>

Functions of elite culture in modern society. Folk, elite and mass culture

Introduction

Culture is a general concept that covers various classes of phenomena. It is a complex, multi-layered, multi-level whole, including various phenomena. Depending on from what point of view, on what grounds to analyze it, one can identify certain of its structural elements, differing in the nature of the carrier, in the result, in the types of activities, etc., which can coexist, interact, resist each other, change their status. Structuring culture based on its carrier, we will single out as the subject of analysis only some of its varieties: elite, mass, folk culture. Since on modern stage they receive an ambiguous interpretation, then in this test we will try to understand the complex modern cultural practice, which is very dynamic and contradictory, as well as contradictory points of view. The test paper presents various historically established, sometimes opposing views, theoretical justifications, approaches, and also takes into account a certain sociocultural context, the relationship of various components in the cultural whole, and their place in modern cultural practice.

And so, the purpose of the test is to consider the varieties of culture, elite, mass and folk.

culture elite mass folk

The emergence and main characteristics of elite culture

Elite culture, its essence, is associated with the concept of elite and is usually contrasted with folk and mass cultures. The elite (elite, French - chosen, best, selected), as a producer and consumer of this type of culture in relation to society, represents, from the point of view of both Western and domestic sociologists and cultural scientists, the highest, privileged strata (stratum), groups, classes , carrying out the functions of management, development of production and culture. This affirms the division of the social structure into higher, privileged and lower, elite and the rest of the masses. Definitions of the elite in various sociological and cultural theories are ambiguous.

The identification of an elite layer has a long history. Confucius already saw a society consisting of noble men, i.e. minorities, and a people in need of constant moral influence and guidance from these noble ones. In fact, Plato stood in an elitist position. The Roman senator Menenius Agrippa classified most of the population as “draft animals”, which require drivers, i.e. aristocrats.

Obviously, from ancient times, when in the primitive community the division of labor began to occur, the separation of spiritual activity from material activity, the processes of stratification according to property, status, etc. began to stand out (alienate) not only the categories of rich and poor, but also the most significant people in in any respect - priests (magi, shamans) as bearers of special secret knowledge, organizers of religious and ritual actions, leaders, tribal nobility. But the elite itself is formed in a class, slave-owning society, when, due to the labor of slaves, privileged layers (classes) are freed from exhausting physical labor. Moreover, in societies of various types, the most significant, elite strata, constituting a minority of the population, are, first of all, those who have real power, backed up by the force of arms and law, economic and financial power, which allows them to influence all other spheres of public life, including including sociocultural processes (ideology, education, artistic practice, etc.). Such is the slave-owning, feudal aristocracy (aristocracy is understood as the highest, privileged layer of any class, group), the highest clergy, merchants, industrial, financial oligarchy, etc.

Elite culture is formed within the framework of layers and communities that are privileged in any sphere (in politics, commerce, art) and includes, like folk culture, values, norms, ideas, ideas, knowledge, way of life, etc. in the sign-symbolic and their material expression, as well as ways of their practical use. This culture covers different spheres of social space: political, economic, ethical and legal, artistic and aesthetic, religious and other areas of public life. It can be viewed on different scales.

IN in a broad sense elite culture can be represented by a fairly large part of the national (nationwide) culture. In this case, it has deep roots in it, including folk culture, in another, narrow sense - it declares itself as “sovereign”, sometimes opposed to the national culture, to a certain extent isolated from it.

An example of elite culture in a broad sense is knightly culture as a phenomenon of secular culture in the Western European Middle Ages. Its bearer is the dominant noble-military class (knighthood), within which they have developed their own values, ideals, their own code of honor (loyalty to the oath, adherence to duty, courage, generosity, mercy, etc.). Their own rituals were formed, such as, say, the ritual of knighting (concluding an agreement with a lord, oath of allegiance, taking vows of obedience, personal perfection, etc.), ritualized and theatrical holding of tournaments to glorify knightly virtues. Special manners are developed, the ability to conduct small talk, play musical instruments, and write poetry, most often dedicated to the lady of the heart. Knightly musical and poetic creativity, cultivated in national languages ​​and not alien to folk musical and intonation traditions, constituted a whole trend in world culture, but it faded away with the weakening and departure of this class from the historical arena.

Elite culture is contradictory. On the one hand, it quite clearly expresses the search for something new, still unknown, on the other hand, an orientation toward conservation, the preservation of what is already known and familiar. Therefore, probably in science and artistic creativity, new things achieve recognition, sometimes overcoming considerable difficulties. Elite culture, including areas of an experimental, even demonstratively non-conformist nature, contributed to the enrichment of the ideological, theoretical, figurative and content outline, to the expansion of the range of practical skills, means of expression, ideals, images, ideas, scientific theories, technical inventions, philosophical, social -political teachings.

Elite culture, including its esoteric (internal, secret, intended for initiates) directions, are included in different spheres of cultural practice, performing different functions (roles) in it: informational and cognitive, replenishing the treasury of knowledge, technical achievements, works of art; socialization, including a person in the world of culture; normative and regulatory, etc. What comes to the fore in elite culture is the cultural-creative function, the function of self-realization, self-actualization of the individual, and the aesthetic-demonstrative function (it is sometimes called the exhibition function).

VKontakte

Classmates

The concepts of mass and elite culture define two types of culture in modern society, which are associated with the peculiarities of the way culture exists in society: the methods of its production, reproduction and distribution in society, the position that culture occupies in the social structure of society, the attitude of culture and its creators to everyday life. people's lives and socio-political problems of society. Elite culture arises before mass culture, but in modern society they coexist and are in complex interaction.

