IN In the twentieth century, culture became the object of powerful expansion from new - audiovisual and electronic - means of communication (radio, cinema, television), which covered almost the entire space of the planet with their networks. In the modern world, the media have acquired the importance of the main producer and supplier of cultural products designed for mass consumer demand. This is why it is called mass culture because it does not have a clearly defined national coloring and does not recognize any national boundaries. As a completely new cultural phenomenon, it is no longer the subject of anthropological (ethnological) or humanitarian (philological and historical) study, but sociological knowledge.

The masses are a special kind of social community, which should be distinguished from both the people (ethnic group) and the nation. If a people is a collective personality with a uniform program of behavior and a system of values ​​for everyone, if a nation is a collective of individuals, then the masses are an impersonal collective formed by individuals that are internally unrelated to each other, alien and indifferent to each other. Thus, they talk about the mass of production, consumer, trade union, party, spectator, reader, etc., which is characterized not so much by the quality of the individuals who form it, but by their numerical composition and time of existence.

The most typical example of a mass is a crowd. The masses are sometimes called “a crowd of lonely people” (this is the title of a book by the American sociologist D. Riesman), and the twentieth century is called the “century of crowds” (the title of a book by social psychologist S. Moscovici). According to the “diagnosis of our time” made by the German sociologist Karl Mannheim back in the 30s. past wreath, “the major changes we are witnessing today are ultimately due to the fact that we live in a mass society.” It owes its emergence to the growth of large industrial cities, the processes of industrialization and urbanization. On the one hand, it is characterized by a high level of organization, planning, and management; on the other, it is characterized by the concentration of real power in the hands of a minority, the ruling bureaucratic elite.

The social basis of a mass society is not citizens who are free in their decisions and actions, but clusters of people indifferent to each other, brought together on purely formal grounds and grounds. It is a consequence not of autonomization, but of the atomization of individuals, whose personal qualities and properties are not taken into account by anyone. Its appearance was the result of the inclusion of large groups of people in social structures that function independently of their consciousness and will, imposed on them from the outside and prescribing for them a certain way of behavior and action. Sociology arose as the science of institutional forms of social behavior and actions of people in which they behave according to the functions or roles prescribed to them. Accordingly, the study of mass psychology is called social psychology.

Being a purely functional formation, the masses do not have their own program of action that internally unites it (it always receives the latter from the outside). Everyone here is on their own, but all together is a rather random association of people, easily subject to external influences and various kinds of psychological manipulations that can evoke certain moods and emotions in her. The masses have nothing behind their souls that they could consider to be their common value and sacred. She needs idols and idols that she is ready to worship as long as they command her attention and indulge her desires and instincts. But she also rejects them when they oppose themselves to her or try to rise above her level. Mass consciousness, of course, gives birth to its own myths and legends, can be filled with rumors, is subject to various phobias and manias, and is capable, for example, of panicking for no reason, but all this is the result not of conscious and thoughtful actions, but of experiences and fears irrationally arising on a mass basis. .

The main value of mass society is not individual freedom, but power, which, although different from traditional power - monarchical and aristocratic - in its ability to control people, to subjugate their consciousness and will, far exceeds the latter. People in power here become the true heroes of the day (the press writes most about them, they never leave television screens), replacing the heroes of the past - dissidents, fighters for personal independence and freedom. Power in mass society is as impersonal and depersonalized as society itself. These are no longer just tyrants and despots whose names everyone knows, but a corporation of people running the country hidden from the public eye - the “power elite.” The instrument of her power, replacing the old “system of supervision and punishment,” are powerful financial and information flows, which she disposes of at her own discretion. Whoever owns finances and the media really owns power in mass society.

In general, mass culture is the instrument of power of mass society over people. Being designed for mass perception, appealing not to everyone separately, but to huge audiences, its goal is to evoke in them a uniform, unambiguous reaction that is the same for everyone. The national composition of this audience is not significant. The mass nature of perception, when people who are little familiar and unrelated to each other seem to merge in a single emotional response, is a specific feature of joining mass culture.

It is clear that it is easier to do this by appealing to the simplest, most elementary feelings and moods of people, which do not require serious mental work and spiritual effort. Mass culture is not for those who want to “think and suffer.” In it they are mostly looking for a source of thoughtless fun, a spectacle that caresses the eyes and ears, a leisure-filling entertainment, the satisfaction of superficial curiosity, or even just a means for “catching a buzz” and obtaining various kinds of pleasures. This goal is achieved not so much through words (especially printed ones), but through images and sound, which have an incomparably greater power of emotional impact on the audience. Mass culture is predominantly audiovisual. It is not intended for dialogue and communication, but to relieve stress from excessive social overload, to ease the feeling of loneliness among people who live nearby but do not know each other, allowing them to feel like one for a while, emotionally discharge and release the accumulated energy.

Sociologists note an inverse relationship between watching television and reading books: as the time of the former increases, the latter decreases. The society from “reading” gradually becomes “gazing”; written (book) culture is gradually being replaced by a culture based on the perception of visual and sound images (“the end of the Gutenberg galaxy”). They are the language of mass culture. The written word, of course, does not completely disappear, but is gradually devalued in its cultural meaning.

The fate of the printed word, and books in general, in the era of mass culture and the “information society” is a large and complex topic. Replacing a word with an image or sound creates a qualitatively new situation in the cultural space. After all, the word allows you to see what cannot be seen with the ordinary eye. It is addressed not to vision, but to speculation, which allows one to mentally imagine what it denotes. “The image of the world revealed in words” has been called the ideal world since the time of Plato, which becomes accessible to a person only through imagination or reflection. And the ability for it is formed to the greatest extent by reading.

Another thing is a visual image, a picture. Its contemplation does not require special mental effort from a person. Vision replaces reflection and imagination here. For a person whose consciousness is formed by the media, there is no ideal world: it disappears, dissolves in the stream of visual and auditory impressions. He sees, but does not think, sees, but often does not understand. An amazing thing: the larger the amount of such information settles in a person’s head, the less critical he is of it, the more he loses his own position and personal opinion. While reading, you can still somehow agree or argue with the author, but long-term communication with the screen world gradually kills any resistance to it. Due to its entertainment and accessibility, this world is much more convincing than the book word, although it is more destructive in its impact on the ability to judge, i.e. on the ability to think independently.

Mass culture, being essentially cosmopolitan, has clearly lowered the threshold of individual receptivity and selectivity. Put on stream, it is not much different from the production of consumer goods. Even with good design, it is designed for average demand, average preferences and tastes. By limitlessly expanding the composition of their audience, they sacrifice to it the uniqueness and inimitability of the author's principle, which has always determined the originality of the national culture. If today anyone is still interested in the achievements of national culture, it is already in the status of high (classical) and even elite culture, looking back to the past.

This makes it clear why most Western intellectuals saw the masses as the main enemy of culture. National forms of life were replaced by the cosmopolitan city with its standardized regulations and regulations. In such an environment, culture cannot breathe, and what is called it has no direct relation to it. Culture is behind us, not ahead of us, and all the talk about its future is meaningless. It has turned into a huge leisure industry, existing under the same rules and laws as the entire market economy.

Konstantin Leontyev was also surprised that the more European peoples gain national independence, the more they become similar to each other. It seems that national borders in culture exist only to preserve for some time the ethnocultural differences between peoples coming from the past, otherwise extremely close to each other. Sooner or later, everything that separates them in terms of culture will turn out to be insignificant against the background of the ongoing integration processes. National culture already frees the individual from the unconditional power over him of the direct collective and traditionally transmitted customs and values ​​of his group, and includes it in a broader cultural context. In its national form, culture becomes individual, and, therefore, more universal in its meanings and connections. Classics of any national culture are known all over the world. The further expansion of the boundaries of culture taking place in mass society, its entry to the transnational level is carried out, however, due to the loss of its clearly expressed individual principle in the process of both creativity and consumption of culture. The quantitative composition of the audience consuming culture is increasing extremely, and the quality of this consumption is decreasing to the level of a publicly accessible primitive. Culture in mass society is driven not by a person’s desire for individual self-expression, but by the rapidly changing needs of the crowd.

