By the nature of the creations, one can single out the culture represented in single samples And popular culture. The first form, according to the characteristic features of the creators, is divided into folk and elite culture. folk culture is a single work of most often anonymous authors. This form of culture includes myths, legends, tales, epics, songs, dances, and so on. Elite culture- a set of individual creations that are created by well-known representatives of the privileged part of society or by its order by professional creators. Here we are talking about creators who have a high level of education and are well known to an enlightened public. This culture includes fine arts, literature, classical music, etc.
Mass (public) culture represents products of spiritual production in the field of art, created in large editions, counting on the general public. The main thing for her is the entertainment of the widest masses of the population. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education. Its main feature is the simplicity of ideas and images: texts, movements, sounds, etc. Samples of this culture are aimed at the emotional sphere of a person. At the same time, popular culture often uses simplified examples of elite and folk culture (“remixes”). Mass culture averages the spiritual development of people.
Subculture- this is the culture of any social group: confessional, professional, corporate, etc. It, as a rule, does not deny the universal culture, but has specific features. Signs of a subculture are special rules of behavior, language, symbols. Each society has its own set of subcultures: youth, professional, ethnic, religious, dissident, etc.
Dominant culture- values, traditions, views, etc., shared only by a part of society. But this part has the ability to impose them on the whole of society, either because it constitutes the ethnic majority, or because it has a mechanism of coercion. A subculture that opposes the dominant culture is called a counterculture. The social basis of the counterculture is people who are alienated to a certain extent from the rest of society. The study of the counterculture makes it possible to understand the cultural dynamics, the formation and spread of new values.
The tendency to evaluate the culture of one's nation as good and correct, and another culture as strange and even immoral has been called "ethnocentrism". Many societies are ethnocentric. From the point of view of psychology, this phenomenon acts as a factor in the unity and stability of this society. However, ethnocentrism can be a source of intercultural conflicts. The extreme forms of manifestation of ethnocentrism are nationalism. The opposite is cultural relativism.
Elite culture
Elite, or high culture created by a privileged part, or by its order by professional creators. It includes fine arts, classical music and literature. High culture, such as the painting of Picasso or the music of Schnittke, is difficult for an unprepared person to understand. As a rule, it is decades ahead of the level of perception of an averagely educated person. The circle of its consumers is a highly educated part of society: critics, literary critics, frequenters of museums and exhibitions, theater-goers, artists, writers, musicians. When the level of education of the population grows, the circle of consumers of high culture expands. Its varieties include secular art and salon music. The formula of elite culture is “ art for art”.
Elite culture It is intended for a narrow circle of highly educated public and opposes both folk and mass culture. It is usually incomprehensible to the general public and requires good preparation for correct perception.
The avant-garde trends in music, painting, cinema, complex literature of a philosophical nature can be attributed to the elite culture. Often the creators of such a culture are perceived as inhabitants of the "ivory tower", fenced off by their art from real everyday life. As a rule, elite culture is non-commercial, although sometimes it can be financially successful and move into the category of mass culture.
Modern trends are such that mass culture penetrates into all areas of "high culture", mixing with it. At the same time, mass culture reduces the general cultural level of its consumers, but at the same time, it itself gradually rises to a higher cultural level. Unfortunately, the first process is still much more intense than the second.
folk culture
folk culture is recognized as a special form of culture. In contrast to the elite culture of the people, culture is created by anonymous creators who do not have professional training. The authors of folk creations are unknown. Folk culture is called amateur (not by level, but by origin) or collective. It includes myths, legends, tales, epics, fairy tales, songs and dances. In terms of execution, elements of folk culture can be individual (retelling of a legend), group (performing a dance or song), mass (carnival processions). Folklore is another name for folk art, which is created by various segments of the population. Folklore is localized, that is, associated with the traditions of the given area, and democratic, since everyone participates in its creation. Anecdotes and urban legends can be attributed to modern manifestations of folk culture.
Mass culture
Mass or public does not express the refined tastes of the aristocracy or the spiritual quest of the people. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when mass media(radio, print, television, records, tape recorders, video) penetrated into most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social strata. Mass culture can be international and national. Popular and pop music is a vivid example of mass culture. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education.
Popular culture is usually less artistic value than elitist or popular culture. But it has the widest audience. It satisfies the momentary needs of people, reacts to any new event and reflects it. Therefore, samples of mass culture, in particular hits, quickly lose their relevance, become obsolete, go out of fashion. This does not happen with works of elite and folk culture. pop culture is a slang term for mass culture, and kitsch is a variation of it.
