Robert Huhges is a culture columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He writes the ``Futures and Options'' column for the Weekend Journal. He spoke at Calvin in early January as the opening speaking for the 2002 January Series. Editor in chief Erin Miller interviewed Hughes before his lecture.

Is there a particular part of culture you're interested in?

I like a lot of different areas of culture. One of the things I'll be talking about is, to me, all entertainment and culture is valid, not necessarily of equal value, but everything is worthwhile as an expression of people's individuality. I happen to like...everything from opera, Mozart especially, to TV shows like Alias even. I like a lot of things. I urge people to keep an open mind, to see everything, keep open to everything. You never know when you'll find something of quality you never expected. I'm also very interested in classical music. I'm very interested in literature. I go to the theatre a lot. I'm pretty well-rounded as far as that goes. I'm not crazy about ballet, but that's just a personal thing. I still try to write about because it's important that people here about it but it's just not something that I go to that often.

You talked about how high culture was something more Americans should be interested in.

I think Americans are interested in high culture. I have a feeling, though, that many people are afraid of it because they think that they might come across as ignorant because they don't know a lot, or they think they don't know a lot. It's unfortunate that there's a kind of elitism about high culture, so called high culture, that keeps people away from it. People who are up there performing classical arts want to entertain you as well as ...the pop star. There's a bias about what's popular versus what's serious that has helped to marginalize serious art and I think they get less written about, they seem more arcane, so people ar a little more wary of them. I think that they shouldn't be. That's just the way they're portrayed and I would like to see high arts given a greater amount of publicity. I know they'll never compete with Hollywood stars for column inches in a newspaper , but nevertheless, I think we are short-changing ourselves and the people whoa re interested in performing arts by not talkinhg about opera singers, for instance instead of pop singers. I think both are fine and a lot of pop singers are better than a lot of opera singers, but nevertheless we limit our options if we just focus on one part of popular entertainment.

So, what would you say would be a part of pop culture that would bring benefit to Americans?

Americans don't need any help with pop culture but that's part of what we are. One of our greatest exports has been Hollywood. All over the world, people look to the U.S. movies for their entertainment. They're slickly packaged and it used to be that people, Hollywood directors knew how to tell a story. That's less so now, but I what I think is wrong is to just say that because something is popular it is not worthwhile. There are a lot of popular books I like, a lot of popular TV shows I think are excellent. The Sopranos is just as good as a Victorian novel with more profane language, but it tells a very interesting story artfully and it's gotten a lot of accolades. Even on network TV there's a lot of good stuff. A lot of times, you're selling people short. These are honest expressions of human emotion. A lot it is junk but a lot of it is good stuff. There's a lot in classical arts that isn't great either. You're not even allowed to say that. Some stuff is boring, but some of it is rapturous. You shouldn't be afraid of thinking that way. I think people sometimes rely on people they consider more knowledgeable that they to guide them, but I think if people just opened themselves up to the possibilities of culture on a broad spectrum, if they took the time to listen to CDs of Mozart and then go to performances, they'll get a sense of what's going on and they won't have to rely so much on the word of someone else, they'll be able to find out for themselves. One of the things I do in my column is I just try to find interesting things to write about in the performing arts, but I don't say it's good or bad. By including it I'm implying that it's good, but I try to write it in a way that a reader will say, ``OK, maybe I'll consider going to this opera,'' try to make it more accessible in the very short amount of space that I have.

What would you say about pieces of high art that take more of a pop culture approach?

That's fine. I think a lot of people have intelligent rethinking of classics. There's been a trend in staging works that aren't generally staged. Peter Sellers, the avant garde director of opera staged a Bach cantata last year at Lincoln Center in which the singer was dressed in a hospital gown and she was attached to an IV drip and the cantata was about death. She sang a lament in a way meant to have greater affect for people in the audience who had been involved in situations with a loved one dying. Now people can argue whether this was just being overliteral, but others are thinking it's a good visual way of drawing people not used to listening to Bach into the music in a way that hadn't been done before. There's also a composer who, last year, was the composer in residence for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He's a composer with a great awareness of pop culture. One of his pieces is called ``Dead Elvis'' and it's a bassoon concerto in which the bassoonist is encouraged to dress up in as a lounge-era Vegas King so that people get a sense of the fun in the music. He's aware of having fun with our pop stuff. There are more and more of these things happening. Because we live in a visual age, peopelt think that we need, well not everybody but some programmers for classical music think that this is a good way to draw in listeners. It's not always effective; sometimes it's lame. If it's an honest way of bringing people in, that's great. They can see that it's not so threatening, they're not going to be bored to tears by listening intently. That's also good, I think.

Would some critics say it's too gimmicky?

A lot of critics say it's too gimmicky and they're entitled to their opinion. I think a lot of it is gimmicky. It depends on the artistry. Sometimes a restaging of an opera just to try to make it relevant is very wrong. Peter Sellers again staged ``Don Giovanni'' up in Harlem and it just didn't quite work. There was a staging of a Handel opera last year at City Center which was set in the 30s and it just didn't work for the kind of music that was being sung and the kind of costumes that were being worn. They didn't jive. It didn't provide an entry into the work for people who were unfamiliar with it. When it's gimmicky it means you do not trust the composer and the librettist to have been true men of the theatre who knew what they were doing. Sometiems the conventions of the theatre melodrama might seem hackneyed to us, but if Verdi is staged right and staged honestly with people believing in the material, it's a great theatrical experience. Sometimes I can totally agree when an artist thinks he would like to see something staged, and as a way of illuminating an aspect of a composers art. I'm fine with that. Again, Lincoln Center did something on Shostakovich, the Emerson String Quartet played some of his late quartets whiles actors and dancers enacted scenes from his life. I think that helped to give a sense of what Shostakovich was going through as he composed these works and struggled under Soviet regimes. I don't think, though, that people necessarily need a visual for an oral medium, but again, if it's done in a way that you can sense that the way this person who's doing has thought about the work and is trying to illuminate it in some way rather than just say, here I am, I know you're bored, here's a way to bring you in. Gimmicks don't work. Some things can end up being gimmicky if they're not thought through and sometimes people just make mistakes and it doesn't work.

