Within a certain historical era There have always been different cultures: international and national, secular and religious, adults and youth, Western and Eastern. In modern society, mass and elite cultures have acquired enormous importance.

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

“Mass culture” was formed simultaneously with the society of mass production and consumption. Radio, television, modern means of communication, and then video and computer technology contributed to its spread. There are several opinions regarding its origin and existence as such.

1. American cultural scientist Mac Donald believes that mass culture is not culture at all, but a parody of it; it cannot contain moral and artistic values. There is one point of view,

2. that mass culture is modern industrial folklore, but there is an inconsistency here, since folklore comes from the people’s environment, and mass culture is imposed from above.

3. Another position is that mass culture is a product of American culture, which is international in nature. It arose because a unified national culture(there were no speakers there traditional culture) It is mass culture that is an indicator of many aspects of the life of society and at the same time a collective propagandist and organizer of it, society, and moods. Inside popular culture there is its own hierarchy of values ​​and hierarchy of persons. A balanced rating system and, on the contrary, scandalous brawls, a fight for a place at the throne.

Popular culture is a type of cultural product that is produced every day in large volumes. It is assumed that mass culture is consumed by all people, regardless of their place of birth and country of residence. Characterizing her, the American philologist M. Bell emphasizes: “This culture is democratic. It is addressed to all people without distinction of classes, nations, levels of poverty and wealth.” This is the culture of everyday life, presented to the widest audience through various channels, including media and communications.

Mass culture is called differently: entertainment art, anti-fatigue art, kitsch, semi-culture, pop culture.

Mass culture manifested itself for the first time in the United States in turn of XIX-XX centuries Famous American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski liked to repeat a phrase that over time became commonplace: “If Rome gave the world law, England - parliamentary activity, France - culture and republican nationalism, then modern USA gave the world a scientific and technological revolution and mass culture.”

Socially, mass culture is shaping a new social order, called the “middle class”. The processes of its formation and functioning in the field of culture are most specifically described in the book of the French philosopher and sociologist E. Morena "Zeitgeist" (1962). The concept of “middle class” has become fundamental in Western culture and philosophy.

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 rather to stimulate consumer consciousness in the viewer, listener, reader, which, in turn, forms a special type of passive, uncritical perception of this culture in a person. In other words, the human psyche is manipulated and the emotions and instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings and, above all, feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, and fear are exploited.

Stages of formation of mass culture:

1. The prerequisites for mass culture have been formed since the birth of humanity, at the dawn of Christian civilization. As an example, simplified versions of the Holy Books (for example, the “Bible for the Beggars”), designed for a mass audience, are usually given.

2. The origins of mass culture are associated with the appearance in European literature XVII-XVIII centuries adventure, detective, 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 (1660-1731) - the author of a widely famous novel“Robinson Crusoe” and 481 more biographies of people in so-called risky professions: investigators, military men, thieves, prostitutes, etc. and our compatriot Matvey Komarov (1730-1812) - creator of the sensational bestseller of the 18th-19th centuries “Tales of the Adventures of an English Mylord George" and other equally popular books. The books by both authors are written in brilliant, simple and clear language.

3. The law on compulsory universal literacy, adopted in 1870 in Great Britain, also had a great influence on the development of mass culture.

The phenomenon of the emergence of mass culture seems to be:

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries 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 has been analyzed in a number of philosophical works XX century.

Economic background and social functions"mass" culture

The origins of the widespread spread of mass culture in modern world lie in the commercialization of all public relations, which was pointed out by K. Marx in Capital. In this essay, K. Marx examined through the prism of the concept “commodity” the entire diversity social relations in bourgeois society.

The desire to see a product in the sphere of spiritual activity, combined with the powerful development of mass media, led to the creation of a new phenomenon - mass culture. A predetermined commercial installation, conveyor production - all this largely means the transfer to the sphere of artistic culture of the same financial-industrial approach that prevails in other branches of industrial production. Moreover, many creative organizations are closely connected with banking and industrial capital, which initially predetermines them (be it cinema, design, TV) to produce commercial, box office, and entertainment works. In turn, the consumption of these products is mass consumption, because the audience that perceives this culture is mass audience large halls, stadiums, millions of viewers on television and movie screens.

