A concrete example of the phenomenon of mass culture. Characterization of television as a phenomenon of mass culture. Mass media
Adapted to the tastes of the broad masses of people, it is technically replicated in the form of many copies and distributed using modern communication technologies.
Appearance and development mass culture associated with the rapid development of mass media, capable of exerting a powerful influence on the audience. AT mass media usually there are three components:
- mass media(newspapers, magazines, radio, television, Internet blogs, etc.) - replicate information, have a regular impact on the audience and are focused on certain groups of people;
- means of mass influence(advertising, fashion, cinema, popular literature) - do not always regularly affect the audience, are focused on the average consumer;
- technical means of communication(Internet, telephone) - determine the possibility of direct communication of a person with a person and can serve to transfer personal information.
It should be noted that not only the mass media have an impact on society, but society also seriously affects the nature of the information transmitted in the mass media. Unfortunately, public demand often turns out to be culturally low, which reduces the level of television programs, newspaper articles, variety performances, etc.
In recent decades, in the context of the development of means of communication, they speak of a special computer culture. If earlier the main source of information was a book page, now it is a computer screen. A modern computer allows you to instantly receive information over the network, supplement the text with graphic images, videos, sound, which provides a holistic and multi-level perception of information. In this case, the text on the Internet (for example, a web page) can be represented as hypertext. those. contain a system of references to other texts, fragments, non-textual information. The flexibility and versatility of the means of computer display of information greatly increase the degree of its impact on a person.
At the end of the XX - the beginning of the XXI century. mass culture began to play an important role in ideology and economics. However, this role is ambiguous. On the one hand, mass culture made it possible to reach out to broad sections of the population and introduce them to the achievements of culture, presenting the latter in simple, democratic and understandable images and concepts, but on the other hand, it created powerful mechanisms for manipulating public opinion and forming an average taste.
The main components of mass culture include:
- information industry- press, television news, talk shows, etc., explaining current events in an understandable language. Mass culture was originally formed precisely in the sphere of the information industry - the "yellow press" of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Time has shown the high efficiency of mass media in the process of manipulating public opinion;
- leisure industry- films, entertainment literature, pop humor with the most simplified content, pop music, etc.;
- formation system mass consumption, which focuses on advertising and fashion. Consumption is presented here as a non-stop process and the most important goal of human existence;
- replicated mythology- from the myth of the "American dream", where the beggars turn into millionaires, to the myths of "national exceptionalism" and the special virtues of this or that people in comparison with others.
20th century to characterize the changed place of culture in modern society. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when the mass media (radio, print, television) penetrated most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social strata. The exceptionally intensive development of mass media and communications has led to the fact that not an individual person, but a large number - a mass of people - has come to be considered as the addressee of culture. In contrast to the elite, mass culture focuses on the average level of mass consumers.
The phenomenon of mass culture reflects the impact of the modern technogenic world on the formation of the human personality. It is unique as the art of manipulating elementary "subhuman" reactions and impulses ("drives") of the masses of people, using the most refined achievements of culture (technology and science). A system of tested techniques is being created, designed for the simplest unconditional reactions, attraction, increased eventfulness, and shock moments are used.
Mass culture is emphatically focused on entertainment, it is quite cheerful, and in many ways it exploits such areas of the human psyche as the subconscious and instincts.
Consider the influence of television on popular culture.
Television is a very young cultural phenomenon, which, when it appeared, had to be integrated into the already existing "system of things" and into the corresponding system of ideas. For comparison: when the first car was created (1895), its shape resembled the shape of a carriage and, we emphasize, could not be otherwise: in the minds of the creators of the car, and all other people, the idea of the carriage as the most comfortable means of transportation dominated. Let's call the carriage the model-prototype of the car in order to briefly characterize the phenomenon itself. The entry of television into culture demonstrates the same approach and, very importantly, something completely new.
