The Playboy Panel: America's Cultural Explosion—Its Scope and Challenge

one of a series of provocative conversations about subjects of interest on the contemporary scene

Panelists

David Brinkley, a television newsman and commentator of singular intelligence and wit, is seen nightly on NBC's Emmy-winning Huntley-Brinkley Report, periodically as writer-narrator of his own wry documentary specials and as coanchor man (with Chet Huntley) at such top-rated special events as the political conventions. Before joining NBC, he was a reporter for the Wilmington Star-News in his native North Carolina, and bureau manager for the United Press in several other Southern cities.

Aaron Copland, long recognized as one of America's most distinguished composers, has lectured on music at many colleges and universities, and is a frequent visiting conductor with some of the nation's finest symphony orchestras. Winner of a 1944 Pulitzer Prize for music, an Oscar for his 1949 film score for The Heiress, and a gold medal for music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he is perhaps best known for such works as Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring, Lincoln Portrait and an opera, The Tender Land. His books include What to Listen for in Music and Music and Imagination.

Murray Kempton, the recently resigned editor of The New Republic and currently a columnist for the New York World-Telegram, is a widely respected reporter, liberal spokesman and social critic. As a columnist for the New York Post from 1949 to 1962, he earned a nationwide reputation as a provocative commentator on everything from progressive jazz to reactionary politics. A collection of his columns, entitled America Comes of Middle Age, has been published by Little, Brown. An earlier Kempton book was Part of Our Time—Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties.

Russell Lynes, managing editor of and regular contributor to Harper's Magazine, is an insightful analyst of contemporary American manners and mores. In such books as The Tastemakers, Snobs, Guests, A Surfeit of Honey, The Domesticated Americans and a satirical novel, Cadwallader, he has popularized the use of those now-familiar status categories: "highbrow," "lowbrow," "middlebrow," and many of their permutations.

Dore Schary, no less successful as an author and playwright than as a motion-picture producer-director, has won an Academy Award for producing Boys Town and an Antoinette Perry award for writing the hit play Sunrise at Campobello. His newest play, One by One—which he will also produce and direct—is scheduled to open this season on Broadway. In addition to his work in films and the theater, Mr. Schary is active in Manhattan cultural affairs.

David Susskind, the peripatetic president of Talent Associates-Paramount, Ltd., is a versatile producer of quality drama: for television (Du Pont Show of the Month, East Side, West Side), theater (Rashomon) and films (All the Way Home, A Raisin in the Sun). Honored for such productions with a mantelpieceful of Peabody, Sylvania and Academy awards, he is better known to the public as an outspoken and often embattled critic of mediocrity in the arts—a reputation which he reaffirms weekly on Open End, the widely acclaimed TV discussion series of which he has been the moderator since 1958.

Alvin Toffler is the author of The Culture Consumers (just published by St. Martin's Press), the first book-length study of America's "cultural explosion" and its nationwide ramifications. An advisor to the Rockefeller Brothers' Fund Study of the Performing Arts, he has also lectured on the U. S. mass media at the Salzburg Seminar in American studies. Formerly a labor columnist, reporter and Washington news correspondent, he has contributed widely to such magazines as Fortune, Saturday Review, Show and Playboy, for which he wrote The Little World of David Merrick (October 1963) and has conducted Playboy Interviews with Vladimir Nabokov (January 1964) and Ayn Rand (March 1964).

[Q] Playboy: There are pervasive signs that this country is in the midst of an unprecedented cultural explosion. Theater and opera attendance, for example, has increased 115 percent during the lifetime of television. Since 1950, the number of amateur painters has grown from 30,000,000 to 40,000,000. And contrary to popular belief, the national pastime would seem to be music: Twice as many Americans now attend concerts as go to baseball games; some 19,000,000 classical LPs were sold last year; there are more piano players than licensed fishermen; and the number of symphony orchestras throughout the nation has increased from 800 to more than 1250 in the past 15 years, most of the new ones in cities with populations of 50,000 or less. The purchase of hard-cover and paperback books is increasing three times faster than the population; some $1,600,000,000 worth were sold last year alone. The number of nonprofessional theater groups, meanwhile, has proliferated to more than 5000—plus some 20,000 dramatic workshops organized by clubs, churches, high schools and universities. In the late Forties, there were only a dozen or so U. S. art movie-houses, half of them in New York, which regularly screened foreign films, classics and experimental shorts; today there is a nationwide circuit of more than 500 art theaters, from which many foreign films go on to run in 5000 other downtown and neighborhood moviehouses.

[Q] Arnold Mitchell, an economist for the Stanford Research Institute, predicts that "the trend toward culture will create a total arts market of about seven billion dollars by 1970." All in all, the Stanford Institute estimates that 120,000,000 Americans a year attend cultural events or otherwise express their growing interest in the graphic and performing arts. Such statistics notwithstanding, some critics have contended that this culture boom is little more than a status-motivated expression of conspicuous consumption on the part of an increasingly affluent middlebrow public. Do you agree, gentlemen?

[A] Lynes: I think that the importance of these statistics has been greatly inflated. Take museum attendance, for example. What difference does it make to the culture of the nation that 100,000 people will come in an afternoon to look at the Mona Lisa? This doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of cultural interest. It's partly "What will we do with the kids on Sunday afternoon?" And it's partly the same kind of impulse that makes people want to be the first across a new bridge. There's a story about a ten-year-old boy who burst into the Metropolitan Museum where a group of people were looking at a Rembrandt worth $300,000. "Where's the hundred-dollar picture?" the boy asked. It's that kind of reaction. There's nothing the matter with it, but it doesn't mean anything statistically.

[A] Susskind: Well, I feel that these statistics are important, because they give at least an indication of the tastes of that part of the population that can be measured—the part that is going to concerts, that is attending museums, that is buying paperback books and good records. I doubt that you can accurately measure a society's qualitative cultural thirst in quantitative terms, but these statistics give important indications of the appetites abroad in the country. I think it unquestionable that there is an increasing thirst to know more, understand more, appreciate more. We are obviously feeding the mainstream of our society with more educated people every June than ever before. And these people are coming into the society with a higher level of cultural wants than their parents and grandparents did.

[A] Schary: But we have seen in other civilizations—the Greek and Roman, for instance—that a burgeoning of the arts isn't enough to assure a truly cultured society. Even Socrates was politically backward, insisting on a caste system and maintaining that some men were born to be slaves. So with regard to all this talk about a current cultural explosion, I would be much more excited and much more impressed if we were less hypocritical in our moral attitude toward it. I find it hard to believe that a man is cultured when he buys a painting and then uses it as a device to reduce his income tax. By my criteria, a lot of nonsense is being written and spoken about this alleged cultural explosion. Culture to me is much more a way of life than it is the ownership of a great collection of stereophonic classical records or some valuable paintings or a bookcase full of first editions—or even a scholarly understanding of James Joyce. To me, a man who owns a great collection of first editions and belongs to a club that discriminates against Jews or Negroes is not a cultured man.

[A] Susskind: I agree. If statistics were the ultimate measure, pre-War Germany would have to be considered the most erudite, the most cultured society in the 20th Century. And it turned out to be a society capable of incredible barbarism.

[A] Toffler: Granted, but I don't think it can be denied that there has been a revolutionary turnabout as far as the arts themselves are concerned in the U. S. In a country that traditionally looked with indifference upon the arts, we have suddenly developed a craving for culture. Some people say this craving is chiefly status climbing, but I disagree sharply with that view. Certainly there is some element of chichi and social cachet involved in the culture explosion. But these are really quite minor elements in the over-all motivation.

[A] Schary: But what have the qualitative results been? Harold Schonberg, the music critic of The New York Times, has pointed out that the cultural boom is not nearly so impressive as it appears to be, that what we call musical centers, for example, are really not musical centers at all. They don't program sufficiently fresh and challenging music. Also I fail to see a burgeoning cultural explosion in the Broadway theater or even in the off-Broadway theater. And I fail to see it, with some notable exceptions, in American films.

