The Cult of the Hierarch

I'm half way through reading The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen. To my mind it's a breathlessly hysterical monument to dead ideas, to borrow the critic Walter Raleigh's characterization of Paradise Lost. Keen is terribly upset that untutored, and inevitably unscrupulous, amateurs are polluting our culture by publishing blogs, uploading videos to youtube.com and in general practicing culture without a license.

Keen comes across as a defender of hierarchy and of vested interests. He is obsessed with authority. He exposes a touchingly naive belief in the objectivity and honesty of the print media. He seems to hate satire, invention, irreverence, or just plain fun.

One of the movie channels was playing a rerun of Amadeus last night. There is a scene in which Mozart is told by the fawning hangers on of the Emperor Josephy II that he cannot write an opera based on “The Marriage of Figaro”. The play is vulgar, it would undercut authority, it would cause dissension between the classes--those were the objections raised. Truth be told, they were afraid of anything new, anything that might threaten their positions in society.

Keen's book sounds like the work of someone who is afraid for his position and for the system he relies upon for an income.

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