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. Type of culture characterized by production cultural property, samples that, due to their exclusivity, are calculated and available mainly to a 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
Historical origin elite culture this is exactly what happens: already in primitive society, priests, magicians, 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 develop around a charismatic leader, scientific communities and scientific schools, in political associations and parties - including especially those that worked secretly, 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 and so on. (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 takes on 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. postmodern W. 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 elite, high culture is a person - 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 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. 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 dominant public relations, and the development of stereotypes of the mass consciousness of members of the "consumer 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, 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 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, 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 from the addressee special training and immense cultural outlook;
- using a deliberately subjective, individually creative, "delimiting" interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings cultural development reality by the subject to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, to the limit, replaces the reflection of reality in an elite culture with its transformation, imitation - with deformation, penetration into meaning - with conjecture and rethinking of the given;
- semantic and functional “closedness”, “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 poetized in elite culture
Elements of high culture
- The science
- Philosophy
- Specialized (vocational) 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
By the nature of the creations, one can single out the culture represented in single samples And popular culture. The first form for characteristics 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 well-known representatives 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”). Popular culture averages 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 behavior, language, symbolism. 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. social basis countercultures are people, to some extent alienated from the rest of society. The study of the counterculture makes it possible to understand cultural dynamics, formation and dissemination 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. extreme forms manifestations of ethnocentrism constitute 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 high educated part 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 the real world. 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 overall cultural level its consumers, but at the same time 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 vocational 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 folk art created by different segments of the population. Folklore is localized, that is, associated with the traditions of the given area, and democratic, since everyone is involved in its creation. To contemporary manifestations folk culture include anecdotes, urban legends.
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 facilities 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 has 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 common culture, a system of values, traditions, customs inherent in a certain. Talk about youth subculture subculture of the elderly, subculture of national minorities, professional subculture, 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 are reading different books, go to different schools, are guided by 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. Subculture of terrorists resists 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 spiritual life 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 standards, aesthetic tastes, etc., which is associated with the specifics cultural heritage 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.
Instruction
Elite culture includes works different types arts: literature, theater, cinema, etc. Since its understanding requires a certain level of training, it has a very narrow circle of connoisseurs. Not everyone understands the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Alexander Sokurov. A special type of thinking is needed to understand the works of Franz Kafka or James Joyce's Ulysses. The creators of an elite culture, like, do not try to achieve high fees. Much more valuable for them is creative self-realization.
Consumers of elite culture are people with a high educational level and a developed aesthetic taste. Many of them are themselves creators of works of art or their professional researchers. First of all, we are talking about writers, artists, art historians, literary and art critics. This circle also includes connoisseurs and connoisseurs of art, regular visitors to museums, theaters and concert halls.
At the same time, works of the same types of art can belong to both elite and mass culture. For example, classical music is for elite culture, and popular music is for mass culture, Tarkovsky's films are for elite culture, and Indian melodramas are for mass culture, etc. At the same time, there are literary genres that always belong to mass culture and are unlikely to ever become elite. Among them are detective stories, ladies' novels, humorous stories and feuilletons.
Sometimes there are curious how works belonging to an elite culture can, under certain conditions, go into the category of mass. For example, Bach's music is undoubtedly a phenomenon of elite culture, but if it is used as an accompaniment to a program figure skating, then automatically turns into a product of mass culture. Or quite the opposite: many of Mozart's works for their time were, most likely, "light music" (that is, they could be attributed to popular culture). And now they are perceived, rather, as an elitist.
Most of the works of elite culture are initially avant-garde or experimental. They use tools that will become clear to the mass consciousness after a few decades. Sometimes experts even call the exact period - 50 years. In other words, examples of elite culture are half a century ahead of their time.
Related article
The term "classical music" is sometimes interpreted extremely broadly. It includes not only creations outstanding composers past years, but also world-famous hits popular artists. Nevertheless, there is a strictly authentic meaning of "classical" in music.
In a narrow sense, classical music is called a rather short period in the history of this art, namely, the 18th century. The first half of the eighteenth century was marked by the work of such outstanding composers as Bach and Handel. The principles of classicism as the construction of a work in strict accordance with the canons were developed by Bach in his works. His fugue became a classical - that is, exemplary - form of musical creativity.