[A] Toffler: As for Mr. Schonberg, I wouldn't lean too heavily on his pronouncement that the culture explosion is unimpressive. He has also written, and I quote: "Compared with what used to be encountered 25 years ago, the last decade has been virtually a renaissance, and may be recognized as such in history." Actually, I wouldn't go so far as to call this a renaissance. But I'm very optimistic about what's happening. Our musicians and dancers and actors, for example, are as technically expert as any in the world. Older artists are amazed at the technical proficiency of the young people coming out of the conservatories and art schools today. And our programing is far richer and more varied than ever before. Just collect some concert programs and see what's being played. Listen to FM. Go to art galleries and see the fantastic variety of art on display.

[A] Another good index, by the way, is what others think of us. There is ample evidence that Europe and the rest of the world have gained new respect for American culture in the last few years. American painting has stormed the world, American architecture is closely watched abroad. American plays—Miller, Albee, Williams, among others—are being performed all over the world. And European artists are coming to the United States to live and work exactly the way our artists used to go to Paris and Rome 40 years ago. The reason is simple. This is where the action is.

[Q] Playboy: Several skeptical critics have said that this "action" consists largely of unprofessional and insignificant work performed by a growing army of amateur artists, musicians, poets, composers and writers. Is this true, in your opinion?

[A] Toffler: To begin with, I don't think "amateur" is a dirty word. It's true that the largest part of the cultural explosion does represent amateur activity. But if we look around more closely—at such places as St. Paul or Winston-Salem, for example—we will find that even in amateur organizations, there is a definite movement toward professionalism. Amateur orchestras that can't afford to pay a hundred men professional wages will engage professionals to take on the chief functions in the orchestra. Community theaters will hire a professional director so that even at the lowest levels, there is an upgrading toward professional standards. If you focus too much on the amateur nature of much current activity, you tend to underestimate the many influences in this country that are raising tastes rather than lowering them. Look at the ubiquity of really first-rate classical music recordings and the great spread in FM broadcasting in the past ten years. It's simply no longer true that because a town has only an amateur orchestra, the inhabitants have no exposure to really fine professional music. The availability of good recordings and good music on the air makes it inevitable that those who go to a concert by an amateur orchestra probably come to that concert with a higher set of standards than they had ten and fifteen years ago. They know what first-rate performances sound like. The public isn't as stupid and insensitive as a lot of our critics like to think.

[A] Schary: I still ask what difference it makes if more Bach is being played or more people are reading Miller or Joyce? This cuts no ice at all. What I want to analyze is the nature of the fabric of our society. What is the temper of our moral steel? How indignant do we get? I think it's wonderful that there are people interested in building museums. And I'm glad more people are going to those museums than ever before. But what relationship has this to what kind of people we are? My God, we're talking about going to the moon. We can orbit a man for 80 days around the earth. We can fly around the earth in 48 minutes. But we still haven't learned to live with one another. Is this culture? Is this progress? We've added 25 years to the life span of man, but we also have a way of knocking us all off in 50 seconds—in a thermonuclear war. Is this progress in terms of real culture? I hardly think so.

[Q] Playboy: Do you agree with novelist Herbert Kubly, who has claimed that "to really evaluate any aesthetic improvement in our national life, we would have to know how many of the millions who go to concerts can tell Bach from Beethoven, whether the playgoers who mass-purchase tickets to hits have ever been moved in the theater, whether the thousands who shuffle glazed-eyed through the galleries really see a painting and whether the million books sold each year are read with discernment"?

[A] Copland: I'm not so concerned with the mass public that doesn't really understand the difference between the various composers—or even the various arts. But I am very concerned that some young guy in some little town in Arizona now has a chance to make contact with art in a way that would not have been possible before. If art is very important for him and if he is a real artist and a cultural person by nature, the fact that culture has spread so widely all over the country is an enormous advantage. As for the mass public, I'm afraid that they get from the arts only what they bring to them, either by instinct or background, or through whatever education they've had in the arts. It'll be a long time before we get here the feeling that we get when we're in Europe: that even though someone never goes to a concert or to an art gallery, the whole idea of culture has somehow seeped into him. In France, for example, after a thousand years of cultural life, everybody seems to have some notion of what it's all about—even those who don't have direct contact with it.

[A] Susskind: I think we're beginning to get that sense in this country, too. I don't think paperbacks are being bought for decorative purposes. They don't look particularly handsome in a bookcase. I think they're being read. I think an honest attempt is being made to understand the material, to absorb it and to use it in life. But I don't think people are buying Bach or Beethoven records or going to hear an economist's lecture out of some kind of status seeking. I think they're going out of a need, an appetite, and I think that's healthy. Unfortunately, it's still a minority appetite. But it's a fast-growing minority. I was very impressed a year or so ago on Open End when we had six outstanding college graduates who were discussing their various leisure-time activities. I discovered that good foreign movies were very much a part of their cultural diet, whereas the bad Hollywood movie was no part of their diet, that increasingly it was the documentary and the occasional good thing on television that they watched—or they didn't watch at all. This kind of American is swelling the population in such geometrically increasing numbers that the graduation class five or ten years from now may conceivably be double or triple what it is today—in quality as well as quantity. To try to find out if they really know the difference between Bach and Beethoven—this is secondary. And I think it's quibbling.

[A] Copland: Agreed that it's healthy, but I'm talking about the general atmosphere of a country. When I go to a hall for a performance in America and seek out the superintendent of the building and say "I'm performing here tonight," he gives me a cold stare that doesn't indicate any interest at all. On the other hand, when I check into a hotel in France and they give me an affiche to fill out that says Occupation, and I put down Composer, the woman who gets that little piece of paper looks at me in a somewhat different way than if I had put down Businessman. That sort of thing takes a long time to develop. You can't hope for it here, where the cultural explosion has been so comparatively recent. It reminds me a little of the situation in Israel when I was there in 1952. Though the country was only a couple of years old, there were already composers who were anxious to sound like Israeli composers. But it takes time for the two things to develop together.

[A] Schary: I don't think it's only quibbling. For instance, I thought Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a very important and moving play. It was also a hit, but I wonder how many of those who went to see it truly appreciated it. My saying this may classify me as a kind of snob. I may be assuming that my own appreciation of that play was unique or special, but I'll have to take that risk, I suppose. I just can't help wondering how many of those who went really knew what Albee was saying, and how many because they had heard there were phrases in it like "hump the hostess" and "screw you"—went, in other words, to be titillated rather than moved. It's good to see that Shakespeare still remains the most widely produced playwright in the world. It's good to see Tyrone Guthrie's theater in Minneapolis. But that's not enough. A swallow does not the summer make. I'm still waiting to see an appreciation here of a decent way of life. Then I'll believe in the cultural explosion.

[A] Brinkley: To return to the question, it seems to me that Mr. Kubly's question as to whether someone is "cultured" or not is impossible to measure. Even if by some magic you were able to ask all of those people who have bought the tickets and have been to the plays and the concerts, if you were able to ask why they went and what they got out of the experience, I doubt if most of them could tell you. I think that sort of question is pretty vague and meaningless and purposeless. After all, if they want to go to plays—or don't—it's their business. If they're moved by them—or they aren't—that's their business, too. There is a great deal of snobbishness in this discussion about the "true" worth and the "true" value of the so-called cultural explosion. Suppose some of the people who go to concerts don't know the difference between Bach and Beethoven; what difference does it make? Is it something for us to worry about? Would it be better if they didn't go at all? I don't know the answer to the question and I wonder if it need ever have been asked.