Popular culture

Definition of the concept

In modern scientific literature there are various definitions of mass culture. Some associate mass culture with the development in the twentieth century of new communication and reproductive systems (mass press and book publishing, audio and video recording, radio and television, xerography, telex and telefax, satellite communications, computer technology) and the global information exchange that arose thanks to the achievements scientific and technological revolution. Other definitions of mass culture emphasize its connection with the development of a new type social structure industrial and post-industrial society, which led to the creation of a new way of organizing the production and transmission of culture. The second understanding of mass culture is more complete and comprehensive, because it not only includes the changed technical and technological basis of cultural creativity, but also considers the socio-historical context and trends in cultural transformations of modern society.

Popular culture refers to the type of product that is produced daily in large volumes. This is a set of cultural phenomena of the 20th century and the peculiarities of the production of cultural values ​​in modern industrial society, designed for mass consumption. In other words, this is a conveyor belt production through various channels, including the media and communications.

It is assumed that mass culture is consumed by all people, regardless of place and country of residence. This is the culture of everyday life, presented on the widest possible channels, including TV.

The emergence of mass culture

Relatively prerequisites for the emergence of mass culture There are several points of view:

  1. Mass culture arose at the dawn of Christian civilization. As an example, simplified versions of the Bible are cited (for children, for the poor), designed for a mass audience.
  2. IN XVII-XVIII centuries In Western Europe, the genre of adventure novel appears, which significantly expanded the readership due to huge circulations. (Example: Daniel Defoe - the novel “Robinson Crusoe” and 481 other biographies of people in risky professions: investigators, military men, thieves, prostitutes, etc.).
  3. In 1870, Great Britain passed a law on universal literacy, which allowed many to master main view artistic creativity of the 19th century - a novel. But this is only the prehistory of mass culture. In the proper sense, mass culture first manifested itself in the United States at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The emergence of mass culture is associated with the massification of life at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At this time, the role of the human masses increased in various areas of life: economics, politics, management and communication between people. Ortega y Gaset defines the concept of the masses this way:

Mass is a crowd. A crowd in quantitative and visual terms is a multitude, and a multitude from a sociological point of view is a mass. Mass is the average person. Society has always been a moving 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. Ortega sees the reason for the promotion of the masses to the forefront of history in the low quality of culture, when a person of a given culture “does not differ from the rest and repeats the general type.”

The prerequisites for mass culture also include the emergence of a system of mass communications during the formation of bourgeois society(press, mass book publishing, then radio, television, cinema) and the development of transport, which made it possible to reduce the space and time necessary for the transmission and dissemination of cultural values ​​in society. Culture emerges from local existence and begins to function on the scale of the national state (a national culture emerges, overcoming ethnic restrictions), and then enters the system of interethnic communication.

The prerequisites for mass culture also include the creation within bourgeois society of a special structure of institutions for the production and dissemination of cultural values:

  1. The emergence of public educational institutions (comprehensive schools, vocational schools, higher educational institutions);
  2. Creation of institutions producing scientific knowledge;
  3. Appearance professional art(academies of fine arts, theater, opera, ballet, conservatory, literary magazines, publishing houses and associations, exhibitions, public museums, exhibition galleries, libraries), which also included the emergence of the institute art criticism as a means of popularizing and developing his works.

Features and significance of mass culture

Mass culture in its most concentrated form is manifested in artistic culture, as well as in the fields of leisure, communication, management and economics. The term "mass culture" was first introduced by the German professor M. Horkheimer in 1941 and the American scientist D. MacDonald in 1944. The content of this term is quite contradictory. On the one hand, mass culture - "culture for everyone", on the other hand, this is "not quite culture". The definition of mass culture emphasizes spreadthe vulnerability and general accessibility of spiritual values, as well as the ease of their assimilation, which does not require special developed taste and perception.

The existence of mass culture is based on the activities of the media, the so-called technical arts (cinema, television, video). Mass culture exists not only in democratic social systems, but also in totalitarian regimes, where everyone is a “cog” and everyone is equal.

Currently, some researchers abandon the view of “mass culture” as an area of ​​“bad taste” and do not consider it anti-cultural. Many people realize that mass culture has not only negative features. It influences:

  • the ability of people to adapt to the conditions of a market economy;
  • respond adequately to sudden situational social changes.

Besides, mass culture is capable:

  • compensate for the lack of personal communication and dissatisfaction with life;
  • increase the population's involvement in political events;
  • increase the psychological stability of the population in difficult social situations;
  • make the achievements of science and technology accessible to many.

It should be recognized that mass culture is an objective indicator of the state of society, its misconceptions, typical forms of behavior, cultural stereotypes and a real value system.

In the sphere of artistic culture, she calls on a person not to rebel against the social system, but to fit into it, to find and take his place in an industrial society of a market type.

TO negative consequences of mass culture refers to its ability to mythologize human consciousness, to mystify real processes occurring in nature and society. There is a rejection of the rational principle in consciousness.

There were once beautiful poetic images. They talked about the wealth of imagination of people who could not yet correctly understand and explain the action of the forces of nature. Nowadays myths serve the poverty of thinking.

On the one hand, one might think that the purpose of mass culture is to relieve tension and stress in a person in an industrial society - after all, it is entertaining. But in fact, this culture does not so much fill leisure time as stimulate the consumer consciousness of the viewer, listener, and reader. A type of passive, uncritical perception of this culture arises in a person. And if so, a personality is created, whose consciousness easy mamanipulate, whose emotions are easy to direct to the rightside.

In other words, mass culture exploits the instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings and, above all, feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear, and self-preservation.

