Narrator Listen to part of a lecture in an art class. Now get ready

Well, um, whether we like it or not—and many may disagree with my thesis because painting, or music, or some other art is more important to them—the art of the moving image is the only art truly of our time, whether it is in the form of film or television. The moving picture is our universal art, which comprises all others, literature and acting, stage design and music, dance and the beauty of nature, and most of all, the use of light and of color.
    It is always about us, because the medium is truly part of the message and the medium of the moving image is uniquely modern. Everybody can understand it, as everyone once understood religious art in church. And as people used to go to church on Sundays, anyway they still do it now, so the majority today go to the movies on weekends. But while in the past most went to church only on some days, now everybody watches moving images every day.
    All age groups watch moving pictures, and they watch them for many more hours than people have ever spent in churches. Children and adults watch them separately or together in many ways and for many people, it is the only experience common to parents and children. It is the only art today that appeals to all social and economic classes, in short, that appeals to everybody, as did religious art in times past. The moving picture is thus by far the most popular of our time, and it is also the most authentically American of arts.
    When I speak here of the moving picture as the authentic American art of our time, I do not think of art with a capital A, nor of "high" art. Putting art on a pedestal robs it of its vitality. When the great medieval and Renaissance cathedrals were erected, and decorated outside and in with art, these were popular works, which meant something to everybody.
    Some were great works of art, others not, but every piece was significant and all took pride in each of them. Some gain their spiritual experience from the masterpiece, but many more gain it from the mediocre works that express the same vision as the masterpiece but in a more accessible form. This is as true for church music or the church itself as for paintings and sculptures. This diversity of art objects achieves a unity, and differences in quality are important, provided they all represent, each in its own way, the overarching vision and experience of a larger, important cosmos. Such a vision confers meaning and dignity on our existence, and is what forms the essence of art.
    So among the worst detriments to the healthy development of the art of the moving image are efforts by aesthetes and critics to isolate the art of film from popular movies and television. Nothing could be more contrary to the true spirit of art. Whenever art was vital, it was always equally popular with the ordinary man and the most refined person. Had Greek drama and comedy meant nothing to most citizens, the majority of the population would not have set all day long entranced on hard stone slabs, watching the events on the stage; nor would the entire population have conferred prizes on the winning dramatist. The medieval pageants and mystery plays out of which modern drama grew were popular entertainment, as were the plays of Shakespeare. Everybody admired David’s statue; it was simultaneously popular and great art, but one did not think of it in disparate terms. Neither should we. To live well we need both: visions that lift us up, and entertainment that is down to earth, provided both art and entertainment, each in its different form and way, are embodiments of the same visions of man. If art does not speak to all of us, common men and elites alike, it fails to address itself to that true humanity that is common to all of us. A different art for the elites and another one for average man tears society apart; it offends what we most need= visions that bind us together in common experiences that make life worth living.