A 19 yr old man entered the national tv newscast with a gun. here's a video. He looks vaguely north african but doesn't have the typical accent of 2nd generation north african immigrants. He sounds rather formal and educated. And delivers some hard to follow explanations about hacker collectives and conspiracies. The newscaster seems to be trying to sound human and down to earth. Maybe somebody is coaching him through an earpiece. Obviously it's a tense situation. He predicts that he'll be riddled with bullets by the police.
The gun turned out to be fake. He was apprehended withough any shots fired and his name or ethnic background is not mentioned in the Dutch media. Only his city of origin. Non Dutch media are not bound by this half ethical half legal constraint and do mention his name and details about his background.

Somehow he strikes me as representative of the friction between Dutch and North African culture that's happening the NL at the moment.
I hope his mental troubles will stabilise after his TBS (detention with psychiatric care) and he'll be able to build a somewhat normal life after this very very public meltdown.

Mary Beard reckons that the ancient Romans didn't have any concept of "popular culture". In Pompeii, the richest and the poorest house have the same style of decoration, the rich just have more of it and better executed.

In Elizabethan/Jacobean England, both rich and ordinary went to the theatre. The poor would go the Globe and stand as groundlings, the King or Queen would have command performances, but they would be watching the same play.

That's not because that society was classless, quite the opposite. Everybody had a clearly defined rank, from the aristocracy to the differing grades of peasant. Sumptuary laws dictated what clothing members of a given class could wear. If you passed someone on the street, you had to "give the wall" to someone of higher rank, stepping into the street if necessary.

Hypothesis: the distinction between popular and elite culture evolved as a way to identify members of different classes in an era when it can be otherwise difficult to tell.

If we had a modern sumptuary law where everyone had to wear a badge with last year's income on it, then the rich would be free to enjoy monster truck rallies and the workers could go to the ballet.

Hypothesis: the distinction between popular and elite culture evolved as a way to identify members of different classes in an era when it can be otherwise difficult to tell.


This is what historians pretty much say, and though it was an incremental shift the point at which they think it really happened was the start of the Industrial REvolution, because the increased volume and pace of production outstripped an owner's ability to supervise a company alone and required an expansion of the middle layer of management to track, count, analyze, record, arrange, and document stuff. A dramatic number of white-collar jobs were created within a very short period of time. But much of the story of the nineteenth century is that of the elite trying to keep some hard boundaries around their class while the middle classes continually worked to ape and adopt elite lifestyles. Middle-class people had money and could dress nicely and get higher education and have lovely houses and vacations. What they could not get was 'breeding,' so things associated with the patrician classes became more important until you reach the heights of the Gilded Age, when superrich American people were speaking French fulltime at home and changing clothes six times a day and setting up ever more exclusive clubs and societies in an effort to outpace the middling folk.

I kind of do think we're back - rich people do whatever they want, including monster trucks. They do take nicer vacations, but we all read about the same design trends and their homes (like Romans') are fancier reflections of the dominant taste but the taste isn't that different here at the DIY level. The trouble is that lower and middle income classes have a much harder time now aping anything rich people alone do, because the money isn't there. But one thing is universal, nobody wants to go to the ballet. [Unless it's Christmas and your kids is in/wants to see the Nutcracker.] or the symphony. The people who kept those institutions alive are fading away, while monster trucks, and high-end restaurants, and spas, continue to do well.

Here in the NL high culture stems from the moment that we rejected being subjected to the Spanish catholic monarchs in 1568. That ended the social dynamic of fealty and aristocracy and started the Dutch republic where it was no longer aristocracy that held all the power but merchant burghers who filled the influential roles in cities and became a patrician caste unto themselves.
Once power was somewhat open to common citizens it created a drive for learning to get ahead and distinguish oneself. So in this Dutch renaissance patricians would also often take part in poetical societies.

When I was a student I met a few guys from landed gentry. And they always struck me as ostentatiously coarse. I guess that was their way of showing that they didn't need to be highly cultural like the petit bourgeois since they were born into being important and owned land.

Which makes me wonder about US american power dynasties like the Kennedies and the Bushes. Do they feel the need to show being educated and high culture? Or can they ignore that and just exude the much more undeniable stature of encumbent power?

So I guess I don't fully agree with the hypothesis. It is true that people distinguish themselves with high culture. (And the pedantry on mefi about the right use of 'begs the question' is an example of that)
But I don't think that showing your money would do as well. Culture is by definition non personal knowledge. And a penchant for high culture comes from a lifetime of valueing learning. So in my view it's an off shoot of being raised to maximise learning, show ones inner value and get ahead.
People think that high culture means opera and ballet. But the same mechanism is at work when people scoff at mainstream pop or late appreciators of musicians or not sufficiently authentic punk etc etc.

To give an example of high culture dynamics in US popular culture look at the movie The Equalizer f.i. The protagonist is working a common job. But has a background as a secret service/ special forces insider. To underscore how he is among the common people but has an inner quality that puts him above the other americans they show him reading master works of literature and show great self control.

So it's not just a shibboleth; the key element is that it is about learning and discipline.

has a background as a secret service/ special forces insider

That type of person is not considered elite in the US. Honestly, servicepeople of all levels and kinds come in a notch above plumbers and electricians in the eyes of the very wealthy. Every now and then a scion of a family like that will enter the Naval Academy or something but it's considered a little ...romantic.

the key element is that it is about learning and discipline.