[A] Toffler: I agree. It's a totally subjective issue. We can't enter the skull of an American concertgoer. We can't know what's going on inside his brain or his nervous system. And the same thing goes for Europeans. Mr. Copland suggested that Europeans are more cultured than we are. Maybe so. But with all due respect, that's a galloping generalization. We can't know what, if anything, goes through the mind of the aristocratic noble as he dozes off in the middle of a Haydn symphony. We can't know what's passing through the mind of a European shuffling through the Louvre. It's time we stopped making automatic pejorative comparisons.

[Q] Playboy: In this connection, the late A. Whitney Griswold, president of Yale University, said that "We have become too much a nation of lookers and listeners, a nation of spectators ... our creative powers have atrophied." Do you think he's correct, gentlemen?

[A] Kempton: Well, I can't carry a tune. Does this mean that I am debarred? Certainly I shouldn't inflict myself as a performer on the public, but am I therefore forbidden to listen to other people perform? I don't see anything wrong with being a nation of lookers and listeners—though it may be that we are slightly overmanaged. We have a few too many book clubs, a few too many lectures by Leonard Bernstein on why we should appreciate Bach—even if we don't—and a few too many comments on the problems of our culture by people who do not habitually read poems and novels.

[A] Brinkley: But to answer the statement directly, if we have become a nation of listeners rather than creators, who's playing in all those 1200 symphony orchestras? Who paints all those pictures, good and bad, that you find on every firehouse lawn across the country on art-exhibit days? Who are all these people I see painting in the parks? Whether they do it well or badly is another question, but they are painting. It seems to me that there is more creativeness now, certainly in terms of numbers, than I can remember in the past.

[A] Susskind: I completely agree. Though we probably are a spectator country, I think we're coming out of that. We're evolving into a country of doers. We are only now at a point where to be a painter or to be interested in something cultural is no longer to be considered an antisocial kook. We have been an anti-intellectual society. The worst political epithet up until perhaps a decade ago was "egghead." But I think we're evolving into a culture where brains do matter, where intellectuals are the object of respect and attention and pride. Along with that goes a respect for people who do rather than watch.

[A] Schary: But we're battered from morning to night with opportunities to listen, to be spectators. As a result, there has been a diminution of the process of meditation—and meditation is a creative process. There has been a diminution of the ability to just get away and be by yourself and think. When you're in the city, you feel an urgency about all the magazines and the newspapers that keep pouring in. We've got to get to that new restaurant and we've got to get to see that new show and all the new exhibits. We've got to participate in everything. And we participate and participate until we lose the essential power of meditation and thought. This kind of spectator life to me is not culture.

[Q] Playboy: The fact remains that public interest and participation in the arts has never been so keen—or so widespread both socially and geographically. And some commentators contend that this new national appetite for culture is most pronounced not in such cosmopolitan centers as New York and San Francisco, but in the hinterlands—in hundreds of smaller cities and communities throughout the country. Do you agree, gentlemen?

[A] Lynes: Yes, and one of the factors that has contributed to this dissemination and leveling out of culture is our communications systems. In the middle of the last century, it used to take a fashion in women's clothes ten years to get from the Eastern seaboard to the Mississippi. Today, if it takes ten seconds, that's a lot. Now these things are immediately everywhere. Therefore, you are inevitably going to level out the cultural valleys, the "square areas." Being a New Yorker, I think New York is still the center of culture, but what happens is that as you get into communities remote from that center, you do find enclaves of people who are determined to have culture—and that's where you have cinema societies and little groups of people who insist on being avant-garde about their painting and their reading. This is the upper-bohemian underground. I think these people, in a sense, work harder for their culture because they feel more embattled about it. We don't have to work for culture in New York. There's so much of it that we can't possibly take advantage of it all. What I mean is that if you have to work for it, you read more penetratingly. You will have heightened sensitivity to visual experience. You'll get more delight from films, and you'll be more critical about them.

[A] Schary: I do think, nonetheless, that the most sophisticated audiences are still in the major metropolitan centers. I do a lot of traveling, and I've found that when you get out of the big areas—Boston or Chicago or San Francisco or New York—and you try to get a program of good music on the radio, you can go out of your mind. You get nothing but bad rock 'n' roll, bad folk singing or bad mountain music, depending on what area you're in. I just don't think the whole country has become as sophisticated as Mr. Lynes has implied.

[A] Copland: I agree that the big cities are still the cultural centers. The great advantage of the big cities is not so much the size of their populations, but the fact that every big city generally contains a nucleus of perhaps 350 people who are very important in the life of that city; they are the ones who care most passionately about the arts, and on whom you can depend for an audience, especially for far-out art of any kind. Without them, something is seriously lacking. When you go to some small town in Iowa, for instance, you very much sense the lack of such a nucleus. You find an occasional person—say, a member of a university faculty—but you don't have that essential group of those who are in the know and who set the cultural tone of the community. As far as I can see, you need the great numbers of a big city in order to produce these small groups. And I should add that the nucleus does not seem to me to be that much larger these days. When I go to an avant-garde concert now in New York and compare it with an avant-garde concert in the 1920s, I see those same 350 people. The faces have all changed, but the number of those really passionately interested remains about the same. I don't mean to imply that these nuclei are only in New York, of course. All the big cities have them, and all the big university centers—even the University of Texas.

[A] Susskind: I think you're underestimating the degree to which this country has torn down the provincial gates in cultural terms. All over the country the things we've been discussing are doing better proportionately—and in some cases are far outdistancing the big urban centers like New York City. There's that old bromide that there's nothing west of the Hudson river that matters. Well, there's a whole population out there that does matter, and it's a population that at the very least is in step with the cultural explosion and at the very best is ahead of it, compared with New York. I can think of two excellent showmen who have frequently found audiences outside New York much more responsive, much more giving, much more totally involved than the New York and Boston audiences. Peter Ustinov made that observation after touring the country with a play. And I think Tyrone Guthrie in Minneapolis is experiencing this same kind of excitement as he discovers that in the hinterlands there is a burgeoning desire for the better things. Actually, I don't think such cities as New York and Chicago are keeping pace with the growth in the hinterlands. Out there with more leisure and with a life more conducive to enjoyment and reflection, they are somewhat in advance of our own frenetic, tired way of life. It's here in New York that you most often hear, "Look, I've had a hard day. When I come home, I want to relax with a good Western or a musical comedy." I think that's far less true of Minneapolis, of Houston. And if you read the reports of Howard Taubman in The New York Times as he visits communities all across the country, you'll see that he finds an electricity of response which proves that the "provinces" are very much involved in the cultural explosion.

[A] Toffler: I think this is most true of the university towns. From what I can gather from musicians and managers and bookers, the response to music, for one thing, at college campuses all over the country is really remarkable. These young, vivacious, alert audiences take to contemporary music at least as readily as the standard big-city audiences. And not only music. I think the most outdated cliché still infecting the judgment of many critics is the notion that they've cornered the market on sophistication and good taste. I think they're reacting out of a sense of violated exclusivity. What used to be their monopoly is no longer a monopoly at all.

[A] Kempton: Well, I'll say one thing about New York. I always love going to other cities and meeting the truly hip and sophisticated people there—because it always makes me feel so much more hip and sophisticated than they are; they suffer from a cultural lag about seven and a half months behind New York.

[A] Toffler: As a chauvinistic New Yorker, it pains me deeply to say this, but I don't think that kind of cultural lag is going to remain in effect much longer. Much of the really avant-garde experimentation is to be found on university campuses around the country. It's not concentrated in New York the way it once was. When one can see an Ionesco play—though it may not be well performed—in a Southern city of 50,000, then New York has begun to lose some of its strangle hold. Which is the orchestra that plays the most avant-garde work? It's not the New York Philharmonic. It's the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra under Lukas Foss. It's been called the "principal American orchestral sounding board" for such exploratory young composers as Cage, Feldman, Brown and their European counterparts. We're going to have to adjust ourselves to the notion that cultural primacy will have to be fought for in the future.

