American Popular Culture’s Promoting Role To Its Urbanization In The First Half Of The20^th Century

Early in the1980s, domestic academia has begun to turn their attention to the research on popular culture. But on the whole, domestic research on popular culture is still at a beginning stage because of various factors, and the theoretical basis, research methodology and objectives on popular culture are still under exploration. From the existing research results, although there are numerous excellent, innovative works, they are only a tip of the iceberg. Because popular culture has a vast range which covers many subsidiaries. Besides, the research directions taken by some scholars are relatively narrow on account of fussy understanding of the essence of popular culture. At the same time, some scholars just follow their predecessors slavishly, and focus more on the popular culture itself, but rarely combined it with the corresponding historical background.The author finds that in the special period---the first half of the20th century, the development of American popular culture is intertwined with the development of urbanization. Meanwhile, domestic scholars rarely did research on American urbanization in this period, but put an emphasis on the overall process of urbanization, and seldom had scholars studied the promoting factors to the development of urbanization. Even if a few researchesin the combination of American popular culture and its urbanization had done, but only listed the two processes parallelly on the surface and failed to point out the relations clearly. So the author does a combining research on American popular culture and its urbanization under a specific time period---the first half of the20th century, which aims to analyze the promoting function of popular culture to its urbanization.Therefore, the author tries to draw lessons from the predecessors’research results and hopes for a breakthrough. On the one hand, the author defines American popular culture, criticizes Frankfurt school rationally, highlights its internal essence and main forms; On the other hand, the author tries to define urbanization from various angles, discusses the dominant factors of urbanization, and shows the process of American urbanization from different angles; Then she highlights the major forms of American popular culture and its promoting role to the urbanization in three aspects under a specific time period---the first half of the20th century. The author hopes that people can have a more objective understanding towards the essence of American popular culture through the analysis of the author, and get a whole picture of urbanization as well as the contribution made by the popular culture to the same period urbanization in the first half of the20th century.