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 outlined in the most detailed way in the book French philosopher and sociologist E. Morin, “The Zeitgeist” (1962). 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 the feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear, and self-preservation.

The mass consciousness formed by mass culture is diverse in its manifestation. However, it is distinguished by its 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. Popular culture in to a greater extent does not focus on realistic images, but on artificially created images (image) and stereotypes. In mass culture, the formula (and this is the essence of an artificially created image - an image or a stereotype) is the main thing. This situation encourages idolatry.

Popular 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 as its ultimate goal the distraction of the masses from social activity, the adaptation of people to existing conditions, conformity.

Hence the use in popular culture of such genres of art as detective, western, melodrama, musical, comic book. It is within these genres that simplified “versions of life” are created that reduce social evil to psychological and moral factors. This is also supported by such ritual formulas of mass culture as “virtue is always rewarded”, “love and faith (in oneself, in God) always conquers everything.”

main manifestations and trends of mass culture:

- childhood industry (works of art for children, toys and industrially produced games, products for specific children's consumption, children's clubs and camps, etc.) pursuing the goals of explicit or camouflaged standardization of the content and forms of raising children, introducing ideologically oriented worldviews into their consciousness, laying the foundations of basic values officially promoted in a given society;

- massive comprehensive school . 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;
- facilities mass media (printed and electronic), broadcasting current relevant information to the general population, “interpreting” to the average person the meaning of ongoing events, judgments and actions of figures from various specialized spheres of social practice.
- system of national (state) ideology and propaganda of “patriotic” education, controlling and shaping the political and ideological orientations of the population and its individual groups (for example, political educational work with military personnel), manipulating the consciousness of people in the interests of the ruling elites;
- mass political movements (party and youth organizations, manifestations, demonstrations, propaganda and election campaigns), initiated by the ruling or opposition elites with the aim of involving broad layers of the population in political actions, most of them very far from the political interests of the elites, who have little understanding of the meaning of the proposed political programs, to support 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”, rumors, gossip, etc.), simplifying a complex system value orientations human beings and the variety of shades of worldview down to elementary dual oppositions (“ours – not ours”).
- entertainment industry , which includes mass artistic culture (in almost all types of literature and art, perhaps with the certain exception of architecture), mass staged entertainment performances (from sports circus to erotic), professional sports (as a spectacle for fans), structures for conducting organized entertainment leisure (appropriate types of clubs, discos, dance floors) and other types of mass shows.

Origins the wide spread of mass culture in the modern world lies in the commercialization of all social relations. A predetermined commercial installation, conveyor production - all this largely means the transfer to the spheres of artistic culture of the same financial-industrial approach that prevails in other branches of industrial production. In turn, the consumption of these products is mass consumption, because the audience that perceives this culture is the mass audience of large halls, stadiums, millions of viewers of television and movie screens.

Specific features :

1) mass culture belongs to the majority; this is culture Everyday life;

2) mass culture is not the culture of the social “lower classes”; it exists in addition to and “above” social entities;

4) standard and stereotypical;

5) limited by conservatism (unable to quickly and adequately respond to changes in culture);

6) is more often of a consumer nature, which in turn forms a special type of passive, uncritical perception of this culture in a person; there is manipulation of the human psyche and exploitation of emotions and instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings and, above all, feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear, self-preservation;

7) in mass culture there is a mechanical replication of spiritual values.
Spheres of Manifestation : media, the system of state ideology (manipulating consciousness), mass political movements, secondary schools, the system of organizing and stimulating mass consumer demand, the system of image formation, leisure, etc.

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The history of the emergence of mass culture. Classification of spheres of manifestation of mass culture, proposed by A.Ya. Flier. Approaches to defining mass culture. Types of culture based on the principle of intracultural hierarchy. Types of culture and signs of subculture.

History of the emergence of the subculture

Non-normative (deviating from socially accepted norms, antisocial) behavior of young people first became the object of attention of scientists in the United States of America in the 30-50s. XX century.