[A] Lynes: I'm not that certain that New York will lose its primacy. In every nation and even in every continent, there is always a cultural center to which those interested in the arts will gravitate. There isn't any artist in America, I think, who at some point doesn't want to come to New York and belong to the cultural community here. He may go back to the West Coast or get involved in some other community, but at some point in your career, you have to be directly involved in the life of the cultural center of your time. And in our time, it's New York.

[A] Susskind: Yes, there's truth in that. I say again that other sections of the country are equal to and in some cases beyond New York in their cultural appetite, but this is still the place where the World Series of the arts is played. When a man has won all the ball games he can win in Sacramento, he'll then want to come to New York and try to win in the biggest park of them all. And I think that in New York, too, he will always be given the deepest encouragement if he's doing something new—for our critics, perhaps because they're the most jaded, are the quickest to welcome the offbeat, the different and the fresh.

[Q] Playboy: Yet there are critics who complain that the avant-garde in any field—whether in New York or in a college town—has lost its capacity to arouse or affront the audience. Do you think this is true?

[A] Copland: You have to bear in mind that there is a difference between the 1920s—when the avant-garde did sometimes provoke fierce reactions—and the present. Even though avant-garde music then was actually less "shocking" than it is now, the 1920s represented the first time that people had heard such things. By now they've gotten used to the fact that there are such things in existence. The mere use of electronic music for film accompaniment, for instance, has accustomed people's ears to unusual sound effects, so that it's difficult even for the boys who are writing advanced electronic music now to create completely unprecedented and hair-raising sounds.

[A] Susskind: Don't forget, too, that our capacity to be shocked, affronted and actively indignant has probably been considerably reduced by three decades of fantastic realities. In other words, perhaps people could once have risen in moral indignation about a book or a play or about a piece of sculpture, but after you've seen whole populations burned in gas ovens, when you've witnessed nuclear horrors, when we have the capacity to end all human life, when all kinds of man-made catastrophes are within the immediate experience of every adult living today, it's difficult to become that indignant about an event in art. Reality has become so shocking, so horrendous and so frightening that response to cultural aggravation is somewhat more sotto voce than it used to be. That is not to say that plays don't exist that can agitate and move people to applause or to wrath. It only means that, compared to a march for peace or a march for civil rights, a march for Lady Chatterley's Lover seems rather a wasteful exercise.

[A] Lynes: There are other factors involved. One has to realize that part of the decrease in shock value is an increase in boredom, in indifference. When people are shocked all the time, who cares? I remember a few years ago being asked to a press conference being given by a group of abstract painters. They asked the press to come in and they then complained about how the attacks on abstract painting were vicious, and so on. Actually, by that time, there were no longer any attacks on abstract painting. But these boys were brought up to fight and they couldn't find a fight. So they were trying to pick a fight, because they had become accepted.

[A] Brinkley: There's yet another reason why people aren't so easily shocked anymore. In the past, there was a nearly universally accepted form or style in art, and the slightest departure from it was noticeable. But today there is no standard style that is universally accepted, so there is no base point from which you can determine the "legitimacy" of any new departure. Now if you have some paints and brushes and a piece of canvas, you can do just about anything and call it art—and maybe it is. There is so much freedom, so much experimentation that it's very hard to be shocked. To be shocked, you have to encounter a defiance of some generally accepted standard.

[A] Toffler: I think we're misunderstanding the whole business of "shock." When a person is educated and sophisticated, he simply is not shockable in the old way. He sees through the traditional ploys that artists have used to jolt him. So if the artist's purpose is to shock—a perfectly good purpose, but by no means a primary purpose of art—then he is going to have to find new ways of doing it. This isn't bad. It means that the audience is challenging the artist. It means that the culture consumer is more sensitive than he used to be, not less—but more sensitive to nuance and subtlety, not to the gross or the obvious.

[A] Kempton: I still think the point about the avant-garde no longer shocking people is valid. I don't see how people can get outraged anymore. After all, we're talking about consumers of the arts, and they're rather passive consumers. It's as if no one has told them they're permitted to become outraged. I find, by contrast, Mr. Khrushchev's views on literature and art rather refreshing. I would hate to be the object of any of them, but at least he's reacting emotionally. I would imagine that Mr. Khrushchev's taste in art is fully as cultivated as that of the average woman whose sense of property values tells her to buy abstract expressionism; but at least he does get excited. He's interested in what the argument is all about. Our problem in this country is that we're inhibited in our negative reactions; and when we do like something, we have already paid out so damn much of the coinage of compliment to things that aren't worth it, that it's difficult to have—or to convincingly show—any real enthusiasm for something that really is superior.

[A] Schary: I certainly don't think people get angry enough about art. I've had discussions with friends of mine who have bought some very avant-garde work which I frankly admit I don't understand. I believe most of it is junk, and I think it will be proved to be junk some years from now. I've argued this with friends who own some of this stuff, and they don't get angry. They try to explain to me reasonably that I misunderstand, that this is new and that at one time the works of the great masters were attacked. But they do this explaining without getting mad. I wish they would get angry. I wish people had more moral indignation. I think part of this lack of involvement in the arts and this dearth of highly personal opinion is based on this absence of moral indignation. It was considered square, for instance, to have been a little outraged at what happened in England with the Profumo case. Everybody said, "Aw, come on, you know we're all fooling around." I remember, at the time of the TV quiz scandals, the lack of moral indignation and the people who were saying, "Well now, come on, if you'd been in that spot, wouldn't you have done it?" And you found yourself sounding square when you said, "No, I wouldn't have done it. And you ought to be ashamed to think I would have done it." The structure of our income tax, moreover, encourages so much chicanery that it breeds a kind of immorality that's very hard to deal with and that further deadens the capacity for moral indignation. All of this is symptomatic of the kind of lack of moral indignation that makes our society placid and flaccid. I find that for myself, as I grow older, I get more radical. I get angrier as I see what's happening all over the country with the race problem and the failure of people to recognize that we've been hypocritical about it. People will not admit they're responsible for what's going on in race relations, to use that one example, but at the same time they pretend they're "cultured" because they're going to museums and buying classical records and the like. Well, this is ridiculous to me. Absolutely ridiculous.

[Q] Playboy: Critic Dwight Macdonald has written that much of the cultural explosion is actually "midcult," or middlebrow—as opposed to "high culture" on the one hand and to "masscult," as he calls it, on the other. He defines midcult as "a corruption of High Culture ... which is able to pass itself off as the real thing." The danger of midcult, according to Macdonald, is that it either rejects the truly creative artist, thus starving his talent—or it accepts him, thus cheapening his talent. Macdonald claims further that the prevalence of midcult taste makes it difficult for the untrained observer to distinguish among good, bad and mediocre art. Do you agree with this postulation?

[A] Lynes: I think the fact that an artist has a general kind of support does not necessarily smother him if he's really talented.

[A] Kempton: I don't think anything corrupts an artist except the needs of his wife and children, which Yeats pointed out are, after all, the main form of corruption—that, and the artist's own vanity and stupidity.

[A] Lynes: Besides, maybe an artist can't always do what he most ought to do. Take the Renaissance artist who designed chests and painted altarpieces and portraits: He was being half craftsman and half artist, or maybe three quarters of one and a quarter of the other. But this does not demean his work in any sense.

[Q] Playboy: But what of Macdonald's charge that ours is an age of midcult which masquerades as high culture?

[A] Lynes: I don't think anybody is really fooled. That danger is greatly exaggerated. Anyway, I did this "highbrow, upper-middlebrow, lower-middlebrow, lowbrow" thing almost 15 years ago. The ways of identifying them have simply changed since then. If I were to rewrite that piece, I'd have to change the specific examples. There has been a great deal of semantic confusion about this. There is a distinction, for instance, between "high culture" or highbrowism and the avant-garde. Highbrowism is a pose, while the avant-garde is not necessarily a pose at all. People forget that there is a distinction here between the consumer and the producer. I don't think about a highbrow painter; I think about a highbrow art lover. I have written a piece on leisure in which I said we ought to revive the word "dilettante." Dilettante means a man who takes delight in what he enjoys. The ideal consumer of art is the dilettante—who works at it, who enjoys it, who is intelligent about it.