What, then, does globalization bring with it? What does it mean for culture? If, within the borders of existing national states, mass culture still somehow coexists with high examples of culture created by the national genius of the people, then won’t culture in the global world become synonymous with human facelessness, devoid of any heterogeneity? What is the general fate of national cultures in the world of global connections and relationships?

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal state budget educational

institution of higher professional education

"Volgograd State Technical University"

Department of History, Culture and Sociology

Abstract on cultural studies

"Trends in the development of mass culture"

Completed:

student of group F-469

Senin I.P.

Teacher:

senior teacher Solovyova A.V.

_________________

Rating ___ b., __________

Volgograd 2012

1. Introduction………………………………………………………… ……..…...3
2. Historical conditions and stages of the formation of mass culture......4
3. Social functions of mass culture……………………...………..5
4. Negative influence of mass culture on society……...…………...6
5. Positive functions of mass culture…………………...……….7
6. Conclusion……………………………………………………..…………..8
7. Bibliography…………………...………………………. ..………….9

Introduction

Culture is the totality of industrial, social and spiritual achievements of people. Culture is a system of means of human activity, which is constantly being improved, and thanks to which human activity is stimulated and realized. The concept of “culture” is very polysemantic, has different content and different meanings not only in everyday language, but also in different sciences and philosophical disciplines. It must be revealed in differential-dynamic aspects, which requires the use of the categories “social practice” and “activity”, connecting the categories “social being” and “social consciousness”, “objective” and “subjective” in the historical process.

If we recognize that one of the main signs of true culture is the heterogeneity and richness of its manifestations, based on national-ethnic and class-class differentiation, then in the 20th century it was not only Bolshevism that turned out to be the enemy of cultural “polyphony”. In the conditions of “industrial society” and scientific and technological revolution, humanity as a whole has discovered a clearly expressed tendency towards pattern and monotony to the detriment of any kind of originality and originality, whether we are talking about an individual or about certain social strata and groups.

The culture of modern society is a combination of the most diverse layers of culture, that is, it consists of the dominant culture, subcultures and even countercultures. In any society, one can distinguish high culture (elite) and folk culture (folklore). The development of the media has led to the formation of the so-called mass culture, simplified in semantic and artistic terms, technologically accessible to everyone. Mass culture, especially with its strong commercialization, can displace both high and folk cultures. But in general, the attitude towards popular culture is not so clear.

The phenomenon of “mass culture” from the point of view of its role in the development of modern civilization is assessed by scientists far from unambiguously. A critical approach to “mass culture” boils down to its accusations of neglecting the classical heritage, of allegedly being an instrument of conscious manipulation of people; enslaves and unifies the main creator of any culture, the sovereign personality; contributes to her alienation from real life; distracts people from their main task - “the spiritual and practical development of the world” (K. Marx). The apologetic approach, on the contrary, is expressed in the fact that “mass culture” is proclaimed as a natural consequence of irreversible scientific and technological progress, that it contributes to the unity of people, especially young people, regardless of any ideologies and national-ethnic differences into a stable social system and not not only does it not reject the cultural heritage of the past, but also makes its best examples the property of the widest strata of the people by replicating them through print, radio, television and industrial reproduction. The debate about the harm or benefit of “mass culture” has a purely political aspect: both democrats and supporters of authoritarian power, not without reason, strive to use this objective and very important phenomenon of our time in their interests. During the Second World War and in the post-war period, the problems of "mass culture", especially its most important element - mass information, were studied with equal attention in both democratic and totalitarian states.

Historical conditions and stages of the formation of mass culture

The peculiarities of the production and consumption of cultural values ​​have allowed culturologists to identify two social forms of cultural existence: mass culture and elite culture. Mass culture is a type of cultural product that is produced in large volumes every day. It is assumed that mass culture is consumed by all people, regardless of place and country of residence. It is the culture of everyday life, presented to the widest audience through various channels, including the media and communications.

When and how did mass culture appear? There are a number of points of view regarding the origins of mass culture in cultural studies.

Let us give as an example the most frequently found in the scientific literature:

1. The prerequisites for mass culture have been formed since the birth of humanity, and, in any case, at the dawn of Christian civilization.

2. The origins of mass culture are associated with the appearance in European literature of the 1988th centuries of the adventure, detective, and adventurous novel, which significantly expanded the readership due to huge circulations. Here, as a rule, they cite as an example the work of two writers: the Englishman Daniel Defoe, author of the well-known novel “Robinson Crusoe” and 481 other biographies of people in so-called risky professions: investigators, military men, thieves, etc., and our compatriot Matvey Komarov .

3. The law on compulsory universal literacy adopted in Great Britain in 1870 had a great influence on the development of mass culture, which allowed many to master the main form of artistic creativity of the 19th century - the novel.

And yet, all of the above is the prehistory of mass culture. And in the proper sense, mass culture manifested itself for the first time in the United States. The famous 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 the modern USA gave the world a scientific and technological revolution and mass culture.”

The phenomenon of the emergence of mass culture is presented as follows. The turn of the 19th century was characterized by a comprehensive massification of life. It affected all its spheres: economics and politics, management and communication between people. The active role of the human masses in various social spheres was analyzed in a number of philosophical works of the 20th century.

X. Ortega y Gasset in his work “The Revolt of the Masses” derives the very concept of “mass” from the definition of “crowd”. A crowd, in quantitative and visual terms, is a multitude, and a multitude, from a sociological point of view, is a mass,” explains Ortega. And further he writes: “Society has always been a mobile unity of the minority and the masses. A minority is a set of persons who are specially singled out; the mass is a group of people who are not singled out in any way. The mass is the average person. Thus, a purely quantitative definition turns into a qualitative one.”

The book by the American sociologist, Columbia University professor D. Bell, “The End of Ideology,” in which the features of modern society are determined by the emergence of mass production and mass consumption, is very informative for analyzing our problem. Here the author formulates five meanings of the concept “mass”:

1. Mass - as an undifferentiated set (i.e., the opposite of the concept of class).

2. Mass - as a synonym for ignorance (as X. Ortega y Gasset also wrote about this).

3. The masses - as a mechanized society (i.e., a person is perceived as an appendage of technology).

4. The masses - as a bureaucratized society (i.e., in a mass society, the individual loses his individuality in favor of the herd). 5. The masses are like a crowd. There is a psychological meaning here. The crowd does not reason, but obeys passions. A person may be cultured by himself, but in a crowd he is a barbarian.

And D. Bell concludes: the masses are the embodiment of herdism, uniformity, and stereotypes.

An even more in-depth analysis of “mass culture” was made by the Canadian sociologist M. McLuhan. He, like D. Bell, comes to the conclusion that mass communications give rise to a new type of culture. McLuhan emphasizes that the starting point of the era of “industrial and typographical man” was the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. McLuhan, defining art as the leading element of spiritual culture, emphasized the escapist (i.e., leading away from reality) function of artistic culture.

Of course, these days the mass has changed significantly. The masses have become educated and informed. In addition, the subjects of mass culture today are not just the masses, but also individuals united by various connections. In turn, the concept of “mass culture” characterizes the features of the production of cultural values ​​in modern industrial society, designed for mass consumption of this culture.

Social functions of mass culture

Socially, mass culture forms a new social stratum, called the “middle class”. The processes of its formation and functioning in the field of culture are most concretely described in the book of the French philosopher and sociologist E. Morin “The Zeitgeist”. The concept of “middle class” has become fundamental in Western culture and philosophy. This “middle class” also became the core of life in industrial society. He also made mass culture so popular.

