How and where are works of mass culture created. Features of mass culture

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Mass culture is a state, or more precisely, a cultural situation corresponding to a certain form of social organization, in other words, culture "in the presence of the masses", and it is also a complex phenomenon generated by modernity and not amenable to unambiguous assessment. Since its inception, it has become for philosophers, sociologists the subject of study and heated discussions. Disputes about the significance of this culture, its role in the development of society continue today.

To talk about the existence of mass culture, it is necessary first to mention the historical community called the mass, as well as mass consciousness. They are connected and do not exist in isolation from each other, they act simultaneously as an “object” and “subject” of mass culture.

The emergence of mass culture is associated with the formation at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. mass society. The material basis of what happened in the XIX century. significant change was the transition to machine production. But industrial machine production presupposes standardization, and not only equipment, raw materials, technical documentation, but also the skills and abilities of workers, working hours, etc. The processes of standardization and spiritual culture have been affected.

Two spheres of the life of a working person were clearly identified: work and leisure. As a result, effective demand arose for those goods and services that helped to spend leisure time. The market responded to this demand by offering a “typical” cultural product: books, films, gramophone records, etc. They were intended primarily to help people spend their free time interestingly, take a break from monotonous work.

The use of new technologies in production, the expansion of the participation of the masses in politics required a certain educational preparation. In industrialized countries, important steps are being taken to develop education, primarily primary education. As a result, an extensive readership appeared in a number of countries, and after this, one of the first genres of mass culture, mass literature, was born.

Weakened with the transition from traditional to industrial society, direct ties between people partly replaced the emerging mass media, capable of quickly broadcasting various kinds of messages to a large audience.

Mass society, as noted by many researchers, has given rise to its typical representative - "man of the masses" - the main consumer of mass culture. Philosophers of the early 20th century endowed him with predominantly negative characteristics - "a man without a face", "a man - like everyone else." In the first half of the last century, the Spanish philosopher X. Ortega y Gaset was one of the first to give a critical analysis of this new social phenomenon - the "mass man". It is with the “mass man” that the philosopher connects the crisis of high European culture, the existing system of public power. The mass displaces the elite minority (“people with special qualities”) from leading positions in society, replaces it, begins to dictate its conditions, its views, its tastes. The elite minority are those who demand a lot from themselves and take on burdens and obligations. Most do not require anything, for them to live is to go with the flow, remaining as they are, not trying to surpass themselves. X. Ortega y Gaset considered the main features of the "mass man" to be the unrestrained growth of life's demands and innate ingratitude towards everything that satisfies these demands. Mediocrity with an unbridled thirst for consumption, “barbarians who poured out of the hatch onto the stage of the complex civilization that gave birth to them” - the philosopher so unflatteringly characterizes most of his contemporaries.

In the middle of the XX century. The "mass man" to an increasing extent began to correlate not with the "rebellious" violators of the foundations, but, on the contrary, with a completely well-intentioned part of society - with the middle class. Realizing that they are not the elite of society, people of the middle class are nevertheless satisfied with their material and social position. Their standards, norms, rules, language, preferences, tastes are accepted by society as normal, generally accepted. For them, consumption and leisure are as important as work and career. In the works of sociologists, the expression "society of the mass middle class" appeared.

There is one more point of view in science today. According to it, mass society generally leaves the historical stage, the so-called demassification takes place. Uniformity and unification are being replaced by emphasizing the characteristics of an individual, personalization of personality, the “mass man” of the industrial era is being replaced by the “individualist” of post-industrial society. So, from the "barbarian who burst onto the stage" to the "respectable ordinary citizen" - such is the spread of views on the "mass man".

The term "mass culture" covers various cultural products, as well as the system of their distribution and creation. First of all, these are works of literature, music, visual arts, films and video films. In addition, this includes patterns of everyday behavior, appearance. These products and samples come to every home through the media, through advertising, through the fashion institute.

Consider the main features of mass culture:

Publicity. Accessibility and recognition have become one of the main reasons for the success of mass culture. Monotonous, exhausting work at an industrial enterprise increased the need for intensive rest, quick restoration of psychological balance, energy after a hard day. To do this, a person searched on book shelves, in cinema halls, in the media, first of all, easy-to-perceive, entertaining performances, films, publications.

