The concept of mass society has formed one important perspective on the role of mass media and mass culture in modern capitalist societies. Q. D. Leavis, for example, cites Edmund Gosse, writing in 1889, as follows: One danger which I have long foreseen from the spread of the democratic sentiment, is that of the tradition of literary taste, the canons of literature, being reversed with success by a popular vote. Yet insofar as a difference has arisen between theories and studies which concentrate upon the mass media, and those which concentrate upon popular culture, this book will confine itself to the latter. 5 The Marxist political economy perspective comes close to this understanding of popular culture, while variants of feminist theory define it as a form of patriarchal ideology which works in the interests of men and against the interests of women. Populists, Simon Frith. As with so many who hold to this understanding of popular culture, MacDonald adopts a position of cultural pessimism. I brought this for my A2 Media Studies 'Celebrity Obsession' coursework. Z�����S��k�%�q.D�x�I��Ksn�/8/���U��' ���.zcd�l�m���i�:�7��hgD�}�6�>E���{����0/�=���"(�r����"1l�a$Qhǐ�}�x�-nz�Dޫ���D�q9T8� 1�S��)rA�J҉:�x����%���Q��DXa[�p[0i+�� ���� 8BIM' 54. x�bbd```b``�"ς�_� ��!f��M���\&F�D�,#�d��`���$�0 � To indicate the relevance of this to the themes of this chapter we can quote a leading theorist of mass culture: Folk art grew from below. Accessed 04, 2013. https://www.studymode.com/essays/An-Introduction-To-Theories-Of-Popular-1644599.html. This has not, however, always been seen in a favourable light. But for MacDonald it is doubtful whether this intellectual community can sustain itself. The distinction, for example, between popular culture and ‘high’ or ‘learned’ culture is to be found in this period in the writings of the German poet Herder (Burke 1978:8). But it is probably its coverage and readability which have led to a second edition of this book being published. �1`���U�F_�w�Yf��ߙ3s�=g���w��d.�< _I�y#��چ|��P[�F��#��.3To|YY9�C�����E4=�âi���-��zb4�M�G��=���� �by�X=2�"��� �GW��D/�^������t}v֍��З� \J�L�W0�`%��GDAK�q�aDd�e���T��� D�4 ��N�?E��V)�v'� �V��1:�I�cKLB��ET�\TY+�vA�-��bX�A�b@��Q9�n�������GX�+ƨ M6� �du�t )GGB�C��J�C8D�Кb��w�)t*�o��f�Gf͐�t�=�.����������:0 ��"o�YUX�/Iw>���q\u�ҥ~��$#�+"h� Something went wrong. 1487 0 obj<> endobj With our dedicated customer support team, 30-day no-questions-asked return policy, and our price match guarantee, you can rest easy knowing that we're doing everything we can to save you time, money, and stress. This was understandable and has really helped me. But he does see the artistic avant-garde having a defensive role to play because it is, by definition, outside the market place, and can maintain artistic standards. The merger has standardised the theatre MASS CULTURE 17 expunging both the classical and the experimental… and…the movies…too have become standardised…they are better entertainment and worse art (MacDonald 1957:64–65) If it is the case that mass culture has threatened to unseat high culture and take over, where does this leave art and the avantgarde? As before, the book brings together work by After hurricane Katrina employees had been working round the clock to get the company up and running Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular', Stuart Hall. - The role of this elite, this conscious minority, is two-fold. Just as there are international inequalities in the distribution of the media, so in western capitalist societies there are domestic, economic and cultural inequalities which prevent people from sharing in the increased availability of popular media culture. Please try your request again later. Those writers who advocate cultural populism define popular culture as a form of consumer subversion which is precisely how they wish to evaluate and explain it (Fiske 1989b:43–47). Her analysis is therefore instructive not only for what it says about what she sees as the debasing effect of mass culture upon literary standards, but also for its political response to this situation which involves a coherent theory of the role of an intellectual and elite avant-garde. The theories discussed in this book have been chosen for a number of reasons. The bland and standardised formulas of mass culture are developed to sell things to this mass consuming public because they can be made to appeal to everyone since everyone, every atomised person, is open to manipulation. ’ It also ‘carries two older senses: inferior kinds of work (cf. Nicholas They may not all have been equally supported by empirical research, but their ideas have all formed an important point of reference for any attempt to analyse and evaluate popular culture. section have been fully revised and rewritten.