The Critics Of Mass Culture Theory

The development of the society expends the meaning of culture perpetually, Williams definitude index that to the conception of culture, the difficulty is we must expand it's meaning, until it almost equal to the normal life. Actually the expand of culture is not only to the normal life, it also break the limit of culture,economy and politics synchronously, culture increasingly have the color of economy and politics, the relation between culture and intermediary is increasingly tightness, so we have four dimensions to analyze culture, that is culture,economy,politics and intermediary.The investigator explain mass culture from different dimension, because of the infiltrate of the dimensions, the understanding from one dimension must have localizations, plus the different position that investigator choose, the understanding of mass culture are more contradictive. How to answer the question of the reason that makes the contradictive viewpoints and understand the mass culture phenomenon, accordingly comprehend the society and human of the time in-depth, are the main missions of mass culture's studies. After reviewing the mass culture theories of investigators both at home and abroad, I discussed the depth rootstock of the contradictive viewpoints, and analyzed real-life issue from the visual angle of the depth rootstock. Finally, on the basis of the analysis of theories and the real-life, I point out reasonable concept of mass culture.One, discover the paradoxical understanding in the mass culture theories of investigators both at home and abroad.There are two contradictive viewpoints concerning culture dimension of the mass culture study, one praises the significance of mass culture in the affirmation of human's temporal needs, the other criticizes the emphasize of temporal needs and the fulfill of desires decreased spirit of humanity and it's non- civilization.There are two contradictive viewpoints concerning the economic dimension of the mass culture study, one considers the commercialization of culture makes the culture secularization and simplify; the other considers the commercialization of culture dose not make the culture secularization and makes it richness.The analysis of the political dimension of mass culture contains two levels, one level is the function at the local political square; the other level is the function at the international political square. At the local political square, there are two contradictive viewpoints, one considers the mass culture as the tool of political dominion; the other considers it as the tool of political revolt.At the international political square, there are two contradictive viewpoints, one considers the mass culture as the ideological invasion of West especially of America, formed cultural colonialism to other nations; the other considers the mass culture can't deviate from the nation's Contextual, so there is no cultural colonialism, culture is communicate and use for reference one anther, nation's culture is independent.There are two contradictive viewpoints concerning intermediary dimension, one emphasizes human control of intermediary, the other emphasizes the intermediary control of human.Two, point out the depth rootstock of the paradox understanding.From the cultural dimension of mass culture, the dichotomy of mass and elite per se contains problem, the reason of the paradoxical viewpoints is the different understanding of culture, praiseful viewpoint is based on the practicality point of view in cultural understanding, but critical viewpoint is based on the transcendence point of view in cultural understanding. Humanity is the unification of practicality and transcendence, for the exactly understand of mass culture, we should transcend the dichotomy from the point of humanity view. We must keep the view that practicality and transcendence are all growing from the groundwork of human.From the economical dimension of mass culture, the reason of the paradoxical viewpoints is the different understanding of humanity, the viewpoint of considers the commercialization of culture makes the culture secularization and simplify is magnify the human practicality and intercommunity, the viewpoint of considers the commercialization of culture dose not make the culture secularization and makes it richness is magnify the human transcendence and heterogeneity. The two viewpoints are all ignored the society influence to culture and magnified the influence of the commercialization of culture, as a matter of point, the commercialization of culture is aroused by the development of society, society is the depth reason of culture.Synchronously, the two viewpoints are all ignored the cultural attribute in merchandise. the commercialization of culture and the aggrandizement of cultural attribute in merchandise are presence in the same time, culture and merchandise pervasion one anther. The analysis of mass culture should add the analysis of cultural attribute in merchandise.From the political dimension of mass culture, the reason of the paradoxical viewpoints of the function at the local political square is the different understanding of the relation between human and culture. If one puts emphases on passivity of human in the culture, he would consider the mass culture as the tool of political dominion and the tool that can wear down criticism of people. If one puts emphases on activeness of human in the culture, he would consider the mass culture as the tool of political revolt and democratic. Human is the unification of activeness and passivity in culture, so the understanding from one point of view is unilateral, human and culture are mutually constructed, mass culture is both dominion and revolt tool, it's the field of political conflict. The reason of the paradoxical viewpoints is also the wrong understanding of the relation between culture and society, no matter which class produced culture, culture cannot reflect the benefit of one class, it can but the result of the compromise of class benefits, it's the reflect of real society. The reason of the paradoxical viewpoints of the function at the international political square is the different understanding of the relation between culture and society. If one puts emphases on culture's independency to society, he would consider the mass culture as cultural colonialism. If one puts emphases on culture's restriction by society, he would consider the mass culture as nation's independent culture. The correct way to understand international culture communion is based on the dialectic understanding of the relation between culture and society. On one hand, culture have the active function to society, the external culture can affect the internal culture; on the other hand, culture can not affect the society deviate from the society environment, culture spread to other country must have certain limit, or alter itself in order to melt into other country's culture.From the intermediate dimension of mass culture, the reason of the paradoxical viewpoints is the different understanding of the relation between human and technique. If one puts emphases on the control of intermediate technique, he would consider the intermediate technique induced alienation. If one puts emphases on the activeness of acceptors, he would consider that human use intermediate technique for human benefits. The correct way to understand mass culture in intermediate dimension, we must keep the unification of intermediate technique alienation and acceptor's activeness in mind.Three, analyze the real-life issues.The depth rootstock of paradox in mass culture is the paradox of humanity and culture, while the two parts of paradox are dialectic unification, there is no good to the right understanding of real-life issues if each sticks to his argument. In this article, I analyzed and"super girl"from the point view of the dialectic unification of the paradox in mass culture.Four, limit reasonable concept of mass culture.Above all analysis, the study of mass culture theory needs to notice several problems as list hereinafter, one is the understanding of the multi-dimension's infiltrative in mass culture; two is the understanding of the dialectical in mass culture; three is the understanding of culture commonness in mass culture. Only on the basis of the right understanding of those problems, can we shape the reasonable concept of mass culture.From analysis of multi-dimension's infiltrative of mass culture, we found that the multi-dimension of mass culture is infiltrate with each other. For the need of research, we can study mass culture from one dimension, but we can't be limited mass culture by one dimension, because if we do so, it would form many concepts of mass culture and make confusion in the theory research.From analysis of the dialectical in mass culture, we found that the two parts of the paradox are dialectical unification, the two parts of the paradox are opposed,depended each other,the two parts can't divided. So, the concept of mass culture can't be limited by one part of the paradox.From analysis of the culture commonness in mass culture, we found that the paradox of mass culture is truly the paradox of all culture, only some paradox are extrude, so there is no particular in mass culture, it's culture of particular history and technical conditions.After the synthesis of above analysis, it no difficult to found the unilateral defection of the concepts I list in the beginning of the article, the defection of the concepts is the paradox understanding of mass culture. Mass culture is unification of multi-dimension and dialectic, no matter which dimension we choose to divide, there is no criterion may completely detach mass culture from other culture. The multi-dimension's infiltrative and dialectical unification of mass culture make any contempt to divide one part culture from entire culture must fail. If we must name mass culture with concept, it is impossible to name it by one type of culture, it only can be the culture form adapt with modern society's economy,political,technical environment,it's an entire culture.