Subculture
The set of values, beliefs, traditions and customs that guide the majority of members of society is called dominant culture. Since society breaks up into many groups (national, demographic, social, professional), each of them gradually forms its own culture, i.e., a system of values and rules of conduct. Small cultures are called subcultures.
Subculture- part of a common culture, a system of values, traditions, customs inherent in a certain. They talk about the youth subculture, the subculture of the elderly, the subculture of national minorities, the professional subculture, the criminal subculture. The subculture differs from the dominant culture in language, outlook on life, behavior, hair, dress, customs. The differences can be very strong, but the subculture does not oppose the dominant culture. Drug addicts, the deaf and dumb, the homeless, alcoholics, athletes, and the lonely have their own culture. The children of the aristocrats or the middle class are very different in their behavior from the children of the lower class. They read different books, go to different schools, follow different ideals. Each generation and social group has its own cultural world.
Counterculture
Counterculture denotes a subculture that is not only different from the dominant culture, but opposes, is in conflict with the dominant values. The terrorist subculture opposes human culture, and the hippie youth movement in the 1960s. denied the dominant American values: hard work, material success, conformity, sexual restraint, political loyalty, rationalism.
Culture in Russia
The state of the spiritual life of modern Russia can be characterized as a transition from upholding the values associated with attempts to build a communist society, to the search for a new meaning of social development. We have reached the next round of the historical dispute between Westernizers and Slavophiles.
The Russian Federation is a multinational country. Its development is due to the peculiarities of national cultures. The uniqueness of the spiritual life of Russia lies in the diversity of cultural traditions, religious beliefs, moral norms, aesthetic tastes, etc., which is associated with the specifics of the cultural heritage of different peoples.
At present, in the spiritual life of our country, there are conflicting trends. On the one hand, the mutual penetration of different cultures contributes to interethnic understanding and cooperation, on the other hand, the development of national cultures is accompanied by interethnic conflicts. The latter circumstance requires a balanced, tolerant attitude towards the culture of other communities.
Elite culture has rather blurred boundaries, especially at the present time with the tendencies of the elements of the mass to strive for the expression of individuality. Its peculiarity is that it is doomed to be misunderstood by most people, and this is one of its main characteristics. In this article, we will find out the elite culture, what are its main characteristics and compare it with the mass one.
What it is
Elite culture is the same "high culture". It is opposed to the mass, which is one of the methods of its detection in the general cultural process. This concept was first singled out by C. Manheim and J. Ortega y Gasset in their works, where they deduced it precisely as the antithesis of the concept of mass culture. They meant by high culture that which contains a semantic core capable of developing human individuality, and from which the continuation of the creation of its other elements can follow. Another direction they singled out is the presence of special verbal elements accessible to narrow social groups: for example, Latin and Sanskrit for clergy.
Elite and mass culture: opposition
They are opposed to each other by the type of impact on consciousness, as well as by the quality of the meanings that their elements contain. Thus, the mass is aimed at a more superficial perception, which does not require specific knowledge and special intellectual efforts to understand the cultural product. At present, there is an increased spread of mass culture due to the process of globalization, which, in turn, is spread through the media and stimulated by the capitalist structure of society. unlike the elite, it is intended for a wide range of people. Now we see elements of it everywhere, and it is especially evident in television programs and cinema.
So, Hollywood cinema can be opposed to arthouse cinema. At the same time, the first type of films focuses the viewer's attention not on the meaning and idea of the story, but on the special effects of the video sequence. Here, high-quality cinema implies an interesting design, an unexpected, but easy-to-perceive plot.
Elite culture is represented by arthouse films, which are evaluated according to different criteria than Hollywood products of this kind, the main of which is meaning. So, the quality of the video sequence in such films is often underestimated. At first glance, the reason for the low quality of shooting is either the lack of good funding, or the dilettantism of the director. However, this is not the case: in arthouse cinema, the function of video is to convey the meaning of an idea. Special effects can distract from this, so they are not typical for products of this format. Arthouse ideas are original and deep. Very often, in the presentation of a simple story, a deep meaning is hidden from a superficial understanding, a real tragedy of a person is revealed. When watching these films, you can often see that the director himself is trying to find the answer to the question posed and is studying the characters in the course of shooting. Predicting the plot of an arthouse movie is almost impossible.
