Gilbert Seldes

Seldes' belief in the democratization of culture characterized his career. In the 1920s, he rejected conventional understandings of jazz, film, comics, vaudeville and Broadway as banal, immoral and aesthetically questionable.[10] He did not limit art to its 'high-culture' normative of European forms like opera, ballet and classical music. He also did not believe that culture was inherently ordered, or that it demanded rigorous training to create and understand.[11]

Instead, Seldes advocated a democratic aesthetic culture. He sought only to distinguish well-executed art from that which was not. He found 'excellence, mediocrity at all levels' and detested 'trash' of both the high- and low-class nature. Furthermore, he insisted that the dichotomy between the high and low brow was fundamentally complex. This distinction stemmed from class assumptions rather than a judgement of art's intrinsic value –

The lively arts are created and admired chiefly by the class known as lowbrows, are patronised and, to an extent enjoyed, by the highbrows; and are treated as impostors and as contemptible vulgarism by the middle class, those who invariably are ill at ease in the presence of great art until it has been approved by authority.[12]

Unlike his contemporaries, therefore, he evaluated popular culture, introducing new sources like jazz, comics, film, television and radio to criticism. He praised them for their honesty, humour, and the technical skills of their performers.[13] An anti-intellectual, he was also convinced that art, particularly popular entertainment, should avoid being overly cerebral and didactic. Subsequently, he staunchly opposed critics who recommended radio as a tool for formal education in the 1930s, saying, "no lessons, thank you, and no, damn you, no lectures".[14]

Moreover, Seldes believed that intellectuals would discern a distinctive American culture if they abandoned their assumption that only European trappings conferred cultural legitimacy. To him, America already possessed its own heterogeneous, democratic and dynamic cultural heritage.[15] In The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes stated that the language and rhythms of jazz reflected a distinct, home-grown American identity. America had found its 'characteristic expression' and had arrived 'at a point of creative intensity' through popular culture.[16] He, therefore, advocated that American intellectuals not be ashamed of jazz, but reaffirm and support it instead.

Naturally, this horrified the critics of The Dial, the magazine for which Seldes was managing editor. They derided him as pretentious and vulgar on many occasions.[17] In response, Seldes was especially critical of American expatriates and critics who favored European art media and scorned American popular culture. He called them the "debunkers" and argued that European culture was not worthy of veneration. It had "foisted on us [America] feeble ideas, questionable taste, quackeries and crazes".[18]

More importantly, he also objected to these expatriates' and critics' assertion that America had insufficient historical experience to inspire artistic creativity. From the 1930s, he became convinced that an historical understanding of America was fundamental to its self-identification. He, therefore, moved from art criticism to writing history to prove that America had a cultural past. This led to books like The Stammering Century and Mainland.[19] By the 1930s, Seldes' writings took on heavier tones of American exceptionalism, which increased with the advent of World War II.

During the Great Depression, Seldes' belief that entertainment existed purely for its own sake evolved. He called for theatre to reflect the harsh realities of American life–

I do not mean that all the plays ought to be concerned with the farmers' strike in Iowa and the bread lines in New York, although I do not see why at least a few of the plays do not deal with these subjects. It is possible to be aware of what has happened in these three years and make your awareness felt even in light comedy.[20]

He grew more critical of serious plays, advocating light-hearted content that confronted and assuaged the struggles of everyday life. Ever the cultural populist, he maintained that American art should benefit American citizens.

Seldes' interests diversified to film from the late 1920s. Unlike critics like H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan who scorned films as vulgar, Seldes believed that film could be a tool for American historical education. He wrote, directed, produced and hosted a range of historical documentaries. This is America (1933) was his debut effort.[21] Among film artists, Seldes praised Charlie Chaplin in particular; in 1924, he spoke of Chaplin as one of America's two great artists of the time, the other one being Krazy Kat cartoonist George Herriman.[22]

From the outset, he was convinced that film's essential feature was also a defining American trait. This was its ability to capture "movement, and that happen[ed] to be the one dominant characteristic of all American history".[23] He, therefore, believed that film was vital to America's cultural identity.

