Sky
29th December 2007, 22:15
Under state-monopoly capitalism the mass media makes culture a branch of the economy, transforming it into mass culture. The system of mass communication makes it possible for mass culture to reach the overwhelming majority of the members of society. Through the unifying influence of fashion it directs and subjugates all aspects of human existence, from the style of dwelling and clothing to the type of hobby and from the choice of ideological orientation to the forms and rites of intimate relations. Mass culture aspires to cultural colonizationthat is, to enveloping and subjugating the culture of the whole world.
The products of mass culture have a number of specific features, including a primitive characterization of human relations and a tendency to reduce social and class conflicts to entertaining clashes between good and bad people whose goal is to achieve personal happiness at any cost. Almost without exception there is a happy ending. Comic stripes, popular books and magazines, and commercial motion pictures are pervaded by escapism, sheer amusement, sentimentality, and a naturalistic delight in sex and violence. The unconscious and the instinct are emphasizedpossessiveness, the sense of property, national and racial prejudices, the cult of success, the cult of the strong personality, and at the same time, the cult of mediocrity. Conventionality is important in mass culture, as is primitive symbolism (the bad guys black costume in the Western, Supermans square jaw in the comic strips, and the fairy-tale qualities of James Bond.) Superficial details that separate ours from theirs (for example, clothing, setting, house, neighborhood, make of car) are extremely important. Although these and other features have been inherent in bourgeois culture since the beginning of the general crisis of capitalism, their concentration in the mass output of cultural commodities has given rise to new cultural characteristics that make it possible to apply the concept of mass culture only to recent years.
Progressive democratic forces in capitalist countries have made the struggle against mass culture, an openly antidemocratic movement, one of their important theoretical and practical rasks.
The products of mass culture have a number of specific features, including a primitive characterization of human relations and a tendency to reduce social and class conflicts to entertaining clashes between good and bad people whose goal is to achieve personal happiness at any cost. Almost without exception there is a happy ending. Comic stripes, popular books and magazines, and commercial motion pictures are pervaded by escapism, sheer amusement, sentimentality, and a naturalistic delight in sex and violence. The unconscious and the instinct are emphasizedpossessiveness, the sense of property, national and racial prejudices, the cult of success, the cult of the strong personality, and at the same time, the cult of mediocrity. Conventionality is important in mass culture, as is primitive symbolism (the bad guys black costume in the Western, Supermans square jaw in the comic strips, and the fairy-tale qualities of James Bond.) Superficial details that separate ours from theirs (for example, clothing, setting, house, neighborhood, make of car) are extremely important. Although these and other features have been inherent in bourgeois culture since the beginning of the general crisis of capitalism, their concentration in the mass output of cultural commodities has given rise to new cultural characteristics that make it possible to apply the concept of mass culture only to recent years.
Progressive democratic forces in capitalist countries have made the struggle against mass culture, an openly antidemocratic movement, one of their important theoretical and practical rasks.