popular/populist
An idea has been haunting my mind for the past weekend, closely related to the commonly abused idiom of wanting a politician that you would like to drink a beer with, and it is this. When it comes to expert-level of skill in any particular field, popular acceptance comes about when it is a field that the popular media portrays as being accessible solely through effort without any inborn abilities. The contrast is the fields wherein the popular media deems as having "prodigies". Examples of this that come to my mind are chess, classical music, math and by extension the hard sciences. I was thinking about as I read a story about Susan Boyle's debut album wherein the critic described her as being an able singer but not a particularly exceptional one. No one writes about a pop music prodigy or a singing prodigy or a writing prodigy. I was also thinking about this while I was listening to Andre Agassi being interviewed on Fresh Air and he talked about the ridiculously rigorous tennis school that he was raised in.
However, my line of thinking does get to a chicken-and-egg problem of, do certain things become popular because they are portrayed as being accessible or do things that are popular then become portrayed as being accessible. Here I'm thinking of in terms of athletics of maybe golf compared to football or baseball
However, my line of thinking does get to a chicken-and-egg problem of, do certain things become popular because they are portrayed as being accessible or do things that are popular then become portrayed as being accessible. Here I'm thinking of in terms of athletics of maybe golf compared to football or baseball