Cultural mass figure. Soshnikov A.E.

By the nature of creations one can distinguish the culture represented in single samples And popular culture. The first form, based on the characteristic features of its creators, is divided into folk and elite culture. Folk culture represents single works, most often by nameless authors. This form of culture includes myths, legends, tales, epics, songs, dances, etc. Elite culture- a collection of individual creations that are created well-known representatives privileged part of society or at its request by professional creators. Here we are talking about creators who have a high level of education and are well known to the 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 quantities for the general public. The main thing for her is to entertain the broadest masses of the population. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of 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, mass culture often uses simplified examples of elite and folk culture (“remixes”). Mass culture averages the spiritual development of people.

Subculture- this is the culture of any social group: confessional, professional, corporate, etc. As a rule, it does not deny universal human culture, but has specific characteristics. Signs of a subculture are special rules of behavior, language, and symbols. Each society has its own set of subcultures: youth, professional, ethnic, religious, dissident, etc.

Dominant culture- values, traditions, views, etc., shared only by part of society. But this part has the opportunity to impose them on the entire society, either due to the fact that it constitutes the ethnic majority, or due to the fact that it has a coercive mechanism. Subculture that opposes dominant culture, called counterculture. The social basis of counterculture is people who are, to a certain extent, alienated from the rest of society. The study of counterculture allows us to understand cultural dynamics, the formation and spread of new values.

The tendency to evaluate the culture of one's own nation as good and correct, and another culture as strange and even immoral, has been called "ethnocentrism" Many societies are ethnocentric. From a psychological point of view, this phenomenon acts as a factor in the unity and stability of a given society. However, ethnocentrism can be a source of intercultural conflicts. The extreme forms of manifestation of ethnocentrism are nationalism. The opposite is cultural relativism.

Elite culture

Elite, or high culture is created by a privileged part, or by its order, by professional creators. It includes fine art, classical music and literature. High culture, for example, the painting of Picasso or the music of Schnittke, is difficult for an unprepared person to understand. As a rule, it is decades ahead of the level of perception of an averagely educated person. The circle of its consumers is a highly educated part of society: critics, literary scholars, regulars of museums and exhibitions, theatergoers, artists, writers, musicians. When the level of education of the population increases, the circle of consumers of high culture expands. Its varieties include secular art and salon music. The formula of elite culture is “ art for art's sake”.

Elite culture intended for a narrow circle of highly educated public and is opposed to both folk and mass culture. It is usually incomprehensible to the general public and requires good preparation for correct perception.

Elite culture includes avant-garde movements in music, painting, cinema, and complex literature philosophical nature. Often the creators of such a culture are perceived as inhabitants of the “ivory tower”, who have fenced themselves off with 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 general cultural level of its consumers, but at the same time it itself gradually rises to a higher cultural level. Unfortunately, the first process is still much more intense than the second.

Folk culture

Folk culture is recognized as a special form of culture. Unlike elitist folk culture, culture is created by anonymous creators who do not have professional training. The authors of folk creations are unknown. Folk culture is called amateur (not by level, but by origin) or collective. It includes myths, legends, tales, epics, fairy tales, songs and dances. In terms of execution, elements of folk culture can be individual (statement of a legend), group (performing a dance or song), or mass (carnival processions). Folklore is another name for folk art, which is created by various segments of the population. Folklore is localized, that is, connected with the traditions of a given area, and is democratic, since everyone participates in its creation. Modern manifestations of folk culture include jokes and urban legends.

Mass culture

Mass or public art does not express the refined tastes of the aristocracy or the spiritual quest of the people. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when mass media(radio, print, television, recordings, tape recorders, video) penetrated into most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social classes. Mass culture can be international and national. Popular and variety music - shining example mass culture. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of level of education.

Popular culture is usually has less artistic value than elite or popular culture. But it has the widest audience. It satisfies the immediate needs of people, reacts to and reflects any new event. Therefore, examples of mass culture, in particular hits, quickly lose relevance, become obsolete, and go out of fashion. This does not happen with works of elite and popular culture. Pop culture is a slang name for mass culture, and kitsch is its variety.

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 develops own culture, i.e. a system of values and rules of behavior. Small cultures are called subcultures.

Subculture- part of the general culture, a system of values, traditions, customs inherent in a particular country. They talk about youth subculture subculture of older people, subculture of national minorities, professional subculture, criminal subculture. Subculture is different from dominant culture language, outlook on life, behavior, combing one’s hair, dressing, customs. The differences may be very strong, but the subculture is not opposed to the dominant culture. Drug addicts, deaf and dumb people, homeless people, alcoholics, athletes, and lonely people have their own culture. Children of aristocrats or members of the middle class are very different in their behavior from children of the lower class. They read different books, go to different schools, and are guided by different ideals. Each generation and social group has its own cultural world.

Counterculture

Counterculture denotes a subculture that not only differs from the dominant culture, but is opposed and in conflict with dominant values. The terrorist subculture is opposed to human culture, and the hippie youth movement in the 1960s. rejected mainstream American values: hard work, material success, conformity, sexual restraint, political loyalty, rationalism.

