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Mass culture briefly. Mass culture: main characteristic

Mass culture briefly. Mass culture: main characteristic

21.04.2019

Mass culture or pop culture, mass culture, the culture of the majority - the culture of everyday life, entertainment and information that prevails in modern society. It includes such phenomena as mass media (including television and radio), sports, cinema, music, popular literature, visual arts, etc.

The content of mass culture is determined by the daily events, aspirations and needs that make up the life of the majority of the population (i.e., the mainstream). The term "mass culture" originated in the 1940s. XX century in the texts of M. Horkheimer and D. MacDonald, dedicated to the criticism of television. The term became widespread thanks to the works of representatives of the Frankfurt sociological school.

Mass culture in the 18th and 19th centuries

The prerequisites for the formation of mass culture are laid down in the very existence of the structure of society. José Ortega y Gasset formulated a well-known approach to structuring on the basis of creativity. Then the idea arises of the "creative elite", which, naturally, constitutes a smaller part of society, and of the "mass" - quantitatively the main part of the population. Accordingly, it becomes possible to speak about and about the culture of the "mass" - "mass culture". During this period, there is a division of culture, determined by the formation of new significant social strata, gaining access to a full-fledged education, but not belonging to the elite. Getting the opportunity for a conscious aesthetic perception of cultural phenomena, newly emerging social groups that constantly communicate with the masses make the “elite” phenomena significant on a social scale and at the same time show interest in “mass” culture, in some cases they are mixed (see, for example, Charles Dickens ).

Mass culture in the 20th century

In the twentieth century, mass society and the mass culture associated with it became the subject of research by the most prominent scientists in various scientific fields: the philosophers José Ortega y Gasset (“The Revolt of the Masses”), Karl Jaspers (“The Spiritual Situation of the Time”), Oswald Spengler (“The Sunset of Europe"); sociologists Jean Baudrillard (“Phantoms of Modernity”), P. A. Sorokin (“Man. Civilization. Society.”) and others. Analyzing mass culture, each of them notes a trend towards its commercialization.

Karl Marx, analyzing the problems of a market economy, noted the commercialization of literary work:

“Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost and received £5 for it, was an unproductive worker. On the contrary, the writer who works for his bookseller in a factory manner is a productive worker. Milton created "Paradise Lost" with the same necessity with which a silkworm produces silk. It was a true manifestation of his nature. He then sold his work for £5. And the Leipzig proletarian writer, who fabricates books at the behest of his publisher ... is a productive worker, since his production is subordinated to capital from the very beginning, and is carried out only to increase the value of this capital.

Speaking about art in general, P. A. Sorokin noted an approximately similar trend in the middle of the 20th century: “As a commercial product for entertainment, art is increasingly controlled by merchants, commercial interests and fashion trends ... A similar situation creates the highest connoisseurs of beauty from commercial dealers, compels artists to comply with their demands, further imposed through advertising and other media. At the beginning of the 21st century, modern researchers state the same cultural phenomena: “Modern trends are cumulative and have already led to the creation of a critical mass of changes that have affected the very foundations of the content and activities of cultural institutions. The most significant of them, in our opinion, are: the commercialization of culture, democratization, the blurring of boundaries - both in the field of knowledge and technology - as well as the priority attention to the process, not to the content.

The attitude to mass culture in modern philosophical and cultural thought is not unambiguous. If Karl Jaspers called popular art "the decline of the essence of art", and Jean Baudriard said that all areas of contemporary art "enter the transaesthetic sphere of simulation", then these concepts were revised in the 1960s-1970s. within the framework of postmodernism, which destroyed for many researchers the opposition of mass and elite cultures of qualitative evaluative meaning. Speaking of art (implying elite art) of the early 20th century, Ortega y Gasset speaks of its dehumanization. Under such conditions, the increase in the role of "superhumanized" mass art is a natural process.