[A] Kempton: Mr. Macdonald, I think, has a feeling that any magazine in which he writes is thereby elevated from mid-cult to responsible "upper midcult." I would have liked to have read Mr. Macdonald on that literary issue of Esquire—a magazine for which he writes—a couple of years ago. That, in terms of affectation, childishness, heterosexual camp and everything else I can think of, was the most disgusting thing I've ever read in my life. It even included the invasion of Allen Ginsberg's privacy, about which he doesn't care—but I care. If that issue wasn't vulgar, I don't know what the hell is. I don't in any sense criticize Macdonald. I have the utmost respect for him as a craftsman, but I think he has a terrible problem—and that is the identification of yourself and your friends as an elite. And from that perspective, he sets up this high-culture, midcult and masscult concept. But all it actually amounts to is people going around and getting medals pinned on themselves for shooting large, fat sitting ducks. Although the result of his kind of preoccupation with "midcult" is often amusing, it's fundamentally a waste of energy to keep on indicting television and to keep pointing out that the Book-of-the-Month Club doesn't have a perfect eye for absolutely immortal literature. Besides, those who are attacked simply produce fatuous and flaccid replies that are a further waste of time. I simply don't want to hear David Sarnoff respond again to an attack from a "high-culture" man by explaining what he has done for culture since he kicked Toscanini's symphony orchestra into the street.

[A] Toffler: The thing that concerns me about Macdonald's elitist theory, which is very popular on the literary cocktail circuit nowadays, is that it presupposes the unredeemability of anyone presently among the great unwashed masses. Mr. Macdonald wants, as he has said time and again, to put high art on a pedestal and keep it separated and at a great distance from what he calls midcult and masscult. The fact that there are grades in between trash and exquisitely great art offends him, because it means there is a ladder up which people perhaps less cultivated than himself can climb. Macdonald argues that we have to eliminate that ladder—even at the cost of freezing everyone at his present level, wiping out any possibility of self-improvement, condemning everyone but a narrow circle of connoisseurs to perpetual vulgarity. All this is necessary, he argues, because the presence of midcult cheapens the standards of excellence at the top. This is a classic example of one of his wonderfully unverifiable generalizations. There simply is no evidence that it's true.

[A] Schary: Well, I must confess I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Macdonald. I find him a savage critic with whom I often disagree on detail. But I think he's very sharp, and in this instance, I would say that the truly high-minded artist can find his work diluted if he allows himself to be drawn into what Macdonald calls midcult.

[A] Toffler: But midcult is whatever Macdonald says is midcult. Once Macdonald pronounced Maxfield Parrish and Rockwell Kent midcult. Then he concluded that Van Gogh's Sunflowers was midcult. Even Picasso either is or comes perilously close to being midcult, according to Macdonald. The fact is that the presence of an infinite number of gradations of quality between the very good and the very bad makes it possible for public taste to rise at all levels. And the proof that the system works can be found in Macdonald's own writing. Dan Bell, the sociologist, took the trouble to analyze the successive versions of Macdonald's essay on midcult and pointed out how between 1944 and 1960 Macdonald had "upgraded" his examples of midcult vulgarity, moving from Rockwell Kent to Picasso as public taste grew more sophisticated and refined. Macdonald says "a tepid ooze of midcult is spreading everywhere." It sounds to me like a case of cultural paranoia.

[A] Copland: As for me, I'm a great believer in the naturalness of art attracting its own natural audience—midcult, masscult, high culture or otherwise. What concerns me most is making it available. What people do with art depends on a great many different factors, none of which are really under our control. If I wanted, for instance, to make music both available and also raise the level of music appreciation, I would start by stopping all the advertising of commercial record companies. Why? Because they are so angled in one particular direction. But I am convinced that without this happening, those to whom a love of the arts is a natural instinct will naturally find their own level despite our commercial setup. I only have to go back to my own experience. There was no reason in the world why I should have become a composer, let alone have gotten interested in the arts. But there is a basic instinct in some people that gives them a sense of what art's all about. They are the people on whom the progress of the arts depends. About all we can do right now is try to make sure that everybody who might be sensitive to art is having real contact with it.

[A] Brinkley: One thing Macdonald has not considered fully enough is that we have an enormous industry for the distribution and display of whatever creativeness exists. We have Cinemascope with stereophonic sound, mass magazines, television, LP records and hi-fi machines—and a prosperous population. Two thirds of the population, using some of Mr. Macdonald's figures, are able to buy all these things. So we have an enormous machinery for distributing whatever is created, but we find that there aren't enough creators to keep this machine going. By inventing Cinemascope and stereophonic sound you don't automatically invent people able to create things to put on the screen. The invention of television did not necessarily also invent people able to create good things to put on it. Classical LP records are mainly filled with the work of previous generations. I think there is as much high culture now as there ever was—if not more—but still not enough to fill all these machines we have. So the machines have to use whatever is available, and what is available is very often bad.

[Q] Playboy: Let's discuss a related question, if we may. A great deal of community pride is being taken in the large number of new cultural centers currently being built throughout the country. But do you think, as Rudolf Bing of the Metropolitan Opera Company has put it, that we may be more concerned with marble halls than with the quality of what is presented in those halls?

[A] Schary: I see nothing wrong in this. I'd love to see us build more beautiful marble halls where we would stage beautiful plays or have beautiful pictures hung. I deplore what we're doing with some of our old beauty, however. I'm horrified to see some great structures—Pennsylvania Station, for instance—coming down. I joined the committee to preserve Carnegie Hall because I think it's a beautiful hall. This destruction of old beauty is all part of the urgency I was talking about: Rip it down, use the space more economically, more efficiently. Rebuild. Make it more antiseptic, make it better air conditioned. That's what disturbs me. So I'd like to see somebody build a gorgeous hall with marble columns, wide staircases with red velvet and beautiful seats. I'm sure the next thing is to put something good in it, but I see nothing wrong in aiming for architectural beauty while we're at it.

[A] Kempton: But are these marble halls beautiful? Without having been too observant, I would feel they have gotten to be known as the ugliest collection of cultural warehouses in the world. I think there's a problem with these buildings which Paul Goodman has put very well; buildings, he says, are being commissioned rather than people. The quality of the architect has become less important, and that means the buildings have got to lose in creative design. Secondly, it does seem to me en passant that if electronic illiterates in the 16th Century were able to build an opera house in Palermo that had decent acoustics, those responsible for Lincoln Center could have done the same. But they didn't.

[A] Susskind: The point being missed is that these halls, whether you consider them beautiful or not, are being attended by increasingly large audiences. Lincoln Center is a gleaming new building. Admittedly, there is a debate about its acoustics, but attendance there is notably successful. Now, are they coming to see the new building or are they coming to hear the music therein? I think the latter, clearly. The Guggenheim Museum is something to see on Fifth Avenue, but once inside, the focus of attention is on the art. That's what counts.

[A] Brinkley: I don't think, however, we can evade the question of whether we're emphasizing buildings rather than what's in them. In Washington, they're raising $30,000,000 to build an enormous cultural center, a big marble building. If they had tried to raise $30,000,000 to subsidize musicians, painters, ballet dancers and the like, I doubt they could have got 50 bucks. People are more likely to give money to something they can see, something physical and tangible, so that when Aunt Nellie visits, they can take her by and point out the cultural center. It wouldn't be easy, on the other hand, to point out a composer at work. Also, the tax laws encourage that kind of thing. It does seem to me we'd be better off if we spent more time encouraging people to create things than we now spend building halls to put them in after they've been created. There's a chance of winding up with enormous marble temples with nothing in them—because while the bricklayers and steel constructors have made a lot of money, the painters, musicians and dancers have in the meantime starved to death or gone into the insurance business.