Alongside film's proliferation, Seldes promulgated the democratization of cultural criticism. He proposed that critical opinion needed to support film's reach to a mass audience, and applauded the rise of film criticism from the 1920s. For all of film's merits, however, Seldes also accurately predicted and lamented literary culture's decline in the 1930s as a result of film and television.[24]

From the 1930s, Seldes was wary of the transformation of popular culture to mass culture, which television and radio facilitated. He was concerned that the popular arts had lost their dynamism as 'passive observation' had, by then, replaced 'active participation' in the arts.[25] Furthermore, he worried that American tastes were becoming uniform and undiscriminating. This concern increased in the 1950s, as he saw that the arts were monopolized, homogenized, and of poor standard. In the second edition of The Seven Lively Arts (1957), he wrote, "we are being engulfed in a mass-produced mediocrity".[26]

Media responsibility was also a pertinent issue to Seldes, as he believed that entertainment corporations' control and commercialization of the arts eroded the value of popular culture. He blamed media corporations for broadcasting content that he thought pandered to the lowest common denominator.[27] He considered soap operas and TV dramas "corrupting influences".[28] To Seldes, TV detrimentally narrowed the interests of the public, when, instead –

the public [should] be given every opportunity to find its own level of taste by having access to the best as well as to the mean – which in this case, is far from golden.[29]

Moreover, he also rued how television's accessibility made entertainment seem like a 'right', rather than a reward to be earned.[29]

Still, he remained optimistic and wished that the public would criticize the media. This was Seldes' enduring ideal – for American cultural criticism's democratization.[30] The historian Michael Kammen considers Seldes the forerunner of the cultural studies for his research into the social impact, political implications and educational potential of cultural mediums.[31] He also declared that he did not find sex as entertaining as virtue, honesty, realism, humor and technical skill in performance. He perceived its growing usage in entertainment (particularly in Hollywood) as a reflection of a decline of the media.[32]

In early 1946, Seldes wrote an essay in Esquire magazine, where he criticized what he perceived to be the prevailing radio humor of the time. According to Seldes, most comedians on the airwaves based their humor almost solely on various insults, which he found tiresome. His essay led to an invitation on The Jack Benny Program to defend his stance, which he accepted. He appeared on Benny's radio program on February 24, 1946. Despite his objections to radio comedy, Seldes did enjoy appearing on the show, and recalled that Benny's writers "accomplished the miracle of making me seem very funny indeed".[33]

While a patriot, Seldes was largely apolitical. He later regretted this neglect and he conceded that his material comforts had made him apathetic –

nothing in public affairs has caused me so much regret as my failure to join them. The only one that seems even faintly valid to myself is that I wasn't, by nature, a joiner of movements… In a sense, this absorption into a life I had never anticipated and the prosperity I enjoyed, could make me indifferent to public causes.[34]

Before and during World War II, however, Seldes was completely committed to American exceptionalism. He emphasized the uniqueness of American culture and democracy against Europe's. Despite his populist inclinations, he was an anti-Communist. He believed that Communism was incompatible with America, as it required "complete self-dedication" at the expense of democratic suffrage.[35] He saw Americans during the 1930s as generally apathetic and undisposed to rebellion. He, therefore, championed middle-class American concerns instead.[36] These dominated Mainland (1936), Your Money or Your Life (1938) and Proclaim Liberty! (1942). He later considered his views during this period dogmatic, pedantic and isolationist.[37]

As an intellectual, Seldes sought not just to evaluate the arts and challenge other critics, but also aimed to inform the public. He saw himself as a 'constructive' critic rather than a 'destructive' one, differentiating himself from the detractors of American popular culture.[38] He also alleged that they were too technical; they were critics "not of literature, but of economics, sociology, psychoanalysis, morality – and so on". Throughout his career, he favored fairness, balance and internationalism, and was, most of all, averse to providing only one-sided evidence that could mislead his readers.