And after the death of Bach, a new stage opens in the history of music, connected with Haydn and Mozart. The rather complex and heavy sound was replaced by lightness and harmony of melodies, grace and even some coquetry. And yet, it is still a classic: in his creative search, Mozart sought to find the ideal form.
Beethoven's works are a junction of classical and romantic tradition. In his music, passions and feelings become much more than rational canons. During this period of the formation of the European musical tradition, the main genres were formed: opera, symphony, sonata.
A broad interpretation of the term "classical music" implies the work of composers of past eras, which has withstood the test of time and has become a standard for other authors. Sometimes classical refers to music for symphonic instruments. The most clear (although not widely used) can be considered classical music as authorial, clearly defined and implying performance within the given framework. However, some researchers urge not to confuse academic (that is, squeezed into certain limits and rules) and classical music.
In the evaluative approach to the definition of classics, as the highest achievements in the history of music, the possible is hidden. Who is considered the best? Can the masters of jazz, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and other recognized authors and performers? On the one hand, yes. That's what we do when we call exemplary. But on the other hand, in pop-jazz music there is no strictness of the author's musical text, characteristic of the classics. In it, on the contrary, everything is built on improvisation and original arrangements. There is a fundamental difference between classical (academic) music and the modern post-jazz school.
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- What is culture? Definition of the word culture. The meaning of the word culture and photo
There are several types of literature, each of which has its own characteristics. Yes, under classical literature understand works that are considered exemplary for a particular era.
History of the term
Classical is a rather broad concept, since this type includes works different eras and genres. These are universally recognized works, considered exemplary for the eras in which they were written. Many of them are included in the compulsory program.
The concept of classics has developed in the last three centuries of the era of antiquity. Then it denoted certain writers who, according to different reasons were considered role models. One of the first such classics was the ancient Greek poet Homer, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
In the 5th-8th centuries AD. formed the authors of the texts, which determined the theories and norms transmitted in the learning process. IN different schools this canon differed minimally. Gradually, this list was replenished with new names, among which were representatives of pagan and Christian faith. These authors became the cultural property of the public, who were imitated and quoted.
The modern meaning of the concept
During the Renaissance, European writers turned their attention to the authors of antiquity, as a result of the liberation of secular culture from excessive pressure. The result of this in literature was an era in which it became fashionable to imitate ancient Greek playwrights such as Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and follow the canons of classical drama. Then the term "" in the narrow sense began to mean the whole ancient literature.
In a broad sense, any work that created a canon in its genre began to be called a classic. For example, there are eras of modernism, eras, realism, etc. There is the concept of domestic and foreign, as well as world classics. So, recognized classics domestic literature in Russia are considered A.S. Pushkin, F.M. Dostoevsky, etc.
As a rule, in the history of literature different countries and nations there is an age in which fiction gained the greatest, and such a century is called classical. There is an opinion that the work acquires public acceptance when it carries Eternal values”, something relevant for all times, encourages the reader to think about any universal problems. The classics remain in history and are opposed to one-day works, which eventually fall into oblivion.
A person's ability to emotionally-sensory perception of reality and to artistic creativity prompted him to express his experiences figuratively, with the help of colors, lines, words, sounds, etc. This contributed to the emergence artistic culture in a broad sense.
What is included in the concept
Artistic culture is one of the spheres of public culture. Its essence is a creative reflection of being (, society and its life) in artistic images. It has important functions, such as the formation of aesthetic perception and consciousness of people, public values, norms, knowledge and experience, and recreational function (rest and recovery of people).
As a system it includes:
- art as such (individual and group), works and artistic values;
- organizational infrastructure: institutions that ensure the development, preservation, dissemination of artistic culture, creative organizations, educational institutions, demonstration sites, etc.;
- the spiritual atmosphere in society - perception, public interest in artistic and creative activities, art, state policy in this area.
Artistic culture includes mass, folk, artistic culture; artistic and aesthetic aspects various kinds activities (political, economic, legal); regional artistic subcultures; artistic subcultures of youth and professional associations, etc.
It manifests itself not only in art, but also in everyday life, and in material production, when a person gives expressiveness to the objects he creates for practical and utilitarian purposes and, realizing his need for aesthetics and beauty, in creativity. In addition to the material realm and physical items, it also applies to the spiritual realm.
