Research On Guidance For The Values Of Contemporary Chinese Popular Culture

Popular culture refers to a cultural form with the largest audience participation and the hugest amount of influence.In contemporary China,popular culture has been popular with people in a more prosperous way,which has vigorously enriched the cultural markets,promoted the development of cultural industries,and met people’s spiritual needs.However,its unsuccessful integration with ideology,art and values leads to such bad tendencies as the confusion of values,the misunderstanding of the morals,the impetuous audience participation,the maximum pursuits of entertainment,and the sole strategy to improve the share of market,etc.It is extremely challenging to provide guidance for the values of popular culture.Guidance for the values of contemporary Chinese popular culture aims to lead,regulate and integrate the popular culture by using the advanced cultural values and the core socialist values that are generally acknowledged for their human contemporaneous-ness and contemporary humanity,for the purposes of resisting the immoral values,promoting the development of popular culture in the direction of advanced culture,molding and improving people in the process of pleasing people and meeting the people’s needs,integrating the people’s self-values and social values,and promoting the free and all-round development of people.Therefore,this dissertation centers on the guidance for the values of contemporary Chinese popular culture with the perspective of the formation and realization of values.Such topics as the connotations and features,the ideal values and the development of contemporary Chinese popular culture will be covered to explore its value orientation and related reasons.More specifically,under the guidance of socialist core values and contemporary human morals of the true,the good and the beautiful,efforts will be done to conduct an analysis of the subject,principle,mechanism and path of Chinese contemporary popular culture in the new ear for the sake of promoting a positive and healthy upward development of people as well as Chinese contemporary popular culture.This dissertation consists of eight parts.The introduction summarizes the status quo of the researches home and abroad about the popular culture and its value guidance,and illustrates the research objects,aims and its significance.Chapter One illustrates the connotations,features,and value-oriented aims of popular culture in the context of contemporary China,and analyzes the necessity and significance of guiding the values of contemporary Chinese popular culture.This chapter defines the concepts of culture,popular culture,value,values,value orientation,value of popular culture,values of popular culture and valueguidance of popular culture.It expounds the ideal goal of Chinese popular cultural value orientation on truth,goodness and beauty,emphasizes its socialist feature,affinity for people,and cultural property.Therefore,greater efforts should be made under the guidance of socialist core values and contemporary human morals of the true,the good and the beautiful.Chapter Two introduces the theoretical bases and their reference guidance for this dissertation,in which the detailed explanation focuses on the cultural theories based on Marxism,and Marxism with Chinese characteristics.In Marxism,dialectical materialist cultural theory,starting with a description of the living modes of human beings,emphasizes that the essence of culture is practice-based dialectical unifications of the objectification of the subject and the object subjectivism,and of humans’ regularity and teleology.Lenin holds in his thoughts on the proletariat culture and cultural revolution that popular culture is a unity of socialism,people and Party spirit.The proletariat culture is an advanced culture and provides guidance for the values of literature woks and human beings.In the cultural practice,the proletariat Party and intellectuals play important roles of value guides.After the founding of the proletariat powers,Lenin upholds the culturalism in which he thinks that learning from all cultures,including the capitalist culture,improves the cultural qualities of the workers and farmers.The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and the Marxist upholds the critique theory of mass culture,emphasizing the guidance for the values in the critiques of mass culture.The Birmingham School pays less attention to value guidance,but it pays close attention to the daily life patterns and aesthetic tastes of the common people of the lower classes,and it also emphasizes that the mass create culture on their own initiative and abilities.The dominant ideology proposed by Antonio Gramsci provides reference for the Communist Party of China and intellectuals who are leading the contemporary Chinese popular culture.The postmodernity concerned with mass culture can be divided into two groups: one emphasizes the mass’ initiative and creativeness,with John Fiske as a representative;the other emphasizes the negativity of mass culture,with Daniel Bell and Fredric Jameson as two representatives.In Marxism with Chinese characteristics represented by Mao Zedong,Deng Xiaoping,Jiang Zemin,Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping,the Marxist cultural theories have been inherited and developed into the principle that the popular culture is national and scientific.The Marxism with Chinese characteristics reflects the different features and realities in different times in China.Chapter Three focuses on causes for the rising and development of Chinese popular culture,in which efforts have been put into making detailed analyses of such causes as the context of globalization,the transformation of ideology since the reform and opening-up started in 1978,the cultural reforms,the development of productivity