Following his graduation from Harvard University in 1914, Seldes left for London as the Philadelphia Evening Ledger's correspondent during World War I. He covered the social conditions in England. He also wrote for the Boston Evening Transcript, The Forum and New Statesman in London.[39]

After the end of the war, Seldes returned to America and became Collier Weekly's associate editor. Seldes would become second associate editor for The Dial in 1920, often contributing how own pieces to the periodical under the pseudonyms Vivian Shaw or Sebastien Cauliflower.[40] His long, glowing 1922 review in The Nation of Ulysses by James Joyce helped the book become known in the United States (although it would remain banned there until 1933).[41] Seldes' tenure as editor of The Dial included the publication of the famous November 1922 issue featuring T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Together, they took The Dial on a modernist track, as opposed to other magazines like Van Wyck Brooks' The Freeman and Henry Luce's TIME.[42] During this time, he worked with other intellectuals like Marianne Moore and Sophia Wittenberg (who later became Lewis Mumford's wife), who recounted him as an excellent colleague –

Gilbert was lighthearted and easy to get along with. Though he was serious about his work, which he seemed to enjoy, I would not say he was intellectually intense… The Dial in its early days, and I was there in one capacity or another from the start, was conducted in the office along rather informal lines with a general camaraderie, and Gilbert did much to foster that. I think he thoroughly enjoyed his work.[43]

Vanity Fair named Seldes one of ten 'modern critics of America' in 1923, and he soon became a commentator for its magazine.[44] In January 1923, he sailed for Europe to turn his articles on popular culture into a book. In a letter to his brother George Seldes, he stated that –

The purpose of this voyage is a four months trip of rest, frivolity, and impressions to be followed… for solitude to be spent in writing a couple of books.[45]

In the final months of 1923, Seldes resigned his position at The Dial to pursue freelance writing.[46] The Seven Lively Arts, his most famous book, is the result of Seldes' sojourn in Paris.

He returned to New York the following year to write for several journals and newspapers, of which his weekly column for the Saturday Evening Post provided the most significant remuneration. Over the late 1920s and 1930s, he also dabbled in writing and producing plays and musicals, besides writing columns. Some, like A Midsummer Night's Dream (1936), performed badly in the box office, and others, like Love of Three Oranges (1925), were not even staged. His one Broadway success was his adaptation of the Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes (1932).

Seldes' interests evolved along with the expansion of film, radio and television. From 1927, he was a film critic for The New Republic, and investigated the working class' especial partiality to film.[47] He joined CBS in 1937 as its first director of television programs, and in 1952, served as the director of the National Association for Better Radio and TV, a nonprofit corporation. He wrote, produced and directed mostly educational programs for the small screen and for radio, covering topics on American history and culture. These include Americans at Work and Puritan in Babylon (1937) for the radio and This is America (1933), a seventy-minute documentary that was shown in picture houses across the U.S.[48] It was the first full-length documentary film ever made.[49] He also hosted NBC's The Subject is Jazz (1958), a weekly series that introduced genres of jazz to the American public. From the 1950s, he was an adjunct lecturer for literature and communications at Columbia University.[50]

Seldes was the founding dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1959–1963). He was the program consultant for National Educational Television from 1963 and was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in that year.[51]

Throughout his career, Seldes struggled between the pragmatic journalistic need to write profitably and his desire to write material of enduring value. In the years following the Great Depression, for example, he experienced financial difficulties and had little choice but to write for purely commercial projects. These include This Is New York (1934), a tourist guide to the city.[52]

• The United States and the War, 1917
• The Seven Lively Arts, 1924 (name given to The Seven Lively Arts program)
• The Square Emerald, 1928 (under the pseudonym Foster Johns)
• The Stammering Century, 1928
• The Victory Murders, 1928 (under the pseudonym Foster Johns)
• An Hour with the Movies and the Talkies, 1929
• The Movies and the Talkies, 1929
• The Wings of the Eagle, 1929
• Back from Utopia, 1929
• The Future of Drinking, 1930
• Against Revolution, 1932
• The Years of the Locust, 1933
• Mainland, 1936
• Movies for the Millions, 1937
• The Movies Come from America, 1937
• Your Money and Your Life, 1938
• Proclaim Liberty!, 1942
• The Portable Ring Lardner, 1946
• The Great Audience, 1950
• Writing for Television, 1952
• The Public Arts, 1956
• The Seven Lively Arts, second edition, 1957
• The New Mass Media, 1957
• As in My Time, uncompleted and unpublished memoirs, 1958

• The Wisecrackers, 1925
• Love of Three Oranges, 1925
• Lysistrata (A Modern Version), 1932
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1936
• Swinging the Dream, 1939

• This is America, 1933
• Americans at Work, 1937
• The Taming of the Shrew, 1937
• Puritan in Babylon, 1937
• Living History, 1938
• Americans All – Immigrants All, 1938
• The Lively Arts, 1950s
• The Subject is Jazz, 1958