Form And Logic

This thesis, in the hope of providing some theoretical help for the further research on the relationship between aesthetics and media culture, is making an attempt to analyze the reasons why there, in the study of media culture aesthetics, exist some different opinions concerning the relationship. The author of this thesis holds that there are two different inner thought paths in the media culture aesthetics study, logic of merchandise and logic of symbol, which are exactly the deep reasons leading to opinion distinctions concerning aesthetic standards in the study of media culture.The thesis is divided into two parts, the preface and the body. There are 4 chapters in the body part.The preface mostly deals with the general objects involved in the study of media culture aesthetics and points out the prime task in the study is to define the relationship between aesthetics and media culture. The relationship has been touched to different degrees in some previous research of media culture aesthetics, from which distinctive theoretical opinions have arisen with regard to the relationship. And the distinction of the opinions has become the question in the course of media culture aesthetics study, which is also the basic object studied and analyzed in this thesis. At the end of the preface, the general structure of the thesis is outlined.Chapter one focuses on the three research forms of media culture aesthetics: the modern aesthetic criticism on media culture by Adorno, the general aesthetic analysis of media culture by Fiske, and the postmodern aesthetic thinking on media culture by Baudrillard. By explicating the specific content of the three research forms, the author points out that they come up with their different answers and thus form distinctive opinions on the relationship of aesthetic art activity and media culture. The exact differences between the opinions can be seen in the following two aspects. The first one is their different judgment about the nature of mass media and its ideology: the three forms change from media merchandise to media text to media code technology, and from false ideology to neutral ideology to the end of ideology code. The second one is the aesthetic standards of media culture: the three forms change from modern aesthetic standards to the popular aesthetic standards of"pleasure"and then to the disappearance of aesthetic standards. In the meanwhile, it can be seen that the first one, in the three forms, somehow leads to the second one naturally.Chapter two analyzes the inner logic lying in the three forms when ideology is treated so as to probe into the real theoretical reason resulting in the judgment differences on the nature of ideology. Based on the respective definitions of ideology by the three forms, the analysis of this chapter is done by introducing the main theoretical source of the three forms and the result is that there exists two different inner logics, respectively merchandise logic and symbol logic. Furthermore, the criticism of media ideology by Adorno is dominated by the logic of merchandise, which mostly focuses on the relationship between the use value and the exchange value of the merchandise. On the other hand, the analysis by Fiske and Baudrillard on media ideology is dominated by the logic and symbol, which treats as its core the relationship between the signifier and the signified of language symbols. And in addition, the distinction between these two logics essentially leads to the judgment difference on the nature of media ideology by Adorno, Fiske and Baudrillard.Chapter three is mainly about the relationship between two logics and the opinion difference in the three forms concerning aesthetic standards and thus it is confirmed that the difference or division lying in the three forms arises from the relationship between aesthetics and media culture. And the reason causing the difference is rooted in the difference between the logic of merchandise and that of symbol. And through detailed analysis, it is found out that, in the three forms, the ideological nature of aesthetics is respectively revealed by utilizing the two logics. However, Adorno, by the logic of merchandise, proves there is some possibility that modern art aesthetics, as ideology, may serve an anti-ideology function, and therefore the standards of modern aesthetics are established. In contrast, with logic of symbol, Fiske thoroughly passes on this possibility to the meaning"pleasure"generated by the resistance of symbols, and here the aesthetic standards of media culture changes in the direction of popular aesthetics. Besides, Baudrillard, by using the logic of symbol to hide/replace the logic of merchandise, thinks that, with the total symbolization of the post-modern society, both ideology and art have become the"figure"models, which results in the disappearance of aesthetic standards since there doesn't exist ideology in a"figure"society.Chapter Four discusses the defects that exist when Adorno, Fiske and Baudrillard decide the nature of media ideology and set aesthetic standards of media culture, and the defects, in the author's opinion, are basically caused by the division of merchandise logic and symbol logic. Then at the end of the thesis, the concept"mechanism"is presented and the combination of merchandise logic and symbol logic is suggested as a possibility.