Multi-dimensional View Of Popular Culture In Chinese

Popular culture is a kind of cultural phenomenon that was produced and developed within reform and open, market economy. It coexists with mainstream culture and elite culture in China. Popular culture affects development of China’s socialist society and daily life of Chinese. It has become an indispensable part of the people’s livelihood. This new culture shows its positive value; meanwhile, it also brings some negative influences. Thus, we have to confront and resolve theoretical and practical problems related to popular culture, such as how we understand its meanings and characteristics; how to research history and generation; how to evaluate the current situation and promote the healthy development.This paper starts from Marxist standpoint, applying the method of theory with practice, on the basis of a large number of related literatures. First of all, it describes meanings and characteristics of popular culture. It begins with the relationship between ’culture’ and ’popular culture’, distinguishes those two concepts and analyzes the main characteristics of popular culture. Secondly, it examines popular culture in China from a historical dimension, three stages are used to analyse the development of popular culture. Those stages consist of before the founding of People’s Republic of China,30years of founding and after founding. Finally, it summarizes the reasons of development and prosperity of popular culture in China.Theory analysis and history evidences show that the generation and development of popular culture is reasonable. Popular culture is beneficial for spiritual liberation of Chinese and realization of humanistic care. In addition, it can promote construction of political democracy and consolidation of cultural industry. However, popular culture comes along with negative influence at the same time. The paper analyses both positive and negative influences objectively and rationally. It provides proper understanding of the trend of popular culture in China, which will enforce the standard guidance of popular culture. As a result, we are required to consider the development of popular culture with appropriate attitude and method. It is necessary to emphases that popular culture has to be guided by core value system and development of harmonious culture. Moral rational principle, humanistic spirit principle, the principle of aesthetic consciousness should be pursed, while social benefit and economic benefit should follow the principle of’win-win’. Those core values will enable mass culture to develop harmoniously.