Culture in Russia

The state of spiritual life in modern Russia can be characterized as transitional from upholding the values associated with attempts to build a communist society to the search for a new meaning of social development. We have entered the next round of the historical dispute between Westerners and Slavophiles.

The Russian Federation is a multinational country. Its development is determined by the characteristics 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 of the cultural heritage of different peoples.

Currently, in the spiritual life of our country there are contradictory 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.

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

The content of popular 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” arose in the 40s. 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.

Popular culture in the 18th and 19th centuries

The prerequisites for the formation of mass culture are inherent in the very existence of the structure of society. José Ortega y Gasset formulated a well-known approach to structuring based on creative potential. Then the idea of a “creative elite” arises, which, naturally, constitutes a smaller part of society, and of the “mass” - quantitatively the main part of the population. Accordingly, it becomes possible to talk about both the culture of the “mass” - “mass culture”. During this period, a division of culture occurs, determined by the formation of new significant social strata that gain access to full education, but do not belong to the elite. Gaining an opportunity for conscious aesthetic perception cultural phenomena, newly emerging social groups, constantly communicating with the masses, make “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 20th century mass society and the associated mass culture have become the subject of research by prominent scientists in various scientific fields: philosophers Jose Ortega y Gasset (“Revolt of the Masses”), Karl Jaspers (“The Spiritual Situation of the Time”), Oswald Spengler (“The Decline of Europe”); sociologists Jean Baudrillard (“Phantoms of Modernity”), P. A. Sorokin (“Man. Civilization. Society.”) and others. Analyzing mass culture, each of them notes a tendency towards its commercialization.

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

"Milton, who wrote" Lost heaven“ and who received £5 for it was an unproductive worker. On the contrary, a 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. This was a real manifestation of his nature. He then sold his work for £5. And the Leipzig literary proletarian, who manufactures books at the behest of his publisher... is a productive worker, since his production is from the very beginning subordinated to capital, and is carried out only to increase the value of this capital.

Speaking about art in general, an approximately similar trend was noted by P. A. Sorokin in the middle of the 20th century: “As a commercial product for entertainment, art is increasingly controlled by merchants, commercial interests and fashion trends... This situation creates the highest connoisseurs of beauty from commercial businessmen, forces artists to submit to their demands, which are also imposed through advertising and other media.” IN beginning of XXI century, modern researchers state the same cultural phenomena: “Modern trends are cumulative in nature 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, include: the commercialization of culture, democratization, the blurring of boundaries - both in the field of knowledge and in the field of technology - as well as a predominant attention to the process rather than to the content."

The attitude towards mass culture in modern philosophical and cultural thought is not unambiguous. If Karl Jaspers called mass art “the decline of the essence of art,” and Jean Baudrillard said that all spheres of modern art “enter the transaesthetic sphere of simulation,” then these concepts were revised in the 1960-1970s. within the framework of postmodernism, which for many researchers has destroyed the opposition of mass and elite cultures of qualitative evaluative meaning. Speaking about art (meaning elite art) of the early 20th century, Ortega y Gasset talks about its dehumanization. In such conditions, the increasing role of the “superhumanized” mass art- the process is natural.

Genres of popular culture

A necessary property of a mass culture product must be entertaining in order for it to be a commercial success, so that it is bought and the money spent on it makes a profit. Entertaining is determined by the strict structural conditions of the text. The plot and stylistic texture of mass culture products may be primitive from the point of view of elitist fundamental culture, but it should not be poorly made, but, on the contrary, in its primitiveness it should be perfect - only in this case will it be guaranteed readership and, therefore, commercial success . Stream of consciousness, defamiliarization, intertext are not suitable for mass culture. For mass literature, you need a clear plot with intrigue and twists and turns and, most importantly, a clear division into genres. We see this clearly in the example of mass cinema. The genres are clearly demarcated and there are not 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), science fiction, pornography. Each genre is a self-contained world with its own linguistic laws, which should never be crossed, especially in cinema, where production is associated with the largest number financial investments. Using the terms of semiotics, we can say that genres of mass culture must have a rigid syntax - an internal structure, but at the same time they may be semantically poor, they may lack deep meaning. In the 20th century, mass culture replaced folklore, which is also syntactically constructed extremely rigidly. This was most clearly demonstrated 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. Texts of mass literature and cinema are constructed in the same way. Why is this necessary? 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 a detective story, and the plot of a thriller should be exciting and dangerous. This is why stories within popular genres are so often repeated. Repeatability is a property of myth - this is the deep relationship between mass and elite culture, which in the 20th century, willy-nilly, focuses on the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Actors are identified with characters in the minds of the viewer. A hero who dies 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 mass 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, cult texts of mass culture form a special intertextual reality around themselves.