Genres of popular culture

A necessary property of the products of popular culture must be entertaining, so that it has a commercial success, so that it is bought and the money spent on it makes a profit. Amusement is given by the strict structural conditions of the text. The plot and stylistic texture of mass culture products can be primitive from the point of view of an elitist fundamental culture, but it must not be poorly done, but, on the contrary, it must be perfect in its primitiveness - only in this case it is guaranteed readership and, therefore, commercial success. . Stream of consciousness, estrangement, intertext are not suitable for mass culture. Popular literature needs a clear plot with intrigue and vicissitudes and, most importantly, a clear division into genres. We see this well in the example of mass cinema. The genres are clearly demarcated and there aren't many of them. The main ones are detective, thriller, comedy, melodrama, horror film, or, as it has been called lately, “chiller” (from the English chill - to tremble with fear), fantasy, pornography. Each genre is a self-contained world with its own linguistic laws, which in no case should be transgressed, especially in cinema, where production is associated with the largest amount of financial investment. Using the terms of semiotics, we can say that the genres of mass culture must have a rigid syntax - an internal structure, but at the same time they may be poor semantically, they may lack a deep meaning. In the 20th century, popular culture replaced folklore, which is also syntactically built extremely rigidly. This was shown most clearly in the 1920s by V. Ya. Propp, who analyzed a fairy tale and showed that it always contains the same syntactic structural scheme, which can be formalized and represented in logical symbols. The texts of mass literature and cinema are constructed in the same way. Why is this needed? This is necessary so that the genre can be recognized immediately; and the expectation must not be violated. The viewer should not be disappointed. Comedy should not spoil the detective, and the plot of a thriller should be exciting and dangerous. That is why plots within mass genres are so often repeated. Repetition is a property of a myth - this is the deep kinship between mass and elite culture, which in the 20th century, willy-nilly, is guided by the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Actors in the mind of the viewer are identified with the characters. The hero who died in one film seems to be resurrected in another, just as archaic mythological gods died and were resurrected. After all, movie stars are the gods of modern mass consciousness.

Cult texts of popular culture

A variety of mass culture texts are cult texts. Their main feature is that they penetrate so deeply into the mass consciousness that they produce intertexts, but not in themselves, but in the surrounding reality. That is, the cult texts of mass culture form around themselves a special intertextual reality.

An elitist culture, which is complex and sophisticated in its internal structure, cannot influence the extra-textual reality in such a way. It's hard to imagine the jokes about Hans Castorp from The Magic Mountain or Josef Knecht from The Glass Bead Game. True, some modernist or avant-garde technique is mastered by fundamental culture to such an extent that it becomes a cliché, then it can be used by mass culture texts. As an example, we can cite the famous Soviet cinematic posters, where the huge face of the main character of the film was depicted in the foreground, and in the background little men killed someone or simply flickered (depending on the genre). This change, the distortion of proportions is a stamp of surrealism. But the mass consciousness perceives it as realistic, although everyone knows that there is no head without a body, and that such space is, in essence, absurd. Postmodernism - this careless and frivolous child of the end of the 20th century - finally let mass culture in and mixed it with the elite. At first it was a compromise, which was called kitsch. But then the classic texts of postmodern culture, such as Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose or Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction, began to actively use the strategy of the internal structure of mass art.

a type of culture characterized by the production of cultural values: - designed for mass consumption and for an average mass taste; - standardized in form and content; - assuming commercial success; and – disseminated by the media