Artistic culture in the narrow sense
The core of artistic culture is professional and household art. This includes Tip 6: Who are geisha, one of which is the word "man", the other - "art". Already from the etymology of the word, one can guess that geisha are not Japanese courtesans. For the latter, there are separate words in Japanese - jero, yujo.
Geishas were perfect at being a woman. They raised the spirits of men, creating an atmosphere of joy, ease and emancipation. This was achieved through songs, dances, jokes (often with erotic overtones), teahouses, which were demonstrated by geisha in male companies along with easy conversation.
Geisha entertained men both at social events and on personal dates. There was also no place at the tête-à-tête meeting intimate relationships. A geisha can have sex with her patron, who deprived her of her virginity. For geishas, this is a ritual called mizu-age that accompanies the transition from apprentice, maiko, to geisha.
If a geisha marries, then she retires from the profession. Before leaving, she sends out to her clients, patron, teachers with a treat - boiled rice, thereby informing her about the break in communication with them.
Outwardly, geisha are distinguished by their characteristic make-up with a thick layer of powder and bright red lips that make the woman's face look like a mask, as well as an old high, lush hairstyle. The traditional geisha is a kimono, the main colors of which are black, red and white.
modern geisha
It is believed that geisha appeared in the city of Kyoto in the 17th century. The quarters of the city where the geisha houses are located are called hanamachi (“flower streets”). There is a school here, where from the age of seven or eight they are taught to sing, dance, conduct a tea ceremony, play the national Japanese instrument shamisen, conducting a conversation with a man, and also teach how to make up and put on a kimono - everything that a geisha should know and be able to do.
When in the 70s years XIX century, the capital of Japan was moved to Tokyo, and noble Japanese, who made up the bulk of geisha clients, also moved there. Geisha festivals, which are held at regular intervals in Kyoto and have become its calling card, were able to save their craft from the crisis.
After the Second World War, Japan was captured by mass culture, leaving Japanese national traditions in the background. The number of geishas has declined significantly, but those who have remained faithful to the profession consider themselves the guardians of the true Japanese culture. Many continue to follow the old way of life of a geisha completely, some only partially. But being in a geisha society is still the prerogative of the elite segments of the population.
Sources:
- geisha world
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. 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 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.
Features of the production and consumption of cultural values allowed culturologists to identify two social forms existence of culture : mass culture and elite culture.
Mass culture is a type of cultural production that is produced daily in large volumes. It is assumed that mass culture is consumed by all people, regardless of place and country of residence. Mass culture - it is the culture of everyday life, presented to the widest possible audience through various channels, including the media and communications.
Mass culture (from lat. massa - lump, piece) - a cultural phenomenon of the 20th century, generated by the scientific and technological revolution, urbanization, the destruction of local communities, the blurring of territorial and social boundaries. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when the mass media (radio, print, television, record and tape recorder) penetrated most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social strata. In the proper sense, mass culture manifested itself for the first time in the United States on turn of XIX- XX centuries.
The well-known American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski liked to repeat a phrase that became commonplace over time: “If Rome gave the world the right, England parliamentary activity, France culture and republican nationalism, then modern USA gave the world scientific and technological revolution and popular culture.
The origins of the widespread dissemination of mass culture in modern world lie in the commercialization of all social relations, while the mass production of culture is understood by analogy with the conveyor industry. Many creative organizations (cinema, design, TV) are closely associated with banking and industrial capital and are focused on the production of commercial, box office, and entertainment works. In turn, the consumption of these products is mass consumption, because the audience that perceives this culture is a mass audience of large halls, stadiums, millions of viewers of television and movie screens.
A striking example of mass culture is pop music, which is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population. 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 and go out of fashion. As a rule, mass culture has less artistic value than elite culture.
The purpose of mass culture is to stimulate the consumer consciousness of the viewer, listener, reader. Mass culture forms a special type of passive, non-critical perception of this culture in humans. It creates a personality that is quite easy to manipulate.
Consequently, mass culture is designed for mass consumption and for the average person, it is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education. In social terms, it forms a new social stratum, called the "middle class".
Mass culture in artistic creativity performs specific social functions. Among them, the main one is illusory-compensatory: introducing a person to the world of illusory experience and unrealizable dreams. To do this, mass culture uses such entertainment types and genres of art as circus, radio, television; stage, hit, kitsch, slang, science fiction, action movie, detective, comics, thriller, western, melodrama, musical.