Mass culture mythologizes human consciousness, mystifies real processes occurring in nature and in human society. There is a rejection of the rational principle in consciousness. The purpose of mass culture is not so much to fill leisure time and relieve tension and stress in a person of industrial and post-industrial society, but to stimulate consumer consciousness in the recipient (i.e., viewer, listener, reader), which in turn forms a special type - passive, uncritical person's perception of this culture. All this creates a personality that is quite easy to manipulate. In other words, the human psyche is manipulated and the emotions and instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings are exploited, and above all feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear, and self-preservation.

The mass consciousness formed by mass culture is diverse in its manifestation. However, it is characterized by conservatism, inertia, and limitations. It cannot cover all processes in development, in all the complexity of their interaction. In the practice of mass culture, mass consciousness has specific means of expression. Mass culture is more focused not on realistic images, but on artificially created images (image) and stereotypes. In popular culture, the formula is the main thing.

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 unrealistic dreams. And all this is combined with open or hidden propaganda of the dominant way of life, which has its ultimate goal of distracting the masses from social activity, adapting people to existing conditions, and conformism.

Hence the use in popular culture of such genres of art as detective, melodrama, musicals, and comics.

The negative impact of mass culture on society

The culture of modern society is a combination of the most diverse layers of culture, that is, it consists of the dominant culture, subcultures and even countercultures.

34% of Russians believe that mass culture has a negative impact on society and undermines its moral and ethical health. The All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) came to this result as a result of a study conducted in 2003. survey.

The positive influence of mass culture on society was stated by 29% of Russians surveyed, who believe that mass culture helps people relax and have fun. 24% of respondents believe the role of show business and mass culture is greatly exaggerated and are convinced that they do not have a serious impact on society.

80% of respondents are extremely negative towards the use of profanity in public speeches of show business stars, considering the use of obscene expressions an unacceptable manifestation of promiscuity and lack of talent.

13% of respondents allow the use of profanity in cases where it is used as a necessary artistic means, and 3% believe that if it is often used in communication between people, then attempts to ban it on the stage, in cinema, on television are simply hypocrisy .

A negative attitude towards the use of profanity is also reflected in Russians’ assessments of the situation surrounding the conflict between journalist Irina Aroyan and Philip Kirkorov. 47% of respondents sided with Irina Aroyan, while only 6% supported the pop star. 39% of respondents showed no interest in this process at all.

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Mass culture as a social phenomenon

Sociology

Mass culture as a social phenomenon

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 anticipating the expectations of the mass audience, mass culture meets its needs for leisure, entertainment, play, communication, emotional compensation or release, etc.

Introduction

Mass culture, being one of the most striking manifestations of the sociocultural existence of modern developed communities, remains a relatively little-understood phenomenon from the point of view of the general theory of culture. Interesting theoretical foundations for studying the social functions of culture (including mass culture) have been developed in recent years by E. Orlova. In accordance with its concept, two areas can be distinguished in the morphological structure of culture: everyday culture, mastered by a person in the process of his general socialization in his living environment (primarily in the processes of upbringing and general education), and specialized culture, the development of which requires special (professional) education . Mass culture occupies an intermediate position between these two areas with the function of translating cultural meanings from specialized culture to ordinary human consciousness. Such an approach to the phenomenon of mass culture seems very heuristic. This work sets the goal of in-depth reflection on the socio-functional characteristics of mass culture in line with this concept and correlating it with the concept of social subcultures.

Since the decomposition of primitive society, the beginning of the division of labor, social stratification in human groups and the formation of the first urban civilizations, a corresponding differentiation of culture arose, determined by the difference in the social functions of different groups of people associated with their way of life, material means and social benefits, as well as the emerging ideology and symbols of social prestige. These differentiated segments of the general culture of a particular historical community eventually came to be called social subcultures. In principle, the number of such subcultures can be correlated with the number of specialized areas of activity (specialties, professions) available in the community, but the objectives of this article do not require such a fine-grained structuring of culture. It is enough to highlight only a few main social-class (estate) subcultures that unite large groups of people in accordance with their role and functions in the production of the means of physical and social existence of a person, in maintaining or disrupting social organization and regulation of social life (order).

Types of subcultures

First of all, we are talking about the subculture of rural producers, called folk (in socio-demographic terms) or ethnographic (in terms of the greatest concentration of relevant specific features). Functionally, this culture produces mainly means of maintaining the physical (vital) existence of people - primarily food. From the point of view of the main characteristics, this subculture is characterized by a low level of specialization in individual professions (the “classical” peasant is, as a rule, a generalist worker: a farmer, a cattle breeder, a fisherman, and a carpenter at the same time, unless special landscape conditions specialize him more narrowly); low level of individual social aspirations of people; a slight gap between the everyday culture of peasant life and the specialized knowledge and skills of agricultural labor. Accordingly, the method of social reproduction of this subculture generally does not go beyond the simple intergenerational transmission of the local tradition of environmental management and the associated picture of the world, beliefs, rational knowledge, norms of social relations, rituals, etc., the transmission of which is carried out in the forms of ordinary upbringing of children in the family and does not require any special education.

The subculture of urban producers has somewhat different functions, which at the dawn of civilization was formed as a craft and trade one, and later began to be called bourgeois (burgher), industrial, proletarian, post-bourgeois (socialist), etc., although functionally it remained the same. This culture produces the means not so much of vital as of social existence of people - tools, weapons, household items, energy, transport, communications, urban habitat, knowledge about the world and about man, means of exchange (money) and the mechanisms of their functioning, trade, aesthetic values, etc. Moreover, all this, as a rule, is produced in commercial quantities.

This subculture is characterized by a relatively high and steadily increasing level of professional specialization of its subjects (even a craftsman of ancient times was a more or less narrow specialist in his field, not to mention later craftsmen, engineers, doctors, scientists, artists, etc.); moderate level of personal social aspirations (those representatives of the urban subculture who are distinguished by increased social ambitions usually strive to go into the elite or criminal spheres, and the ambitions of average urban producers are, as a rule, relatively moderate). The gap between the ordinary and specialized components of this culture in ancient times was small (the specialty of an artisan or merchant was mastered in the process of home education), but with scientific and technological development it increased significantly (especially in knowledge-intensive professions). The processes of social reproduction of this subculture were divided accordingly: the everyday culture of the average city dweller is reproduced within the framework of family education and through the institutions of the national educational standard (which will be discussed below), and the specialized culture is reproduced through a network of secondary specialized and higher educational institutions.

The third social subculture is elite. This word usually means special sophistication, complexity and high quality of cultural products. But this is not the most important feature of the elite subculture. Its main function is the production of social order (in the form of law, power, structures of social organization of society and legitimate violence in the interests of maintaining this organization), as well as the ideology that justifies this order (in the forms of religion, social philosophy and political thought). The elite subculture is distinguished by a very high level of specialization (the training of clergy - shamans, priests, etc., is obviously the oldest special professional education); the highest level of social aspirations of the individual (love of power, wealth and fame is considered the “normal” psychology of any elite). The gap between the ordinary and specialized components of this social subculture, as well as in the bourgeois subculture, until recently was not very large. The knowledge and skills of an aristocratic upbringing acquired from childhood, as a rule, made it possible to perform the duties of a knight, officer, courtier, official of any rank, and even a monarch without additional training. Perhaps only the functions of clergy required special training. This situation lasted in Europe until the 18th-19th centuries, when the elite subculture began to merge with the bourgeois subculture, turning into the highest layer of the latter. At the same time, the requirements for the professional preparedness of performers of elite functions increased significantly, which led to the emergence of corresponding educational institutions (military, diplomatic, political and administrative).