An elite culture, which in its internal structure is built in a complex and sophisticated way, cannot influence extra-textual reality in such a way. It's hard to imagine jokes about Hans Castorp from The Magic Mountain or Joseph Knecht from The Glass Bead Game. True, it happens that some modernist or avant-garde technique is mastered by fundamental culture to such an extent that it becomes a cliche, then it can be used by texts of mass culture. As an example, we can cite the famous Soviet cinema posters, where the huge face of the main character of the film was depicted in the foreground, and in the background little people were killing someone or simply flickering (depending on the genre). This change, distortion of proportions is a stamp of surrealism. But mass consciousness it is perceived as realistic, although everyone knows that there is no head without a body, and that such space is, in essence, absurd. Postmodernism - that careless and frivolous child of the end of the 20th century - finally let in mass culture and mixed it with elite culture. At first it was a compromise called kitsch. But then 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.

Mass culture, as some experts believe, it was born as a replenishment of another, lost natural living environment - traditional society and its folklore. Their source is the same - the broad masses of the people, although taken into different historical eras and using various technical means to express their creative self. The dombra and gusli reflect the era of handcraft and folklore, and the tape recorder and music center reflect the era of automated production and waste-free technologies.

Although the source, or better yet, the audience, for these forms of art is the same, the role of the masses in their emergence is different. In folk culture, the people were the author of all or most works; in mass culture, they act rather or predominantly as consumers of those products that are composed by completely professional authors on a commercial basis.

The time of emergence of mass culture was the middle of the 20th century, when the media (radio, print, television, recordings and tape recorders) penetrated into most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social strata. Mass culture can be international and national

cash Pop music is a striking example of mass culture. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education, but it does not express the refined tastes or spiritual quest of the people.

Mass culture, as a rule, has less artistic value than elite or popular culture. But it has the widest audience and is original. It satisfies the immediate needs of people, reacts to and reflects any new event. Therefore, examples of mass culture, in particular hits, quickly lose relevance, become obsolete, and go out of fashion. This does not happen with works of elite and popular culture. High culture refers to the preferences and habits of townspeople, aristocrats, the rich, and the ruling elite, while mass culture refers to the culture of the lower classes. The same types of art can belong to high and mass culture: classical music- high, and popular music - mass, Fellini's films - high, abolitionists - mass, Picasso's paintings - high, and popular prints - mass. However, there are such genres of literature, in particular science fiction, detective stories and comics, which are always classified as popular or mass culture, but never as high. The same thing happens with specific works of art.

Bach's organ mass belongs to high culture, but if it is used as musical accompaniment in figure skating competitions, it is automatically included in the category of mass culture, without losing its belonging to high culture. Numerous orchestrations of Bach's works in the style light music, jazz or rock do not compromise high culture at all. The same applies to the Mona Lisa on the packaging of toilet soap or a computer reproduction of it hanging in the back office.

In table 2 collects the main forms of culture and gives their characteristic features.

Table 2 Main forms of culture

The difference between high and folk culture is about the same as between national and ethnic. High culture, like national culture, can only be written, but ethnic and folk culture can be anything. High (elite) culture is created by the educated layer of society, while folk and ethnic culture is created primarily by the uneducated. An ethnic culture that is small in size and historically more ancient, as soon as many peoples merge and form a single national culture, turns into folk culture. “The creators and consumers of written culture are those who can read and write, i.e. formed layers

societies that, in the initial phase of its formation, represent a clear minority compared to the illiterate population. This educated minority becomes the bearer of national culture” 50.

High and national culture is created not by an ethnic group or a people, but by an educated part of society - writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, in short, humanists. As a rule, high culture is initially experimental or avant-garde in nature. Those are tried in it artistic techniques, which will be perceived and correctly understood by wide layers of non-professionals many years later. Experts sometimes give exact dates - 50 years. With such a delay samples

of the highest artistry are ahead of their time.

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, the first thing they did was try to reduce the cultural lag, calling on all artists not to get carried away with form-making, but to speak in an understandable language to the common people language. They put forward the slogan “Art must be understandable to the people,” attributing it to the outstanding German Marxist Rosa Luxemburg. But as it turned out later, R. Luxemburg actually said something else: “Art must be understood by the people.” The first formula assumes that the artist, the creator of high culture, must descend to the level of the most primitive consciousness, the second requires that the illiterate, semi-educated peasantry rise to the level of perception of world masterpieces, constantly learn and improve.

For some time, high culture not only can, but must remain alien to the people. Like a good wine, it needs to age, and the viewer needs to mature creatively during this time. Over the course of 50 years, any avant-garde and unusual work manages to turn into a retrograde, conservative one. With each passing decade, the distance between high and popular culture decreases. Today, the avant-garde, especially in popular culture, becomes fashion almost the next day.

The concepts of high and mass culture are historically relevant, i.e. depend on interests and the assessment given to a work of art at different times. So, for example, Shakespeare's plays or opera, which today we classify as high art, were originally, at the moment of their birth, forms of mass culture. The very concept of aesthetic, according to the sociological view, is a social construct.