In the practice of mass culture, mass consciousness has specific means of expression. Popular culture in to a greater extent focuses not on realistic images, but on artificially created images - images and stereotypes.

Popular culture creates a hero formula, repetitive image, stereotype. This situation creates idolatry. An artificial “Olympus” is created, the gods are “stars” and a crowd of fanatical admirers and admirers arises. In this regard, mass artistic culture successfully embodies the most desirable human myth - myth of a happy world. At the same time, she does not call her listener, viewer, reader to build such a world - her task is to offer a person refuge from reality.

The origins of the widespread spread of mass culture in modern world lie in the commercial nature of all social relations. The concept of “product” defines the entire diversity of social relations in society.

Spiritual activity: cinema, books, music, etc., in connection with the development of mass media, become a commodity in the conditions of assembly line production. The commercial attitude is transferred to the sphere of artistic culture. And this determines the entertaining nature of works of art. It is necessary that the clip pays off, the money spent on the production of the film produces a profit.

Mass culture forms a social stratum in society called the “middle class”. This class became the core of life in industrial society. A modern representative of the “middle class” is characterized by:

  1. Striving for success. Achievement and success are the values ​​that culture in such a society is oriented towards. It is no coincidence that stories about how someone escaped from poor to rich, from a poor emigrant family to a highly paid “star” of mass culture are so popular in it.
  2. Second distinguishing feature"middle class" person possession of private property . A prestigious car, a castle in England, a house on the Cote d'Azur, an apartment in Monaco... As a result, relations between people are replaced by relations of capital, income, i.e. they are impersonally formal. A person must be in constant tension, survive in conditions of fierce competition. And the strongest survive, that is, those who succeed in the pursuit of profit.
  3. The third value characteristic of a “middle class” person is individualism . This is recognition of individual rights, its freedom and independence from society and the state. The energy of a free personality is directed into the sphere of economic and political activity. This contributes to the accelerated development of productive forces. Equality is possible stey, competition, personal success - on the one hand, this is good. But, on the other hand, this leads to a contradiction between the ideals of a free personality and reality. In other words, as the principle of the relationship between man and man individualism is inhumane, and as a norm of a person’s relationship to society - antisocial .

In art and artistic creativity, mass culture performs the following social functions:

  • introduces a person to the world of illusory experience and unrealistic dreams;
  • promotes the dominant way of life;
  • distracts the broad masses of people from social activity and forces them to adapt.

Hence the use in art of such genres as detective, western, melodrama, musicals, comics, advertising, etc.

Elite culture

Definition of the concept

Elite culture (from the French elite - selected, best) can be defined as a subculture of privileged groups of society(while sometimes their only privilege may be the right to cultural creativity or to preserve cultural heritage), which is characterized by value-semantic isolation, closedness; elite culture asserts itself as the creativity of a narrow circle of “highest professionals”, the understanding of which is accessible to an equally narrow circle of highly educated connoisseurs. Elite culture claims to stand high above the “ordinariness” of everyday life and to occupy the position of the “highest court” in relation to the socio-political problems of society.

Elite culture is considered by many culturologists as the antithesis of mass culture. From this point of view, the producer and consumer of elite cultural goods is the highest, privileged layer of society - elite . In modern cultural studies, the understanding of the elite as a special layer of society endowed with specific spiritual abilities has been established.

Elite is not easy upper layer society, ruling elite. There is an elite in every social class.

Elite- this is the part of society most capable ofspiritual activity, gifted with high moral and aesthetic inclinations. It is she who ensures social progress, so art should be focused on meeting her demands and needs. The main elements of the elitist concept of culture are contained in the philosophical works of A. Schopenhauer (“The World as Will and Idea”) and F. Nietzsche (“Human, All Too Human,” “The Gay Science,” “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”).

A. Schopenhauer divides humanity into two parts: “people of geniuses” and “people of benefit.” The former are capable of aesthetic contemplation and artistic activity, the latter are focused only on purely practical, utilitarian activity.

The demarcation between elite and mass culture is associated with the development of cities, book printing, and the emergence of a customer and performer in the field. Elite - for sophisticated connoisseurs, mass - for the ordinary, ordinary reader, viewer, listener. Works that serve as standards of mass art, as a rule, reveal a connection with folklore, mythological, and popular popular constructions that existed before. In the 20th century, the elitist concept of culture was summarized by Ortega y Gaset. The work of this Spanish philosopher, “The Dehumanization of Art,” argues that the new art is addressed to the elite of society, and not to its masses. Therefore, art does not necessarily have to be popular, generally understandable, universal. New art should alienate people from real life. "Dehumanization" - and is the basis of the new art of the twentieth century. There are polar classes in society - majority (mass) and minority (elite) . New art, according to Ortega, divides the public into two classes - those who understand it and those who do not understand it, that is, artists and those who are not artists.

Elite , according to Ortega, this is not the tribal aristocracy and not the privileged layers of society, but that part of it that has a “special organ of perception” . It is this part that contributes to social progress. And it is precisely this that artists should address with their works. The new art should help ensure that “...the best get to know themselves, learn to understand their purpose: to be in the minority and fight with the majority.”

A typical manifestation of elite culture is theory and practice of “pure art” or “art for art’s sake” , which found its embodiment in Western European and Russian culture at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. For example, in Russia, the ideas of elite culture were actively developed by the artistic association “World of Art” (artist A. Benois, magazine editor S. Diaghilev, etc.).

The emergence of an elite culture

Elite culture, as a rule, arises in eras of cultural crisis, the breakdown of old and the birth of new cultural traditions, methods of production and reproduction of spiritual values, and a change in cultural and historical paradigms. Therefore, representatives of elite culture perceive themselves as either “creators of the new”, towering above their time, and therefore not understood by their contemporaries (these are mostly romantics and modernists - figures of the artistic avant-garde, cultural revolution), or “custodians of fundamental principles” that must be protected from destruction and whose meaning is not understood by the “masses”.