When radio appeared (A. S. Popov, 1895), the model-prototype was the sounding human speech, later - sounding music, that is, phenomena related to the beginning of human culture. When cinema arose (the Lumiere brothers, 1895, J. Méliès), its prototype models were the theater (the European tradition goes back to the ancient theater of the 5th century BC) and photography (the founders are the inventors L. J. M. Daguerre, 1839 , J. N. Niepce in France; W. G. F. Talbot, 1840-1841, in England), which, in turn, had painting as a prototype model (the origin is about 40,000 BC. ). At the expense of photography, the cinema has already come closer to that "effect of television" that interests us.
At its inception, television did not rely on ancient prototype models, they were radio and cinema, that is, the latest phenomena that themselves had not yet been sufficiently mastered by mankind (additionally: a newspaper, an older model). Subsequently, the same effect was repeated with the emergence of computer culture (in particular, the Internet), where among the models-prototypes it is necessary to name first of all television. Behind latest models ancient and even new models are viewed only historically, outside of actual awareness, and this is something new that was formed in culture with the advent of television.
It is the renewal of prototype models that takes place in the culture of the twentieth century that can explain why the essence of television remains insufficiently identified.
The latest models have not yet been fully mastered, which leads to a desire to rely on a stronger foundation (that is, more familiar).
Hence the concept of television as a new art form. There has been extensive discussion about this. From the stated point of view, its hidden meaning is in drawing an analogy between television (new in culture) with art (old, mastered, understandable in culture) or in criticizing this analogy.
A large amount of evidence can be cited confirming that television is a special form of art (or, more broadly, artistic culture).
Then, having accepted the general thesis, it is necessary to take the next step - to compare television with various types of art (artistic culture). No matter how the specifics of the artistic possibilities of television are revealed, its propensity for secondariness and orientation towards an audience of millions of people, that is, features of mass artistic culture, will inevitably come to the fore. This, it seems, led to the traditional idea of television as a form of mass culture (which acted as an explanatory model-prototype of television). The concept of "mass culture" is painted in negative tones, hence the quite logical transfer of this emotional shade to the conceptual interpretation of television.
Meanwhile, television, despite its outward resemblance to the mass artistic culture, performs a different role, obviously so new that it cannot be easily defined through analogy and requires a special study.
The unique property of television as a communicative subsystem of culture is the transmission of an image over a distance. It fulfilled the long-standing dream of mankind about a kind of "all-seeing", about the possibility of looking beyond the horizon of the visible living space. Thanks to this, television spread so quickly and widely, it turned out to be so in demand by people.
“Television messages - especially now, with the presence of communication satellites - come from all over the world, which means that the great gift of television is that through it the whole world has gained visibility. And since TV does not “remove” the viewer from his everyday environment, on the contrary, it itself strives there, then together with television the whole world breaks into the home of an individual ... In the era of television, it is not a person who travels around the world, but images from all over the world - from all countries and continents - rush to the viewer and, having lost their materiality, swarm around him - as if in order to dutifully get into his "aggregate social experience”and“ a model of the world ”, - wrote the famous television researcher V.I. Mikhalkovich.
Television expands the boundaries of the real world, accessible for vision and comprehension by a person, completes and supplements the socio-cultural space accessible to the individual, that is, it contributes to the formation of an individual image of reality. This means that the requests of a particular person to television as a source of information about the surrounding reality, in general, are the same as for reality itself.
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu makes a very accurate observation: “For some of our philosophers (and writers), “to be” means to be shown on television, that is, to end up being noticed by journalists or, as they say, to be in good standing with journalists (which is impossible without compromise and self-compromise). Indeed, since they cannot rely on their own works alone to continue to exist for the public, they have no other choice but to appear on the screen as often as possible, and therefore write works at regular and as short intervals as possible, the main whose function, according to Gilles Deleuze, is to provide their authors with an invitation to television.
A person, constantly orienting himself in the world of changing social conditions, can make a wide variety of demands on television content. Life orientation is one of the most important functions of television in relation to the viewer, along with recreational and compensatory ones. For example, a person does not understand the sphere of self-realization. He lacks human contact. He needs some life alternative if the directly accessible social reality is not valuable and desirable enough. In search of responses to these requests, a person turns to TV as well.
