i can not understand the whole meaning. please help me

Question

Although it is now academically respectable to analyze popular culture, the fact that many intellectuals feel compelled to rationalize their own penchant for  action movies or mass-market fiction reveals, perhaps unwittingly, their continued investment in the old hierarchy of high and low culture.

Deadrat · Accepted Answer

I know that it seems that this should have a whole meaning, but it's quite possible that it does not. I'll try to break out some of the ideas.

High and low culture. High culture is worthwhile art, as judged and enjoyed by the educated. For example, opera, symphonic music, and ballet. Low culture is worthless endeavors, also as judged by the educated but enjoyed by the uneducated. For example, action movies, romance novels, and country music.

(This is not a hierarchy, which requires more than two levels. It's a contrast between two things, one judged better than the other by intellectuals.)

The claim is that many intellectuals, who should like only the high culture, also like the low culture. "Penchant" means to have a preference for. These intellectuals make up phony reasons for their preference (that's what "rationalize" means), and in fact they feel they must defend their choices with these reasons (that's what the "compelled" means).

Somehow making up phony reasons for liking low culture means that even as they claim to like low culture, they still believe that it's inferior to high culture. (When that belief is called "investment," it means that the belief is important to those that hold it.) And they don't even realize they believe that. (That's what "unwittingly" means.)

These intellectuals do all this in spite of the fact that places where intellectuals hang out, colleges and universities (that's what "academically" refers to), now make popular culture (low culture) part of the curriculum (i.e., formal courses where they analyze low culture).

Aside from the fact that there's no evidence that any, let alone, many intellectuals think this way, if it is now the case that it's respectable to analyze low culture, nobody would have to "rationalize" their enjoyment of it. You only rationalize what you think you shouldn't be doing. But the schools say it's fine.

Hasibul Alam · Answer

i can not understand the whole meaning. please help me

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