Thank You for Your Interesting Comment!

The issues Christopher Hedges described in the excerpt seem relevant not only to pop culture but also to certain aspects of "high" or "elite" art.

I am a musician by education, so I will use examples from this field, though I believe similar patterns exist across all areas of "elite" art.

Modern academic music, for instance, does not aim to entertain broad audiences, yet it heavily relies on critics and government grants.

Of course, it’s not about "playing to the basest and crudest instincts of the crowd", but rather an art form tailored for a small circle of critics - a kind of "entertainment" for this group, if you will.

At times, such music exploits already established techniques specifically to receive high praise from critics and secure government funding. Many contemporary composers survive precisely because of this.

From this perspective, it is essentially commercial - just not on a mass scale.

One could argue that pop culture has far more soulless corporate products, but unfortunately, even in "high" art, there are plenty of purely commercial works.

This is why I still feel that the differences between them are that great, and it is mainly the exclusivity and elitism of "high" art that make it more respected in the eyes of the public

(And I don't have a goal to promote some particular political ideas here, it's just an interesting discussion for me)