TV programs, in turn, reflecting one or another part of social reality, organizing it, carry certain meanings of this reality that can influence a person, acting as sources of value alternatives to sociocultural guidelines in relations with the world. Therefore, special attention should be paid to such a feature of television programs as the formation of these alternatives for the viewer, and their specific content should be considered in the context of the three defining processes of human life: activity, behavior and communication. Perceiving certain meanings of TV programs, forming new sociocultural guidelines on their basis, a person can form a personal value attitude towards them, and these new guidelines can, according to B.M. Sapunova, "determine his life attitudes and behavior". .
The role of television is characterized by multifunctionality. However, in the multiplicity of specific functions, two fundamental functions stand out, which allows us to speak of the bipolar functionality of television. The first function is informational. The second function is leisure.
The information function is the basic feature of television as cultural phenomenon. To clarify this idea, let's compare the screening of a feature film in a cinema and on TV.
In the cinema, no matter how poorly technically equipped it is, we meet with the work of art itself, this is the form of its existence.
On the contrary, a film shown on television, even the most perfect one, is only information about a work of art (just as Leonardo da Vinci's La Gioconda, which we see in an illustrated magazine or book, is only information about a painting in Louvre).
In a narrower and more familiar sense, information on television acts as a collection of information about events, news.
At a new stage in the development of television broadcasting (in our country since perestroika, in the West - much earlier), the information function of television has fundamentally changed in content (and, as a result, in forms), because the very idea of television information has changed.
The domestic viewer, brought up on the programs of information and educational (with a pronounced ideological orientation) Soviet television, was amazed by the appearance of commercial advertising on television. At first inept, imitating Western models, then more and more high-quality, even talented, she persistently interfered with the broadcasting grid.
Information-advertising permeates the entire sphere of television broadcasting. It is both open in nature (commercials) and hidden (mentions of advertising objects in the speech of presenters and participants in programs, clothes, hairstyles, other surroundings of characters that are authoritative for viewers, what they hold in their hands, what they touch, what watch that they listen to what surrounds them, etc.). Information about events, turning into advertising information, changes its structure.
Thus, the sequence of news programs of the Soviet period (official block - country's working life - foreign news block - cultural news - sports - weather) is replaced by another sequence: the most sensational news (catastrophe, murder, etc.) - less sensational news (including, for example, the official bloc). If a major scientific discovery is made, this is the material of the end of the issue, but if the scientist received Nobel Prize, start.
In Soviet times, a certain percentage of negative news in the information program was set: no more than 40%.
An analysis of current news shows that negative news prevails even on official channels. On some (for example, on "RenTV" with Romanova), their number reaches 90% and sometimes even more.
The news is interrupted by commercials. A stable tandem arises: the real news of the day is terrible (contract killings, corruption, wars, terrorism), catastrophic (hurricanes, tsunamis, mass epidemics), terrible for the common man (fires, leaks, failures in the operation of power systems, water supply, sewerage, poor living conditions , low wages, bribes of low-level officials, unfair trial, deprivation of benefits, rise in price of food, gasoline, increase in housing costs, negligence in schools and hospitals, fraud, hooliganism, drunkenness, poverty), while in commercials the viewer is presented with an ideal, happy life(beautiful things - from pantyhose to refrigerators, all washing powders, medicines for any disease according to the latest scientific developments, almost free loans for almost any amount, allowing you to dance even on critical days; toothpastes and chewing gums, luxury cars and computers of the latest models, exciting films, grandiose concerts, political parties standing guard over the interests of the people).
These two blocks are constantly interspersed, collectively evoking the polar emotions of the viewers, through which television culture has, in essence, a suggestive influence on the consciousness and subconsciousness of millions.
Sensationalism as a principle of presenting information on modern television turns out to be a connecting bridge in the bipolarity of the main functions of television - informational and leisure.
Television, reflecting new realities, has developed its own new forms that implement the leisure function. In the spectrum of these proper television forms, two TV genres were formed, which turned out to be at different poles: a video clip (in the brevity of which the option of minimizing leisure was reflected) and a television series (in the duration of which, reaching several thousand episodes, the option of maximizing leisure was reflected). Between these poles, an intermediate place was occupied by a talk show that combined information and leisure as television functions, but not through sensationalism, but through the illusion of interactivity.