In such a situation, the elite culture acquires features of esotericism- closed, hidden knowledge that is not intended for wide, universal use. In history, the carriers of various forms of elite culture were priests, religious sects, monastic and spiritual knightly orders, Masonic lodges, craft guilds, literary, artistic and intellectual circles, and underground organizations. Such a narrowing of the potential recipients of cultural creativity gives rise to awareness of one's creativity as exceptional: “true religion”, “pure science”, “pure art” or “art for art’s sake”.

The concept of “elite” as opposed to “mass” was introduced at the end of the 18th century. The division of artistic creativity into elite and mass manifested itself in the concepts of the romantics. Initially, among the romantics, the elitist carries within itself the semantic meaning of being chosen and exemplary. The concept of exemplary, in turn, was understood as identical to the classical. The concept of the classical was especially actively developed in. Then the normative core was the art of antiquity. In this understanding, the classical was personified with the elitist and exemplary.

Romantics sought to focus on innovation in the field of artistic creativity. Thus, they separated their art from the usual adapted artistic forms. The triad: “elite - exemplary - classic” began to crumble - the elitist was no longer identical to the classical.

Features and significance of elite culture

A feature of elite culture is the interest of its representatives in creating new forms, demonstrative opposition to the harmonious forms of classical art, as well as an emphasis on the subjectivity of the worldview.

The characteristic features of an elite culture are:

  1. the desire for the cultural development of objects (phenomena of the natural and social world, spiritual realities), which stand out sharply from the totality of what is included in the field of subject development of the “ordinary”, “profane” culture of a given time;
  2. inclusion of one’s subject in unexpected value-semantic contexts, creation of its new interpretation, unique or exclusive meaning;
  3. the creation of a new cultural language (language of symbols, images), accessible to a narrow circle of connoisseurs, the decoding of which requires special efforts and a broad cultural outlook from the uninitiated.

Elite culture is dual, contradictory in nature. On the one hand, elite culture acts as an innovative enzyme of the sociocultural process. Works of elite culture contribute to the renewal of the culture of society, introducing new issues, language, and methods of cultural creativity into it. Initially, within the boundaries of elite culture, new genres and types of art are born, the cultural and literary language of society is developed, and extraordinary scientific theories, philosophical concepts and religious teachings, which seem to “break out” beyond the established boundaries of culture, but then can become part of the cultural heritage of the entire society. That is why, for example, they say that truth is born as heresy and dies as banality.

On the other hand, the position of an elite culture, opposing itself to the culture of society, may mean a conservative departure from social reality and its pressing problems into the idealized world of “art for art’s sake,” religious, philosophical and socio-political utopias. Such a demonstrative form of rejection of the existing world can be both a form passive protest against him, and a form of reconciliation with him, recognition of one’s own powerlessness of elite culture, its inability to influence the cultural life of society.

This duality of elite culture also determines the presence of opposing - critical and apologetic - theories of elite culture. Democratic thinkers (Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, Plekhanov, Morris, etc.) were critical of elitist culture, emphasizing its separation from the life of the people, its incomprehensibility to the people, its serving the needs of rich, jaded people. Moreover, such criticism sometimes went beyond the bounds of reason, turning, for example, from criticism of elite art into criticism of all art. Pisarev, for example, declared that “boots are higher than art.” L. Tolstoy, who created high examples of the novel of the New Age (“War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina”, “Sunday”), in late period of his work, when he switched to the position of peasant democracy, he considered all these works unnecessary for the people and began to compose popular stories from peasant life.

Another direction of theories of elite culture (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Berdyaev, Ortega y Gasset, Heidegger and Ellul) defended it, emphasizing its content, formal perfection, creative search and novelty, the desire to resist the stereotypedness and lack of spirituality of everyday culture, and considered it as a haven of creative personal freedom.

A variety of elite art in our time is modernism and postmodernism.

Used literature:

1. Afonin V. A., Afonin Yu. V. Theory and history of culture. Tutorial for independent work of students. – Lugansk: Elton-2, 2008. – 296 p.

2.Cultural studies in questions and answers. Methodical manual to prepare for tests and exams in the course “Ukrainian and foreign culture” for students of all specialties and forms of study. / Rep. Editor Ragozin N.P. - Donetsk, 2008, - 170 p.

By the nature of creations one can distinguish the culture represented in single samples And popular culture. The first form, based on the characteristic features of its creators, is divided into folk and elite culture. Folk culture represents single works, most often by nameless authors. This form of culture includes myths, legends, tales, epics, songs, dances, etc. Elite culture- a set of individual creations that are created by well-known representatives of the privileged part of society or on its order by professional creators. Here we are talking about creators who have high level education and well known to the enlightened public. This culture includes fine arts, literature, classical music, etc.

Mass (public) culture represents products of spiritual production in the field of art, created in large quantities for the general public. The main thing for her is to entertain the broadest masses of the population. It is understandable and accessible to all ages, all segments of the population, regardless of level of education. Its main feature is the simplicity of ideas and images: texts, movements, sounds, etc. Samples of this culture are aimed at the emotional sphere of a person. At the same time, mass culture often uses simplified examples of elite and folk culture (“remixes”). Mass culture averages the spiritual development of people.

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

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

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

Elite culture

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

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

Elite culture includes avant-garde movements in music, painting, cinema, and complex literature of a philosophical nature. Often the creators of such a culture are perceived as inhabitants of an “ivory tower”, fenced off with their art from real everyday life. As a rule, elite culture is non-commercial, although sometimes it can be financially successful and move into the category of mass culture.