Your topic is ``Short Attention Span Culture.'' In communications classes, we discuss how television, with multiple commercial breaks, has shorted attention spans. How would that play in culture? Are people not able to sit through a whole play?

I think there's a trend in classical music programming to shorten the evenings. Often people try to get people out by 10:15 instead of 10:45 and that's as much a product of modern lifestyles where people have families and need to get home to them as it is of short attention spans. Our time is so conflicted now, we have so many options and I think that they sometimes tentative sense of how long you can hold an audience. I think they should be bold and hold an audience for a few hours. Not everybody can give up an evening of three hours all the time. I think that having just short, easy music stuff on your program all the time doesn't do any one any favors either. It makes it seem like the other music we're playing is hard and this music is easy so you should come hear this. I realize that our attention spans are being made shorter by advertisers and TV. Have you ever seen the show 24 on Fox, they break it every few minutes - about eight times in the hour - for commercials. The only way to watch that show is to tape it and skip through the commercials because they break up any sense of drama. I think TV is very bad about that. On cable they allow you to see things whole, which is great. I think our attention spans are shorter, I think we are bombarded by so many options that you have to get your attention fast. In some ways, classical music programmers think that way, but plays aren't getting any shorter, really. Movies aren't getting any shorter. ``Lord of the Rings'' was almost three hours, ``Harry Potter'' was two hours and a half and they're huge hits. People are willing to sit through it if it's worthwhile. There are a couple of things at work here. Sometimes programmers just don't trust audiences. We are given a lot of choices, but if you give us something worthwhile, we'll stay and watch it or listen to it.

How has Sept. 11 affected what people are watching?

In terms of the things people want to watch, I've seen people are going for the familiar. ``Friends'' is a big hit again. It's always been a big hit but it's an even bigger hit than it has been because we want the comfort of people we know on our screens. Fantasy movies are doing huge. ``Lord of the Rings,'' which is about a fight against evil, has touched a lot of cords, even with people who aren't Tolkien-heads, it's tapping into a fantasy they want to indulge in. It's hard. The war we're fighting is a new kind of war, so it's not the all out frontal assault we had with World War II or even the Vietnam War, so it's hart to keep people's interest, I think, because the immediate horror has dissipated. I can see why [news broadcasters] would break in and say there has been some progress, that our efforts are not futile, just to keep us going, this is why we're there, it's worthwhile.

Has there been a difference in how cultural events have been covered since then?

Well, there was in the few months afterwards certainly. In the Weekend Journal section where I work, we had a shift in the kind of stories we had to write because the world was different and stuff that seemed like it was worthwhile on Sept. 10 seemed just heartless and self-indulgent afterwards. I think that's changing. We were told our writing should be a little less flippant, perhaps, because we're in a different age. People aren't humorless now, but even around the country, people who weren't directly affected, we were as a country affected. There's a certain amount of seriousness in things now, even though it might not play as serious. People are less mocking now. There's a lot less flippancy. That could change, in a year, back to where we were. At the moment, the country had a major catastrophe happen to it and people are still, even if they don't talk directly about it, it's somewhere in their minds. That affects culture. One of the columns I had to write after the week after the attacks ...I just wrote a column about soothing culture, exhibitions that had paintings that offered a sense of contemplation, music that helped soothe. I didn't want anything raucous or harsh. People responded well to that. They looked at that [and said] thank you for pointing us in the right direction, something that will take my mind off, in a good way, of what's been going on. Just those kinds of things that would offer you a sense of spiritual release through meditation that the arts are sometimes good for. I didn't know what I was going to do or how I was going to entertain myself or what I was going to watch. Like everybody else, I was glued to the TV set for a couple of days. Then I couldn't read the book I had been reading. I actually started reading some mysteries, Agatha Christie classic mysteries because they find the solution and they're very intelligent. I actually thought about it. I was thinking about culture, how would I spend my time, what would speak to me?

How would you suggest to college students on limited budgets, how to find ways to fit in culture?

They're not that expensive. There are always student discounts. People live in an area and often don't go to the places the area is known for. I think people should make it, not a habit, but consider it an option. People have to get up and go out of their house to do something. It's actually more entertaining and doesn't have to be work. I try to give people options to help them think beyond the TV. I'm a big fan of TV. I watch it. I don't spend all my time glued to the tube. I try to get out. I live in a city that has almost limitless cultural possibilities and it would be appalling of me just to sit at home every night. It really would be a waste of time when there's so much offered. When you're exposed to live entertainment and performance and people looking at something, you just don't get that in your living room. Once you get in the habit of trying to do that, you realize what you miss if you don't have that in your life. It takes a little practice of getting outside and what I try to do is nudge people to try to do it without seeming like a scold or ``you should do this,'' but just offering them an option, so they're open to the possibility of changing their routine.