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MASS CULTURE

a term used in modern cultural studies to refer to a specific kind of spiritual production, focused on the "average" consumer and suggesting the possibility of a wide replication of the original product. The appearance of M.K. It is customary to associate with the era of the formation of large-scale industrial production, which required the creation of an army of hired workers for its service. The simultaneous breakup of the traditional social structure of feudal society also contributed to the emergence of a mass of people cut off from the usual forms of activity and the spiritual traditions associated with them. M.K. arises, on the one hand, as an attempt by new social strata (hired workers and employees) to create their own kind of urban folk culture, on the other hand, as a means of manipulating mass consciousness in the interests of the dominant political and economic structures. M.K. seeks to quench the natural human yearning for an ideal with the help of a set of stable worldview clichés that form an implicit code of worldview and a model of behavior. M.K. operates, as a rule, with basic archetypal ideas and feelings (desire for love, fear of the unknown, striving for success, hope for a miracle, etc.), creating on their basis products designed for an immediate emotional reaction of the consumer, similar to children's direct perception of reality . M.K. creates modern mythology, constructing its own world, which is often perceived by its consumers as more real than their own everyday existence. The essential side of M.K. is the exact choice of the addressee-consumer (age, social and national groups), which determines the choice of appropriate artistic and technical techniques and, if successful, brings a significant income. M.K. traditionally opposed to an elite culture capable of creating products of unique artistic value that require certain intellectual efforts and initial cultural baggage for their perception. The element of innovation in M.K. insignificant, since its creators are mainly engaged in the creation of simplified versions of the achievements of "high" culture adapted for the mass consciousness. At the same time, it is unlawful to consider M.K. a reserve of vulgarity and bad taste, which has nothing to do with genuine art. In reality, M.K. serves as a kind of mediator between the generally accepted values of elite culture, the avant-garde "underground" and traditional folk culture. Turning esoteric revelations and marginal artistic experiments into a part of the "naive" consciousness, M.K. contributes to its enrichment and development. At the same time, fixing the mass mindsets and orientations existing in society, M.K. has the opposite effect on elite cultural creativity and largely sets the perspective of the modern reading of cultural tradition. Dynamics of M.K. is able to give a fairly accurate picture of the evolution of social ideals and worldview models, the main trends in the spiritual life of society. M.K. is a natural product of modern civilization. The most striking phenomena of M.K. (comics, "black" crime novel, family saga) are often considered as varieties of urban folklore. Therefore, the significance of a particular product M.K. is determined not by its universal value, but by the ability to express the illusions, hopes and problems of the era in the language of its time.

M.R. Zhbankov

Mass culture is a specific product of modern industrialized urbanized society. Various directions of its analysis were closely connected with the corresponding versions of the theory of mass society. Critical analysis of mass culture emphasized in it the characteristics of "low", primitive culture, "culture of the masses", which poses a threat to "high culture", or emphasized the use by the elites of mass culture, which arouses "lower instincts" for the spiritual exploitation of the masses, mass standardization and depersonalization. With more optimistic approaches, mass culture was viewed as a generally quite satisfactory form of culture, characteristic of a mature industrial society with a high level of education, a high standard of living, and a developed system of mass communications.

In modern sociology, the concept of "mass culture" is increasingly losing its critical focus. The functional significance of mass culture is emphasized, which ensures the socialization of huge masses of people in a complex, changeable environment of a modern industrialized urban society. Approving simplified, stereotypical ideas, mass culture nevertheless performs the function of constant life support for the most diverse social groups. It also ensures mass inclusion in the system of consumption and thus the functioning of mass production. Mass culture is characterized by universality, it covers a wide middle part of society, affecting in a specific way both the elite and the marginal strata.

It should be noted that in recent years, with the development of modern information technologies, fundamentally new phenomena have appeared. There is a division of the "mass" into segments, processes of demassification are developing. This leads to the growth of cultural diversity, segmentation of the market of cultural products. Now the concept of "mass culture" emphasizes only one thing - the market aspect of the current cultural situation. Mass culture is a set of cultural products with commercial properties; this is a product in which the economic characteristics, i.e. the ability to sell on the market are the main criterion, and the value load has faded into the background. This is what leads to the priority development of entertainment rather than ideological or analytical programs, to the transformation of show business into one of the most profitable types of business. In the 90s. the struggle of the largest TNCs for segments of the market of cultural products began. The development of global networks has given this struggle a global character. The six largest TNCs in the world now dominate the market for the cultural industry, and each of them pursues its own cultural policy. The changed technological forms of cultural production will no longer allow returning to the old, traditional patterns - they can only be preserved on the periphery of cultural life. In the life cycle of a modern cultural product, which includes such stages as creative work, production of an author's copy, industrial production (replication), advertising, wholesale and retail trade, import / export and archive, the creative part is 10%, and the rest is subordinated to ordinary commodity laws. Nevertheless, the struggle between defenders of the value of culture and supporters of the application of the criterion of "marketability" to any type of product, including cultural, continues.

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Mass culture

With the advent of the mass media (radio, mass print media, television, records, tape recorders), the distinctions between high and popular culture were blurred. This is how a mass culture emerged, which is not associated with religious or class subcultures. Media and popular culture are inextricably linked. A culture becomes "mass" when its products are standardized and distributed to the general public.