Outstanding artists worked within the framework of mass culture: actors Charlie Chaplin, Lyubov Orlova, Nikolai Cherkasov, Igor Ilyinsky, Jean Gabin, dancer Fred Astaire, world-famous singers Mario Lanza, Edith P-af, composers F. Lowe (author of the musical "My Fair lady”), I. Dunaevsky, film directors G. Alexandrov, I. Pyryev and others.

In detectives, "spy stories" events follow each other with kaleidoscopic speed. The heroes of the works are also simple and understandable, they do not indulge in long discussions, but act.

Serialization, replicability. This feature is manifested in the fact that the products of mass culture are produced in very large quantities, designed for consumption by a really mass of people.

Passivity of perception. This feature of mass culture was noted already at the dawn of its formation. Fiction, comics, light music did not require the reader, listener, viewer to make intellectual or emotional efforts for their perception. The development of visual genres (cinema, television) only strengthened this feature. Reading even a lightweight literary work, we inevitably conjecture something, create our own image of heroes. Screen perception does not require us to do this.

commercial nature. A product created within the framework of mass culture is a product intended for mass sale. To do this, the product must be democratic, that is, fit, like a large number of people of different sex, age, religion, education. Therefore, manufacturers of such products began to focus on the most fundamental human emotions.

Works of mass culture are created mainly within the framework of professional creativity: music is written by professional composers, film scripts are written by professional writers, advertising is created by professional designers. Professional creators of mass culture products are guided by the requests of a wide range of consumers.

So, mass culture is a phenomenon of modernity, generated by certain social and cultural shifts and performing a number of fairly important functions. Mass culture has both negative and positive aspects. The not too high level of its products and the commercial, mainly, criterion for assessing the quality of works, does not negate the obvious fact that mass culture provides a person with an unprecedented abundance of symbolic forms, images and information, makes the perception of the world diverse, leaving the consumer the right to choose "consumed product". Unfortunately, the consumer does not always choose the best.

It implies a superficial understanding that does not require specific knowledge and is therefore accessible to most.

Stereotyping is the main feature of the perception of the products of this culture.

Its elements are based on emotional unconscious perception.

It operates with average linguistic semiotic norms.

It has an entertaining focus and manifests itself, to a greater extent in an entertaining form.

Mass culture has its own special features: a simple character, a stingy theme, an appeal to the subconscious of people. All of them form their pros and cons. The main advantage is that it is close and practically inseparable from the consumer. Food, technology, clothing - all this comes to us thanks to mass culture. Today, the value of a product depends on the demand for it. The main law of economics, demand creates supply. The higher the demand, the greater the supply, that is, the greater the value of the product. Thus, mass culture becomes the engine of consumption, and achieves these successes through advertising.

Also, the media still helps her in all this, because a person is a set of information, and therefore it is these media that have already penetrated all corners of the globe that create a person. They dictate their tricks, forms, opinions to the whole world. And young people perceive it best of all, they absorb all the information like a sponge.

Our youth are people who have been influenced by the information world, television, radio, Hi-Tech and much more. She forgot all the traditions of her ancestors, which have evolved over the centuries.

Way of self-affirmation young man became prestige. Special symbols are used to designate it. The main factor of prestige is clothing, by which it is easy to determine what social rank a person belongs to.

The relationship of science to mass culture has also changed, in the 1960s-1970s. within the framework of postmodernism, the concept was revised, depriving the opposition of mass and elite cultures of qualitative evaluative meaning.

The main features of mass culture.

Amusement. It is provided by an appeal to those aspects of life and emotions that cause constant interest and are understandable to most people: love, sex, family problems, adventure, violence, horror. In detectives, "spy stories" events follow each other with kaleidoscopic speed. The heroes of the works are also simple and understandable, they do not indulge in long discussions, but act.

Serialization, replicability. This feature is manifested in the fact that the products of mass culture are produced in very large quantities, designed for consumption by a really mass of people.

Passivity of perception. This feature of mass culture was noted already at the dawn of its formation. Fiction, comics, light music did not require the reader, listener, viewer to make intellectual or emotional efforts for their perception. The development of visual genres (cinema, television) only strengthened this trait. Reading even a lightweight literary work, we inevitably conjecture something, create our own image of heroes. Screen perception does not require us to do this.

educational level and social status (popularization of science, comics with summary plots of classical literature, etc.).