Today, the discrepancy between the ordinary and specialized layers of the elite subculture has become very significant, because the ruling circles of most countries are now filled with people who, as a rule, did not receive an aristocratic upbringing at home. Although there are no convincing signs of sustainable reproduction of the traditions of everyday elite culture in most developed societies of our time (the relic of the “Russian intelligentsia”, apparently, was preserved precisely due to its contradictory kinship-antagonism with the socialist utopia), nevertheless, talking about the “death » aristocratic tradition is still premature. It’s just that the political and intellectual elite itself has become different, almost unrelated to the hereditary aristocracy of previous times. And if its specialized forms are more or less continuous in relation to the historically established ones, then at the everyday level the new “elite style”, combining aristocratic and bourgeois traditions, is still far from harmony and its forms even in the USA and Western Europe.

And finally, another social subculture is criminal. This is a culture of deliberate violation of the prevailing social orders and ideology. It has many specific specializations: theft, murder, hooliganism, prostitution, beggary, fraud, national extremism, political terrorism, revolutionary underground, illegitimate sectarianism, heresy, sex crime, alcoholism, drug addiction and further under all articles of the criminal code, as well as lists of forms of mental deviations, social inadequacy, etc. This subculture has always existed and, apparently, it is based on some features of the human psyche, leading to one or another form of protest against the absolute regulation of social existence (implanted, naturally, by the elite culture ). The parameters of this subculture that interest us are distinguished by very contradictory (amorphous, unstructured) characteristics. Here there are both highly specialized (terrorism) and completely unspecialized (hooliganism, alcoholism) manifestations of criminality, and any stable distance between these components, as well as any pronounced tendency to increase the level of specialization, is not visible. The social ambitions of the subjects of the criminal subculture also vary from extremely low (homeless people, beggars) to extremely high (charismatic leaders of extremist political movements and sects, political and financial swindlers, etc.). The criminal subculture has also developed its own special institutions of reproduction: dens of thieves, places of detention, brothels, revolutionary underground, totalitarian sects, etc.

Reasons for the emergence of mass culture

Thus, it can be assumed that the traditional opposition between folk and elite subcultures from the point of view of understanding their social functions is completely unconvincing. The opposition to the folk (peasant) subculture is seen as the urban (bourgeois) subculture, and the counterculture in relation to the elitist (culture of standards of social order) is seen as the criminal (culture of social disorder). Of course, it is impossible to completely “shove” the population of any country into one or another social subculture. A certain percentage of people, for various reasons, are always in an intermediate state of either social growth (transition from a rural subculture to an urban one or from a bourgeois to an elite one), or social degradation (sinking from a bourgeois or elite “to the bottom” to a criminal one).

One way or another, the identification of groups of people as representatives of one or another social subculture seems to be the most justified, primarily based on the specific features of the everyday culture they have mastered, realized in the corresponding forms of lifestyle. The way of life, of course, is determined, among other things, by the type of professional occupation of a person (a diplomat or a bishop inevitably has a different way of life than a peasant or a pickpocket), 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, norms of social adequacy, and general ideological attitudes. , social philosophy, 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 by him more or less spontaneously in the process of childhood upbringing and general education, communication with relatives, the social environment, professional colleagues, etc. and is adjusted. throughout an individual’s life, depending on the intensity of his social contacts. Everyday culture is the possession of the customs of everyday life of the social and national environment in which a person lives and socially self-realizes. The process of mastering everyday culture is called in science general socialization and inculturation of the individual, which includes a person not just in the national culture of any people, but also - without fail - in one of its social subcultures, which are discussed above.

The study of the everyday culture of rural producers, according to established tradition, is mainly dealt with by ethnography (including cultural anthropology, ethnic ecology, etc.), and the everyday layer of culture of other social strata, by necessity, is general history (historical anthropology, etc.), philology (social semiotics, “ Moscow-Tartu semiotic school), sociology (sociology of culture, urban anthropology), but most of all, of course, cultural studies.

At the same time, it is necessary to take into account that until the 18th-19th centuries, none of the described social subcultures, nor even their mechanical sum (on the scale of one ethnic group or state) could be called the national culture of the corresponding state. First of all, because there were no unified national standards of social adequacy and unified mechanisms for the socialization of the individual throughout the entire culture. All this arises only in modern times during the processes of industrialization and urbanization, the formation of capitalism in its classical, postclassical and even alternative (socialist) forms, the transformation of class societies into national ones and the erosion of class barriers that separated people, the development of universal literacy of the population, the degradation of many forms traditional everyday culture of the pre-industrial type, the development of technical means of reproducing and broadcasting information, the liberalization of morals and lifestyles of communities, the increasing dependence of political elites on the state of public opinion, and the production of mass consumption products on the stability of consumer demand regulated by fashion, advertising, etc.

A special place here is occupied by the processes of mass migration of the population to cities, massification of the political life of communities (the emergence of multimillion-dollar armies, trade unions, political parties and electorates). In the last decades of the twentieth century, the dynamics of the technological revolution were added to the listed factors - the transition from the industrial stage of development (intensification of mechanical manipulation of working bodies) to the post-industrial stage (intensification of management processes - obtaining and processing information and decision-making).

Under these conditions, the tasks of standardizing sociocultural attitudes, interests and needs of the bulk of the population, intensifying the processes of manipulating the human personality, its social aspirations, political behavior, ideological orientations, consumer demand for goods, services, ideas, one’s own image, etc., have become equally relevant. n. In previous eras, the monopoly on this kind of control of consciousness on a more or less mass scale belonged to the church and political authorities. In modern times, private producers of information, consumer goods and services also entered into competition for people’s consciousness. All this required a change in the mechanisms of general socialization and inculturation of a person, preparing the individual for the free realization of not only his productive labor, but also his sociocultural interests.

If in traditional communities the problems of general socialization of the individual were solved primarily by means of personal transmission of knowledge, norms and patterns of consciousness and behavior (activity) from parents to children, from a teacher (master) to a student, from a priest to a parishioner, etc. (and in the content of the transmitted social experience, a special place was occupied by the personal life experience of the educator and his personal sociocultural orientations and preferences), then at the stage of the formation of national cultures, such mechanisms of social and cultural reproduction of the individual begin to lose their effectiveness. There is a need for greater universalization of the transmitted experience, value orientations, patterns of consciousness and behavior; in the formation of national norms and standards of social and cultural adequacy of a person; in initiating his interest and demand for standardized forms of social goods; in increasing the efficiency of the mechanisms of social regulation due to the unifying effect on the motivation of human behavior, social aspirations, images of prestige, etc. This, in turn, necessitated the creation of a channel for transmitting knowledge, concepts, sociocultural norms and other socially significant information to the general public population, covering the entire nation, and not just its individual educated classes. The first steps in this direction were the introduction of universal and compulsory primary and, later, secondary education, and then the development of mass media and information (media), democratic political procedures, drawing ever larger masses of people into their orbit, etc.

It should be noted that in national culture (as opposed to class culture), the children of, say, the British queen and the children of a day laborer from Suffolk receive a general secondary education according to more or less the same type of programs (national educational standard), read the same books, study the same English laws, watch the same television programs, support the same football team, etc., and the quality of their knowledge of the poetry of Shakespeare or British history depends more on their personal abilities than on differences in programs general education. Of course, when it comes to obtaining a special education and profession, the opportunities of the compared children vary significantly and depend on the social circumstances of their lives. But the national standard at the level of general secondary education, uniformity in the content of general socialization and inculturation of community members, the development of the media and the gradual liberalization of information policy in modern countries more or less ensure the nationwide cultural unity of citizens and the unity of the norms of their social adequacy. This is national culture, in contrast to class culture, where even the norms of social behavior differed for different social groups.