According to some sociologists, high art, unlike mass culture, requires special knowledge to correctly evaluate it. Its very perception and evaluation is a serious intellectual and aesthetic experience, while mass culture is purely entertaining. Other authors believe that the division of art into “high” and “popular” is rooted in historical and social

50 Culture: theories and problems: Proc. manual for students and graduate students of humanitarian specialties / T.F. Kuznetsova, V.M. Mezhuev, I.O. Shaitanov et al. M., 1995. P. 40.

context and institutionalized ruling groups for the purpose of strengthening their own status by asserting that “their” forms of art are “better” than those created and used by other people 51 .

Recently, the boundaries between high and mass culture have become more blurred, which, in particular, is manifested in such a phenomenon as high-pop adaptation high art to mass culture, popularization that was previously considered accessible only to higher strata of society (for example, “promotion” opera singers like pop stars, or a series of programs on central channel television, presenting in detail French cuisine, which previously only very few - representatives of upper strata- in expensive restaurants 52).

Mass culture

With the advent of the media (radio, mass printed publications, television, recordings, tape recorders), the differences between high and popular culture began to blur. This is how mass culture arose, which is not associated with religious or class subcultures. The media and popular culture are inextricably linked. A culture becomes “mass” when its products are standardized and distributed to the general public.

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

Mass culture is a concept that embraces 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 communications. The production, distribution and consumption of mass culture products is industrial and commercial in 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 (certain types of rock music, “intellectual” detective, pop art). The aesthetics of mass culture is characterized by a constant balancing act between the trivial and the original, the aggressive and the sentimental, the vulgar and the sophisticated. By updating and objectifying the expectations of the mass audience, mass culture meets its needs for leisure, entertainment, play, communication, emotional compensation or release, etc. Mass culture does not express the refined tastes or spiritual searches of the people, and has less artistic value than elite or folk culture. But it has the widest audience and is original. It satisfies the immediate needs of people, reacts to and reflects any new event. Therefore, examples of mass culture, in particular hits, quickly lose relevance, become obsolete, and go out of fashion. It can be international and national. Pop music is a striking example of mass culture. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of level of education.

Mass culture and its social functions

In the morphological structure of culture, two areas can be distinguished: ordinary and specialized culture. Mass culture occupies an intermediate position with the function of a translator. The gap between ordinary and specialized cultures in ancient times was small (the specialty of a craftsman or merchant was mastered in the process of home education), but with scientific and technological development it increased significantly (especially in knowledge-intensive professions).

Everyday culture is realized in 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 different ways of life than a peasant), the indigenous traditions of the place of residence, but most of all - the social status of the person, his estate or class affiliation. It is the social status that determines the direction of the individual’s economic and cognitive interests, the style of his leisure time, communication, etiquette, information aspirations, aesthetic tastes, fashion, image, household rites and rituals, prejudices, images of prestige, ideas about one’s own dignity, general worldviews, social philosophy and etc., which constitutes the main array of features of everyday culture.

Everyday culture is not studied by a person specifically (with the exception of emigrants who purposefully master the language and customs of their new homeland), but is acquired spontaneously in the process of childhood upbringing and general education, communication with relatives, the social environment, professional colleagues, etc., and is adjusted throughout life. individual according to the intensity of his social contacts.

Modern knowledge and cultural patterns are developed within highly specialized areas of social practice. They are understood and assimilated by 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 requires a system of means for “translating” information from the language of highly specialized areas of culture to the level of everyday understanding of unprepared people, for “interpreting” this information to its mass consumer, for a certain “infantilization” of its figurative incarnations, as well as 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 interpretive practice has become necessary for a person throughout his life. Modern man, even being very educated, remains a narrow specialist in one field, and the level of his specialization increases from century to century. In other areas, he requires a permanent “staff” of commentators, interpreters, teachers, journalists, advertising agents and other kinds of “guides” leading him through the boundless sea of information about goods, services, political events, artistic innovations, social conflicts, etc.

Mass culture became the implementer of this kind of need. The structure of life in it is given to a person as a set of more or less standard situations, where everything has already been chosen by those 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 correct doctrine, leaders, place in the ranks, sports and pop stars, 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 previous times with translating 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 to two centuries, and what cultural phenomena have you performed this function before?

Apparently, before the scientific and technological revolution of recent centuries, there really was no such gap between specialized and everyday knowledge. The only exception was religion. We know well how great was the intellectual gap between “professional” theology and the mass religiosity of the population. What was really needed here was a “translation” from one language to another. This task was solved by preaching. Obviously, we can consider church sermons to be the historical predecessor of the phenomena of mass culture.

Phenomena of mass culture are created professional people, deliberately reducing complex meanings to primitiveness. It cannot be said that this kind of infantilization is easy to perform; It is well known that the technical skill of many show business stars evokes sincere admiration among representatives of the “art classics”.