By the end of the 20th century, the strengthening of the second direction of masculture (adaptation of complex plots for simplified perception by an unprepared audience) allows scientists to talk about the emergence of midculture (culture of the “middle level”), which somewhat narrows the gap between elite and mass cultures.

One of the manifestations of mass, mainly youth, culture has become pop culture (from the English popular: popular, generally accessible). This is a set of neo-avant-garde views on art, formed in the 60s of the twentieth century. It is characterized by the denial of the experience of previous generations; the search for new forms in art, a lifestyle that expresses the ideological protest of young people against the sanctimonious morality of modern Western society.

Despite the seeming democratic nature, masculu active creator spiritual values to the level passive user

mass culture, programmed for its thoughtless and soulless consumption (from a producing position to an appropriating one).

Mass culture is always a devaluation of high cultural patterns, an imitation of familiarization with culture.

Therefore, masculuture as a phenomenon, although derived from culture itself, but, in fact, far removed from culture in its high understanding and meaning, should be called paracultural (from the Greek para: near, at, about), i.e., near-cultural, phenomenon.

The only way to oppose the standardization of culture and the expansion of mascult is to familiarize yourself with the values of genuine culture in the process of spiritual education of the individual, including in the course of cultural studies and other humanitarian disciplines.

5.4. Elite culture

The culturological opposition to mass culture is elitist culture (from French e lite: the best, selective, chosen).

Its origins are in the ancient philosophy of Heraclitus and Plato, in which for the first time intellectual elite as a special professional group - the custodian and bearer of higher knowledge.

AT the Renaissance, the problem of the elite was posed by F. Petrarch

in his discourse "On Genuine Nobility". For the humanists of that time, "rabble", "despicable" people are uneducated fellow citizens, self-satisfied ignoramuses. In relation to them, the humanists themselves appear as an intellectual elite.

The theory of elites takes shape at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The founders of the theory of elites are the Italian scientists V. Pareto (1848–1923), G. Mosca (1858–1941), R. Michels (1876–1936). Before the Second World War, the theory of elites became widespread except for Italy - in Germany and France, after the war - in the United States. The recognized theorist of the elite was the Spanish philosopher J. Ortega y Gaset, who believed that there is an elite in every social class.

According to the theory of elites, the necessary components of any social structure are the highest privileged stratum or strata that perform the functions of managing and developing culture.

This is the elite.

The elite is the part of society most capable of spiritual activity, endowed with high moral and aesthetic inclinations, which ensures progress.

The elite is characterized by a high degree of activity and productivity. It is usually opposed to mass.

There are many definitions of the elite, we will name only some of its specific features.

The elite is made up of people with such qualities as organization, will, ability to unite to achieve a goal (G. Mosca); enjoying the greatest prestige, status, wealth in society, having the highest sense of responsibility, intellectual or moral

superiority over the mass (J. Ortega y Gaset); this is a creative minority as opposed to an uncreative majority (A. Toynbee).

According to V. Pareto, society is a pyramid with an elite on top. The most gifted from the bottom rise to the top, replenishing the ranks of the ruling elite, whose members, in turn, degrading, sink down into the masses. There is a circulation, or circulation, of elites; renewal of the elite is facilitated by social mobility. Alternation, change of elites is the law of the existence of society. (As mentioned above, the idea of society as a social pyramid is also contained in the sociology of P. A. Sorokin, who also developed the problems of social mobility.)

Science has developed a classification of elite theories: 1) biological - the elite are people occupying the highest

places in society due to their biological and genetic origin;

2)psychological - based on the recognition of the exclusively psychological qualities of the elite group;

3) technical - understands the elite as a set of people who own and manage technical production;

4)organizational - refers to the elite of executives, including the bureaucratically organized bureaucracy;

5)functional - classifies as an elite people who perform the most important functions in society, in a certain group or in a certain territory;

6)distribution - considers the elite of those who receive maximum material and non-material benefits;

7)artistic and creative- includes in the elite representatives of various spheres of spiritual production (science, art, religion, culture).

The elite is characterized by cohesion and activity, the ability to develop stable patterns of thinking, assessments and forms of communication, standards of behavior, preferences and tastes.

A striking example of the development of such samples and standards are the elite culture and elite art.

