Social Class in Art and Literature

According to Cohen's film, the Nazi's saw the propagation of the Nazi aesthetic as means of freeing the laboring workers from their social class. The general idea circled around the lower class comprehension of the basics of the civilized classes (i.e. the socio-cultural behaviors of the upper and middle classes) and after this has occured, Die Gemeinschaft would reach a state of social equilibrium. This social trickle down effect is interesting to me on two fronts. First, as fully detailed (almost to a suspicious fault) in Cohen's film, is the tenacity with which the Nazi's ascribed to the aesthetic. Secondly, a similar line of ideology was developed a few years earlier in England after WWI. In the post-industrialist society of England, intellectuals were centered on the problem of social class. One possible solution to this problem came from the rising field of literary criticism, particularly from the newly forged literary magazine, Scrutiny. Out of the rise of English Literary Studies and Criticism came the idea that if the laboring class could become educated in the great works of the English Nation, given that the 'great' works embodied the ideal of the higher classes, there would be a surge in English nationalism and the barriers between the classes would fall. This differed little from the Nazi idea that through the rigorous education of the working class in the 'German' aesthetic, the classes would equalize and Germans would again, be proud to be Germans and to the point of death. The jingoistic thinking behind both the ideology of the Nazi regime and of the Post-industrialist English academia is strikingly similar, and perhaps a parallel not to be missed.