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

the industry of “childhood subculture” (artworks 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 comprehensive 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 (print and electronic), broadcasting current information, “explaining” to the average person the meaning of ongoing events, judgments and actions of figures from specialized fields;

a system of ideology and propaganda that shapes the political orientation 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 and little understanding of the meaning of political programs;

the entertainment leisure industry, which includes mass artistic culture (almost all types of literature and art, perhaps with the exception of architecture), mass staged entertainment performances (from sports and circus to erotic), professional sports, structures for organized entertainment leisure (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 involvement or an ecstatic emotional reaction to what is happening. Mass artistic culture achieves its effect through a special aestheticization of the vulgar, ugly, physiological, i.e. acting on the principle of the medieval carnival and its semantic “reversals”. This culture is characterized by:

replicating the unique and reducing it to the everyday and publicly accessible;

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

the intellectual leisure industry ("cultural" tourism, amateur arts, 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, crosswords, etc.), introducing people to popular science knowledge, scientific and artistic hobby, developing the general "humanitarian erudition" of the population;

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

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

all kinds of dictionaries, reference books, encyclopedias, catalogues, 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 they want. Mass culture, as one of the most free distribution of goods in the information market, can only exist in conditions of voluntary and rush demand. Of course, the level of such excitement is artificially maintained by interested sellers of goods, but the very fact of increased demand for precisely this, made precisely 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 “person” were completely alien, if there were not a truly 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, it should not be assessed only negatively. Mass culture is generated by objective processes of modernization of society, when the socializing and inculturating functions of traditional culture lose their effectiveness. Mass culture actually takes on the functions of an instrument for ensuring primary socialization. It is likely that mass culture is the embryonic predecessor of some new, still emerging everyday culture.

One way or another, mass culture is a variant of the everyday culture of the urban population, competent only in a narrow area, and otherwise preferring to use printed and electronic sources of reduced information “for complete fools.” 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 slams, three stomps.”

University: VZFEI

Year and city: Tula 2010

Introduction 3

1. Popular culture 4

2. Reading crisis 10

3. Elements of popular culture 11

4. Comics 12

1. Introduction .

The subject of cultural studies is the concept of culture. The object of cultural studies is living people, creators and bearers of culture, as well as cultural phenomena, processes and institutions. Culture is closely related to society. If society is understood as a set of people, then culture is the totality of the results of their activities.

In everyday life, the concept of culture is used in at least three meanings.

Firstly, culture means a certain sphere of social life that has received institutional reinforcement (ministries of culture with an extensive apparatus of officials, mid-level specialists and senior educational establishments, training specialists in culture, magazines, societies, clubs, theaters, museums, etc., engaged in the production and dissemination of spiritual values).

Secondly, culture is understood as a set of spiritual values and norms inherent in a large social group, community, people or nation (elite culture, Russian culture, Russian foreign culture, youth culture, working class culture, etc.).

Thirdly, culture expresses a high level of qualitative development of spiritual achievements (“ cultured person“meaning well-mannered, “workplace culture” meaning neatly tidy, clean functional space). We introduce a “level” meaning into the concept of “culture” when we contrast culture with lack of culture - the absence of culture. There is no society, people, group or person devoid of culture.

2. Mass culture. .

Mass culture includes only those elements of culture that are broadcast through mass media, or channels of mass communication - radio, television, cinema, and the press. With their invention, the boundaries between city and village, and then between countries, were first erased. According to I. Lamond, these three criteria - television, radio and the press - distinguish mass culture from folk culture. Mass media are a form of what mass culture is the content of.

Although the roots of mass and popular culture, according to Leo Lowenthal, go back to Europe XVI century, in the strict sense of the word they must be considered a product of modern society. This is especially true for popular culture.

Appearance modern means mass media made it possible to replicate one cultural product in thousands and millions of copies, and therefore reduce the cost of each and make it accessible to a wide segment of the population. Industrial and especially post-industrial society associated with two important processes- distribution mass production and the appearance mass leisure.

The transition to mass production occurred in the USA in the 30s, and to mass leisure - there in the 50s, therefore the USA is considered the birthplace of both. From here mass production and mass leisure spread to other countries of the world, especially in Western Europe. Mass culture was formed on the basis of mass production and mass leisure. Why are three phenomena - mass production, mass leisure and mass culture - closely related to each other, and they need to be considered in close unity?

Mass production, which spread after the advent of assembly lines and the Ford system, not only standardized labor process, made work easier, filled the market with consumer goods, but it also made it possible to significantly reduce the price of goods. Mass production gave rise to a new phenomenon - mass consumption and the mass consumer, and it is most often identified with the middle class, that is, not very rich, but no longer poor layers of society.

In the mid-50s, the United States experienced rapid economic growth and an increase in the material well-being of the population, an increase in labor productivity and a corresponding reduction in the working week, a reorientation of the average American from the values of work to the values of leisure, and the widespread use of household appliances, increasing the level of literacy and facilitating the population’s leisure time to cultural institutions, including schools and universities, libraries and theaters, cinema and television. Sociologists began to talk about a cultural revolution of leisure, occurring during the transition of developed countries from industrial to post-industrial society.