Not here. Our elite has everything to do with business acumen and the (hopefully old) money it brought in, not learning and discipline.

they always struck me as ostentatiously coarse

That happens here. The very wealthy here tend to mock the middle-class sense of delicacy, decency, civility, sentimentality, because they really don't need it.

I think what you're calling "high culture" in your discussion above is something closer to "knowledge capital" or "cultural capital." But in the US there is very little association of intellectual culture with the elite classes any more. As I said above, that pretty much ended with the Gilded Age and the rise of oil and agribusinesses (which was associated with investment in those industries spurred by the two World Wars) as the larger sources of wealth. Business and the arts/humanities underwent a schism at that point, and have never really been reunited. Today, our financial and business elite have the greatest power in the society, and though they do maintain some traditions of wealth they are a lot more likely to be interested in adventure sports and luxury travel than in the arts and humanities, lifelong learning, even the pure sciences.

This is an interesting conversation. And jouke made the classic Weberian thesis that Miko touched on more explicit, which is that at some point in Europe the merchant classes displaced the old nobility in wealth.

I looked up a convo I had with a friend about this and I was telling her how The Great Gatsby is a good example of someone who made it in wealth but didn't quite break through to the East Coast elite Ivy-educated status. Meanwhile the Kennedys are an example of a family that did manage to become a pseudo-aristocracy. Basically I think in America the closest example to aristocracy is the wealthy old East Coast families. (Come to think of it there is also the Southern plantation owner type but many of them kinda fell apart a bit--same as in England or here in India the "old aristocracy" found themselves totally unable to generate enough money to keep up the old family palaces.)

A few days ago I was watching an interview with Cheslea Handler on Howard Stern where she talked about her fling with 50 Cent. It gave me weird vibes, even racial maybe, but basically while saying he was a nice guy she was putting him down a bit for not spelling well, mentioned that he was gonna go on vacation with her but couldn't swim, being somewhat immature in handling his dealings between her and other women, and said she broke up with him by saying something (calling him a thug or something) that hurt his pride as a black man.

It's all kinda weird and made me think about how (to your point, Miko, about adventure sports) 50 Cent's personal wealth eclipses Chelsea's wealth but she can issue put-downs like "he can't swim."

Basically there is a difference between things like class, wealth, power, influence and these various kinds of status don't necessarily overlap. A Harvard prof who often writes books has one type of status, Donald Trump has another type, Brad Pitt has another type, they all have different types of status.

There's still the High Art component of wealth in things like the Koch brothers' endowments--things like the David H. Koch Theater for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

There's still the High Art component of wealth

Yeah, but since I work in that world, I can tell you that it's becoming rarer and rarer for rich people to care about the arts. It is a fairly dire thing, especially for organizations like ballets, theatres, and symphonies that pretty much coasted on large-scale donations from the same small group of families for a long time. Interest in art as an expression of wealth is basically done. Today, philanthropic investment goes to "innovation" and global health, primarily. It's no longer fashionable to be seen as an arts patron.

50 Cent's personal wealth eclipses Chelsea's wealth but she can issue put-downs like "he can't swim."

That's a pretty classic racist trope. Not cool. But yeah, 50 cent will cry all the way to the bank. To me, that's a story about white supremacy and its interactions with the economy. Well observed though on your part.

East Coast elite Ivy-educated status

There's still an element of that elite, but in truth they're simply not the most powerful people in America any more, haven't been since World War II. it's our imagination of who's in the elite, but the actual financial/political elite today are mainly people whose wealth is traceable back to banking, entertainment, or petroleum. Petroleum can translate to transportation, conglomerate vertically integrated businesses, agribusiness, munitions or manufacturing, but it's mostly seeded in the post-WWII oil economy which all of those industries are dependent upon. Outside of the entertainment sector - outliers who are also not politically powerful, in general - they are mostly people you've never heard of, not Carnegies or Vanderbilts. They are mostly from the Midwest or South or West, not New York or Boston. They are not what we tend to think of as Ivy League elitists. Those people are still around but are relatively impotent in influence and politics.

But I agree, if you're asking who the elite are it's important to recognize there are different categories of elite. I generally think of it as the people with the greatest influence on politics, particularly trade policy, foreign policy, and domestic regulations. Those are the people creating the reality we live in right now, and on the whole, they are not much invested in the arts or learning for learning's sake. But the knowledge/culture elite is not politcally powerful and has no money, so it's hard for me to think of them as a real elite. They only get any play when they service the agenda of the political elite (see all things related to "innovation," the current fascination - this is why every arts center is trying to figure out how to have a makerspace or an arts/science series).

Traditionally the American elite has been those descended from Mayflower passengers and signers of the Declaration of Independence.

That's an interesting point Miko. Yeah in pragmatic terms most of the top Ivy-level students I knew from high school have essentially become management or management consultants whereas the real money is in ownership of some sort of company or commodity. And you are right about petroleum being a magic sort of resource to exploit. From an international standpoint, for all we hear about skyscrapers in the UAE, or U.S. congresspeople ranting about Iran, the richest and most powerful regional hegemon in the middle east by far is Saudi Arabia. That black gold is quiet power.