[A] Copland: Well, I can't give a yes or no answer to the question. I am a believer in cultural centers just because America believes in symbols so strongly. The fact that we have Rockefeller Center in New York gives everybody who goes there a chance to visit a place they think of as a symbol of big business at its best, at its most glamorous. I don't see why we shouldn't take full advantage of that kind of American reaction in relation to the arts. Every city that sets up a cultural center will by that mere fact call the attention of as wide a number of citizens as possible to the fact that such a place exists. That's an advantage. But obviously, if all they do is set up the halls and then don't give a damn what's sung or played or performed or shown there, it's not much of an advantage. But I'm all for getting the buildings up and then seeing to it that they're properly filled with good things.

[A] Lynes: It's the concentration of buildings for "culture" that bothers me. I think that's much too easy and ostentatious a way of proving that you've got culture. Crowding all sorts of culture in one place seems kind of silly to me. The fascination of New York City's culture is that it's all over the lot.

[A] Toffler: Let's not underestimate the necessity of these marble halls—concentrated or not. One of the things that has plagued this country in the past has been a continuing shortage of good theaters, good music auditoriums, good places where the finest in professional ballet and theater could perform. Now we're experiencing a cultural building boom of rather phenomenal proportions. This by itself may not be culture, but it certainly provides better soil from which culture can spring. Furthermore, when we create an art center, we staff it with professionals who are in effect professional bureaucrats in the arts. Bureaucrats have many vices and some virtues, but one of their characteristics is that they have a vested interest in perpetuating their functions. This means they have an investment in maintaining a high degree of activity in these cultural centers and also in maintaining a high level of quality. David Brinkley has suggested that we may not have the talent with which to fill all these centers, but the proof that this isn't true is the fact there are many fine artists who can't make a living. We have the talent; we're getting the audiences for it; and we're getting more stages and other physical facilities. What we have to do now is make the appropriate social arrangements to bring all these elements together. The growth of art centers and the "cultural" construction boom is a step in that direction.

[Q] Playboy: So far we've been talking mostly about classical music, painting and the theater. But what of so-called "pop culture"? Is there any evidence of a cultural explosion in pop music and in television?

[A] Susskind: Insofar as pop music is concerned, it's ghastly—and the kids love it. I think they love it partly because of adult hatred of it. It's their form of insurrection. I guess in my day our affection for Sinatra and Russ Columbo and Buddy Clark was viewed dimly by our parents. Nor did my parents appreciate my appetite for Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. But as for the present, I think this terrible rock-'n'-roll stuff is a passing phenomenon. This kind of music is quickly outgrown by even the youngsters. I notice that 75 percent of the total record business consists of long-playing albums, and virtually none of the rotten rock-'n'-roll music is on the charts of the best-selling albums. Now if 75 percent of all record sales are from albums and if most of these albums are relatively good music—from Broadway shows to classical performances—I would suggest that the pop music we're afflicted with is very much a prepuberty interest which will subside as the youngster grows. But it is disgraceful that the music publishers and record companies keep pandering to this appetite. It's a case of the criminal calling the fence a crook. Those in the music business who say this is what their audience wants haven't tried to give the audience something different.

[A] Lynes: I don't see any evidence that mass popular culture, including pop music, is any better now than it was, say, a century ago. Or any worse. A little bit of it is almost always something of value. But hasn't this always been true of popular culture? Take the case of the Greek amphorae. They were made as perfume bottles and wine casks, mass-produced by the hundreds of thousands. This was popular culture, but now we think of it as high culture. I think that out of any mass kind of thing you're always going to get a residue of worth of some kind.

[A] Schary: I would think that mediocrity prevails in almost every society. I don't think it's unique to America. My God, you should see some of the junk that we never see in America by Italian, French, Japanese, Indian and Swedish film makers. We see the best of their films. We don't see the flood of mediocrity that hits their home markets. Again, I think we get confused with all this talk about levels of culture. I can conceive of a highly moral and liberal society in which taste in music might not be considered at all cultural in the "high-culture" sense of the term. It might even be a society that loves rock-'n'-roll music, and I say fine. I wouldn't give a damn about it as long as it was a highly moral and liberal society.

[Q] Playboy: What of television? Do you agree with those critics who say that television is terrible and getting steadily worse? And if this is true, do you feel that it's due to greedy network-sponsoragency control, or to the fact that the audience actually likes what it gets, and is thereby being responsibly served?

[A] Brinkley: To start with, even if the only consideration in programing television were the utmost quality, there isn't enough good program material, and there aren't enough good program producers or performers to fill up ten percent of the television time. Even if money were no object, if public acceptance were no object, there still wouldn't be enough high-grade program material to fill all those hours seven days a week, day and night. It can't be done.

[A] Kempton: The thing I can't stand are those people in television who explain away the bad shows by saying they're running a democratic medium, that they're only giving the public what it wants. Then they hold conventions at which they give themselves awards for public service.

[A] Brinkley: Television certainly can do much better than it does, and it may be that we should provide people with more high-quality programs in the hope that if they don't like them at first, they'll learn to like them. It's a nice theory, but it's still true that programs like The Beverly Hillbillies are the most popular; and to ask any mass medium to ignore the material that most of its audience seems to like is certainly unrealistic.

[A] Kempton: The truth of the matter is, I don't give a damn what the ratings show: Television has no audience. And I'll tell you why. I never look at it, and I'm not a member of the cultural elite. My objection to television is not one of snobbishness. I just think it's a bore. I defy anyone—anyone—to sit and look at an hour and a half of television without a feeling of emptiness, of disappointment when he gets up. For this reason I say nobody really looks at it, except a bunch of kids—and they quit when they're 14 years old.

[A] Brinkley: You're omitting the improving standards of the "fact" programs—news, documentaries and the like. I think they alone justify television's existence—live coverage of news events, documentaries in some depth. I would agree that a lot of the rest of it is pretty bad, though it isn't as bad as it used to be. It should be a lot better. I wish I could tell you how to do it by tomorrow night, but I can't.

[A] Lynes: I think that part of the problem is going to be solved by the eventuality of a more and more divided-up audience—with some watching news, some documentaries, a few educational shows, and the mass watching so-called "entertainment" programs. We're getting it in movies, where everyone isn't going to see a Cleopatra kind of picture, as some film executives thought for a while they were going to do. But I don't think you necessarily have to divide those audiences only between what's on educational television and what's on the networks. I look at both, including the ball games on commercial television. There are more and more small audiences, moreover, for smaller kinds of things.

[A] Toffler: Technological progress is also creating a much greater differentiation of stations and of audiences. As we get more UHF channels going—especially now that the new television sets have to be equipped to play UHF—it will be possible for more and more individual channels to serve very selective audiences and thereby provide a great variety of material at a great variety of levels. You won't have one big split between a tiny audience watching educational television and a large one watching The Beverly Hillbillies. You'll have sizable audiences for a variety of different programs and levels.

[A] Schary: Speaking about what's happening on television now, I deplore most of it. When they do something of great merit, I applaud—but then I get sick because more programs of superior quality are not done. I would say generally that the American public gets what it asks for—and what it deserves. At the same time, I also believe that advertisers, networks and agencies try to make every program be all things to all men. There is no reason why a national network cannot on occasion program for specialized audiences.

[A] Susskind: Bearing in mind that everything is relative, I think we're going to see better television seasons. By that I mean a better balance of programing. There will not be any excessive focus on the Western or the private eye or the game show; and if you achieve better balance in the program spectrum, you're way ahead. Will there be a revolutionary improvement over the whole dial? No. Is there in newspapers? Is there in magazines? Is there in books? No. But we are going to have a better forward thrust in television, better balance and diversification, better artists performing on a continuing basis, and more meaningful drama.