Sociologists, psychologists, and lawyers have studied the emergence and functioning of youth gangs in big cities, primarily Chicago (many of you will remember the resoundingly successful American film “Gangs of Chicago” with Leonardo DiCaprio in leading role). Here, non-normative (that is, non-standard from the point of view of social norms) behavior of young people was considered. The film, naturally, due to the specifics of the genre, somewhat romanticizes images and situations; researchers analyzed their causes and essence. Research has shown that members of such gangster associations live in accordance with their own rules and norms, which are a deviation from the basic socio-cultural norm. It was to them, these associations, that the concept of “subculture” was first applied. Subculture began to be called a subsystem of society that is not recognized by society as a whole, primarily by state authorities.

After the Second World War, the term “youth subculture” came into use among sociologists and began to be used not only in relation to criminal groups, but also to all cultural phenomena associated with youth. It was noted that growing prosperity leads to an increase in the purchasing power of young people, and this in turn gives rise to the emergence of a new, independent market for goods and services aimed at young buyers. It has been called a "teen culture breakthrough." However, during this period, deviations from the basic norms and values ​​of society among young people were insignificant and many researchers, on this basis, denied the existence of the concept of “youth culture”, arguing their position by the fact that powerful means of influence and control over the lifestyle of the young are concentrated in the hands of the older generation generations.

But those who viewed adolescence as the beginning of a new intracultural process were right. The production of widely available “cultural goods” (pop music, fashion, etc.) has led to the fact that teenagers have become an international style movement, producing and consuming not only various options fashion and music. youth subculture gradually differentiated, it arose various movements, which were associated not only and not so much with fashion and music, but with socio-political views - this process covered culture in the 60-70s. Then they started talking about the “conflict of generations”, and as a result, interest in research studying this problem sharply increased.

History of the emergence of mass culture

The emergence of mass culture is associated with the formation at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. mass society. The material basis of what happened in the 19th century. Significant changes were the transition to machine production. But industrial machine production presupposes standardization, not only of equipment, raw materials, technical documentation, but also of workers’ skills, working hours, etc. Standardization processes and spiritual culture were also affected.

Two spheres of a working person’s life have become quite clearly defined: work and leisure. As a result, effective demand arose for those goods and services that helped to spend leisure time. The market responded to this demand by offering a “standard” cultural product: books, films, gramophone records, etc. They were intended primarily to help people have an interesting time. free time, take a break from monotonous work.

The use of new technologies in production and the expansion of mass participation in politics required certain educational preparation. In industrial developed countries are being done important steps aimed at developing education, especially primary education. As a result, a large readership appeared in a number of countries, and after this, one of the first genres of mass culture arose - mass literature.

The direct connections between people, weakened with the transition from traditional to industrial society, were partly replaced by the emerging means of mass communication, capable of quickly broadcasting various kinds of messages to a large audience.

Mass society, as many researchers have noted, gave birth to its typical representative - the “man of the masses” - the main consumer of mass culture. Philosophers of the early 20th century. gave him predominantly negative characteristics- “a man without a face”, “a man like everyone else”. In the first half of the last century, the Spanish philosopher X. Ortega y Gaset was one of the first to give critical analysis this new social phenomenon - the “mass man”. It is with the “mass man” that the philosopher associates the crisis of high European culture and the established system of public power. The masses displace the elite minority (“people with special qualities”) from leading positions in society, replace them, and begin to dictate their terms, their views, their tastes. The elite minority are those who demand a lot from themselves and shoulder burdens and obligations on themselves. The majority does not demand anything; for them, living means going with the flow, remaining as they are, without trying to surpass themselves. X. Ortega y Gaset considered the main features of the “mass man” to be the unbridled growth of life’s demands and innate ingratitude towards everything that satisfies these demands. Mediocrity with an unbridled thirst for consumption, “barbarians who poured out of the hatch onto the stage of the complex civilization that gave birth to them” - this is how the philosopher unflatteringly characterizes most of his contemporaries.