Characteristics of high culture
Elite culture has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from mass culture:
- Its elements are aimed at displaying and studying the deep processes of human psychology.
- It has a closed structure, accessible to understanding only outstanding individuals.
- Differs in originality of artistic solutions.
- Contains a minimum of figurative means.
- Has the ability to express something new.
- It is an approbation of what in the future may become a classic or trivial art.
Forms of culture refer to such sets of rules, norms and models of human behavior that cannot be considered completely autonomous entities; neither are they constituent parts of a whole. High or elite culture, folk culture and mass culture are called forms of culture because they represent a special way of expressing artistic content. High, folk and mass culture differ in a set of techniques and visual means of a work of art, authorship, audience, means of conveying artistic ideas to the audience, and the level of performing skills.
Depending on who creates culture and what level it is, sociologists distinguish three forms of it.
-elite
-folk
-mass
high culture
Elite, or high culture is created by a privileged part of society, or by its order by professional creators. It includes fine arts, classical music and literature. High culture, such as the painting of Picasso or the music of Schoenberg, is difficult for an unprepared person to understand. As a rule, it is decades ahead of the level of perception of an averagely educated person. The circle of its consumers is a highly educated part of society: critics, literary critics, regulars of museums and exhibitions, theater-goers, artists, writers, musicians. When the level of education of the population grows, the circle of consumers of high culture expands. Its varieties include secular art and salon music. The formula of elite culture is "art for art's sake".
folk culture
Folk culture consists of two types - popular and folk culture. When a campaign of tipsy friends sings the songs of A. Pugacheva or<Не шуми камыш>, then we are talking about popular culture, and when an ethnographic expedition from the depths of Russia brings material from carol holidays or Russian lamentations, then they always talk about folklore culture. As a result, popular culture describes today's way of life, manners, customs, songs, dances, and so on. people, and folklore - its past. Legends, fairy tales and other genres of folklore were created in the past, and today they exist as a historical heritage. Some of this legacy is still being performed today, which means that part of the folklore culture has entered popular culture, which, in addition to historical legends, is constantly replenished with new formations, for example, modern urban folklore.
Thus, in folk culture, in turn, two levels can be distinguished - a high one, associated with folklore and including folk legends, fairy tales, epics, old dances, etc., and a lower one, limited by the so-called pop culture.
Unlike elite culture, which is created by professionals, high folk culture is created by anonymous creators who do not have professional training. The authors of folk creations (tales, lamentations, tales) are often unknown, but these are highly artistic works. Myths, legends, tales, epics, fairy tales, songs and dances belong to the highest creations of folk culture. They cannot be attributed to an elitist or high culture just because they were created by anonymous folk creators.<Народная культура возникла в глубокой древности. Ее субъектом являются не отдельные профессионалы, а весь народ. Поэтому функционирование народной культуры неотделимо от труда и быта людей. Авторы ее зачастую анонимны, произведения существуют обычно во множестве вариантов, передаются устно из поколения в поколение. В этом плане можно говорить о народном искусстве (народные песни, сказки, легенды), народной медицине (лекарственные травы, заговоры), народной педагогике, суть которой часто выражается в пословицах, поговорках> 1)
In terms of execution, elements of folk culture can be individual (retelling of a legend), group (performing a dance or song), mass (carnival processions). Folklore is not the name of all folk art, as is often thought, but only part of it, associated primarily with oral folk art. Folklore, as well as popular, forms (or types) were created earlier and are being created today by various segments of the population. Folklore is always localized, i.e. associated with the traditions of the area, and democratic, since everyone involved in its creation.
The place of concentration of folklore culture, as a rule, is the village, and the popular one is the city, since the majority of the population lives there today. Some creative products are classified as folk culture as a whole, without subdividing them into folklore and popular. For example, folk medicine, folk crafts, folk games and fun, folk songs and dances, folk rituals and holidays, folk cuisine, folk ethics and pedagogy.
The audience of popular culture is always the majority of society. So it was in traditional and industrial society. The situation changes only in a post-industrial society.
Mass culture
Mass culture does not express the refined tastes or spiritual quests of the people. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when the mass media (radio, print, television, records and tape recorders) penetrated most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social strata. Mass culture can be international and national. Pop music is a vivid example of mass culture. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education.
