Happy Christmas(scult and Midcult)

A very Merry Christmas to you (yes, we’re still celebrating over here in Catholic world. You can pry it from my cold fingers at Candlemas). Because I’m congenitally incapable of celebrating publicly on this blog in a normal way, here’s what I have for you instead: a rambling panegyric in honor of Paul McCartney, over and against his erstwhile bandmate John Lennon, with some niche mid-century cultural criticism thrown in.

Let me begin in the middle. Those readers who know me well, or simply listen to the right episodes of The Readers Karamazov, know of my intense bias in favor of Sir Paul and against the dearly beloved John. All I can say is I come by this prejudice honestly; it began long before I had ever heard the worst song in pop history. For reasons unknown, the only Beatles album we had growing up was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which I listened to assiduously for a time. Though I loved the whole album, even at that underdeveloped stage I could sense a divide in the songwriting sensibilities. For my part I gravitated more to the nursing home swingtime vibes of “When I’m 64” than the psychedelia of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

Now that I’ve become a man, though, I’ve put away childish things. Many people, perhaps, think that means I’ve shifted allegiances and gone over to team John. Au contraire, my friends: rather, I’ve leaned even more heavily into Paulpartisanship. Conveniently enough for this seasonally themed post, both John and Paul produced solo Christmas songs (both of which have become radio staples) which serve as microcosmic examples of their relative infer-and-superiority.

But before diving into the relative merits of “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” and “Wonderful Christmastime”, first let’s jump back and pick up that promised niche midcentury cultural criticism you have all been salivating over. Dwight Macdonald, whose work deserves a much wider audience, was an American Marxist cultural critic in the middle years of the twentieth century. In his best known essay, “Masscult and Midcult,” Macdonald develops a theory of cultural production centered around these two neologisms. Masscult is relatively straightforward: the culture produced for consumption by the masses; generally, especially in an age of mass media, free of challenging content and requiring no effort to consume. Midcult, however, is harder to parse: a sort of halfway house between masscult and true high culture, midcult promises the sophistication of high culture but delivers instead the thoughtless pleasures of masscult. Because of the patina of intellectual respectability applied like an egg wash to its surface, midcult glistens with the promise of self-improvement, a false promise which only makes it that much more dangerous. Masscult and midcult are the wolf and the fox: at least with the wolf you know what you’re getting.

Macdonald’s favored midcult punching bag throughout his essay is Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, at the time a smash hit, one that, according to Macdonald, simultaneously made viewers feel good about their own intellectual standing while anesthetizing them to challenges. We can think of our own innumerable examples across multiple categories. Last Man Standing is masscult, prestige TV midcult. Nickelback? Decidedly masscult. Taylor Swift and the poptimists? Midcult all the way. We can even suss out examples in the realm of food: at least McDonald’s has the masscult decency to make you feel bad for indulging in its grease — midcult classic Chipotle allows 5,000 calories to slide effortlessly down your gullet while you pat yourself on the back for being a real cosmopolitan gourmand.

The favored defense of those fully indoctrinated into the midcult these days is that you must always let people like what they like. Aside from the patronizing implications dripping from that stance, as if taste were something innate and not developed, it allows the purveyors of midcult always to exonerate themselves. Not only that, it creates out of aesthetic materials a staging ground for smug self-righteousness. You don’t like She-Hulk merely because your brain has been microwaved by Marvel to the point that it resembles cream of wheat; no, dang it, you like the show because doing so is praxis. By watching the right shows or movies (let’s face it, almost always shows) or listening to the right acts, you can demonstrate your bona fides on the cultural battlegrounds.

So how do we get back to John and Paul? This is not exactly a subtle jump, people: I’m much too much of a midcult thinker for that. Paul, of all the Beatles, is the quintessential masscult figure. No matter the stage of his career, he just wants to tickle your ears with a good tune, more likely than not one tinged with associations of yesteryear. His music is pure warmth. John, especially as he evolved in the later Beatles and solo years, strove to make something “worthwhile” out of his music; hence the midcultiness of many of his later lyrics. There’s a gesturing toward sophistication without the ability to follow through and create something truly challenging.

You can see this divide clearly in the two Christmas songs — even at the level of title. John lumbers in with a portentous title, replete with parentheses. WAR IS OVER; this really matters, people! Meanwhile Paul can sum up his ethos in two words: wonderful Christmastime. And that’s really the extent of the song. I tortured my children this year by repeating ad nauseum, to whatever they might say, that as for me and my house, I’m SIMPLY HAVING A WONDERFUL CHRISTMASTIME.

Paul’s song is barely a song at all, to be honest, it’s more of (as the kids say) a vibe. It’s a simple, digestible confection, utterly disposable - and it knows it. That’s the key to Paul’s appeal, in general; he doesn’t conceive of himself as a pop music Stravinsky, shifting the ground underneath our feet, nor even a Mahler, perfecter of a form. He’s more like his fellow countryman Vaughan Williams, content to do what he does extremely well: remind you of good songs you’ve heard. He is masscult done right. When we listen to his music, “The mood is right/The spirit's up/We're here tonight/And that's enough.” And that’s enough.

Meanwhile John sets out to change the world through children’s choirs and sleigh bells. But while his intent is grandiose, perhaps even noble, the actual follow through is decidedly weak. Some mumbling about multiculturalism, some vague pacifist sentiments, and a pervasive spirit of the therapeutic (War is over… if you want it. Just believe in yourself!). It’s the classic midcult fake out: merely by listening to this song as flits across your radio dial, you’ve contributed in some non-specific, fuzzy way to the betterment of the world. It really is as easy as that.

Ultimately that false promise is what makes midcult damaging in a way that masscult can never be. John Lennon stopped exactly zero Vietnam Wars with his Christmas song, but he made a huge impact on his own bank account. That might sound cynical applied to someone who genuinely seemed to want to do the right thing, but sub in major corporation X (ahem, DisneyMarvelStarWars) and it makes much more sense. These companies know the levers to pull, both emotionally/narratively and politically, to keep you sucking at the teat of their vast cultural-industrial complex, all while feeling good about yourself. I can listen to “Wonderful Christmastime” and never once confuse it for an actually important Christmas song, but that’s just what “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” tempts me (well, not me) to do. In other words, it’s ok to like junk, so long as you can recognize that it’s junk, you don’t make it the foundation of your diet, and you don’t think that doing so bears any relevance on your moral life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll stop ranting, and get back to SIMPLY, well, you know.