Essay on Popular Cultures Subserviance to High Culture

Popular Cultures Subserviance to High Culture For about a century, Western Culture has really been divided into two cultures, the traditional type of high culture and a mass culture manufactured wholesale for the market. High culture is the arts that require some form of intellect to comprehend, so therefore can only reach a tiny segment of the population, whilst levelling accusations of elitism. High culture includes ballet; the forms of operas, operettas and symphonies; types of film; certain novels; theatre and plays. Mass or popular culture is derived from high culture, so for every item in high culture, there is a corresponding item of lesser importance in popular culture. Forms of popular culture include television,†¦show more content†¦Mass culture is imposed from above, as Karl Marx recognised, onto the passive susceptibility of the ignorant masses, to which decisions lie between consumption or no consumption. It is therefore, the Lords of kitsch that are the sole beneficiaries; mass culture integrates the masse s in a form of debased high culture. This lack of control proves the power of the mass culture businessman, shown when during the 1929 depression, when capitalism was in chaos, focus was turned from the idols of production to the idols of consumption such as Hollywood movie stars, creating a dreamlikeworld, a marketing heaven, for the masses to aspire to. Mass culture can therefore never be worthwhile. Commodities are imposed upon the masses, taking away freedom of choice and individuality. Instead of being related to one another as members of a community, the relation is formed with a system of industrial production, something abstract and untouchable. The great culture-bearing elites have communities with members having an individual role and sharing similar interests. In contrast, mass society sinks to the lowest level, to that of its most primitive members, its taste complies with that of the least sensitive and most ignorant member. Members accept any idiocy if it is wholly ag reed as knowledge in the capitalist superstructure. Homogenized mass culture is so rigidly democratic, refusing distinction or discrimination that it succeeds in destroying