This underfunding is a fact, but probably 159 other countries around the world can say the same (I counted them). The rest somehow live peacefully - mainly in the First World - where there is an audience for everyone on the floors of this metaphorical building.
And here comes the third non-Humean, but downright Epicurean question: About the scale of the market. Ours has shrunk into its possible shell, the consumers of any product culture ("product", I'm counting) are hardly over a million in total. It's a shame that there is no such cultural-anthropological study, we need to think about the issue. And here another slightly unpleasant sub-question arises: Are we not producing too much high culture? Inside which there are also floors, and, God forbid, indefensible taste claims?
Anyway. Part of the problem presented in our country through media propaganda is that while the populist version of "simplification" has toured the nation (and Facebook), the valuable at that time still put on its patent leather shoes. Of course, with the opening of the cultural and all kinds of floodgates in the 1990s, a pitifully imitative and essentially mass culture of the "lower class" was created, which was simmering like in a pressure cooker even in the late socialist era. But it - mi dispiace - does not interfere and practically has not taken away space from the High, it simply exploded to satisfy existing mass tastes.
And here it seems that one of the tasks of the High is not to grumble like a widow about, say, the inheritance tax, but to do what it does better and better. And the state? It has almost never been "cultural" anywhere in history per se, simply because in its peculiar to-do list, culture cannot possibly come before the economy, energy, and recently defense.
So that high culture does not lose its finality
Let me remind you again: High culture is high everywhere: it knows well in more mature nations that it will always lose the match with the popular (low) one. But only we - and parts of Eastern Europe - tear our shirts over this issue, as if the full unread libraries of the socialists and the fact that the young do not know "the writer Rachmaninoff" mean something. As an Anglophile, I will remind you that no one in England would even think of calling the low imitative rap culture of minorities "simplification".
No, the approach should be different, because in a communication sense, high culture in our country does not do anything proactive, but simply exists and is angry that the state does not change its diapers often enough. The possible new approach includes new short forms, tik-toks, educational proactivities and, above all, a market concept - as with any business or industry that is placed in an extraordinary crisis situation and resolutely does not want to die, rather than praying and waiting for a left-wing command breath.
Finally: Don't rush, I know that high culture creates incalculable and exponential value, I am entirely its child. I know that it should not be treated by the Bulgarian state as a jerk, too suitable for any political populist who will not perform a single useful erg of what people like Yavor Gardev have performed in the theater. But let's take it easy on these issues, because in conditions of a liberal democracy, all types of culture have an inalienable right to life, as long as they do not violate the law and, alas, good taste. The latter, unfortunately, is an impossible dream.
The other is from the Evil One.