This is such a bizarre pastiche of thoughts using at random the word "art," which term is employed rather oddly:
… I came to realize that I had witnessed one extreme of the artistic spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are major arts, defined not in terms of cultural superiority but in terms of large audiences. At the other extreme are crafts like making carrot carnations. These are arts that have no audience, other than practitioners of the art itself. Another word for a craft is a hobby. In between the major arts and the crafts or hobbies are minor arts, which have a small audience whose members do not themselves aspire to practice the art.
The "major arts, defined … in terms of large audiences." So major means popular. But I thought we were talking about art. Art is defined — and valued — in terms of its practice in relation to the materials employed. In those terms a work can be major even if nobody appreciates it. Ballet is the epitome of dance, and dancers in particular honor it accordingly, and don't care whether anybody gets it. But wait. There are arts that have no audience except the people who practice them. So mass media is major because it's mass media. And ballet is minor because it is not. The viewpoint on display is, deductively, quite sound. But that is because it has defined its subject in a way that is different from the way it is commonly understood. It's Humpty-Dumptyism through and through. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
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