In the middle of the century, a middle-class society was emerging in the United States, in which the main emphasis was placed on upward mobility and individual labor efforts. It was the middle class that subsequently played main role in the formation popular culture And leisure societies. The characteristic attraction of Americans to the fruits of technical civilization, inventive pathos and the desire to technicize everything and everyone helped in a short time to create material media of mass culture - radio, television, transnational newspaper empires. Finally, the third factor is the passion of Americans to turn everything they touch into profitable business, - contributed to the commercialization of leisure time for the middle and younger generation America in the 50s and 60s.

At the end of the 60s, mass culture also appeared in the USSR. But it depends little on the market, mass production and mass consumption. The main factor was the state. Mass culture was financed and supervised by the state through the mass media, it included propaganda and official culture - from photography to cinema, everything was aimed at promoting the socialist way of life. Official propaganda became widespread thanks to the introduction of tape recorders, radios, televisions and, of course, the press into the everyday life of Soviet people.

Mass culture pushed folk culture to the periphery, which gradually began to be forgotten. If it were not for the folklore expeditions of philologists who recorded legends, songs and rituals that were fading into the past, then folk (folklore) culture would not have been preserved at all. True, the government encouraged the holding of festivals, competitions and shows of folk ensembles.

The spread of popular culture gave rise to scientific research. In the USA, and then in other countries, the sociology of mass culture was formed.

The phenomenon of mass production is not so harmless to society. On the one hand, it makes available to the general public what in former times was used only by the elite. It improves people's working and living conditions. On the other hand, it simplifies our needs and tastes. Publicly available goods are sold at low prices and are of low quality. Reproductions of paintings by Rembrandt or Van Gogh from the store do not convey the full range strong feelings, which a person experiences when contemplating the originals. But not every resident of, say, Russia is able to come to Moscow or travel to Europe to communicate with great originals.

According to A.Ya. Fliera, mass culture performs an important broadcast. The language of modern specialized culture (political, scientific, artistic, engineering, etc.) is almost inaccessible to the general public, so society needed some kind of translators (translators). An important step was the introduction of universal and compulsory education for the population, and then the development of the media. Since professional knowledge is constantly expanding and deepening, a person throughout his life requires the presence of those who interpret and adapt complex information to his level. The best transmitter is mass culture, using both print and television. Numerous commentators, journalists, political observers, showmen, TV stars, etc. not only interpret, but also manipulate our consciousness, driving hackneyed stereotypes and formulations into our heads.

Popular culture is culture at home. She is always with us. We join it when it is beneficial and convenient for us, and not for the authors or performers.

But this has already happened in human history. In ancient times, pharaohs, sultans, kings invited professional artists to their home, and only much later they began to go out into the world, occupying an honorary box in the theater. Salon culture XVIII- The 19th century is also a home culture. True, playing music at home and amateur home performances were the privilege of a thin layer of the intelligentsia. Since the middle of the 19th century, communication with art has become accessible to almost all layers and takes place in specialized institutions - in museums, art galleries, theaters, conservatories, concert halls. It is accessible to the masses.

In the second half of the 20th century, art returned to the home thanks to television, radio, sound and video equipment, reproductions, and slides. Art became domestic, but ceased to be the preserve of a narrow circle of elites.

Of the great three mass media - the press, radio and television - the press arose earlier than the others, becoming already in the 19th century the bearer of the emerging mass and popular culture. Newspaper circulation increased as urban populations grew. As the number of subscribers increased, it became possible to make the newspaper more attractive and cheaper, while maintaining a high level of income through increased turnover. You can take the newspaper with you everywhere - on the street and at home. Previously, to buy it, you had to go to a kiosk. Home delivery of newspapers increases the comfort and attractiveness of large-circulation newspapers.

From now on, it became possible to preserve not only fruits and vegetables, but also information and entertainment using recording equipment. You can turn on your favorite melody at any time and anywhere, listen to it as many times as you want. Of course, there is nothing similar in traditional culture, based on oral transmission of information and a living source. The second distinctive feature is the incomparably wider range and variety of transmitted information. In Moscow you can see or hear what is happening at the moment in New York or Tokyo.

Mass media immeasurably expands the circle of art lovers. P. Tchaikovsky's first concert in 1891, held at Carnegie Hall in New York, was attended by 2,000 people. The Beatles' first performance in the United States at the same Carnegie Hall in 1964 was watched and listened to by 73 million people thanks to television.

An equally important feature of mass culture is the hybridization of media, that is, the combination of a variety of technical achievements into a whole. This is how cinema, radio and television emerged. Television, whose function is to educate, inform and entertain, has combined almost all previous forms of information - school, cinema, radio. In turn, radio, even before the advent of television, accumulated a newspaper (news extracts), a book (radio shows), a theater and a concert hall (radio plays, broadcasts of concerts), a stadium (sports reports), and a stage (playing records). As for cinema, it brought various aspects of the visual sphere closer to us - from photography to theater, circus and stage.