Typical of elite art is the aesthetic isolationism of "pure art" or "art for art's sake".

Elite art is a trend in Western art culture that creates art for the few, for the elite, for the aesthetic and spiritual elite, incomprehensible to the general public, the masses.

Elite art became especially widespread at the beginning of the 20th century. It manifested itself in a variety of directions of decadence and modernism (abstractionism in painting; surrealism in the visual arts, literature, theater and cinema; dodecaphony1 in music), which focused on the creation of art of "pure form", the art of true aesthetic pleasure, devoid of any practical meaning and social values.

Supporters of elite art opposed themselves to mass art, amorphous mass, the tendencies of "massification" in culture, opposed the vulgar ideals of a well-fed, petty-bourgeois life.

The theoretical understanding of elite culture is reflected in the works of F. Nietzsche, V. Pareto, J. Ortega y Gaset and other philosophers.

The most complete and consistent concept of elite culture is presented in the works of J. Ortega y Gaset, who gave a philosophical assessment of the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century. In the book "Dehumanization of Art" (1925), he divided people into "the people" (mass) and the elite - a particularly gifted minority, the creators of genuine culture. He believed that the Impressionists, Futurists, Surrealists, Abstractionists split the audience of art into two groups: artistic elite(outstanding people who understand the new art) and the general public (ordinary people who are not able to understand it). Therefore, the artist-creator consciously turns to the elite, and not to the masses, turns away from the layman.

1 Dodecaphony (from Greek dōdeka : twelve + phōnē : sound) is a method of composing music developed in the 20th century by the Austrian composer A. Schoenberg. Based on a specific sequence of 12 sounds of various pitches.

Mass culture in modern society plays an important role. On the one hand, it facilitates and on the other, it simplifies the understanding of their elements. This is a contradictory and complex phenomenon, despite the characteristic simplicity that mass culture products possess.

Mass culture: history of origin

Historians have not found a common point on which their opinions could agree on the exact time of the occurrence of this phenomenon. However, there are the most popular provisions that are able to explain the approximate period of the emergence of this type of culture.

A. Radugin believes that the prerequisites for mass culture existed, if not at the dawn of the emergence of mankind, then certainly at the time when the book “The Bible for the Poor” was massively distributed, which was designed for a wide audience.
Another provision implies a later emergence of mass culture, where its origins are connected with European. At this time, detective, adventure and adventure novels became widespread due to their large circulation.
In the literal sense, according to A. Radugin, it originated in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He explains this by the emergence of a new form of life arrangement - massification, which was reflected in almost all areas: from political and economic to household.

Based on this, it can be assumed that the impetus for the emergence of mass culture was the capitalist view and mass production, which was supposed to be implemented on the same scale. In this regard, the phenomenon of stereotyping has become widespread. Sameness and stereotypedness are the bright main characteristics of mass culture, which spread not only to household items, but also to views.

Mass culture is closely connected with the process of globalization, which is carried out mainly through the media. This is especially evident at the present stage. One of the best examples is yoga. Yogic practices arose in antiquity, and Western countries had nothing to do with it. However, with the development of communication, an international exchange of experience began to take place, and yoga was accepted by Western people, starting to take root in their culture. This has negative characteristics because the Westerner is not able to understand the full depth and meaning that the Indians understand by doing yoga. Thus, a simplified understanding of a foreign culture takes place, and phenomena that require deep understanding are simplified, losing their value.

Mass culture: signs and main characteristics

It implies a superficial understanding that does not require specific knowledge and is therefore accessible to most.
Stereotyping is the main feature of the perception of the products of this culture.
Its elements are based on emotional unconscious perception.
It operates with average linguistic semiotic norms.
It has an entertaining focus and manifests itself, to a greater extent in an entertaining form.

Modern mass culture: "pros" and "cons"

At the moment, it has a number of shortcomings and positive features.

For example, this allows a large group of members of a society to interact closely, which improves the quality of their communication.

Stereotypes generated by mass culture, if they are based on a true classification, help a person to perceive a large flow of information.

Among the shortcomings, the simplification of cultural elements, the profanation of foreign cultures and the tendency to remakes (altering once created and recognized elements of art in a new way) stand out. The latter leads to the assumption that mass culture is not able to create something new, or is capable, but in small quantities.