The Cafeteria of Vulgarity

Vulgarity is the offending of good taste, a subjective notion, at best. But its antonyms are instructive: "Cultivation", "refinement", and "tastefulness"--concepts that are harder to quarrel with. It is from the Latin meaning "mean folk". The Latin Vulgate Bible translated by St. Jerome is so called because it was to be "commonly used", not because it was demeaned.

Schopenhauer called vulgarity "will over intellect", maybe a bit harsh if one thinks of vulgarity as just careless. But if one looks at the music awards last night much was carefully planned and none was careless. Vulgarity has become a credo among some, a marketing tool by others. Not that it can not be entertaining or even profound. Shakespeare's lower classes usually had a very good understanding of entertainment and of life, but they were never the center of the play, they were the relief. And Eminem can be very powerful. But that is not the norm. Inexperienced poets start with free verse because it is less restraining; it is easier. And "refined" is harder than "unrefined".

Democracy is always suspicious of the charge of vulgarity. It smacks of elitism (although Baudelaire said that what was enjoyable about bad taste was "the aristocratic pleasure in giving offense.") Chesterton implies it is democracy's greatest risk: "To put it shortly, the evil I am trying to warn you of is not excessive democracy, it is not excessive ugliness, it is not excessive anarchy. It might be stated thus: It is standardization by a low standard." It is this "low standard"--and the eagerness to free it from judgment-- that is the point. It democratizes value. It makes all things of equal value and, if true, nothing is valued. Everything and nothing can be picked and chosen; decisions are nothing more than what please. That is more significant than lazy. That is a loss of aspirations and is no way for a society or an individual to live or to think.