The formation of a national culture does not negate its division into the social subcultures described above. National culture complements the system of social subcultures, is built as a unifying superstructure over them, reducing the severity of social and value tensions between different groups of people, setting certain universal standards for some sociocultural features of the nation. Of course, even before the formation of nations, there were similar features of ethnic culture that united different classes: first of all, language, religion, folklore, some household rituals, elements of clothing, household items, etc. At the same time, it seems that ethnographic cultural features inferior to national culture primarily in terms of its level of universality (due to its predominantly non-institutionalized nature). The forms of ethnic culture are very plastic and variable in the practice of different classes. Often even the language and religion of the aristocracy and the plebs of the same ethnic group were far from identical. National culture sets fundamentally uniform standards and benchmarks, implemented by publicly accessible specialized cultural institutions: general education, the press, political organizations, mass forms of artistic culture, etc. For example, some forms of fiction exist among all peoples who have a written culture, but Before the historical transformation of an ethnos into a nation, it does not face the problem of forming a national literary language, which exists in different regions in the form of various local dialects. One of the most significant characteristics of national culture is that, in contrast to ethnic culture, which is primarily memorial, reproducing the historical tradition of collective forms of life of the people, national culture is primarily prognostic, articulating goals rather than the results of development, developing knowledge, norms , contents and meanings of a modernization orientation, imbued with the pathos of intensification of all aspects of social life.

However, the main difficulty in the dissemination of national culture is that modern knowledge, norms, cultural patterns and meanings are developed almost exclusively in the depths of highly specialized areas of social practice. They are more or less successfully understood and assimilated by relevant specialists; For the bulk of the population, the languages ​​of modern specialized culture (political, scientific, artistic, engineering, etc.) are almost incomprehensible. Society requires a system of means for semantic adaptation, translation of transmitted information from the language of highly specialized areas of culture to the level of everyday understanding of unprepared people, “interpretation” of this information to its mass consumer, a certain “infantilization” of its figurative incarnations, as well as “control” of the consciousness of the mass consumer in interests of the manufacturer of this information, offered goods, services, etc.

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, etc., more accessible to children’s consciousness. Now such interpretive practice has become necessary for a person throughout his life. A modern person, even being very educated, remains a narrow specialist in one field, and the level of his specialization (at least in the elite and bourgeois subcultures) is increasing from century to century. In other areas, he requires a permanent “staff” of commentators, interpreters, teachers, journalists, advertising agents and other kinds of “guides” who lead him through the boundless sea of ​​information about goods, services, political events, artistic innovations, social conflicts, economic problems, etc. n. It cannot be said that modern man has become dumber or more childish than his ancestors. It’s just that his psyche, apparently, cannot process such a quantity of information, conduct such a multifactorial analysis of such a number of simultaneously arising problems, use his social experience with due efficiency, etc. Let’s not forget that the speed of information processing in computers is many times higher than the corresponding capabilities of the human brain.

This situation requires the emergence of new methods of intelligent search, scanning, selection and systematization of information, pressing it into larger blocks, the development of new technologies for forecasting and decision-making, as well as the mental preparedness of people to work with such voluminous information flows. It can be assumed that after the current “information revolution”, i.e. increasing the efficiency of transmitting and processing information, as well as making management decisions with the help of computers, humanity will experience a “forecasting revolution” - a sudden increase in the efficiency of forecasting, probabilistic calculation, factor analysis, etc. etc., although it is difficult to predict with the help of what technical means (or methods of artificial stimulation of brain activity) this can happen.

In the meantime, people need some kind of remedy that relieves excess mental stress from the information flows that fall on them, reduces complex intellectual problems to primitive dual oppositions (“good-bad”, “us-strangers”, etc.), giving the individual the opportunity to “relax” "from social responsibility, personal choice, to dissolve it in the crowd of soap opera viewers or mechanical consumers of advertised goods, ideas, slogans, etc. Mass culture has become the implementer of this kind of needs.

Mass culture

It cannot be said that mass culture generally frees a person from personal responsibility; rather, it is precisely about removing the problem of independent choice. The structure of existence (at least that part of it that concerns the individual directly) 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, show business stars etc. In popular culture, everything is already known in advance: the “correct” political system, the only true doctrine, leaders, place in the ranks, sports and pop stars, fashion for the image of a “class fighter” or “sexual symbol”, films where “our “always right and will certainly win, etc.

This begs the question: weren’t there problems in earlier times with translating the ideas and 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 performed this function earlier? Apparently, the fact is that before the scientific and technological revolution of recent centuries, there really was no such gap between specialized and everyday knowledge (as there is still almost no gap in the peasant subculture). The only obvious exception to this rule was religion. It is widely known how great the intellectual gap was between “professional” theology and the mass religiosity of the population. Here, a “translation” from one language to another was really necessary (and often in the literal sense: from Latin, Church Slavonic, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. into the national languages ​​of believers). This task, both linguistically and in terms of content, was solved by preaching (both from the pulpit and missionary). It was the sermon, in contrast to the divine service, that was delivered in a language absolutely understandable to the congregation and was, to a greater or lesser extent, a reduction of religious dogma to publicly accessible images, concepts, parables, etc. Obviously, the church sermon can be considered the historical predecessor of the phenomena of mass culture.

Of course, some elements of specialized knowledge and samples from elite culture always entered the popular consciousness and, as a rule, underwent a specific transformation in it, sometimes acquiring fantastic or popular forms. But these transformations are spontaneous, “by mistake,” “by misunderstanding.” Phenomena of mass culture are usually created by professional people who deliberately reduce complex meanings to primitiveness “for the uneducated” or, at best, for children. It cannot be said that this kind of infantilization is so simple in execution; It is well known that the creation of works of art intended for a children’s audience is in many respects more difficult than creativity “for adults,” and the technical skill of many show business stars evokes sincere admiration among representatives of the “art classics.” Nevertheless, the purposefulness of this kind of semantic reduction is one of the main phenomenological features of mass culture.

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, products for specific children’s consumption, children’s clubs and camps, paramilitary and other organizations, technologies for collective education of children, etc.), pursuing the goals of explicit or camouflaged standardization of content and forms of raising children, introducing into their consciousness unified forms and skills of social and personal culture, ideologically oriented worldviews that lay the foundations of basic value systems officially promoted in a given society;

a mass comprehensive school that closely correlates with the attitudes of the “subculture of childhood”, introducing students to the fundamentals of scientific knowledge, philosophical and religious ideas about the world around them, to the historical sociocultural experience of the collective life of people, to the value orientations accepted in the community. At the same time, it standardizes the listed knowledge and ideas on the basis of standard programs and reduces the transmitted knowledge to simplified forms of children's consciousness and understanding;

mass media (print and electronic), broadcasting current relevant information to a wide segment of the population, “interpreting” to the average person the meaning of ongoing events, judgments and actions of figures from various specialized areas of social practice and interpreting this information in the “necessary” perspective for the client engaging this media , i.e., actually manipulating the consciousness of people and shaping public opinion on certain problems in the interests of their customer (in this case, in principle, the possibility of the existence of unbiased journalism is not excluded, although in practice this is the same absurdity as an “independent army);

a system of national (state) ideology and propaganda, “patriotic” education, etc., controlling and shaping the political and ideological orientations of the population and its individual groups (for example, political and educational work with military personnel), manipulating the consciousness of people in the interests of the ruling elites, ensuring political reliability and desirable electoral behavior of citizens, “mobilization readiness” of society for possible military threats and political upheavals, etc.;

mass political movements (party and youth organizations, manifestations, demonstrations, propaganda and election campaigns, etc.), initiated by the ruling or opposition elites with the aim of involving broad sections of the population in political actions, most of them very far from the political interests of the elites, few understanding the meaning of the proposed political programs, for the support of which people are mobilized by whipping up political, nationalistic, religious and other psychosis;

