Mass Culture Theory -- An Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Mass Culture

Author: Jin Minqing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-09-01
Features: This book introduces several relatively independent cultural types in the current Chinese cultural system, including dominant culture, elite culture, mass culture, and folk popular culture. Among them, mass culture, as an inevitable phenomenon in the process of modernization, exerts a strong influence on the general public and is even becoming a prevailing cultural trend in Chinese society. We must seriously study the historical development of mass culture, comprehensively grasp its deep essence and artistic aesthetic characteristics, analyze its positive functions and negative impacts in contemporary Chinese mass culture, establish a correct understanding of mass culture, guide its reasonable development, build a mass culture with Chinese characteristics, and make it better serve the modernization drive. Culture is a spiritual creative activity and its outcomes, involving both cultural subjects and receptors in the production and circulation of meaning. The mass culture refers to the collective of the majority of social members who, under the conditions of a commodity (market) economy, possess the subjective and objective conditions for basic cultural acceptance and participation and engage in cultural activities in various ways and to varying degrees at different levels and extents. Mass culture is a spiritual creative activity and its outcomes that reflect the daily life of the masses under the conditions of industrialization and the commodity (market) economy, are widely disseminated among the public, cater to the cultural tastes of the masses, and are accepted and participated in by the public. It is a relatively independent cultural type that corresponds to and differs from dominant culture, elite culture, folk popular culture, and other types in the modern cultural system. It is characterized by social массовность, everyday life nature, complex diversity, commercial profitability, strong penetration, entertainment and leisure nature, and ideological nature. The historical development of mass culture has formed its own unique development. Mass culture has fostered a new cultural production method, formed a new cultural landscape, and heralded a new cultural development philosophy. In its development process, contemporary Chinese mass culture has played positive social functions in China's social development, the daily life, spiritual life, and political life of the general public. It provides the public with a broad space for entertainment and leisure. Second, it opens up effective channels for mass enlightenment education. Third, it has cultivated emerging industries in China's economic field. Fourth, it has pioneered new approaches for the state government to manage society. Fifth, it has generated significant forces for the construction of democratic politics in China. Sixth, its independent development constitutes an effective shield for maintaining China's cultural sovereignty.