Mass culture, as a rule, has less artistic value than elite or folk culture. But she has the widest audience and she is the author. It satisfies the momentary needs of people, reacts to any new event and reflects it. Therefore, samples of mass culture, in particular hits, quickly lose their relevance, become obsolete, go out of fashion. This does not happen with works of elite and folk culture. High culture denotes the passions and habits of the townspeople, aristocrats, the rich, the ruling elite, and mass culture denotes the culture of the lower classes. The same types of art can belong to high and mass culture: classical music - high, and popular music - mass, Fellini's films - high, and action films - mass, Picasso's paintings - high, and popular prints - mass. However, there are some genres of literature, in particular fantasy, detective stories and comics, which are always classified as popular or popular culture, but never as high. The same thing happens with concrete works of art.
Bach's organ mass belongs to high culture, but if it is used as musical accompaniment in figure skating competitions, it is automatically included in the category of mass culture, without losing its belonging to high culture. Numerous orchestrations of Bach's works in the style of light music, jazz or rock do not compromise high culture at all. The same applies to the Mona Lisa on a toilet soap box or a computer reproduction of it hanging in the back office.
Basic forms of culture
Elite culture- this is a culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closeness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. This is a “high culture”, which is opposed to mass culture in terms of the type of influence on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective features and providing a meaning-forming function. A type of culture characterized by the production of cultural values, samples that, due to their exclusivity, are calculated and available in the main narrow circle of people (the elite). Its main ideal is the formation of consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity. Elite culture is able to concentrate the intellectual, spiritual and artistic experience of generations.
Historical origin of elite culture
The historical origin of elite culture is precisely this: already in primitive society, priests, sorcerers, sorcerers, tribal leaders become privileged possessors of special knowledge that cannot and should not be intended for general, mass use. Subsequently, this kind of relationship between elite culture and mass culture in one form or another, in particular secular, was repeatedly reproduced (in various religious denominations and especially sects, in monastic and spiritual knightly orders, Masonic lodges, in religious and philosophical meetings, in literary - artistic and intellectual circles that are formed around a charismatic leader, scientific communities and scientific schools, in political associations and parties - including especially those that worked conspiratorially, conspiratorially, underground, etc.). Ultimately, the elitism of knowledge, skills, values, norms, principles, traditions that was formed in this way was the key to refined professionalism and deep subject specialization, without which historical progress, progressive value-semantic growth, content enrichment and accumulation of formal perfection are impossible in culture - any value-semantic hierarchy. Elite culture acts as an initiative and productive beginning in any culture, performing a predominantly creative function in it; while it stereotypes, routinizes, profanes the achievements of elite culture, adapting them to the perception and consumption of the socio-cultural majority of society.
Origin of the term
Elite culture as the antithesis of the mass
Historically, elite culture arose as the antithesis of mass culture and its meaning, the main value shows in comparison with the latter. The essence of elite culture was first analyzed by X. Ortega y Gasset (“Dehumanization of Art”, “The Revolt of the Masses”) and K. Manheim (“Ideology and Utopia”, “Man and Society in an Age of Transformation”, “Essay on the Sociology of Culture”) who considered this culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and having a number of fundamentally important features, including the method of verbal communication - the language developed by its speakers, where special social groups - clergymen, politicians, artists - use special , closed to the uninitiated languages, including Latin and Sanskrit.
Deepening contradictions between elite culture and mass
This trend - the deepening of the contradictions between the elite culture and the mass - has increased unprecedentedly in the 20th century and inspired many sharp and dramatic. collisions. At the same time, there are many examples in the history of culture of the 20th century that clearly illustrate the paradoxical dialectics of elite culture and mass culture: their mutual transition and mutual transformations, mutual influences and self-denial of each of them.
