Mass Culture: A response to a student

Student's question: I had wondered in recent weeks about a good working definition of mass culture. My internal assumptions, which of course could be faulty, are that (a) mass culture as is a product of the industrial, market-driven age -- i.e. that there is a recprocal relationship with the marketplace (in its abstract defition) and culture and (b) that mass culture is some kind of social remix of the low/popular, and high/authoritative cultures that, as we have seen, were divided out when certain societal hierarchies were formed. But, perhaps we can think of it as (high-culture) power's appropriation and transformation of low culture forms, which it "tames" or censors in some manner, and then reimposes it back onto the less powerful classes. So, I suppose related questions I have are: is modern mass culture a stripped-down carnival culture--non-threatening to power-- in a box? If so or even if not, who are the 'masters' of the culture and who are the 'slaves' to it, or is this even an appropriate way of thinking about it, when everyone is a consumer, even the 'masters'

Mass culture from my perspective and based on the readings that I have done in this area tends to be tied to the growth of industrial society and now is a key component of advanced industrial society. Mass culture is born of mass production which begets mass consumption.

Therefore, mass culture is not merely an autonomous cultural manifestation but is the product of certain economic modes of production that necessitate that a mass of people consume the commodities in production, otherwise you have overproduction and a crisis sets in leading to a recession, unless new markets for consumption are found. Therefore, historically there is movement by capitalist industry to devalue the protestant ethic in the sphere of consumption only, not in the sphere of production. There is movement, espeically through marketing and advertising to get people to consume the commodities for sale, the linkage of democracy and happiness and equality through the consumption of the commodities become omnipresent, so the market becomes the beacon of freedom, equality, individuality, etc.

This is of course incorrect, for several reasons, (1) consuming requires you have money and therefore a job, we all know how "free" we are to work and how work is in our best "interest", (2) equality of consumption is impossible since income inequailty is produced through the sphere of consumption, therefore as long as the sphere of production is unequal in pay then then "the democratic equality of the image" of commodities will be false, (3) mass produced goods cannot provide you individuality, it is its antithesis.

Additionally, not only does capitalist industry seek to change the culture of society towards their interests there is now the production of mass culture - where art, literature, music, film, etc. is mass produced for the masses, so cultural production is now tied into the profit motive and its form and content are altered by the economic requirements of large scale corporations to meet their needs, while also appearing to meet the desires of the populace. (We can talk about the manipulation thesis of the consumer later).

Indeed, mass culture does tend to be a merging of lower and higher cultural into this odd manifestation for sale to all. The barier between high culture and high art and the rest of the people tends to be reduced in mass consumer culture - for high art becomes subject to similar economic demands as almost any other piece of art does.

Mass culture does tend to remove the oppositional or critical content from popular/working class culture. This is very evident in the birth of rock and roll, punk, etc. all lower class/working class and in rock's case, black culture, same thing happened with rap, it is lifted out of its lower environment, its scene, shorn of its true meaning and essence and converted into aesthetics of image and clothing styles, into fashion. same thing has happend in teh last 5 years in the underground hardcore/metal scene which i frequent, fashion and image are so dominant now, its community mindedness and oppositional content, what little there was, is now fading.

We must also determine how oppositional are these culture's? on what level? culture, economic, political, etc. Sub-culture's tend to be easily mass-marketed, oppositional economic/ecological agenda's are less easily adopted into capital's demand for valorization - maximization of profit. [a good book on how capital has been able to incorporate all oppositional elements into its continued and strengthened existence and the brith of one-dimensional society and throught is Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. He was part of the Frankfurt School in Germany in the 40-60s. They attempted to bring Marx up-to-date and even combined him with Freud and focused on capital and culture primarily.]

In terms of who controls what, that is an interesting question with many different answers depending on who you ask and what academic department they work in and what lens they see the world through. Sub-culture's manifest their own content but it tends to get modified through its massification by captialist industry and I would argue that there is a continual battle for control over meaning production and consumption.

If you are interested in the concept of culture from a cultural studies perspective than the work of the Cultural study pioneer's in the 1960s in Britian check out E.P Thompson, Stuart Hall, they saw culture as a way of life lived by people, as a struggle over meaning between a subordinate and superior culture (based on a power dynamic, not on aesthetic taste). Their work focused on working class culture and the affects of mass culture on it.

In addition to Herbert Marcuse in the Frankfurt school you have Theordor Adorno who has book intitled "The Culture Industry" its on mass culture and the commmodification of culture for the masses. From a different perspective, that of cultural studies you have Dick Hebdige's classic "Subculture" and Friske "Reading Popular Culture", they champion the person's ability to subvert industry while the frankfurt school saw capital as a totality that allowed for little subversion or resistance.