[Q] Playboy: Turning from television to films as an index of changing tastes, what are your reactions to the growing audience for the work of such foreign moviemakers as Bergman, Antonioni, Fellini, Visconti and Truffaut?

[A] Toffler: Since I, like a great many other normal American males, like to look at a hip and a calf and a breast on occasion, I'm aware that the motives that bring the audiences into the foreign art movies are not entirely aesthetic. On the other hand, I'm still encouraged, for some of these films are magnificent artistically—complex, beautiful and illuminating.

[A] Susskind: As you say, the motives may not be entirely aesthetic, but there is a strong indication that the motion-picture audience now wants to see films that have something to say. They no longer want to see the glossy, stereotyped, Hollywood-factory run of movies—and here again is an indication that the cultural explosion we've been talking about is real. The better films are doing ten times the business they could have done ten years ago; and ten years from today, they'll enjoy ten times the audience they now attract. That's the important thing.

[A] Schary: Yes, I think the greater acceptance of the kinds of films you mentioned is healthy. At the same time, as we welcome pictures from abroad, we forget that American films became the most popular films in the world because they were native films. We've forgotten that this is our own art form. We created it. We started it. We created the mold; but now we've forgotten it.

[A] Lynes: Well, as far as foreign films are concerned, I don't think they're all they're cracked up to be, and I think part of the popularity of the art houses has to do with an audience interested in being chic. But I'm still delighted that the little film theaters have grown up so extensively over the country, because they do represent variety. The more variety and the greater exposure to art there is, the better it will be for magazines like Harper's. I mean that quite literally. Our circulation has more than doubled in the 20 years I've been on the magazine, and I think we're a cultural artifact of a kind. So I am encouraged by what's happening—because after all, the population hasn't doubled in the same period.

[Q] Playboy: While we're on the subject of publications, how do you account for the fact that a number of the mass magazines are publishing the work of avant-garde writers who, 10 or 15 years ago, were represented almost entirely in magazines such as Harper's, Atlantic Monthly and the literary quarterlies?

[A] Toffler: This change in mass magazines as 1 see it is yet another manifestation of the upgrading of the American public with regard to both education and aesthetic judgment. It's a change that's come about because of the publishers' realization that mass magazines can no longer compete with television in the race for ratings—that is, in the attempt to run up the largest possible circulations. They concluded that they had to upgrade editorial quality in order to reach a better educated and therefore more prosperous group of readers. The result of that change has been all to the good, for the mass magazines are measurably better today than they were five or ten years ago when they were caught in the throes of the numbers game.

[A] Brinkley: It seems to me that while a few magazines are doing things they would not have done 20 years ago, these are the things they would have done 50 years ago when there were magazines that crusaded, stepped on people's toes and raised hell about social injustices. I'm delighted to see it come back. There was a pretty pallid period among magazines beginning perhaps in the 1930s and running into the 1950s. During that time they seemed mainly concerned with how the volunteer fire department operated in some town in Ohio and with harmless medical news. Now I think they're becoming more alive and more relevant.

[Q] Playboy: Let's turn, if we may, to a closer consideration of the role of the theater in the current cultural explosion. While the other arts are booming as never before, the Broadway stage is said by many critics to be languishing both artistically and financially. Do you agree? And if so, how do you explain it?

[A] Lynes: I think we expect the arts to produce more good than the arts are capable of producing. Because there are more people involved in the arts today, we think the arts ought to be better, but I don't think this is necessarily so. There is a certain percentage of people who are going to be producers and real consumers of the arts. That percentage does not change greatly. A more serious thing that has happened to the theater is that it now has real competition from the serious film, and even some competition from serious television.

[A] Kempton: I think we get bad theater not because of competition from serious films or television, but because the theater is so terribly oriented toward Hollywood. And the other serious problem of the theater is that it is criticized less seriously than any other art. The theater is the only medium I know in which the best-known critics—some of them, anyway—set out to write reviews on the basis of what the audience likes. I don't know how you can talk of the theater as culture when you see billboards with testimonials like "Best Damn Musical I Ever Saw" from the former head of the drama department of the Catholic University of America. How can you handle this kind of vulgarity? But on the other hand, you do have off-Broadway, which I know is commercial and has its objectionable elements, but which does provide considerable variety. I don't think it's such bad theater.

[A] Schary: Still, by and large, the theater is at a low state, and it's at a low state because we're at a low state. With the world in a continual state of crisis, people tend to run away to the quickest kind of diversion they can find. They don't want to be bothered with problems, so they tune in television or go to a hot musical or to see a blue comic. Or they read a book that will titillate them, and they pretend it's a work of art. If, God willing, we ever reach a period of some kind of relative peace, it will be very interesting to see if there'll be a real burgeoning of the arts.

[A] Susskind: Well, as far as the theater is concerned, I think the reason for the claptrap which many playwrights are turning out is that they're so concerned with finding the formula to make a hit. The audiences on Broadway are responding to junk, but that's because, for another thing, our theater has become the plaything of expense-account people and theater-party ladies who are out for an evening to exhibit their diamonds and fur coats. An evening at the theater has become too expensive for many of the other potential theatergoers. So with this kind of audience, the theater in New York is in the very rear of any kind of cultural explosion. It's pandering to the lowest common denominator of taste. This is a conspiracy of producers out to make a quick buck and of theater-party ladies out to sell benefits to rich charity groups. I think the Broadway theater is in a terrible vise, and I don't see any immediate hope for it.

[A] Toffler: In discussing theater, we have to remember that Broadway is far from being the alpha and omega of the theater world; increasingly, in fact, the best theater is not on Broadway. So it seems to me that the theater can hardly be said to be declining at a time when fine new theaters are springing up in Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco, Dallas and dozens of other cities.

[Q] Playboy: The construction of these new cultural facilities has been made possible, to a great extent, by the increasing encouragement and financial support of state and municipal arts councils throughout the country. Do you think there is any substance to the fear that these official councils may prove to be inhibitors rather than patrons of artistic freedom, in that artists and performers not conforming to their personal standards of artistic merit might be barred from aid?

[A] Susskind: I don't think that the local arts councils bespeak any potential censorship. I think they only signify community enthusiasm. By organizing and raising funds and having subscription lists, they give leverage to the cultural possibilities in a particular town. They make lecture and concert series possible. They don't, I think, lay down any hard-and-fast bureaucratic lines of aesthetic "validity." They're invariably seeking the best artists at the booking centers. These are well-meaning people who believe that only by organizing themselves can they achieve some kind of cultural realization in a community that would be barren of such possibilities if they were to act only as individuals.

[A] Schary: I think it remains to be seen whether there's a danger in all of this. Let's see what these councils support over a period of time. I'm not disturbed yet, but I do get a little scared for the future when I think of what some city councils, to speak in terms of municipalities, could do. I think with horror of what might happen in a city like Los Angeles, with its rattlebrained, highly conservative and mixed-up community life, if some city-sponsored cultural group decided to do something very avant-garde.

[A] Lynes: My feeling is that the further you can keep Government money out of the arts, the better off they are. The more you can get local money involved in the local arts, the better off they are. I think the local cultural center can do quite a lot to serve the arts of a particular community. Of course, the risk increases when you get all the money coming from any one source, particularly when that source is removed from where the arts are performed.

[A] Toffler: I don't think we need to fear that municipal or state patronage of the arts will lead to a kind of low-level Government control. Whatever money is being pumped into the arts by cities and states is more than matched by money from thousands, perhaps millions, of individual contributors. There is also growing support from businesses, foundations, even from such organizations as labor unions, junior leagues and churches. The result is that we've developed a system of plural patronage whereby the various pressures that might accompany gifts of money tend to cancel each other out. The astute artistic director of an orchestra or of a theater company knows how to play off the interests of his patrons against one another in order to give his artists and himself the maximum amount of freedom. So long as this balance is preserved, so long as no single source predominates, the artist is in a very enviable position with regard to pressure. The only point at which I would begin to worry would be when and if the Federal Government became paramount. It could swamp the whole system of plural patronage if it chose to, simply because of its size and resources. I think there is a place for Federal participation in the financing of the arts, but I don't think it ought to involve itself in direct financial subsidies for the operation of artistic institutions.