Mass culture (lat. massa - lump, piece) is a concept that in modern cultural studies is associated with such social groups that are characterized by an "average" level of spiritual needs.

Mass culture, a concept that covers the diverse and heterogeneous cultural phenomena of the 20th century, which became widespread in connection with the scientific and technological revolution and the constant renewal of mass media. The production, distribution and consumption of mass culture products is of an industrial-commercial nature. The semantic range of mass culture is very wide - from primitive kitsch (early comics, melodrama, pop hit, soap opera) to complex, content-rich forms (some types of rock music, "intellectual" detective story, pop art). The aesthetics of mass culture is characterized by a constant balancing between the trivial and the original, the aggressive and the sentimental, the vulgar and the sophisticated. Actualizing and objectifying the expectations of the mass audience, mass culture meets its needs for leisure, entertainment, play, communication, emotional compensation or relaxation, etc. Mass culture does not express the refined tastes or spiritual searches of the people, it 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. It 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 and its social functions

In the morphological structure of culture, two areas can be distinguished: ordinary and specialized culture. An intermediate position with the function of a translator is occupied by mass culture. The gap between ordinary and specialized cultures in antiquity was small (the specialty of an artisan or merchant was mastered in the process of home education), but as scientific and technological development progressed, it increased much (especially in science-intensive professions).

Everyday culture is realized in the appropriate forms of lifestyle. The way of life is determined, among other things, by the type of professional occupation of a person (a diplomat inevitably has other ways of life than a peasant), the aboriginal traditions of the place of residence, but most of all - the social status of a person, his estate or class affiliation. It is the social status that sets the direction of the economic and cognitive interests of the individual, the style of his leisure, communication, etiquette, informational aspirations, aesthetic tastes, fashion, image, everyday rites and rituals, prejudices, images of prestige, ideas about his own dignity, worldview attitudes, social philosophy and etc., which is the main array of features of everyday culture.

Ordinary culture is not specially studied by a person (with the exception of emigrants who purposefully master the language and customs of their new homeland), but is assimilated spontaneously in the process of child upbringing and general education, communication with relatives, the social environment, professional colleagues, etc., and is corrected throughout life individual as the intensity of his social contacts.

Modern knowledge and cultural patterns are developed in the depths of highly specialized areas of social practice. They are understood and assimilated by the relevant specialists, but for the bulk of the population, the language of modern specialized culture (political, scientific, artistic, engineering, etc.) is almost inaccessible. Therefore, society needs a system of means for "translating" information from the language of highly specialized areas of culture to the level of ordinary understanding of unprepared people, for "interpreting" this information to its mass consumer, for a certain "infantilization" of its figurative incarnations, and also for "managing" the consciousness of the mass consumer.

This kind of adaptation has always been required for children, when in the processes of upbringing and general education "adult" meanings were translated into the language of fairy tales, parables, entertaining stories, simplified examples. Now such an interpretive practice has become necessary for a person throughout his life. Modern man, even being very educated, remains a narrow specialist in one area, and the level of his specialization increases from century to century. In other areas, he needs a permanent "staff" of commentators, interpreters, teachers, journalists, advertising agents and other kinds of "guides" who guide him through the boundless sea of information about goods, services, political events, artistic innovations, social conflicts, etc.

The mass culture became the implementer of such needs. The structure of being in it is given to a person as a set of more or less standard situations, where everything has already been chosen by the same "guides" in life: journalists, advertising agents, public politicians, etc. In popular culture, everything is already known in advance: the “correct” political system, the only true doctrine, leaders, a place in the ranks, sports and pop stars, the fashion for the image of a “class fighter” or “sexual symbol”, movies where “ours” are always right and always win, etc.

This begs the question: weren't there problems in the past with the translation of the meanings of a specialized culture to the level of everyday understanding? Why did mass culture appear only in the last one and a half or two centuries, and what cultural phenomena performed this function before?

Apparently, before the scientific and technological revolution of the last centuries, there really was no such gap between specialized and ordinary knowledge. Religion was the only exception. We well know how great was the intellectual gap between "professional" theology and the mass religiosity of the population. It really needed a "translation" from one language to another. This task was solved by preaching. Obviously, we can consider church preaching as the historical predecessor of the phenomena of mass culture.