and media technology,and the establishment of socialist market economy.Strictly speaking,the contemporary Chinese popular culture has risen after the beginning of the reform and opening-up in 1970 s.The growth of the contemporary Chinese popular culture can be divided into five stages: the introduction and imitation of the popular culture overseas(from the end of 1970 s to the middle of 1980s),the beginning of the localized popular culture(from the middle of 1980 s to the beginning of 1990s),the expanding of popular culture(from 1992 to 2002),the industrialization of popular culture(from 2002 to 2012)and the development of mass cultural construction in the new era(after2012).The whole process features several prominences: the pushing force produced by the capital,demassification and individuation,differentiation and diversification,and the inefficiency in its public values.The discussion about the rising and development of the contemporary Chinese popular culture is of necessity in that the popular culture plays active roles in the industrialization of cultural industry,enrich the spiritual life of people,enhance the governance of the country,improve the cultural soft power and maintain the cultural security of the country.Analyses of the active determining factors prove that the rising and development of popular culture is in line with the inevitability of history of contemporary China.Chapter Four discusses the value-oriented problems concerned with the contemporary Chinese popular culture,detailing the problems in the mass cultural products,the production of popular culture,the spreading of popular culture,and the consumption of popular culture.Such problems as irrational selfdestruction,deviation from political values,lack of independent thinking,the weakening of moral rationality and aesthetic rationality,the breakages of the bottom line of the value of truth,goodness and beauty,the strengthening of the utilitarian value,and the phenomenon of abused entertainment,are in need of immediate attention because they are contrary to the nature of popular culture,that is to emphasis people’s essential strength,to educate people and to promote the self-fulfillment of human beings.In Chapter Five,modern factors contributing to the independent development of human beings have been analyzed in several aspects.In the aspect of cultural globalization,diverse cultures and the Western cultural hegemony in the context of old world cultural orders influence the construction of people’s spiritual home and the popular culture in China.In the aspect of cultural productivity,some conceptual misunderstandings have been discussed,for example,placing emphasis on creating the economic values but neglecting to shoulder the social responsibility for the public;a short supply of cultural products due to the poor creativity;and such unacceptable behaviors of the intellects working in the cultural industry as catering to the mass and copying the life,etc.In the aspect of guiding the construction of the popular culture,some imperfect mechanisms exist because there lack the internal self-discipline mechanisms,the external mandatory constraints,and the guiding mechanisms.Such imperfects are the contributing factors to the value-oriented problems related to the contemporary popular culture.Chapter Six discourses about the guiding subjects,direction and principles for guiding Chinese popular culture in a new era.Specifically,the Communist Party of China,Chinese government and Chinese intellects are the guiding subjects.The guiding direction is that of socialist advanced culture.The guiding principles include the basic principle of Marxism,the principle of socialist core values,the principle of guaranteeing the cultural rights and interests of people,the principle of administrating media by the Party,the principle of putting the social benefit at the first place and unifying the social benefit and the economic benefit,and the principle of showing respect to the difference and diversity for a mutual learning between civilizations.Chapter Seven discusses the production and realization of values of popular culture from an angle of methodology,emphasizing such realization mechanisms as cultural identity,moral self-discipline,system regulations,the guidance of public opinions,and the guidance of critiques.The problems concerned with culture is indeed the problem related to human beings.The realization paths have been discussed in order to provide guidance for the values of the popular culture in the new era.The discussion has been made from four groups who are involved in the popular culture: the producers,the spreaders,the consumers,and the managers of the popular culture.The producers should entrench themselves in the real life and provide people with the best cultural products.The spreaders should raise their awareness of subject and actively fulfill their responsibilities for the public culture.The consumers should improve their own qualities both in morality and aesthetics,and cultivate a healthy consumption mentality to enjoy cultural products.The management authorities should strengthen the administration for a harmonious development of the cultural cause and the cultural industry.In conclusion,strengthening the construction of guiding mechanisms and realization paths for the values of popular culture will hopefully promote a health development of the Chinese popular culture in the new ear,and a steady progress of human beings and human society.This dissertation centers on the guidance for the values of contemporary Chinese mass culture with the perspective of the formation and realization of values.The study is only a preliminary attempt.Among them,there is no shortage of shallow and insufficient views and arguments."My life also has an end,and knowledge has no end." This issue needs unremitting thinking and research.