[A] Lynes: I agree. I think it's splendid if the Government wants to send the Modern Jazz Quartet to New Delhi, because they're hiring those guys to go and do a job. I think it's fine if they want to send the New York Philharmonic to Berlin. But I am against a general wash of Federal money to promote culture. Nor am I sanguine about Government arts councils. Setting up an arts council is often like setting up a jury for an exhibition: "You can have this abstraction if you'll let me put this landscape in the show." I think that committee art—and that's what a council is—always tends toward the middle, the safe, secure and mediocre. I'm not afraid of creeping socialism in the arts. I'm afraid of creeping mediocrity. I think that's the effect of the Government getting into it. A friend of mine, an architect, has done a building in Washington. He told me that every decision he made had to be approved by seven committees. So what do you do when you get an arts council? You add one more committee. Maybe it could be useful, but I think that we are all too likely to wind up adding an additional committee to solve problems that haven't been solved by existing committees.

[A] Brinkley: In line with that, the only one of the arts that the Government now patronizes is architecture, and our experience in that field is roughly this: The Government is able to use the best architecture in foreign countries, in embassies and Government buildings abroad. But it is generally not able to have the best architecture here, because here it's under the immediate scrutiny of Congress. I remember some Government building was being put up a few years ago, and a member of the Senate was furious because he was from Indiana and Indiana limestone wasn't being used in it. With few exceptions, the Government architecture in Washington is certainly not inspiring. Nor is Government architecture around this country. Based, therefore, on the way the Government handles architecture, I suspect that it would be a deadening influence if it were to patronize the other arts. You'd have members of Congress who know nothing about music complaining because someone getting a Government subsidy was composing music the Congressmen didn't like.

[Q] Playboy: It has been suggested that one way of raising television standards would be the creation of a Federally financed and operated network. Would you be in favor of such a network?

[A] Brinkley: Well, if there were such a network, I'd certainly hate to work for it. As it is now, we're independent, in a sense, but when, a year or so ago, a number of television stations around the country had the unmitigated temerity to express a few opinions, Congress began to investigate. It makes you wonder what they mean when they talk about freedom of speech. Freedom of speech apparently means you can say anything you like so long as you say nice things about me. I thought that investigation was ludicrous, and if this represents the Federal Government's attitude toward a communications medium run by private enterprise, how would it run one owned by the Government? I think it would be worse than anything on the air now.

[A] Toffler: Federal grants to our arts institutions might also bring with them an unhealthy curiosity on the part of Congressional investigators as to how the tax dollar is being spent. Can you imagine how much worse things might have been for the arts during the McCarthy period if many of our orchestras or theaters had been receiving Federal aid? There would then have been an excuse for Congress to turn the arts upside down hunting for ex-left-wingers, homosexuals, oddballs and anyone else who happened to be different. The results of the witch hunts and black-listing would have been far worse than they were.

[Q] Playboy: Can the Federal Government do anything to aid the arts that would not involve the possibility of intimidation or undue influence?

[A] Toffler: Yes. It can provide Federal money for construction of cultural centers. If you talk to Sol Hurok or Columbia Artists and the other bookers, they'll tell you there's a sore need for more new theaters and good concert halls. This is something the Government could easily support by grants—channeled through the states—to institutions. This kind of assistance would not empower the Government to decide what is going to be performed. It would be a way of keeping the Government at bay with one hand and accepting its money with the other. But it should be pointed out that the charge that the United States now does nothing for the arts is not true. It might surprise you to know that if you took all the money contributed by national governments to the famed opera houses and theaters of Italy, Germany and Austria, plus all the money spent by the vaunted British arts council, you'd find that this is less than the United States Government provides by allowing tax deductions for certain forms of arts patronage. But this doesn't mean we have anything to be smug about. The Federal Government could and should do a hell of a lot more.

[Q] Playboy: Gentlemen, we asked Arthur Miller his feelings about the cultural explosion, and his answer was: "All I believe—and it is something I couldn't begin to prove—is that a deep yearning exists in a limited but crucial group of people for artworks that confront reality. Speaking personally, the best thing I can do is try to provide them, within my means to do so." Do you agree that no matter how impressive the statistics of the cultural boom, this "deep yearning" exists only among "a limited but crucial group of people"?

[A] Copland: Yes, I do. And I think it would be a very noble effort on Arthur's part to confine himself to that audience.

[A] Kempton: This may sound very pompous, but anybody who really tries to work in the arts recognizes that he is addressing himself to—if you want to use Dwight Macdonald's terrible word—an "elite" audience. You're not going to have any real cultural explosion unless you cater to the elite—not because the elite is so nice, but simply because these are people who genuinely need this sort of thing.

[A] Brinkley: I agree with Miller entirely. The audience for high culture is as big as it has ever been—but that's still small. In the Renaissance, paintings were done for private patrons who hung them in their palaces. They weren't done for the public. Mozart and Beethoven composed for private patrons who had the music performed for little parties in their palaces. Their works were not primarily intended for a mass audience. The same thing is true now, but somewhat less so. We do have more people who are educated and who are able to buy and patronize the arts. But we still have a majority of people who aren't interested, can't afford it or aren't educated up to it, and prefer instead a bland diet of popular music and soap-opera entertainment.

[A] Susskind: I cannot agree. We are emerging from the cocoon of an anticultural, anti-intellectual society into a society where to be well read, to be able to think, to be able to paint, to be able to sculpt, to be able to play music is no longer an object of suspicion but rather one of pride. I see no reason to believe that there will always be only a "limited" proportion who care deeply. After all, with each decade there are millions more high school and college graduates, and as I said before, they will propagate. They will have more books in their homes than were in their fathers' homes. They and their children will have higher standards of moviegoing. They'll want better art and better music. All of this will increase geometrically as osmosis has a chance to work. I say it'll be geometric, because our colleges are already bursting at the seams, our educational plants are inadequate to the requirements of the spiraling number of students and faculty members. If we could feed the demand for college facilities and the demand for better faculties, we would make a greater contribution toward the achievement of higher cultural standards than by anything else we might do.

[A] Lynes: I'm not entirely sure that the proportion of the population that is deeply involved with the arts is going to increase, but I don't feel either that this proportion is a small group, as some of you seem to think. It may be small in terms of percentages, but in terms of 180,000,000 people in this country, there are millions who are really concerned about the arts. I think that what can happen is that as leisure increases, many people who might never have gotten to the arts at all because they had to give all their time to feeding their faces and families, may discover experiences that would have been closed to them in another kind of society. If that happens, we may indeed have a marked increase in the proportion of those deeply involved in the arts.

[Q] Playboy: While the qualitative nature of the cultural explosion remains an open question, you seem to be in agreement that public interest and participation in the arts is both widening and deepening, and that this has catalyzed the creation of greatly improved and increased means and facilities for making them generally available across the nation: the construction of cultural centers, the founding of arts councils, the proliferation of quality paperbacks, classical LPs and similar evidences of conspicuous cultural consumption on a nationwide basis. As several panelists have pointed out, we will not be able to measure the depth and quality of this boom until we've had a little longer to see and hear what is actually produced and performed and displayed in our new marble halls—until we have time to assess the extent to which our society as a whole becomes "cultured" in the best and largest sense. But apparently we all agree—to a degree—that the present is far from being culturally static, and the prognosis for a fundamentally cultivated society is far more sanguine than it was only a decade ago. Thank you, gentlemen.