One can judge a nation by its art or lack thereof. One of the most striking aspects of North Korean culture is that it has absolutely no high art. Perhaps their most famous cultural export is the Moranbong Band, a group who make even the most vapid europop seem sophisticated. Here is their piece, Tansume, celebrating a successful missile launch. It is one of the most depressing of music performances I have ever seen.
North Korean culture is an sort of Disney-land traditionalism. Its leaders make great efforts to invent an idealised past, in order to support a distinct Korean cultural and racial identity, but they do so in very modern ways as they have no real understanding or love of history. Films, pop music, mass stadium festivals, ugly behemoth Soviet architecture are what define North Korea.
In that respect, we are rather like the North Koreans. We seek to portray an increasingly idealised version of ourselves that accords with a contrived set of modern values, and which is propagated mainly in low culture. Most of our cultural output is not much better than the Moranbong Band, and in some respects it is worse -- at least the Moranbong Band don't descend to the kind of vulgarity prevalent in our popular music. Great Western art still has a foothold in our culture, but one cannot be optimistic about its future.
Can, then, the inability to establish a genuine national culture hinder the development of a high culture? One problem with America is that it has always lacked an obvious high culture. It has not quite achieved the same literary, artistic and musical heights of European nations. When one thinks of Germany one thinks of Goethe and Bach, but with America one tends to think of an altogether lower culture. America never was a nation in the normal sense -- a home for a tribe of people -- but rather a nation defined almost entirely by its method of government. Anyone really can become an American, and so it is very hard to figure out what exactly America is. I am inclined to think this explains why their artistic culture is not as rich as the European nations'.
North Korean culture is an sort of Disney-land traditionalism. Its leaders make great efforts to invent an idealised past, in order to support a distinct Korean cultural and racial identity, but they do so in very modern ways as they have no real understanding or love of history. Films, pop music, mass stadium festivals, ugly behemoth Soviet architecture are what define North Korea.
In that respect, we are rather like the North Koreans. We seek to portray an increasingly idealised version of ourselves that accords with a contrived set of modern values, and which is propagated mainly in low culture. Most of our cultural output is not much better than the Moranbong Band, and in some respects it is worse -- at least the Moranbong Band don't descend to the kind of vulgarity prevalent in our popular music. Great Western art still has a foothold in our culture, but one cannot be optimistic about its future.
Can, then, the inability to establish a genuine national culture hinder the development of a high culture? One problem with America is that it has always lacked an obvious high culture. It has not quite achieved the same literary, artistic and musical heights of European nations. When one thinks of Germany one thinks of Goethe and Bach, but with America one tends to think of an altogether lower culture. America never was a nation in the normal sense -- a home for a tribe of people -- but rather a nation defined almost entirely by its method of government. Anyone really can become an American, and so it is very hard to figure out what exactly America is. I am inclined to think this explains why their artistic culture is not as rich as the European nations'.
We are seeing the same problem now in Britain. Britishness is becoming something entirely abstract to which anyone can subscribe. And as we become like America, will we find it hard to have a flourishing artistic culture? I think it is already clear that we are struggling. For we are losing the most essential of things: a real, deep, common national culture.
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