Modern trends are such that mass culture penetrates into all areas of “high culture”, mixing with it. At the same time, mass culture reduces the general cultural level of its consumers, but at the same time it gradually rises to a higher cultural level. Unfortunately, the first process is still much more intense than the second.

Folk culture

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

Popular culture

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

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

Subculture

The set of values, beliefs, traditions and customs that guide the majority of members of society is called dominant culture. Since society breaks up into many groups (national, demographic, social, professional), each of them gradually forms its own culture, i.e., a system of values ​​and rules of behavior. Small cultures are called subcultures.

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

Counterculture

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

Culture in Russia

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

Russian Federation - multinational country. Its development is determined by the characteristics of national cultures. The uniqueness of the spiritual life of Russia lies in the diversity of cultural traditions, religious beliefs, moral standards, aesthetic tastes, etc., which is associated with the specifics of the cultural heritage of different peoples.

Currently, in the spiritual life of our country there are contradictory trends. On the one hand, the mutual penetration of different cultures contributes to interethnic understanding and cooperation, on the other hand, the development of national cultures is accompanied by interethnic conflicts. The latter circumstance requires a balanced, tolerant attitude towards the culture of other communities.

Elite culture has rather blurred boundaries, especially nowadays with the tendencies of mass elements to strive for the expression of individuality. Its peculiarity is that it is doomed to be misunderstood by most people, and this is one of its main characteristics. In this article we will find out elite culture, what its main characteristics are and compare it with mass culture.

What is it

Elite culture is the same as “high culture”. It is contrasted with mass, which is one of the methods for detecting it in general cultural process. This concept was first identified by K. Mannheim and J. Ortega y Gasset in their works, where they derived it precisely as the antithesis of the concept of mass culture. They meant by high culture one that contains a core of meaning capable of developing human individuality, and from which the continuation of the creation of its other elements can follow. Another area that they highlighted is the presence of special verbal elements accessible to narrow social groups: for example, Latin and Sanskrit for clergy.

Elite and mass culture: contrast

They are contrasted with each other by the type of impact on consciousness, as well as by the quality of the meanings that their elements contain. Thus, the mass one is aimed at a more superficial perception, which does not require specific knowledge and special intellectual efforts to understand the cultural product. Currently, there is an increased spread of popular culture due to the process of globalization, which, in turn, is distributed through the media and is stimulated by the capitalist structure of society. unlike elitist, it is intended for a wide range of people. Now we see its elements everywhere, and it is especially pronounced in television programs and cinema.

Thus, Hollywood cinema can be contrasted with arthouse cinema. Moreover, the first type of film focuses the viewer’s attention not on the meaning and idea of ​​the story, but on the special effects of the video sequence. Here, high-quality cinema implies an interesting design, an unexpected but easy-to-understand plot.

Elite culture is represented by arthouse films, which are assessed by different criteria than Hollywood products of this kind, the main one of which is meaning. Thus, the quality of the footage in such films is often underestimated. At first glance, the reason for the low quality of filming is either the lack of good funding or the amateurism of the director. However, this is not so: in arthouse cinema, the function of video is to convey the meaning of an idea. Special effects can distract from this, so they are not typical for products of this format. Arthouse ideas are original and deep. Very often, in the presentation of a simple story, a deep meaning is hidden from a superficial understanding; the real tragedy of the individual is revealed. While watching these films, you can often notice that the director himself is trying to find the answer to the question posed and studying the characters as he shoots. Predicting the plot of an arthouse movie is almost impossible.

Characteristics of high culture

Elite culture has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from mass culture:

  1. Its elements are aimed at displaying and studying the deep processes of human psychology.
  2. It has a closed structure, understandable only to extraordinary individuals.
  3. It is distinguished by original artistic solutions.
  4. Contains a minimum of visual aids.
  5. Has the ability to express something new.
  6. It tests what may later become a classic or trivial art.

