Realistic Perspective On The Value Orientation Of Contemporary Popular Culture

The world has been in a new century. At the last twenty years of the past century, China got through an exciting historical period. Among that, the change of the cultural form was so great that it would have stared the whole century. In the life-and-death contest among different cultural powers, the rising of the Mass Culture is benefited by the reform-open policy. In that time, the Mass Culture undertook the sacred historic mission: the mass shared the cultural right.Mass Culture is an imported term, which, as a cultural phenomenon, has developed for hundreds years in the west. The present Chinese Mas~ Culture issimilar in many aspects to the popular cultural forms in its history, for example, the Late Ming Townsfolk Culture, but their differences are obvious. Apart from the different political-economic surrounding, the divergences of the cultural receiver, the transmission medium and the pattern of production result in their distinction in essence. In a word, the present Mass Culture is a new commercial one with more extensive participation, which depends on the modern medium science development.In order to hold the main spirit of Mass Culture, we must have a deep, secret and sincere investigation on the value system inside. The value conception of the Chinese Mass Culture has a strong flavor of the Chinese social transformation.There are three kinds of value choice emerging in the typical text ofMass Culture.The value conception of the townsfolk stratum. The economic status of the townsfolk determines their vacillation and the inclination of the materialism on the3value conception. At first, they not only hate the ideal of social status but also support it; secondly, the townsfolk stratum worships to the materialism value conception, which limits the improvement of the national quality and harms the healthful development Of the Mass Culture.The value choice of the middle class. The middle class is a new group emerging in the fission of the Chinese social construction. They present the successor in the social reformation. In vary field, Mass Culture shows the middle class value choice. The middle class, with the white-collar office worker as the representation figure, goes after the fine and tender-heartedness life style, which always brags about the elegance but vulgarizes it in fact.The traditional value choice of the agricultural civilization. On the politic valuechoice, the receiver of the Mass Culture is infatuated with the honest-officialgood-emperor model, according to this model, the country running under some good man but not under the law. On the moral value choice, they cherish the memory of the traditional moral idea just as the personal loyalty, the familism, and the sacrifice.Above are some aspects of the Mass Culture value conception. In the conflict between the old and new value idea, there are two powers influencing the Mass Culture value choice: Mainstream Culture and the Elite Culture. Since the media affiliating to the government, it is very convenient for the stream culture to affect the Mass Culture; Meanwhile, the el.ite intellectual finds the great enlighten potentiality of the Mass Culture and frequently intervenes it, in order to have some changes imperceptibly on the value conception of the Mass Culture.Once, in the wise抯 view, the development of the Mass Culture was worriable. Due to the whole concentration on the commercial profit, it had become vulgar4and material. Facing to its swift involvement, both evasion and rejection are immature. At the active age, it is the only efficient road for the elite holding on the critical stand and the independent spirit who want to improve the Mass Culture to participate in the common discourse circle.