Traditional theatrical culture turned out to be widely accessible. Commercial entertainment enterprises, which had become a characteristic feature of urban culture since the second half of the 19th century, faced competition. Now the actors played not on stage, but in front of a microphone and a movie camera; people could choose whether to go to theaters and concert halls or listen to the radio and watch television. Opera singers, musicians and journalists began working on radio. The youngest of all forms of entertainment, cinema initially flourished, capitalizing on the expertise of radio and the popularity of movie stars, until the arrival of television. Traditional forms of culture and leisure were changing their status and experiencing a financial crisis. With the advent of radio and television, theater and cinema lost their audience.

Today the expression “culture on a quick fix" Radio, television and the press satisfy the basic condition of mass culture: immediate reaction to what is happening and, therefore, the absence of any selectivity. With the advent of communication satellites, news began to spread around the world almost instantly. At the same time, a huge audience receives the same culture.

Mass culture, being more mobile and technically equipped, began to crowd out traditional forms of art. At first, cinema lured almost all theater visitors, and then it itself was supplanted by television. The struggle for an audience, competition is a new phenomenon in the field of culture that did not exist before. Competing for the return of the audience, theater and cinema were forced to look for new forms, style, and language of expression, which had a fruitful effect on their further development.

However, the “visual civilization” that replaced speech and writing has not only positive, but also negative sides. Some experts believe that visual information leads to early maturation in children and infantilism in adults. It causes the same reaction in people regardless of their level of education, affecting the lower levels of the psyche (emotions and feelings) to the detriment of the mind.

Experts believe that schoolchildren’s teaching methods have discouraged children’s interest in serious books.

3. Reading crisis.

The reading crisis manifests itself in two forms: a) passive literacy, when adults and children simply do not like to read, and b) active illiteracy, or functional illiteracy (this term applies to any person who has significantly lost reading and writing skills and is unable to perception of a short and simple text relevant to everyday life), in which people love, but do not know how to read.

The scale of both phenomena in developed countries is impressive: in highly cultured France, the number of adults who have never opened a book ranges from 50 to 55%; from 23 to 30 million Americans are completely illiterate, that is, they actually cannot read or write, from 35 to 54 million are semi-literate - their reading and writing skills are much lower than necessary for a full life in society. In Canada, 24% of people aged 18 years and over are illiterate or functionally illiterate. In Poland and Germany, 40% of children school age understanding the simplest literary texts is difficult. Up to 30% of French secondary school students read very poorly and will soon join the ranks of the non-reading public, whose intellectual needs are limited to comics and entertaining films. Researchers have identified true cultural deserts, especially in rural areas located just a few kilometers from Paris. Surprisingly, in France there are, on the one hand, a cultural elite, fed with all kinds of book products and claiming to be the bearer of true culture, and on the other hand, the broad masses who are hungry for books and reject the culture offered to them.

Functionally illiterate people are to one degree or another culturally limited and cut off from social and intellectual communication. They can be characterized as follows: poor academic performance at school, a negative attitude towards cultural institutions due to the inability to use them and the fear of being judged by experts, etc. For this category of readers, the world of culture is beyond their vital interests: they do not go to libraries and bookstores, and the education they received at school caused them to be turned away from literature rather than stimulate a deep interest in reading and self-education skills.

4. Elements of mass culture.

Experts consider a very wide range of phenomena to be elements, types and means of expression of mass culture. So, for example, A.Ya. Flier names the following: the media, school and university education, ideology and propaganda, the entertainment leisure industry, including mass staged entertainment performances (from sports circus to erotic), professional sports (as a spectacle for fans), organized entertainment leisure institutions (clubs, discos, dance floors, etc.), the health leisure industry (resorts, physical education, bodybuilding and aerobics, sports tourism, medical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic services), the intellectual leisure industry (amateur arts, collecting, hobby groups, scientific and educational institutions, intellectual games, etc.), slot machines And computer games, all kinds of dictionaries, reference books, encyclopedias, catalogues, Internet, show business, cinema, etc.

But we will highlight only the two most typical genres for mass culture, widespread throughout the world - comics and cinema.

4.1. Comics.

These include oral histories or dialogues accompanied by drawings. At the same time, several varieties are distinguished: 1) magazine and newspaper inserts in the form of a block funny drawings; 2) book comics published as a separate brochure; 3) comic films; 4) comics-caricatures. Standing aside is a special genre of comics that appeared in the late 60s in the underground hippie press and represents an element of counterculture.

The first newspaper comics appeared in the United States in 1892. In 1946, 60 million comic books were sold every month to teenagers under the age of 18 in the country. The peak came in 1954, when 650 different comic book books sold 100 million copies per month. In 1928, the famous cartoon comics with Mickey Mouse appeared.

Over time, comics have become a powerful industry and have become a kind of cult symbol for many generations of Americans. For example, a series about star Wars captured the imagination of teenagers for more than 20 years. Experts believe that the role of comics in the United States is akin to the functions of a large cultural institute, performing an important task for the masses of fans. Comics are enjoyed by all ages, men and women, poor and rich, almost equally.