from French elite - selected, selected, best high culture, the consumers of which are educated people, is distinguished by a very high degree of specialization, designed, so to speak, for “internal use” and often strives to complicate its language, that is, to make it inaccessible to most people. ? A subculture of privileged groups of the society, characterized by fundamental closedness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. Appealing to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and recipients (in any case, the circle of both almost coincides), E.K. consciously and consistently opposes the culture of the majority, or mass culture in the broad sense (in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture , official the culture of a particular estate or class, the state as a whole, the technocratic cultural industry. society of the 20th century. etc.) (see Mass culture). Moreover, E.k. needs a constant context of mass culture, since it is based on the mechanism of repulsion from the values ​​and norms accepted in mass culture, on the destruction of existing stereotypes and templates of mass culture (including their parody, ridicule, irony, grotesque, polemic, criticism, refutation), on demonstrative self-isolation in general national culture. In this regard, E.k. - a characteristically marginal phenomenon within any history. or national type of culture and is always secondary, derivative in relation to the culture of the majority. The problem of E.K. is especially acute. in communities where the antinomy of mass culture and E.K. practically exhausts all the variety of manifestations of nationalism. culture as a whole and where the mediative (“middle”) area of ​​the national culture, a constituent part of it. body and equally opposed to polarized mass and E. cultures as value-semantic extremes. This is typical, in particular, for cultures that have a binary structure and are prone to inversion forms of history. development (Russian and typologically similar cultures). The watering differs. and cultural elites; the first, also called “ruling”, “powerful”, today, thanks to the works of V. Pareto, G. Mosca, R. Michels, C.R. Mills, R. Miliband, J. Scott, J. Perry, D. Bell and other sociologists and political scientists, have been studied in sufficient detail and deeply. Much less studied are the cultural elites - strata united by non-economic, social, political. and actual power interests and goals, but also ideological principles, spiritual values, sociocultural norms, etc. Connected in principle by similar (isomorphic) mechanisms of selection, status consumption, prestige, and political elite. and cultural ones, however, do not coincide with each other and only sometimes enter into temporary alliances, which turn out to be extremely unstable and fragile. Suffice it to recall the spiritual dramas of Socrates, who was condemned to death by his fellow citizens, and Plato, who was disillusioned with the Syracuse tyrant Dionysius (the Elder), who undertook to put into practice Plato’s utopia of the “State”, Pushkin, who refused to “serve the king, serve the people” and thereby who recognized the inevitability of his creativity. loneliness, although royal in its own way (“You are a king: live alone”), and L. Tolstoy, who, despite his origin and position, sought to express the “idea of ​​the people” by means of his lofty and unique art words, european education, sophisticated author's philosophy and religion. It is worth mentioning here the short flowering of the sciences and arts at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent; experience of the highest patronage Louis XIV muses, who gave the world examples of Western European. classicism; short period cooperation between the enlightened nobility and the noble bureaucracy during the reign of Catherine II; short-lived pre-revolutionary union. rus. intelligentsia with Bolshevik power in the 20s. etc. , in order to affirm the multidirectional and largely mutually exclusive nature of the interacting political and cultural elites, which enclose the social-semantic and cultural-semantic structures of the society, respectively, and coexist in time and space. This means that E.k. is not a creation or product of water. elites (as was often asserted in Marxist studies) and is not of a class-party nature, but in many cases develops in the fight against politics. elites for their independence and freedom. On the contrary, it is logical to assume that it is the cultural elites that contribute to the formation of politics. elites (structurally isomorphic to cultural elites) in a narrower sphere of socio-political, state. and power relations as its own special case, isolated and alienated from the whole E.K. Unlike polit. elites, spiritual and creative elites develop their own, fundamentally new mechanisms of self-regulation and value-semantic criteria for active chosenness that go beyond the framework of the strictly social and political. demands, and often accompanied by a demonstrative departure from politics and social institutions and semantic opposition to these phenomena as extracultural (unaesthetic, immoral, unspiritual, intellectually poor and vulgar). In E.k. The range of values ​​recognized as true and “high” is deliberately limited, and the system of norms accepted by a given stratum as obligations is tightened. and strict in the communication of the “initiates”. Quantity The narrowing of the elite and its spiritual unity is inevitably accompanied by its qualities. growth (in intellectual, aesthetic, religious, ethical and other respects), and therefore, individualization of norms, values, evaluative criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique. Actually, for the sake of this, the circle of norms and values ​​of E.K. becomes emphatically high, innovative, what can be achieved in a variety of ways. means: 1) mastering new social and mental realities as cultural phenomena or, on the contrary, rejection of anything new and “protection” of a narrow circle conservative values and norms; 2) inclusion of one’s subject in an unexpected value-semantic context, which makes its interpretation unique and even exclusive. meaning; 3) the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics (metaphorical, associative, allusive, symbolic and metasymbolic), requiring special knowledge from the addressee. preparation and vast cultural horizons; 4) the development of a special cultural language (code), accessible only to a narrow circle of connoisseurs and designed to complicate communication, to erect insurmountable (or most difficult to overcome) semantic barriers to profane thinking, which turns out to be, in principle, unable to adequately comprehend the innovations of E.K., to “decipher” it meanings; 5) the use of a deliberately subjective, individually creative, “defamiliarizing” interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings closer cultural development reality by the subject to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, in the limit, replaces the reflection of reality in E.K. its transformation, imitation - deformation, penetration into meaning - conjecture and rethinking of the given. Due to its semantic and functional “closedness”, “narrowness”, isolation from the whole national. culture, E.k. often