I am consistently maddened by academia talking down to the puerilent audience. No one ever remembers what it's like to be a kid. Don't they know we all want to be treated as equals?
Firstly, they somehow place themselves in this category and simultaneously hover outside of it. I am but a lowly scholar, how could I attain the wisdom of Plato or Longinus or Milton? But as scholars, they at least cling to a higher rung than the common working class. All they enjoy is car chases and chicken wings, let them stuff themselves silly.
But in these searches for defects, obstacles, limits to art and what it can be, we forget that the true moment of creation happens not when the pen touches down on the page or the brush strokes the canvas, but rather when the final product of all that creative effort is enjoyed by another person. No matter their scholarly aspirations. I'm reading Longinus' On The Sublime for History of Criticism, and though in beginning to tackle his problem he says "It is necessary now to seek and to suggest means by which we may avoid the defects which attend the steps of the sublime," it was just a little further down the page that he inspired this idea by saying, "as if instinctively, our soul is uplifted by the true sublime; it takes a proud flight, and is filled with joy and vaunting, as though it had itself produced what it had heard"... (70)
Food for thought. This is certainly going to be a place of digression.
Also interesting: I just learned the word puerilent today, and doesn't that bring up all sorts of fun things? We might consider what one considers juvenile sounds and subject matter when it comes to Frank Zappa, with his kazoos and profane lyrics. Also brings up some interesting things to do with academia's relation to Zappa's type of music, and causes me to think about the true relationship between maturity and music and education.
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