mass social mythology (national chauvinism and hysterical “patriotism”, social demagoguery, populism, quasi-religious and parascientific teachings and movements, extrasensory perception, “idol mania”, “spy mania”, “witch hunt”, provocative “information leaks”, rumors, gossip etc.), simplifying the complex system of human value orientations and the variety of shades of worldview to elementary dual oppositions (“ours - not ours”), replacing the analysis of complex multifactorial cause-and-effect relationships between phenomena and events with appeals to simple and, as a rule, fantastic explanations (world conspiracy, the machinations of foreign intelligence services, “drums”, aliens, etc.), particularizing consciousness (absolutizing the individual and random, while ignoring the typical, statistically predominant), etc. This, ultimately, liberates people, not prone to complex intellectual reflection, from efforts to rationally explain the problems that concern them, gives vent to emotions in their most infantile manifestation;

entertainment industry, which includes mass artistic culture (almost all types of literature and art, perhaps with the certain exception of architecture), mass staged entertainment performances (from sports and circus to erotic), professional sports (as a spectacle for fans) , structures for organized entertainment leisure (appropriate types of clubs, discos, dance floors, etc.) and other types of mass shows. Here the consumer, as a rule, acts not only as a passive spectator (listener), but is also constantly provoked into active involvement or an ecstatic emotional reaction to what is happening (sometimes not without the help of doping stimulants), which is in many respects the equivalent of the same “subculture” childhood”, only optimized for the tastes and interests of an adult or teenage consumer. At the same time, technical techniques and performing skills of “high” art are used to convey simplified, infantilized semantic and artistic content, adapted to the undemanding tastes, intellectual and aesthetic needs of the mass consumer. Mass artistic culture often achieves the effect of mental relaxation through a special aestheticization of the vulgar, ugly, brutal, physiological, i.e., acting on the principle of the medieval carnival and its semantic “reversals.” This culture is characterized by the replication of the unique, culturally significant and its reduction to the everyday and publicly accessible, and sometimes irony over this accessibility, etc. (again, based on the carnival principle of profaning the sacred);

the industry of recreational 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 surgical, physiotherapeutic, pharmaceutical, perfume and cosmetic services to correct appearance), which, in addition to the objectively necessary physical recreation of the human body, gives an individual the opportunity to “tweak” his appearance in accordance with the current fashion for the type of image, with the demand for types of sexual partners, strengthens a person not only physically, but also psychologically (raises his confidence in his physical endurance, gender competitiveness and etc.);

the industry of intellectual and aesthetic leisure (“cultural” tourism, amateur artistic activities, collecting, intellectually or aesthetically developing interest 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 general “humanitarian erudition” among the population, updating views on the triumph of enlightenment and humanity , to “correct morals” through an aesthetic influence on a person, etc., which is fully consistent with the “Enlightenment” pathos of “progress through knowledge” that still persists in Western culture;

a system of organizing, stimulating and managing consumer demand for things, services, ideas for both individual and collective use (advertising, fashion, image making, etc.), formulating in the public consciousness the standards of socially prestigious images and lifestyles, interests and needs, imitating the forms of elite samples in mass and affordable models, including the ordinary consumer in the rush demand for both prestigious consumer goods and behavior patterns (especially leisure activities), types of appearance, culinary preferences, turning the process of non-stop consumption of social benefits into an end in itself of the individual’s existence ;

various kinds of gaming complexes from mechanical gaming machines, electronic consoles, computer games, etc. to virtual reality systems, developing a certain kind of psychomotor reactions of a person, accustoming him to reaction speed in information-insufficient situations and to choice in information-rich situations, which is used both in training programs for certain specialists (pilots, cosmonauts), and for general developmental and entertainment purposes;

all kinds of dictionaries, reference books, encyclopedias, catalogues, electronic and other banks of information, special knowledge, public libraries, the Internet, etc., designed not for trained specialists in relevant fields of knowledge, but for mass consumers “from the street”, which also develops the Enlightenment mythology about compendiums of socially significant knowledge (encyclopedias) that are compact and popular in language of presentation, and essentially return us to the medieval principle of “registry” construction of knowledge.

We can list a number of other particular areas of mass culture.

All this has already taken place at different stages of human history. But living conditions (the rules of the social community game) have changed radically today. Today, people (especially young people) are focused on completely different standards of social prestige, built in a system of images and in a language that has actually become international and which, despite the grumbling of the older generation and traditionally oriented groups of the population, quite suits those around them, attracts and attracts . And no one is imposing this “cultural product”. Unlike political ideology, nothing can be imposed on anyone here. 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 no truly massive demand for all this in society, we would not react to it so sharply.

But the main thing is that such a commercially attractive component of mass culture put up for free sale is by no means its most significant feature and function, but may even be its most harmless manifestation. Much more important is that mass culture represents a new in sociocultural practice, a fundamentally higher level of standardization of the system of images of social adequacy and prestige, some new form of organization of the “cultural competence” of a modern person, his socialization and inculturation, a new system of management and manipulation of his consciousness, interests and needs, consumer demand, value orientations, behavioral stereotypes, etc.

How dangerous is this? Or maybe, on the contrary, in today's conditions it is necessary and inevitable? No one can give an exact answer to this question.

Two points of view on popular culture

Currently, people do not have a single point of view on mass culture - some consider it a good thing, because it still carries a semantic load and forces society to pay attention to certain facts. Others consider it evil, a tool for controlling the masses by the ruling elite. Below these points of view will be discussed in more detail.

About the benefits of mass culture

For several decades now, cultural experts in Europe have been criticizing mass culture for its primitive level, market orientation, and dumbing effect. The assessments “kitsch”, “primitive”, “flea market literature” are typical. But in recent years, defenders of elite art have increasingly begun to notice that elite literature does not convey socially important information. And entertainment products like Mario Puzo's The Godfather turn out to be quite accurate and in-depth analyzes of Western society. And it may be that the success of such literature is due precisely to its educational, rather than entertaining, side.

And with regard to old Soviet films, for example films by Eldar Ryazanov, there is no doubt about their educational value. But this is not specific information about some realities of existence, but a representation of the structures of relationships, typical characters and conflicts. These are ideological orientations of the bygone past, primarily the relations of collectivism, the concept of a common cause, a bright future and heroic behavior. What has lost its appeal at the ideological level retains it at the level of mass consciousness. And here the prediction of the German philosopher and theologian Romano Guardini unexpectedly comes true, who wrote in 1950 in his work “The End of Modern Times” that one should not be afraid of “mass society”, but should hope that it will overcome the limitations of an individualistic society in which a full-blooded development is possible only for a few, and orientation towards common tasks is generally unlikely.

The growing complexity of the world, the emergence of global problems that threaten humanity, requires a change in orientation from individualism to solidarity and camaraderie. What is required is a unification of efforts, a coordination of activities that “is no longer possible for individual initiative and cooperation of people of an individualistic nature.”

What a representative of an individualistic society dreamed of has already been achieved in our country, has been lost, and is now somehow being restored again at the level of the “culture of poverty” and in the imagination. It is imagination that is the main sphere of realization of mass culture. New myths of Eurasianism, geopolitics, the clash of civilizations, and the return of the Middle Ages are being formed in Russia and filling the ideological vacuum of the post-Soviet space. Thus, the place of the classical pre-industrial and fairly systematized industrial Russian culture being pushed out of Russia is being replaced by the eclectic culture of a transitional society.

In contrast to the mass culture of developed countries, which mosaically complements the rigid systematicity of the technological and socio-normative levels and thereby creates a new manipulative totality, the mass culture of Russia chaotically fills the chaotic social reality.

Mass culture, as we know, does not produce values. She replicates them. The ideologeme precedes the mythologem - it is no longer interesting to talk about how mass culture uses archaic methods of reproduction. And, of course, one should not accuse her of “new barbarism.”

The mechanism of culture is not always identical to its content - completely barbaric methods of spreading culture can be put at the service of civilization. Thus, American cinematography has been successfully promoting violence in the name of freedom, preaching law-abidingness and justifying private life for many years.

And the mythologems of post-Soviet mass culture come from themselves. There are no clear and distinct ideologies that would articulate a consciously accepted and hierarchically structured system of social values.