turns into a type (or similarity) of secret, sacred, esoteric. knowledge that is taboo for the rest of the masses, and its bearers turn into a kind of “priests” of this knowledge, chosen ones of the gods, “servants of the muses,” “keepers of secrets and faith,” which is often played out and poeticized in E.K. Historical origin of E.c. exactly this: already in primitive society, priests, magi, sorcerers, tribal leaders become privileged holders of special knowledge, which cannot and should not be intended for general, mass use. Subsequently, this kind of relationship between E.k. and mass culture in one form or another, in particular secular, were repeatedly reproduced (in various religious confessions and especially sects, in monastic and spiritual knightly orders, Masonic lodges , in the craft workshops that cultivated prof. mastery, in religious and philosophical. meetings, literary and artistic and intellectual circles that develop around charismatic people. leader, scientific associations and scientific schools, in politics. associations and parties, including especially those that worked secretly, conspiratorially, underground, etc.). Ultimately, the elitism of knowledge, skills, values, norms, principles, and traditions that was formed in this way was the key to sophisticated professionalism and deep subject specialization, without which history would be impossible in culture. progress, progress value-semantic growth, contain. enrichment and accumulation of formal perfection - any value-semantic hierarchy. E.k. acts as an initiative and productive principle in any culture, performing mainly creative work. function in it; while mass culture stereotypes, routinizes, and profanes the achievements of E.K., adapting them to the perception and consumption of the sociocultural majority of the society. In turn, E.k. constantly ridicules or denounces mass culture, parodies it or grotesquely deforms it, presenting the world of mass society and its culture as scary and ugly, aggressive and cruel; in this context, the fate of representatives of E.K. depicted as tragic, disadvantaged, broken (romantic and post-romantic concepts of “genius and the crowd”; “creative madness”, or “sacred disease”, and ordinary “common sense”; inspired “intoxication”, including narcotic , and vulgar “sobriety”; “celebration of life” and boring everyday life). Theory and practice of E.k. blossoms especially productively and fruitfully at the “breakdown” of cultural eras, with the change of cultural and historical. paradigms, uniquely expressing the crisis conditions of culture, the unstable balance between “old” and “new”, the representatives of E.K. realized their mission in culture as “initiators of the new,” as ahead of their time, as creators not understood by their contemporaries (such, for example, were the majority of romantics and modernists - symbolists, cultural figures of the Avant-garde and professional revolutionaries who carried out the cultural revolution) . This also includes the “beginners” of large-scale traditions and the creators of the “grand style” paradigms (Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Gorky, Kafka, etc.). This view, although fair in many respects, was not, however, the only possible one. So, on Russian grounds. culture (where the public attitude towards E.K. was in most cases wary or even hostile, which did not even contribute to the attitude. distribution of E.K., compared to Western. Europe) concepts were born that interpret E.c. as a conservative departure from social reality and its pressing problems into the world of idealized aesthetics (“pure art”, or “art for art’s sake”), religion. and mythol. fantasies, socio-political. utopian, philosopher idealism, etc. (late Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, M. Antonovich, N. Mikhailovsky, V. Stasov, P. Tkachev and other radical democratic thinkers). In the same tradition, Pisarev and Plekhanov, as well as Ap. Grigoriev interpreted E.k. (including “art for art’s sake”) as a demonstrative form of social and political rejection. reality, as an expression of hidden, passive protest against it, as a refusal to participate in society. struggle of his time, seeing in this a characteristic history. symptom (deepening crisis), and pronounced inferiority of the E.K. itself. (lack of breadth and historical foresight, social weakness and powerlessness to influence the course of history and the life of the masses). Theorists E.K. - Plato and Augustine, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Vl. Soloviev and Leontiev, Berdyaev and A. Bely, Ortega y Gasset and Benjamin, Husserl and Heidegger, Mannheim and Ellul - variously varied the thesis about the hostility of democratization and the massification of culture and its qualities. level, its content and formal perfection, creative. search and intellectual, aesthetic, religious. and other novelty, about the stereotype and triviality that inevitably accompanies mass culture (ideas, images, theories, plots), lack of spirituality, and the infringement of creativity. personality and the suppression of its freedom in conditions of mass society and mechanics. replication of spiritual values, expansion of industrial production of culture. This tendency is to deepen the contradictions between E.K. and mass - increased unprecedentedly in the 20th century. and inspired many poignant and dramatic stories. collisions (cf., for example, the novels: “Ulysses” by Joyce, “In Search of Lost Time” by Proust, “Steppenwolf” and “The Glass Bead Game” by Hesse, “The Magic Mountain” and “Doctor Faustus” by T. Mann, “We ” Zamyatin, “The Life of Klim Samgin” by Gorky, “The Master and Margarita” by Bulgakov, “The Pit” and “Chevengur” by Platonov, “The Pyramid” by L. Leonov, etc.). At the same time, in the cultural history of the 20th century. There are many examples that clearly illustrate the paradoxical dialectics of E.K. and mass: their mutual transition and mutual transformation, mutual influence and self-negation of each of them. So, for example, creative. quest for various representatives of modern culture (symbolists and impressionists, expressionists and futurists, surrealists and dadaists, etc. ) - and artists, and theorists of movements, and philosophers, and publicists - were aimed at creating unique samples and entire systems of E.K. Many of the formal refinements were experimental; theory manifestos and declarations substantiated the right of the artist and thinker to be creative. incomprehensibility, separation from the masses, their tastes and needs, to the intrinsic existence of “culture for culture.” However, as the expanding field of activity of the modernists included everyday objects, everyday situations, forms of everyday thinking, structures of generally accepted behavior, current history. events, etc. (albeit with a “minus” sign, as a “minus technique”), modernism began - involuntarily, and then consciously - to appeal to the masses and mass consciousness. Shocking and mockery, grotesque and denunciation of the average person, slapstick and farce - these are the same legitimate genres, stylistic devices and expressions. media of mass culture, as well as playing on cliches and stereotypes of mass consciousness, posters and propaganda, farce and ditties, recitation and