I didn’t find the author criticism the artists as much as their subject matter. Talking about Elon Musk or nuclear technology or philosophy is transcendent. Talking about the everyday life of a Charleston crab fisher is ordinary.

I like both! But I agree that pop culture fetishises the latter while looking down on the former. (It reminds of of revolutionary France, dialled down orders of magnitude.) I also agree that a healthy culture embraces both.

Virtue signalling in popular culture increasingly looks down on transcendent subjects as out of touch. It’s an interesting recapitulation of classical virtue signalling, e.g. eschewing rock for the opera.