A Class Distinction

"Popular taste applies the schemes of the ethos, which pertain in the ordinary circumstances of life, to legitimate works of art, and so performs a systematic reduction of the things of art to the things of life. ...Intellectuals could be said to believe in the representation - literature, theatre, painting - more than in the things represented, whereas the people chiefly expect representations and the conventions which govern them to allow them to believe 'naively' in the thing represented."
~Pierre Bourdieu, "Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste"

The upper and the lower class. The intellectual and the banal. The good and the bad. Marxist theorists such as Bourdieu focused on class distinctions based on monetary and intellectual status (which really goes hand in hand), among other things, in their writing. In "Distinctions," Bourdieu draws a sharp distinction between the upper and low classes and how they relate to literature. And I find myself questioning his assertions.

Let's start at the beginning: the intellectual elite - those who are educated - see art for what it is: art. The common people, however, look to art and see what it represents. They focus on the ethics of the art, and make it a legitimate art form based on these ethical assessments. They do not judge art on its form, but rather on its content. And in this light, so it seems, Bourdieu places the working class on the low rung of the ladder, with the highest echelon of society being the intellectuals, those who like art for art's sake, and not for its ethical value. My first question is about this distinction: just because someone is not educated, does that mean they can't appreciate art for the sake of art?

Take Shakespeare's plays... they were not for the upper echelon. They were for the common people, and the common people loved them. No, perhaps they did not love the plays solely for their representation, but they loved them because they spoke. They entertained. But maybe those common folk really had something in their love for his plays: every school that I've ever heard of now studies Shakespeare. What started as a "common" art form has now risen into the higher bracket of society's intellectuals as we study and analyze Shakespeare's work. So that leads us to the fluidity of class... can works of art be equally enjoyed by both the upper and lower classes, and can it further travel through classes at different times to serve different purposes (or even the same purpose) in each class? I think in this case - and many other cases - it can be. The question further is, however, are the classes appreciating it in the same way? Bourdieu seems to say not: the lower class looks to their emotions and ethos to find value in a work of art, while the upper class looks to the art itself. But does that necessarily mean that one class is wrong and the other is right? I find that hard to believe. There is a place for form and a place for content, and each should be a viable thing to analyze. Yet, that leads us to the age-old adage: do we have a responsibility to appreciate that which we do not like? For if we now as middle class people - who are rising in stature - read plays that play with form, but the content does not meld with our beliefs, do we have a responsibility to still appreciate the form?