Research On Popular Culture And Its Relationship With Human Development

Human development and liberation is the value goal and theoretical purpose of Marxism.In the view of Marx and Engels,people create social history and transform the world through practice,and constantly improve the subject’s ability,quality and spirit in this process,so as to finally achieve the realm of free and all-round development.Among them,"culture",as an important field and achievement of human social life practice,undoubtedly constitutes an indispensable link in the process of human development.For Marx and Engels,although the cultural theory does not have a significant core position in their theoretical system and has not formed a more systematic cultural theory,they always pay high attention to culture and its related issues,and explain the connotation,characteristics and functions of culture from multiple angles.Specifically,Marx and Engels expounded the practical and social connotation of culture from the aspects of spiritual production,ideology,literature and art,expounding that culture is still an active and positive part of social relations,although it is subject to the development of social economy in the sense of superstructure;At the same time,based on the changes of society and history,they also expounded the nationality and cosmopolitanism of culture.In Marx and Engels’ discussion on culture,we can find a particularly important point that they put "culture" in the overall schema of human development and liberation,and believe that culture is a process and achievement of human practical activities.At the same time,it is also intricately intertwined with social life in many forms and ways such as ideology and conceptual order,And then regard the development and construction of culture as a necessary link for people to move towards the goal of all-round and free development.Popular culture is not only an important part of modern and contemporary social culture,but also an important achievement of the development of modern society.The theoretical principles on the internal relationship between culture and human development established by Marx and Engels can guide us to objectively and comprehensively present the multiple connections between popular culture and human life and development as much as possible,so as to further give play to the positive significance of popular culture for human liberation and avoid the negative impact of popular culture in the practice of cultural construction.Since the 20 th century,with the development of industrial society and the increasing enrichment of modernity,culture has gradually broken the barriers of class and group,began to have extensive contact with most people,and gave full play to its social function.From the basic perspective of historical materialism,popular culture can be regarded as a cultural category produced with the development and of industrial production mode in capitalist society.The emergence and development of popular culture is essentially inseparable from the movement of goods and capital,which is reflected in its industrialized mode of production and dissemination,as well as the characteristics of its functions of profit and consumption demand.At the same time,the development of popular culture is inseparable from the support of modern communication technology,because it relies on the developed modern media system to contact the populares.Finally,as an important cultural form closely related to modern society and popular life,popular culture has the dual functions of entertainment and meaning shaping.In other words,it not only gathers all kinds of images and desires as the object of perceptual activities for the public to entertain themselves,but also contains the potential of reflection and criticism as the reflector of society.In view of the many new characteristics and influence of contemporary popular culture,many Western Marxists after Marx drew lessons from Marxist social critical theory and cultural thought to analyze and investigate modern culture,and put forward different views on the nature,social effect and development trend of popular culture,Among them,there are not only sharp criticism based on the position of elite and human spiritual growth,but also a positive view of popular culture based on social background and public response.Generally speaking,popular culture obviously has a two-way and dialectical impact on human development.In the sense of actively promoting people’s liberation,popular culture,as a cultural factor facing all the people,is rooted in the people’s long-term practice and life process,and promotes the development of people’s cultural consciousness,initiative and innovation consciousness through the extensive cultural practice of popular culture contacting the people.Moreover,popular culture expresses its content and significance based on people’s daily life.Therefore,it fully demonstrates the value of daily life and practical process,promotes people to improve their spiritual quality in the process of daily life,pursues common cognition and positive values with the characteristics of the times,and explores the road of a better life.From the perspective of restricting people’s development,popular culture also presents the standardized and homogeneous characteristics of "cultural industry" under the promotion of capital,which leads to the solidification of popular lifestyles and ideas.Moreover,in the process of commercialization,popular culture increasingly shows the development mode and value pattern of materialization and alienation,which distorts and alienates people’s life attitude,practice mode and value system,causing people to indulge in intuitive material and consumption desire and ignore the all-round development of spirit;In addition,the development of popular culture itself tends to the planarization of meaning,which impacts on the critical dimension,noble pursuit and serious thinking attitude of previous culture,makes people indulge in the representation world without depth and nothingness,and ignores the power of people’s self transcendence and reflection.The integration of contemporary China into the world market after reform and opening up has become a fertile soil for the development and growth of popular culture.In the growth process,Chinese popular culture not only shows the commonality of contemporary popular culture under the promotion of market and capital,but also shows its particularity by interacting with China’s local cultural system.For today’s Chinese cultural field,how to give full play to the positive significance of popular culture and avoid its negative trends such as capitalization and alienation is a problem that must be carefully faced in the journey of building a cultural power;Today’s Chinese popular culture not only inherits the socialist tradition,but also develops and expands relying on the market economy,and promotes the modernization process of social culture and the people;However,it is also facing the crisis of shallow significance and value alienation in the process of sustainable development of market and commercialization,and impacting people’s lifestyle and concept principles.At the same time,popular culture is also in the process of diversified development.In the continuous interaction with traditional culture,mainstream culture and elite culture,it not only faces each other,but also forms new contradictions,and has a multi-dimensional impact on Chinese people’s values,spiritual world and life attitude.In this context,we should adhere to the principle of regulating,regulating and restricting market factors and capital competition,standardize and guide the development of popular culture from the aspects of education and system,and prevent the restrictive impact of today’s mass culture on people’s development space;At the same time,we must also promote the full integration of popular culture with various cultural elements,provide practice space for people to give full play to their cultural subjectivity and creativity,and bring the development of mass culture into the overall framework of socialist cultural construction with Chinese characteristics.