Elitization of mass culture
So, for example, (symbolists and impressionists, expressionists and futurists, surrealists and dadaists, etc.) - and artists, and theorists of trends, and philosophers, and publicists - were aimed at creating unique samples and entire systems of elite culture. Many of the formal refinements were experimental in nature; the theorists of the manifesto and the declaration substantiated the right of the artist and thinker to creative incomprehensibility, separation from the masses, their tastes and needs, to the inherently valuable being of “culture for culture’s sake”. However, as everyday objects, everyday situations, forms of everyday thinking, structures of generally accepted behavior, current historical events, etc. fell into the expanding field of activity of modernists. (albeit with a “minus” sign, as a “minus device”), modernism began - involuntarily, and then consciously - to appeal to the masses and mass consciousness. Shocking and mockery, grotesque and denunciation of the layman, buffoonery and farce are the same legitimate genres, stylistic devices and expressive means of mass culture, as well as playing up cliches and stereotypes of mass consciousness, poster and agitation, farce and ditty, recitation and rhetoric. The stylization or parody of banality is almost indistinguishable from the stylized and paraded (with the exception of the author's ironic distance and general semantic context, which remain almost imperceptible to mass perception); on the other hand, the recognizability and familiarity of vulgarity makes its criticism - highly intellectual, subtle, aestheticized - little understandable and effective for the bulk of the recipients (who are not able to distinguish mockery of base taste from indulgence to it). As a result, the same work of culture acquires a double life with different semantic content and opposite ideological pathos: on one side it turns out to be turned to elite culture, on the other - to mass culture. Such are the many works of Chekhov and Gorky, Mahler and Stravinsky, Modigliani and Picasso, L. Andreev and Verharn, Mayakovsky and Eluard, Meyerhold and Shostakovich, Yesenin and Kharms, Brecht and Fellini, Brodsky and Voinovich. Especially controversial is the contamination of elite culture and mass culture in postmodern culture; for example, in such an early phenomenon of postmodernism as pop art, there is an elitization of mass culture and, at the same time, a massification of elitism, which gave rise to the classics of modern art. postmodernist U. Eco to characterize pop art as “low-browed high-browedness”, or, conversely, as “high-browed low-browedness” (in English. : Lowbrow Highbrow, or Highbrow Lowbrow).
Features of high culture
The subject of an elitist, high culture is a person - a free, creative person capable of conscious activity. are always personally colored and designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the wide dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of an elite culture is a representative of the elite.
At the same time, objects of high culture that retain their form - plot, composition, musical structure, but change the mode of presentation and appear in the form of replicated products, adapted, adapted to an unusual type of functioning, as a rule, pass into the category of mass culture. In this sense, we can talk about the ability of form to be the bearer of content.
If we keep in mind the art of mass culture, then we can state the different sensitivity of its types to this ratio. In the field of music, the form is fully meaningful, even its minor transformations (for example, the widespread practice of translating classical music into an electronic version of its instrumentation) lead to the destruction of the integrity of the work. In the field of fine arts, the translation of an authentic image into a different format - a reproduction or a digital version - leads to a similar result (even if the context is preserved - in a virtual museum). As for a literary work, changing the presentation mode - including from traditional book to digital - does not affect its character, since the form of the work, the structure are the laws of its dramatic construction, and not the carrier - printing or electronic - of this information. Defining such works of high culture that have changed the nature of their functioning as mass works allows the violation of their integrity, when secondary or, at least, not their main components are accentuated and act as leading ones. Changing the authentic format of the phenomena of mass culture leads to the fact that the essence of the work changes, where ideas appear in a simplified, adapted version, and creative functions are replaced by socializing ones. This is due to the fact that, unlike high culture, the essence of mass culture is not in creative activity, not in the production of cultural values, but in the formation of "value orientations" corresponding to the nature of the prevailing social relations, and the development of stereotypes of the mass consciousness of members of the "consumer society". society." Nevertheless, elite culture is a kind of model for the mass, acting as a source of plots, images, ideas, hypotheses, adapted by the latter to the level of mass consciousness.
According to I. V. Kondakov, elite culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and addressees (in any case, the range of both is almost the same). Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes the culture of the majority in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, the official culture of a particular estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of a technocratic society of the 20th century, etc. Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and possessing a number of fundamentally important features:
- complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;
- the ability to form consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;
- the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;
- the presence of a limited range of values recognized as true and "high";
- a rigid system of norms accepted by this stratum as obligatory and strict in the community of "initiates";
- individualization of norms, values, evaluative criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;
- the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural outlook from the addressee;
- using a deliberately subjective, individually creative, “deleting” interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings the subject’s cultural assimilation of reality closer to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, to the extreme, replaces the reflection of reality in elite culture with its transformation, imitation with deformation, penetration into meaning - conjecture and rethinking given;
- semantic and functional "closeness", "narrowness", isolation from the whole national culture, which turns the elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its carriers turn into a kind of "priests" of this knowledge, the chosen ones of the gods , "servants of the muses", "keepers of secrets and faith", which is often played up and poeticized in elite culture
Elements of high culture
- The science
- Philosophy
- Specialized (professional) education, especially higher education (intellectual elite)
- Literature, especially classical, poetry
- Intellectual literature (as opposed to mass literature) and auteur cinema (as opposed to mass cinema)
- art
- Musical art, classical music, opera, ballet, symphonic music, organ music
- Theater
- Etiquette
- public service
- Military service as an officer
- Fine cuisine and good wine
- High-fashion
- Manifesting yourself as a person
Elite culture is a high culture, opposed to mass culture not by the nature of social content, not by the features of the reflection of reality, but by the type of impact on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective features and providing a meaning-forming function. Its main ideal is the formation of consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality. This understanding of elite culture, explicated from a similar understanding of it as a culture high, concentrating the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations, seems to be more accurate and adequate than the understanding of the elite as avant-garde.