rhetoric. Stylization or parody of banality is almost indistinguishable from the stylized and parodied (with the exception of the ironic author's distance and the general semantic context, which remain almost elusive for mass perception); but the recognition and familiarity of vulgarity makes its criticism - highly intellectual, subtle, aestheticized - little understandable and effective for the majority of recipients (who are not able to distinguish ridicule of base taste from indulgence in it). As a result, one and the same work of culture acquires double life with different semantic content and opposite ideological pathos: on one side it turns out to be addressed to E.K., on the other - to mass culture. These are many works by Chekhov and Gorky, Mahler and Stravinsky, Modigliani and Picasso, L. Andreev and Verhaeren, Mayakovsky and Eluard, Meyerhold and Shostakovich, Yesenin and Kharms, Brecht and Fellini, Brodsky and Voinovich. E.c. contamination is especially controversial. and mass culture in postmodern culture; for example, in such an early phenomenon of Postmodernism as Pop Art, there is an elitization of mass culture and at the same time a massification of elitism, which gave rise to the modern classics. postmodernist W. Eco characterize pop art as “lowbrow highbrow”, or, conversely, as “highbrow lowbrow” (in English: Lowbrow Highbrow, or Highbrow Lowbrow). No fewer paradoxes arise when comprehending the genesis of totalitarian culture (see Totalitarian culture), which, by definition, is a mass culture and a culture of the masses. However, in its origin, totalitarian culture is rooted precisely in E.K.: for example, Nietzsche, Spengler, Weininger, Sombart, Jünger, K. Schmitt and other philosophers and socio-political. thinkers who anticipated and brought the Germans closer to real power. Nazism, definitely belonged to E.K. and were in a number of cases misunderstood and distorted by their practical. interpreters, primitivized, simplified to a rigid scheme and uncomplicated demagoguery. The situation is similar with communists. totalitarianism: the founders of Marxism - Marx and Engels, and Plekhanov, and Lenin himself, and Trotsky, and Bukharin - they were all, in their own way, “highbrow” intellectuals and represented a very narrow circle of radically minded intelligentsia. Moreover, the ideal. The atmosphere of social-democratic, socialist, and Marxist circles, then strictly conspiratorial party cells, was built in full accordance with the principles of E.K. (only extended to political and educational culture), and the principle of party membership implied not just selectivity, but also a rather strict selection of values, norms, principles, concepts, types of behavior, etc. Actually, the mechanism itself selection(on racial and national grounds or on class-political basis), which lies at the basis of totalitarianism as a socio-cultural system, was born by E.K., in its depths, by its representatives, and later only extrapolated to the mass society, in which everything considered expedient is reproduced and intensified, and everything dangerous for its self-preservation and development is prohibited and confiscated (including by means of violence). Thus, totalitarian culture initially arises from the atmosphere and style, from the norms and values ​​of an elite circle, is universalized as a kind of panacea, and then is forcibly imposed on society as a whole as an ideal model and is practically introduced into mass consciousness and society. activities by any, including non-cultural, means. In conditions of post-totalitarian development, as well as in the context of Western democracy, the phenomena of totalitarian culture (emblems and symbols, ideas and images, concepts and style of socialist realism), being presented in a culturally pluralistic way. context and distanced from modern times. reflection - purely intellectual or aesthetic - begin to function as exotic. E.c. components and are perceived by a generation familiar with totalitarianism only from photographs and anecdotes, “strangely,” grotesquely, associatively. The components of mass culture included in the context of E.K. act as elements of E.K.; while the components of E.K., inscribed in the context of mass culture, become components of mass culture. IN cultural paradigm postmodern components E.k. and mass culture are used equally as ambivalent game material, and the semantic boundary between mass and E.K. turns out to be fundamentally blurred or removed; in this case, the distinction between E.k. and mass culture practically loses its meaning (retaining for the potential recipient only the allusive meaning of the cultural-genetic context). Lit.: Mills R. The ruling elite. M., 1959; Ashin G.K. The myth of the elite and “mass society”. M., 1966; Davydov Yu.N. Art and the elite. M., 1966; Davidyuk G.P., B.C. Bobrovsky. Problems of “mass culture” and “mass communications”. Minsk, 1972; Snow Ch. Two cultures. M., 1973; “Mass culture” - illusions and reality. Sat. Art. M., 1975; Ashin G.K. Criticism of modern bourgeois leadership concepts. M., 1978; Kartseva E.N. Ideological and aesthetic foundations of bourgeois “mass culture”. M., 1976; Narta M. Theory of elites and politics. M., 1978; Raynov B. “Mass culture.” M., 1979; Shestakov V.P. “The art of trivialization”: certain problems of “mass culture” // VF. 1982. No. 10; Gershkovich Z.I. Paradoxes of “mass culture” and modern ideological struggle. M., 1983; Molchanov V.V. Mirages of mass culture. L., 1984; Mass species and art forms. M., 1985; Ashin G.K. Modern elite theories: critical. essay. M., 1985; Kukarkin A.V. Bourgeois mass culture. M., 1985; Smolskaya E.P. “Mass culture”: entertainment or politics? M., 1986; Shestakov V. Mythology of the XX century. M., 1988; Isupov K. G. Russian aesthetics of history. St. Petersburg, 1992; Dmitrieva N.K., Moiseeva A.P. Philosopher of the free spirit (Nikolai Berdyaev: life and creativity). M., 1993; Ovchinnikov V.F. Creative personality in the context of Russian culture. Kaliningrad, 1994; Phenomenology of art. M., 1996; Elite and mass in Russian artistic culture. Sat.st. M., 1996; Zimovets S. Silence of Gerasim: Psychoanalytic and philosophical essays on Russian culture. M., 1996; Afanasyev M.N. Ruling elites and statehood in post-totalitarian Russia (Lecture course). M.; Voronezh, 1996; Dobrenko E. Molding of the Soviet reader. Social and aesthetic. prerequisites for the reception of Soviet literature. St. Petersburg, 1997; Bellows R. Creative Leadership. Prentice-Hall, 1959; Packard V. The Status Seekers. N.Y., 1963; Weyl N. The Creative Elite in America. Wash., 1966; Spitz D. Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought. Glencoe, 1965; Jodi M. Teorie elity a problem elity. Praha, 1968; Parry G. Political Elite. L, 1969; RubinJ. Do It! N.Y., 1970; Prewitt K., Stone A. The Ruling Elites. Elite Theory, Power and American Democracy. N.Y., 1973; Gans H.G. Popular Culture and High Culture. N.Y., 1974; Swingwood A. The Myth of Mass Culture. L., 1977; Toffler A. The Third Wave. N.Y., 1981; Ridless R. Ideology and Art. Theories of Mass Culture from W. Benjamin to U. Eco. N.Y., 1984; Shiah M. Discourse on Popular Culture. Stanford, 1989; Theory, Culture and Society. L., 1990. I. V. Kondakov. Cultural studies of the twentieth century. Encyclopedia. M.1996