In the middle of the 20th century. The “mass man” increasingly began to be correlated not with “rebellious” violators of the foundations, but, on the contrary, with a completely well-intentioned part of society - with the middle class. Realizing that they are not the elite of society, middle class people are nevertheless satisfied with their material and social status. Their standards, norms, rules, language, preferences, tastes are accepted by society as normal and generally accepted. For them, consumption and leisure are no less important than work and career. The expression “mass middle class society” appeared in the works of sociologists.

There is another point of view in science today. According to her, mass society completely disappears from the historical scene, the so-called demassification occurs. Uniformity and unification are being replaced by emphasizing the characteristics of an individual person, personalization of personality, replacing “ to the mass person From the industrial era comes the “individualist” of post-industrial society. So, from the “barbarian who burst onto the scene” to the “respectable ordinary citizen” - such is the range of views on the “mass person”.

The term "mass culture" covers various cultural products, as well as the system of their distribution and creation. First of all, these are works of literature, music, fine arts, films and videos. It also includes patterns of everyday behavior, appearance. These products and samples come into every home thanks to the media, advertising, and the fashion institute.

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

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

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

Despite its apparent democracy, masculature is fraught with a real threat of bringing down the creative person, active creator spiritual values ​​to the level passive user

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

Maskulture is always a devaluation of high cultural examples, an imitation of familiarization with culture.

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

The only way to counter the standardization of culture and the expansion of mascult is by introducing the values ​​of genuine culture in the process of spiritual education of the individual, including in the course of cultural studies and other humanitarian disciplines.

5.4. Elite culture

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

Its origins date back to ancient philosophy Heraclitus and Plato, in which he first distinguishes intellectual elite as a special professional group – the custodian and bearer of higher knowledge.

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

V his reasoning “On true nobility.” For the humanists of that time, “rabble”, “despicable” people are uneducated fellow citizens, self-righteous ignoramuses. In relation to them, the humanists themselves appear as an intellectual elite.

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

According to elite theory, the necessary components of any social structure is the highest privileged layer or layers that perform the functions of management and cultural development.

This is the elite.

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

The elite is characterized by high degree activity and productivity. It is usually contrasted with mass.

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

The elite consists of people who have such qualities as organization, will, and the ability to unite to achieve a goal (G. Mosca); enjoying the greatest prestige, status, wealth in society, possessing highest feeling responsibility, intellectual or moral

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

According to V. Pareto, society is a pyramid with an elite at the top. The most gifted of the lower classes rise to the top, joining the ranks of the ruling elite, whose members, in turn, degenerate, fall down to the masses. There is a circulation, or cycle, of elites; Social mobility contributes to the renewal of the elite. Alternation, change of elites is the law of the existence of society. (As mentioned above, the idea of ​​society as a social pyramid is also contained in the sociology of P. A. Sorokin, who also developed the problems of social mobility.)

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

place in society due to their biological and genetic origin;

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

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

4)organizational – classifies executives, including the bureaucratically organized bureaucracy, as an elite;

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

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

7)artistic and creative– includes representatives among the elite various fields spiritual production (science, art, religion, culture).

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

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

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

Elite art - a movement in Western artistic culture, creating art for the few, for the elite, for the aesthetic and spiritual elite, incomprehensible to the general public, the masses.

Elite art became especially widespread at the beginning of the twentieth century. It manifested itself in the variety of trends of decadence and modernism (abstractionism in painting; surrealism in fine arts, literature, theater and cinema; dodecaphony1 in music), who focused on creating the art of “pure form”, the art of true aesthetic pleasure, devoid of any practical meaning and social significance.

Supporters of elite art opposed themselves to mass art, the amorphous mass, the trends of “massification” in culture, and opposed the vulgar ideals of a well-fed, bourgeois life.

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

The concept of elite culture is most comprehensively and consistently presented in the works of J. Ortega y Gaset, who gave a philosophical assessment of the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century. In the book “The Dehumanization of Art” (1925), he divided people into “the people” (the masses) and the elite - a particularly gifted minority, the creators of genuine culture. He believed that impressionists, futurists, surrealists, and abstractionists split the art audience into two groups: artistic elite(outstanding people who understand the new art) and the general public (ordinary people who are unable to understand it). Therefore, the creative artist consciously appeals to the elite, and not to the masses, and turns away from the average person.

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