Popular Culture And Postmodernism Way Of Thinking

Studies on popular culture are one of the heated issues in the modern research. To date, considerable research has remarkably been done in this field home and abroad in terms of the background, social foundation, aesthetic features and realistic social functions of popular culture, but little contribution has been due to the internal relationships between popular culture and post-modernist philosophy. It is argued that post-modernist philosophy is the philosophical foundation of modern popular culture. Philosophy is the center of culture while culture is the carrier and symbol of philosophy. Therefore, the investigation into the internal relationship between post-modernist philosophy and popular culture will be of great help to further understand and analyze the innermost nature, intrinsic characteristics and fatal shortcomings of popular culture, and it is significant for the further studies on popular culture and the construction of popular culture.Since the twentieth century, there has been great change in the cultural pattern, which is most characterized by popular culture's becoming the main cultural shape of the present society through stepping in the front stage from the border. This change is related to the transformation of social and historical conditions, but in the theoretical sense, it is due to the philosophical transformation of the cultural center. The emergence of post-modernist philosophy not only results in the change in the subjects culture is concerned with, the legal standard of culture, the means of producing culture, cultural values and the aesthetic values, but also the establishment of a set of interpretative system, which can provide the standard for popular culture. In view of the complexity of post-modernist philosophy itself, this study, on the basis of the thinking pattern of post-modernist philosophy, attempts to prove that post-modernist philosophy is the philosophical foundation of popular culture in terms of epistemology, values, methodology, and aesthetics.This study begins with the brief introduction of the definition, characteristics of popular culture, and its inevitability from the border tothe center. Taking the thinking pattern of post-modernist philosophy as background, the study discusses the nature and characteristics of the thinking pattern of post-modernist philosophy. Then based on the thinking pattern of post-modernist philosophy, it gives support to the view that post-modernist philosophy is the philosophical foundation of popular culture. Finally, with respect to the fatal shortcoming of popular culture, that is, lack of humanistic value, the dual impact of the thinking pattern of post modernist philosophy on popular culture is analyzed and it is put forward that one of crucial factors to promote popular culture is correct understanding and application of the spirit of post-modernist philosophy.