The phenomena of mass culture are created by professional people who deliberately reduce complex meanings to the primitive. It cannot be said that this kind of infantilization is easy to execute; It is well known that the technical skill of many show business stars causes sincere admiration among representatives of the "artistic classics".

Among the main manifestations and trends of mass culture of our time, the following can be distinguished:

the industry of "subculture of childhood" (artistic works for children, toys and industrially produced games, goods specifically for children's consumption, children's clubs and camps, paramilitary and other organizations, technologies for collective education of children, etc.);

a mass general education school that introduces students to the basics of scientific knowledge, philosophical and religious ideas about the world around them with the help of standard programs;

mass media (printed and electronic), broadcasting current information, "interpreting" to an ordinary person the meaning of ongoing events, judgments and actions of figures from specialized fields;

a system of ideology and propaganda that shapes the political orientations of the population;

mass political movements initiated by the elite with the aim of involving broad sections of the population in political actions, most of them far from political interests, who have little understanding of the meaning of political programs;

entertainment leisure industry, which includes mass artistic culture (in almost all types of literature and art, perhaps with the exception of architecture), mass staged and spectacular performances (from sports and circus to erotic), professional sports, structures for organized entertainment (corresponding types of clubs, discos, dance floors, etc.) and other types of shows. Here, the consumer, as a rule, acts not only as a passive spectator, but is also constantly provoked into active inclusion or an ecstatic emotional reaction to what is happening. Mass artistic culture achieves the effect through a special aestheticization of the vulgar, ugly, physiological, i.e. acting on the principle of a medieval carnival and its semantic "shifters". This culture is characterized by:

replicating the unique and reducing it to the ordinary public;

the industry of recreational leisure, physical rehabilitation of a person and correction of his bodily image (resort industry, mass physical culture movement, bodybuilding and aerobics, sports tourism, as well as a system of medical, pharmaceutical, perfumery and cosmetic services for correcting appearance);

the industry of intellectual leisure ("cultural" tourism, amateur performances, collecting, hobby groups, various societies of collectors, lovers and admirers of anything, scientific and educational institutions and associations, as well as everything that falls under the definition of "popular science ", intellectual games, quizzes, crossword puzzles, etc.), introducing people to popular science knowledge, scientific and artistic amateurism, developing the general "humanitarian erudition" of the population;

consumer demand management system for things, services, ideas for both individual and collective use (fashion advertising, image-making, etc.), which forms the standard of socially prestigious images and lifestyles, interests and needs, types of appearance;

gaming complexes - from mechanical gaming machines, electronic consoles, computer games, etc. to virtual reality systems;

all kinds of dictionaries, reference books, encyclopedias, catalogs, electronic and other banks of information, special knowledge, the Internet, etc., designed not for trained specialists, but for mass consumers.

And no one is forcing this "cultural production" on us. Everyone retains the right to turn off the TV whenever he wants. Mass culture, as one of the freest in terms of its distribution of goods in the information market, can exist only in conditions of voluntary and rush demand. Of course, the level of such excitement is artificially supported by interested sellers of goods, but the very fact of increased demand for this particular product, made in this figurative style, in this language, is generated by the consumer himself, and not by the seller.

In the end, the images of mass culture, like any other image system, show us nothing more than our own "cultural face", which in fact has always been inherent in us; it's just that in Soviet times this "side of the face" was not shown on TV. If this "face" were absolutely alien, if there were no really massive demand for all this in society, we would not react to it so sharply.

Although mass culture, of course, is an "ersatz product" of specialized areas of culture, does not generate its own meanings, but only imitates phenomena, one should not evaluate it only negatively. Mass culture is generated by the objective processes of modernization of society, when the socializing and inculturating functions of traditional culture lose their effectiveness. Mass culture actually assumes the functions of an instrument for ensuring primary socialization. It is quite probable that mass culture is the embryonic precursor of some new ordinary culture that is just emerging.

One way or another, but mass culture is a variant of the everyday culture of the urban population, competent only in a narrow area, but otherwise preferring to use printed, electronic sources of reduced "for complete fools" information. In the end, the pop singer, dancing at the microphone, sings about the same thing that Shakespeare wrote about in his sonnets, but only in this case translated into the language of "two claps, three stomps."