In recent years an increasing number of cultural products have come under fire for moral or political reasons, such as racist or sexist content, in the mainstream (White) public sphere. An outstanding example is the classic 1939 film Gone with the Wind ( GWTW), which is loved by many but also strongly criticised for glorifying the American Antebellum South and ignoring the inhumanity of slavery. This case study explores how fans of the film (and the novel on which it was based) negotiate their appreciation of GWTW and these controversial issues. Using an open-ended survey and follow-up interviews, we explore two dominant narratives among the film's predominantly White fans: one that fiercely defends the film against criticism and one that expresses increased feelings of ambivalence and awkwardness. Thus, we add a more self-reflective and dynamic approach to scholarship on cultural taste, audience reception, and fan studies.
Abstract Several scholars have argued that the relation between social and cultural hierarchy has less to do with cultural objects as such ‐ what people consume: high or low/popular culture ‐ and more with their ‘modes of consumption’ ‐
how they (say they) consume and evaluate art: by applying a ‘pure’ or ‘popular’ aesthetic repertoire. To both support and nuance this thesis, this article, based on in-depth interviews with ninety Dutch people, scrutinises in detail which aesthetic criteria
individuals use, and how, when speaking about their likes and dislikes within several cultural fields. It shows that ‘pure’ aesthetic criteria are indeed used more often by the well-educated than by the less-educated, but that ‘popular’ aesthetic criteria are used by
both educational groups about as much. It can be argued that this makes the well-educated more ‘omnivorous’ in their use of aesthetic repertoires.
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) 'Je moet onder aan de ladder beginnen' distinctie en hiërarchie binnen de klassieke en hedendaagse muziek Vermeulen, L.; van den Haak, M.
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