Experts talk about the emergence of the sociology of comics, which, as a subdiscipline, has its own subject and object, empirical data and theoretical developments, methodology and explanatory concepts. The scientific literature on comics includes many hundreds of articles and monographs. Scientists analyze publications in teen magazines, interview comic book readers, and conduct cross-cultural and historical research.

It turned out that comics do not serve as a means to convince people from pressing problems of reality into a fictional world, as was previously thought, but to break the monotonous rhythm of everyday life. In addition, by ridiculing political leaders and movie stars, comics serve as a means of democratic education for youth. Counterculture comics are popular not with those aged 10 to 18, but with those over 20. College and university students find answers to pressing social and political problems in samizdat newspapers and leaflets. Their audience is students who are tired of the norms of official culture and are looking for their place in modern society. Most often this is a type of protest literature. Today, comics have become an integral part of educational and educational programs in the United States.

The cultural significance of cartoon comics can be seen in the fact that their heroes have long turned into additional agents of socialization of the younger generation who grew up on them. They teach teenagers to deal with difficulties, not to be afraid of dangers, to believe in themselves and to hope for success in any turn of events.

At the same time, sociologists note that the moral focus of comic book heroes on the fight against evil is almost completely balanced by the propaganda of violence, with which the pages of such literature are oversaturated. The cartoonist cannot do otherwise: comics simultaneously simplify ways to solve real problems, sometimes offering very primitive and vulgar methods: kill, use violence, rob. Even if they come from villains, the teenage mind still legitimizes them as correct and possible because they come from their favorite cartoons.

In general, the cultural world of comics is heterogeneous; there are undoubted masterpieces in it that educate people in the spirit of respect for moral ideals, and there is outright consumer goods created for the topic of the day. That's why in American literature Experts' opinions are divided: supporters overestimate progressive cultural role comics, and opponents exaggerate the social harm they cause. Some sociologists emphasize the catastrophic role of comics, allowing teenagers to release pent-up energy and aggression, while others point out that comics are more often read by delinquent teenagers than by law-abiding youth. The use of special tests that track school success and the intellectual level of adolescents over several decades indicates that there is some deterioration in motivation and academic achievement. The generation of Americans raised on comics has become worse at thinking and learning.

4.2. Movie.

Cinema appeared as the first vehicle of popular culture. Cinema began as a form of working-class leisure. At the end of the 19th century in the United States, silent cinema, unlike theater and journalists, was the most accessible form of entertainment for emigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe who did not understand English. The first film producers were also emigrants. They understood the needs of their audience by creating comedies, science fiction films and action films. Early cinema was extremely unpretentious, devoid of internal intrigue and consisted of a set of simple scenes: a gardener sprays water from a hose, hunters drive an animal.

When the movie camera was invented in 1903 and the profession of camera operator emerged, films became more complex in plot. Heroes with their own character and dramatic destiny appeared on the screen. In 1927 - 1928, when sound cinema came into life, the peak of cinematography came. Then giant cinemas appeared in America (for 3 - 6 thousand spectators), which were visited daily by 7 to 10 million people. Sound expanded the possibilities of cinema, new genres appeared that were unknown to silent cinema built on pantomime, in particular, musicals, horror films, and social cinema.

From 1990 to 1911, the history of the greatest film industry in the world begins - Hollywood, which is also called the world's “dream factory”. By 1918, it produced up to 97% of the world's cinema: 841 films annually, shown in 21,000 cinemas. The six giants of Hollywood - Warner Brothers, Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, United Artists and Columbia - now earn several billion dollars a year, creating products not only for the domestic market, but also for export. In the 70s, Hollywood, having also begun to create television films, became the world capital of television production.

The first drive-in movie theaters appeared in 1933, and by the late 1940s they had already become a mass phenomenon. In the early 80s, every fourth cinema was for drive-ins. Although cinema did everything to win success among the American audience, its time seemed to be inexorably coming to an end. After the war, interest in cinema fell, while interest in television, on the contrary, grew. In the mid-70s, 20 million viewers visited cinemas a week (for comparison: in the 20s, 100 million every week). As cinema declined, it gained popularity TV.

5. Conclusion.

Mass society is contradictory. On the one hand, it made books publicly available, and with them made universal literacy and scientific knowledge. On the other hand, it is mass society that discourages people from engaging in deep and engaged reading. The reading crisis in the West represents one of the varieties of the cultural crisis.

Repression or suppression traditional types art is explained by the greater accessibility of mass culture, proximity to the audience and more high level comfort. At the same time, technical achievements are an excellent assistant. Classic works of literature and drama, folk songs and the dances could now be seen not by tens, but by hundreds of thousands of people. Cinematography techniques have increased the effect of classics on the viewer.

Competing for the return of the audience, theater and cinema were forced to look for new forms, style, and language of expression, which had a fruitful effect on their further development.

1 . Kravchenko A.I.; Culturology: Tutorial for universities. - M. Academic Project, 2000. - 736 p.

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