the prize and "high" vs "popular" culture

Two prizes are covered in short informative articles on the back page of the Life section of The Straits Times of 6 May. The one is a shortlist - with accompanying description - of the Turner prize candidates. The other is a brief summary of some of the better known actors who are in line for Tony awards. In the “high vs popular culture” debate, these two awards represent what would today be regarded as high culture: visual arts and the theatre. The visual arts, viewed in a museum or gallery, with their aura of muted splendour, and more recently, obscurism and inaccessibility, are per definition elitist. The theatre is arguably elitist because it demands harder work from the audience than do telly and movies in general. Of course, this is a debatable claim, because there are some very sophisticated films out there; films that challenge the viewer and draw him/her out of a comfort zone. However, the camera takes over some of the choices that a person in a theatre needs to make about interpreting events, and there is a visual sumptuousness about film that is very difficult to fully replicate on a stage. The Turner has managed for a long time now to be both elitist and populist. This year’s “conventional by comparison” [to other years’] finalists include paintings depicting notorious murder and suicide sites; folk tunes recorded by the artist, and played at bus stations, cemeteries, museums and churches; and a painter who “mangles her canvasses”. Two consequences of such controversial choices are a continued debate about what exactly constitutes art, and people actually going to view that, and hopefully, other examples of "art". The Tony awards are mentioned in terms of the A-list Hollywood actors who are up for awards in respected plays and musicals. Is the implication that the movies help to keep theatre alive? One could ask whether the visual arts and the theatre have been severely compromised? Does it matter? The theatre and the gallery will be fuller, and that is surely important. But, does this reduce art to yet another consumer product that needs to be sold?