Leavisite criticism rested on assuming working-class audiences lacked cultural resources

Evidence

The dominant Scrutiny narrative was constructed on the back of an unspoken assumption about the limited cultural resources and restricted moral universe of working-class readers and audiences. Only Scrutiny ‘s “saving remnant,” whose sensibilities had been refined by a long cohabitation with the authority that the literary tradition offered, and whose moral backbone had been stiffened by strenuous and sustained critical engagement with lit. crit. (“This is so, is it not?”), offered a site of resistance to the mass appeals and blandishments of the new, debased culture. Hoggart’s account is aware of the limitations of that starting point. “I am inclined to think that books on popular culture often lose some of their force by not making sufficiently clear what is meant by ‘the people,’ by inadequately relating their examination of particular aspects of ‘the people’s’ life to the wider life they live, and to the attitudes they bring to their entertainments.” Even George Orwell, whose studies on popular culture were in some ways paradigmatic, “never quite lost the habit of seeing the working class through the cosy fug of an Edwardian music hall” (Hoggart 1958: 9, 15). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 148

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘saving remnant’ elite-resistance model echoes how Horkheimer/Adorno saw the culture industry versus the knowing few — two traditions with parallel audience-elitism assumptions.
• SHARE: Hoggart’s jab that Orwell ‘never quite lost the habit of seeing the working class through the cosy fug of an Edwardian music hall’ would delight anyone interested in Orwell reception.