ABSTRACT
Hamlet versus Bugs Bunny; string quartets versus rap music; J. Alfred Prufrock versus Sam Spade. Such contrasts instantly evoke a familiar cultural divide, typically expressed as the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. In spite of its familiarity, however, there are many different intuitions about what the general contrast is. Is it a contrast between art forms (e.g. poetry versus video games) or between genres within art forms (e.g. avant-garde novels versus romance novels), or is it a distinction between individual works in the same art form or genre (Moses and Aaron versus Turandot, Lawrence of Arabia versus Plan 9 From Outer Space, I’m Looking Through You versus Louie, Louie)? The fuzziness of the distinction raises a number of basic questions: Do the terms express one fundamental distinction? Is that distinction theoretically coherent? Does it mark significant aesthetic differences? Finally, what is the relation of this distinction to the concept of art?