It is within the framework of these genres that simplified “versions of life” are created that reduce social evil to psychological and moral factors. And all this is combined with open or covert propaganda of the dominant way of life. Mass culture is more focused not on realistic images, but on artificial created images(image) and stereotypes. Today, the newfangled "stars of the artificial Olympus" have no less fanatical admirers than the old gods and goddesses. Modern mass culture can be international and national.
Features of mass culture: general accessibility (comprehensibility to everyone and everyone) of cultural values; ease of perception; stereotypes created by social stereotypes, replicability, entertainment and fun, sentimentality, simplification and primitiveness, propaganda of the cult of success, a strong personality, the cult of the thirst for possession of things, the cult of mediocrity, the conventionality of primitive symbolism.
Mass culture does not express the refined tastes of the aristocracy or the spiritual searches of the people, the mechanism of its distribution is directly related to the market, and it is predominantly a priority of megacity forms of existence. The basis of the success of mass culture is people's unconscious interest in violence and eroticism.
At the same time, if we consider mass culture as a spontaneously developing culture of everyday life, which is created ordinary people, then its positive aspects are the orientation towards the average norm, simple pragmatics, appeal to a huge reader, viewer and listener audience.
As the antipode of mass culture, many culturologists consider elite culture.
Elite (high) culture - elite culture designed to higher strata societies with the greatest capacity for spiritual activity, a special artistic susceptibility and gifted with high moral and aesthetic inclinations.
The producer and consumer of elite culture is the highest privileged stratum of society - the elite (from the French elite - the best, selective, chosen). The elite is not only a tribal aristocracy, but that educated part of society that has a special "organ of perception" - the ability for aesthetic contemplation and artistic and creative activity.
According to various estimates, consumers of elite culture in Europe for several centuries have remained approximately the same proportion of the population - about one percent. Elite culture is, first of all, the culture of the educated and wealthy part of the population. Under the elite culture usually means a special sophistication, complexity and high quality of cultural products.
The main function of elite culture is production social order in the form of law, power, structures social organization society, as well as the ideology that substantiates this order in the forms of religion, social philosophy and political thought. An elite culture involves a professional approach to creation, and the people who create it receive a special education. The circle of consumers of elite culture is its professional creators: scientists, philosophers, writers, artists, composers, as well as representatives of highly educated strata of society, namely: frequenters of museums and exhibitions, theater-goers, artists, literary critics, writers, musicians and many others.
An elitist culture is characterized by a very high level of specialization and the highest level social claims of the individual: love of power, wealth, fame is considered the normal psychology of any elite.
In high culture, those artistic techniques are tested that will be perceived and correctly understood by wide layers of non-professionals many years later (up to 50 years, and sometimes more). For a certain period of time, high culture not only cannot, but must remain alien to the people, it must be endured, and the viewer must mature creatively during this time. For example, the painting of Picasso, Dali or the music of Schoenberg is difficult for an unprepared person to understand even today.
Therefore, elite culture is experimental or avant-garde in nature and, as a rule, it is ahead of the level of perception of it by an averagely educated person.
With the growth of the level of education of the population, the circle of consumers of elite culture is expanding. It is this part of society that contributes to social progress, therefore “pure” art should be focused on meeting the demands and needs of the elite, and it is to it that artists, poets, and composers should turn their works. Formula of elite culture: "Art for the sake of art".
The same types of art can belong to both high and mass culture: classical music is high, and popular music is mass, Fellini films are high, and action films are mass. The organ mass of S. Bach belongs to high culture, but if it is used as a musical ringtone on a mobile phone, it is automatically included in the category of mass culture, without losing its belonging to high culture. Numerous orchestrations
nii Bach in style light music, jazz or rock do not compromise high culture at all. The same applies to the Mona Lisa on a toilet soap package or a computer reproduction of it.
Features of the elite culture: focuses on "people of a genius" capable of aesthetic contemplation and artistic and creative activity, there are no social stereotypes, a deep philosophical essence and non-standard content, specialization, sophistication, experimentalism, avant-gardism, the complexity of cultural values for understanding an unprepared person, sophistication, high quality, intellectuality .