It is quite natural that people who have not mastered the production of ideologies are far from adequately interpreting the phenomena of mass culture. More precisely, most often they are not noticed.

Mass culture is evil

Currently, Western civilization is entering a phase of stagnation and ossification. It should be noted that this statement relates mainly to the realm of the spirit, but since it determines the development of other spheres of human activity, stagnation will also affect the material levels of existence. Economics is no exception here, because at the end of the 20th century it became obvious that most of the world's population made a voluntary or forced choice in favor of the economy of market liberalism. A new, first, economic totalitarianism is coming. At first it will be “soft”, since the current generations of Western people are accustomed to eating well and having an easy and pleasant living environment. Accustoming new generations to less comfortable living conditions and the subsequent reduction of old generations will make it possible to introduce a more rigid model, which will require appropriate control over social relations.

This process will be preceded by a toughening and simplification of the position of the media. This trend can be observed in all countries and, in fact, at any level, from respectable newspapers and magazines and “first” television channels to the tabloid press.

It is clear that the establishment of a “new world order” in its totalitarian form requires not only economic and ideological support, but also an aesthetic basis. In this area, the fusion of liberal democratic ideology and positivistic-materialistic individualistic philosophy gives rise to the phenomenon of mass culture. The replacement of culture with mass culture should simplify human control, since it reduces the entire complex of aesthetic sensations to animal instincts, experienced in the form of a spectacle.

In general, the destruction of culture is a direct consequence of Western liberal democracy. After all, what is democracy? Democracy is a government that represents the majority of the population of a particular region or organization. Liberalism embodies absolute adherence to market laws and individualism. In the absence of authoritarian and spiritual counterweights, producers of an aesthetic product are guided only by the opinions and tastes of the crowd. It is obvious that under such a combination of circumstances, the phenomenon of “revolt of the masses” inevitably arises. The masses demand, first of all, bad taste, endless bestsellers and soap operas. If the elite does not care about the formation and instillation of high ideals among the masses, then these ideals themselves will never establish themselves in people's life. High is always difficult, and the majority always choose what is easier and more convenient.

A curious paradox arises in which mass culture, being the product of broad democratic strata of society, begins to be used by the liberal elite for governing purposes.

By inertia, part of the “top” still continues to strive for true masterpieces, but the system does not favor either creativity or consumption of the latter. Thus, the boor who created mass culture begins to be controlled by a boor who is part of the elite. From now on, belonging to the “higher” class is determined only by purely technical, intellectual abilities, the amount of money controlled and clan affiliation. There is no longer any talk of any spiritual or ethical superiority of the elite over the masses.

There is no need to think that this process has no impact on everyday life. Rudeness makes its way both in the jargon of the language, and in the decline in the level of, as they say, humanitarian knowledge, and in the worship of the spirit of plebeianism that reigns on television. Most of the totalitarian dictators of the past can be accused of misanthropy, pathological cruelty and intolerance, but almost none can be accused of banality. They all ran away from vulgarity in every possible way, even if they did it poorly.

Now, at last, there is an opportunity to merge in eschatological ecstasy between the leading boor and the led boor. Everything that does not fit into their ideas about the structure of the world will be marginalized, or will be completely deprived of the right to exist.

Conclusion

Although mass culture is, of course, an “ersatz product” of specialized “high” areas of culture, it does not generate its own meanings, but only imitates the phenomena of a specialized culture, uses its forms, meanings, professional skills, often parodying them, reducing them to the level of perception of the “low-cultural” "consumer, this phenomenon should not be assessed negatively. Mass culture is generated by objective processes of social modernization of communities, when the socializing and inculturating functions of traditional everyday culture (class type), accumulating the social experience of urban life in the pre-industrial era, lose their effectiveness and practical relevance, and mass culture actually takes on the functions of an instrument for ensuring primary socialization individuals in a national society with erased class and class boundaries. It is likely that mass culture is the embryonic predecessor of some new, still emerging everyday culture, reflecting the social experience of life already at the industrial (national) and post-industrial (in many ways transnational) stages of development, and in the processes of selection of its still very heterogeneous according to its form characteristics, a new socio-cultural phenomenon may arise, the parameters of which are not yet clear to us.

One way or another, it is obvious that mass culture is a variant of the everyday culture of the urban population of the era of a “highly specialized individual”, competent only in his narrow field of knowledge and activity, and otherwise preferring to use printed, electronic or animate reference books, catalogs, “guides” ” and other sources of economically compiled and reduced information “for complete fools.”

In the end, the pop singer dancing around the microphone sings about the same thing that Shakespeare wrote about in his sonnets, but only in this case translated into simple language. For a person who has the opportunity to read Shakespeare in the original, this sounds disgusting. But is it possible to teach all of humanity to read Shakespeare in the original (as the Enlightenment philosophers dreamed of it), how to do this and - most importantly - is it necessary at all? The question, it must be said, is far from original, but lies at the basis of all social utopias of all times and peoples. Popular culture is not the answer. It only fills the gap left by the absence of any answer.

I personally have a twofold attitude towards the phenomenon of mass culture: on the one hand, I believe that any culture should lead people upward, and not sink to their level for the sake of commercial profit, on the other hand, if there is no mass culture, then the masses will be separated from culture at all.

Literature

Electronic encyclopedia “Cyril and Methodius”

Orlova E. A. Dynamics of culture and goal-setting human activity, Morphology of culture: structure and dynamics. M., 1994.

Flier A. Ya. Culture as a factor of national security, Social Sciences and Modernity, 1998 No. 3.

Foucault M. Words and things. Archeology of humanities. St. Petersburg, 1994.

A. Ya. Flier, mass culture and its social functions, Higher School of Cultural Studies, 1999

Valery Inyushin, “The Coming Boor” and “M&A”, Website “Polar Star”, (design. netway. ru)

Subject description: “Sociology”

Sociology (French sociologie, Latin Societas - society and Greek - Logos - the science of society) is the science of society, individual social institutions (state, law, morality, etc.), processes and public social communities of people.

Modern sociology is a variety of movements and scientific schools that explain its subject and role in different ways and answer the question of what sociology is in different ways. There are various definitions of sociology as the science of society. “A Brief Dictionary of Sociology” defines sociology as the science of the laws of formation, functioning, and development of society, social relations and social communities. The “Sociological Dictionary” defines sociology as the science of the laws of development and functioning of social communities and social processes, of social relations as a mechanism of interrelation and interaction between society and people, between communities, between communities and individuals. The book “Introduction to Sociology” notes that sociology is a science that focuses on social communities, their genesis, interaction and development trends. Each of the definitions has a rational grain. Most scientists tend to believe that the subject of sociology is society or certain social phenomena.

Consequently, sociology is the science of the generic properties and basic patterns of social phenomena.

Sociology not only chooses empirical experience, that is, sensory perception as the only means of reliable knowledge and social change, but also theoretically generalizes it. With the advent of sociology, new opportunities have opened up to penetrate into the inner world of the individual, to understand his life goals, interests, and needs. However, sociology does not study a person in general, but his specific world - the social environment, the communities in which he is included, way of life, social connections, social actions. Without diminishing the importance of numerous branches of social science, sociology is still unique in its ability to see the world as an integral system. Moreover, the system is considered by sociology not only as functioning and developing, but also as experiencing a state of deep crisis. Modern sociology is trying to study the causes of the crisis and find ways out of the crisis of society. The main problems of modern sociology are the survival of humanity and the renewal of civilization, raising it to a higher level of development. Sociology seeks solutions to problems not only at the global level, but also at the level of social communities, specific social institutions and associations, and the social behavior of an individual. Sociology is a multi-level science, representing the unity of abstract and concrete forms, macro- and micro-theoretical approaches, theoretical and empirical knowledge.