"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"Mass culture A culture that is popular and dominant among the general population in a given society. It may include such phenomena as everyday life, entertainment (sports, pop music, mass literature), mass media, etc.Mass culture does not express the refined tastes or spiritual quests of the people. The time of its appearance is the middle of the 20th century, when the mass media (radio, print, television) penetrated most countries of the world and became available to representatives of all social strata. Mass culture can be international and national. Pop music is a vivid example of this: it is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of the level of education.
In social terms, mass culture forms a new social system, called the "middle class".
The goal of mass culture is not so much to fill leisure and relieve tension and stress in a person of an industrial and post-industrial society, but to stimulate consumer consciousness in a viewer, listener, reader, which, in turn, forms a special type of passive uncritical perception of this culture in a person. In other words, there is a manipulation of the human psyche and the exploitation of emotions and instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings and, above all, feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear.
Elite culture
Elite culture
is high culture , opposed to mass culture by the type of influence on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective features and providing a meaning-forming function.
The subject of an elitist, high culture is a person - a free, creative person capable of conscious activity. The creations of this culture are always personally colored and designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the wide dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of an elite culture is a representative of the elite.
Elite culture has a number of important features.
Features of the elite culture:
- complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;
- the ability to form consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;
- the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;
- the presence of a limited range of values recognized as true and "high";
- a rigid system of norms accepted by this stratum as obligatory and strict in the community of "initiates";
- individualization of norms, values, evaluative criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;
- the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural outlook from the addressee;
- using a deliberately subjective, individually creative, "deleting" interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings the subject's cultural assimilation of reality closer to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, to the extreme, replaces the reflection of reality in elite culture with its transformation, imitation - with deformation, penetration into the meaning - conjecture and rethinking given;
- semantic and functional “closedness”, “narrowness”, isolation from the whole national culture, which turns the elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, and its carriers turn into a kind of “priests” of this knowledge, the chosen ones of the gods, “servants of the muses” , "keepers of secrets and faith", which is often played up and poeticized in elite culture.
All types of creativity have special features. We list the main features of mass culture:
- accessibility for all people
Works of mass culture are accessible and understandable to most people, they are created for recreation and enjoyment.
Mass culture appeared during the period of rapid development of technology, the transition to widespread factory production - industrialization. Then a person began to need a simple, pleasant form of leisure after a working day. It was during this period that simple, entertaining books, films and music appeared.
- consumer interest
Works of mass culture attract viewers with understandable stories that tell about emotions and feelings close to them, forcing them to empathize with the characters. The action, as a rule, happens quickly, and the audience is waiting for a happy ending.
- availability of whole series, large circulation
Works of mass culture are produced in large quantities: books, CDs with films and music. Also, the repetition applies to the plots themselves, which, as a rule, do not differ in variety, but only the details change.
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- passivity of perception
Mass culture does not require large moral costs, special labor from the consumer. It facilitates perception due to the lightness of the plots, bright images. For example, when watching a movie, you don’t need to imagine, invent a plot, imagine characters, as when reading a book.
- commercial purposes
The peculiarity of mass culture is that the works in it are created by professionals who want to sell them and benefit from it. In order for the product to be bought by as many people as possible, they focus on simple and understandable things for most people.
Some people are supporters of the point of view about the primitiveness of mass culture. But it cannot be unequivocally assessed as bad. Thanks to her, many remarkable figures of art and works were born, for example, the novel by M. Mitchell “Gone with the Wind”.
Mass media
An important role in the dissemination of mass culture is played by special channels through which works find their consumers by regularly broadcasting them. The media include television, radio, newspapers and magazines. Now the Internet has gained the most popularity.
What have we learned?
Having studied the topic of social science, we learned that mass culture is a type of human activity aimed at creating goods that have high demand in society. It can be films and books, music and painting. Their main difference from other types of art is that they are created by professionals for the purpose of sale and have simple and understandable plots, reflect emotions and feelings close to people.
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