It must be emphasized that historically elite culture arises precisely as antithesis of mass and its meaning, the main meaning manifests in comparison with the latter. The essence of elite culture was first analyzed by H. Ortega y Gasset (“Dehumanization of Art”, “The Revolt of the Masses”) and K. Manheim (“Ideology and Utopia”, “Man and Society in an Age of Transformation”, “Essay on the Sociology of Culture”) who considered this culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and possessing a number of fundamentally important features, including the method of verbal communication - the language developed by its speakers, where special social groups - clergymen, politicians, artists - also use special , closed to the uninitiated languages, including Latin and Sanskrit.
Subject elitist, high culture is personality - a free, creative person capable of conscious activity. The creations of this culture are always personalized and are designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide circulation and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the wide dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of an elite culture is a representative of the elite.
At the same time, objects of high culture that retain their form - plot, composition, musical structure, but changing presentation mode and acting in the form of replicated products, adapted, adapted to an unusual type of functioning, as a rule, move into mass culture. In this sense, one can speak of the ability of form to be the bearer of content.
If you mean art mass culture, then we can state the different sensitivity of its species to this ratio. In the field of music, the form is fully meaningful, even its minor transformations (for example, the widespread practice of translating classical music into an electronic version of its instrumentation) lead to the destruction of the integrity of the work. In area visual arts the translation of an authentic image into a different format - a reproduction or a digital version - leads to a similar result (even if the context is preserved - in a virtual museum). As for literary work, then changing the presentation mode - including from traditional book to digital - does not affect its character, since the form of the work, the structure are the laws of its dramatic construction, and not the medium - printing or electronic - of this information. To define such works of high culture that have changed the nature of their functioning as mass works allows the violation of their integrity, when secondary or, at least, not their main components are accentuated and act as leading ones. Changing the authentic format phenomena of mass culture leads to the fact that the essence of the work changes, where ideas appear in a simplified, adapted version, and creative functions are replaced by socializing ones. This is due to the fact that, unlike high culture, the essence of mass culture is not in creative activity, not in the production of cultural values, but in the formation "value orientations" corresponding to the nature of the prevailing social relations, and the development of stereotypes mass consciousness of members of the "consumer society". Nevertheless, elite culture is for the mass a kind of pattern, acting as a source of plots, images, ideas, hypotheses, adapted by the latter to the level of mass consciousness.
Thus, elite culture is a culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closeness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. According to I.V. Kondakova, elitist culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and addressees (in any case, the range of both is almost the same). Elite culture consciously and consistently opposed to majority culture in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, the official culture of a particular estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of the technocratic society of the 20th century. etc. Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and having a number of fundamentally important features:
complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;
· the ability to form consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;
· the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;
the presence of a limited range of values recognized as true and "high";
· a rigid system of norms accepted by this stratum as obligatory and strict in the community of "initiates";
individualization of norms, values, evaluation criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;
· the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural outlook from the addressee;
the use of a deliberately subjective, individually creative, "deleting" interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings the subject's cultural assimilation of reality closer to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, to the extreme, replaces the reflection of reality in elite culture with its transformation, imitation - with deformation, penetration into meaning - by conjecture and rethinking of the given;
semantic and functional “closeness”, “narrowness”, isolation from the whole national culture, which turns the elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its carriers turn into a kind of “priests” of this knowledge, the chosen ones gods, "servants of the muses", "keepers of secrets and faith", which is often played up and poeticized in elite culture.
