PBS: Culture for the Aspirational Classes (And That's Why I Love It!)

I confess, I have been a PBS addict my whole life. Raised by relatively poor parents who didn't want to pay for cable when I was younger, my early media exposure was defined by PBS programming. Sesame Street was absolutely my favorite television show (I had an Ernie-themed birthday one year), later on I devoured the Anne of Green Gables books because I was first inspired by the lovely PBS adaptations, and every Christmas like clockwork I sat down to watch Mikhail Baryshnikov's Nutcracker. All of this was thanks to PBS -- and the VCR, which I think should be noted as equally formative to my PBS exposure since, because we were relatively poor, we also didn't have the money to call into the PBS drives in order make a pledge and then receive the official recordings of the shows in return. Instead, we bootlegged it with our VCR; my VHS of the Nutcracker is still a prized possession, though I don't own a VCR anymore.

There is a point to this anecdote, I promise.

In the past two weeks I've thought a lot about my early experiences with PBS in light of our discussions about taste and class. We've already had a couple of posts about how PBS sets itself apart from other programming because it is tasteful, because it is quality, because it is sort of British, because it is educational, and -- here I think Bourdieu would agree -- because it is distinctly not those other shows. I think Ana summed up this aspect of PBS fantastically when she wrote that "taste is determined by class and education, and constructs itself primarily as a matter of differentiation and rejection of other tastes. In this sense, PBS constructs itself in this instance as not low class, as not based on commercial or popular appeal necessarily, but rather as a designator of what ‘quality’ television is."

But this is only true up to a point. PBS is also incredibly American in its aims and audience, which means that the taste and class that it projects is aspirational and limited. PBS's audience is not the one-percenters, the jet-setters, nor the arbiters and influencers of taste. (I've worked for some of these people, and they wouldn't be caught dead watching Antiques Roadshow or Rick Steve.)

PBS's audience is a middle America that is desperate to distinguish itself with a little bit of history and recycled taste: it's the humble Virgina mother who suddenly discovers that she's distantly related to former Austrian royalty because of her father's old pocket watch; its the middle-aged couple from Iowa that's saved at every holiday for the last five years so that they can finally take a week-long trip across the Alps, as perfectly prescribed by Rick Steve's travel books; its the hipster that gets to self-congratulate himself as he watches Pioneers of Television for being smart enough and discerning enough to watch such a quality and informative show instead of football; and it's the teenaged girl who sits down and watches Jane Austen adaptations, Doctor Who, and Sherlock while drinking Earl Grey and wishing that she were British -- or at least Anything But American.

Oddly enough, this is why I love PBS, because it is culture and taste for the aspirational classes, and it embodies something particularly American that well predates modern PBS programming. My grandparents (on both sides of my family) were often fond of telling me about how they acquired all of the books that they have since bequeathed to me and my brother. All of my grandparents came from low socioeconomic backgrounds: mechanics, potato farmers, barbers, and more potato farmers. Yet, they wanted more for themselves and more for their children, which is why they regularly spent their savings on updating their Encyclopaedia Britannica collections and buying "the Great Classics," as my grandmother called them: Aristotle, Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson. In essence, it was the Western Canon of Philosophy and Literature. And they weren't the only ones doing this; buying these collections was a generational phenomenon across the mid-century aspirational American middle class. I believe that PBS's programming is a direct legacy to this era, particularly in regards to its aspirational values and its consideration of what qualifies a "quality" or "tasteful."

Of course, the irony in this is that the "taste" PBS latches onto is bourgeois at the best of times. As I said before, no one-percenter jet-setter would be caught dead going on a Rick Steve's tour of Europe. And then there's Downton Abbey. Despite many American's confusion over this subject, Downton is not made by PBS. Nor is it made by the BBC (which is also not an uncommon belief). It's made by iTV. As my British friend quipped to me the other day, "it's astounding how Americans can repackage our soap operas as good TV," and then she went on to point out that Downton didn't even hold enough nutritional value to be on the BBC. As result, as much as I love PBS for the way it fuels and encourages the aspirations of the middle class, it's also a double edged sword that reinforces the class disparities between those who aspire and those who have already arrived.




And on a related, but not an entirely on-topic note, I thought I would share this new web series that I've been watching Thug Notes, which does some fascinating things in regards to taste and class.