Sociology

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The formula of elite culture is “art for art’s sake”, its creation by the educated part of society - writers, artists, philosophers, scientists. Mass culture and the “average” level of spiritual needs: social functions, kitsch and art.

abstract, added 05/01/2009


What is culture, the emergence of the theory of mass and elite culture. Heterogeneity of culture. Features of mass and elite culture. Elite culture as an antipode to mass culture. Postmodern trends in the rapprochement of mass and elite cultures.

abstract, added 02/12/2004


The concept of culture, which characterizes the characteristics of consciousness, behavior and activity of people in specific areas of public life. Prerequisites for the formation of mass culture, its modern understanding. The main properties of elitist culture, its disadvantages.

test, added 04/08/2013


Analysis of mass and elite cultures; the concept of "class" in the social structure of American society. The problem of mass culture in various versions of the concept of “post-industrial society”. Possible solutions to the relationship between mass and elite culture.

abstract, added 12/18/2009


Mass culture is a twentieth-century term. The prerequisites for the emergence of mass culture as a phenomenon are developed infrastructure and accessibility of the media. The focus on the masses, accessibility to everyone, leads to a low level of mass culture as a culture.

essay, added 02/18/2009


Mass culture is a natural attribute of mass society that meets its requirements and ideological guidelines. The dependence of the formation of social consciousness of the individual, the spiritual and moral development of the people on the content of the development of mass communication.

National culture , as a system of unified national standards of social adequacy and unified ones emerges only in modern times during the processes of industrialization and urbanization, the formation of capitalism in its classical, postclassical and even alternative (socialist) forms.

The formation of a national culture is built as a unifying superstructure over society, setting certain universal standards for some sociocultural features of the nation. Of course, even before the formation of nations, the same kind of unifying different classes took place features of ethnic culture: first of all language, religion, folklore, some household rituals, elements of clothing, household items, etc. National culture sets fundamentally uniform benchmarks and standards implemented by publicly accessible specialized cultural institutions: universal education, the press, political organizations, mass forms of artistic culture and literature, etc.

Concepts “ethnic” And “national” culture are often used interchangeably. However, in cultural studies they have different contents.

Ethnic (folk) culture- is a culture of people connected by a common origin (blood relationship) and jointly carried out economic activities. It changes from one area to another. Local limitation, strict localization, isolation in a relatively narrow social space is one of the main features of this culture. Ethnic culture mainly covers the sphere of everyday life, customs, clothing, folk crafts, and folklore. Conservatism, continuity, and focus on preserving “roots” are characteristic features of ethnic culture. Some elements of it become symbols of the identity of the people and patriotic attachment to their historical past - “cabbage soup and porridge”, a samovar and a sundress for the Russians, a kimono for the Japanese, a plaid skirt for the Scots, a towel for the Ukrainians.

IN ethnic culture the power of tradition, habit, and customs, passed on from generation to generation at the family or neighborhood level, dominates. The defining mechanism of cultural communication here is direct communication between generations of people living nearby. Elements of folk culture - rituals, customs, myths, beliefs, legends, folklore - are preserved and transmitted within the boundaries of a given culture through the natural abilities of each person - his memory, oral speech and living language, natural musical ear, organic plasticity. This does not require any special training or special technical means of storage and recording.

The structure of national culture is more complex than ethnic. National culture includes, along with traditional everyday, professional and everyday culture, also specialized areas of culture. And since the nation embraces society, and society has stratification and social structure, the concept of national culture embraces the subcultures of all large groups, which an ethnic group may not have. Moreover, ethnic cultures are part of the national one. Take such young nations as the USA or Brazil, nicknamed ethnic cauldrons. American national culture is extremely heterogeneous, it includes Irish, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Russian, Jewish and other ethnic cultures. Most modern national cultures are multiethnic.

National culture cannot be reduced to a mechanical sum ethnic cultures. She has something beyond that. It has its own national cultural features, which arose when representatives of all ethnic groups realized that they belonged to a new nation. For example, both blacks and whites equally enthusiastically sing the US anthem and honor the American flag, respect its laws and national holidays, in particular Thanksgiving Day (US Independence Day). None of this exists in any ethnic culture or among any people who came to the United States. They appeared in new territory. Awareness by large social groups of their commitment to the territory of their settlement, the national literary language, national traditions and symbols constitutes the content of national culture.

Unlike ethnicnational culture unites people living over large areas and not necessarily related by blood. Experts believe that a new type of social communication associated with the invention of writing is a prerequisite for the emergence of a national culture. It is thanks to writing that the ideas necessary for national unification gain popularity among the literate part of the population.

However, the main difficulty in the dissemination of national culture is that modern knowledge, norms, cultural patterns and meanings are developed almost exclusively in the depths of highly specialized areas of social practice. They are more or less successfully understood and assimilated by relevant specialists; For the bulk of the population, the languages ​​of modern specialized culture (political, scientific, artistic, engineering, etc.) are almost incomprehensible. Society requires a system of means for semantic adaptation, “translation” of transmitted information from the language of highly specialized areas of culture to the level of everyday understanding of unprepared people, for “interpretation” of this information to its mass consumer, a certain “infantilization” of its figurative incarnations, as well as “control” of the consciousness of the masses. consumer in the interests of the manufacturer of this information, offered goods, services, etc.





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, etc., more accessible to children’s consciousness. Now such interpretive practice has become necessary for a person throughout his life. A modern person, even being very educated, remains a narrow specialist in only one area, 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” who lead him through the boundless sea of ​​information about goods, services, political events, artistic innovations, social conflicts, etc. It cannot be said that modern man has become more stupid or childish than his ancestors. It’s just that his psyche, apparently, cannot process such a quantity of information, conduct such a multifactorial analysis of such a number of simultaneously arising problems, use his social experience with due efficiency, etc. Let's not forget that the speed of information processing in computers is many times higher than the corresponding capabilities of the human brain.

This situation requires the emergence of new methods of intelligent search, scanning, selection and systematization of information, “pressing” it into larger blocks, the development of new technologies for forecasting and decision-making, as well as the mental preparedness of people to work with such voluminous information flows. After the current “information revolution”, i.e. increasing the efficiency of information transmission and processing, as well as management decision-making, humanity expects a “forecasting revolution” - a leapfrogging increase in the efficiency of forecasting, probabilistic calculation, factor analysis, etc.

In the meantime, people need some kind of remedy that relieves excess mental stress from the information flows that fall on them, reduces complex intellectual problems to primitive dual oppositions, and gives the individual the opportunity to “take a break” from social responsibility and personal choice. dissolve it in the crowd of soap opera viewers or mechanical consumers of advertised goods, ideas, slogans, etc. The implementer of this kind of needs was Mass culture. It cannot be said that mass culture generally frees a person from personal responsibility; rather, it is precisely about removing the problem of independent choice. The structure of existence (at least that part of it that directly concerns the individual) 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 mass culture, everything is already known in advance: the “correct” political system, the only correct doctrine, leaders, place in the ranks, sports and pop stars, the fashion for the image of a “class fighter” or “sexual symbol,” movies where “ours” are always right and always win, etc.

This begs the question: weren’t there problems in 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 performed this function earlier? Apparently, the fact is that before the scientific and technological revolution of recent centuries there really was no such gap between specialized and everyday knowledge. The only obvious exception to this rule was religion. We know well how great was the intellectual gap between “professional” theology and the mass religiosity of the population. Here, a “translation” from one language to another was really necessary (and often in the literal sense: from Latin, Church Slavonic, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. into the national languages ​​of believers). This task, both linguistically and in terms of content, was solved by preaching (both from the pulpit and missionary). It was the sermon, in contrast to the divine service, that was delivered in a language absolutely understandable to the congregation and was, to a greater or lesser extent, a reduction of religious dogma to publicly accessible images, concepts, parables, etc. Obviously, we can consider church sermons to be the historical predecessor of the phenomena of mass culture.

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