FREE ESSAY ON IS POPULAR CULTURE SUBSERVIENT TO HIGH CULTURE AND IF SO, WHY?

IS POPULAR CULTURE SUBSERVIENT TO HIGH CULTURE AND IF SO, WHY?

Is High Culture Superior to Popular Culture, and if so Why?
For about a century, Western Culture has really been divided into two cultures, the
traditional type of 'high culture' and a 'mass culture' manufactured wholesale for the
market.
High culture is the arts that require some form of intellect to comprehend, so therefore
can only reach a tiny segment of the population, whilst levelling accusations of elitism.
High culture includes ballet; the forms of operas, operettas and symphonies; types of
film; certain novels; theatre and plays.
Mass or popular culture is derived from high culture, so for every item in high culture,
there is a corresponding item of lesser importance in popular culture. Forms of popular
culture include television, comics and magazines, pop music and the cinema.
It is acknowledged that mass culture is to some extent a continuation of the old Folk Art
that grew through the Industrial Revolution as the culture of the common people. The
notifiable dissimilarity is its own spontaneity and ability to satisfy the needs of the
people, without the benefit of high culture.
To satisfy the popular taste, as Robert Burns's poetry did, and to exploit tastes, in the
manner of massive industries like Hollywood does, are very different indeed; folk art was
a separate institution, created by and for the people; wheras businessmen's only interest
in the cultural field is to produce profit- and even to maintain their class rule
fabricate Mass culture.
It is accepted that mass culture began as, and to some extent still is, a cancerous
growth on high culture, as shown when Clement Greenburg stated, 'Kitsch (German term for
mass culture) takes advantage of. Fully matured cultural tradition, extracting its riches
and putting nothing back'. Constantly evolving, kitsch reduces so far away from high
culture as to appear quite disconnected from it.
Mass culture is imposed from above, as Karl Marx recognised, onto the passive
susceptibility of the ignorant masses, to which decisions lie between consumption or no
consumption. It is therefore, the 'Lords of kitsch' that are the sole beneficiaries; mass
culture integrates the masses in a form of debased high culture.
This lack of control proves the power of the mass culture businessman, shown when during
the 1929 depression, when capitalism was in chaos, focus was turned from the 'idols of
production' to the 'idols of consumption' such as Hollywood movie stars, creating a
'dreamlikeworld', a marketing heaven, for the masses to aspire to.
Mass culture can therefore never be worthwhile. Commodities are imposed upon the masses,
taking away freedom of choice and individuality. Instead of being related to one another
as members of a community, the relation is formed with a system of industrial production,
something abstract and untouchable. The great culture-bearing elites have communities
with members having an individual role and sharing similar interests. In contrast, mass
society sinks to the lowest level, to that of its most primitive members, its taste
complies with that of the least sensitive and most ignorant member. Members accept any
idiocy if it is wholly agreed as knowledge in the capitalist superstructure.
Homogenized mass culture is so rigidly democratic, refusing distinction or discrimination
that it succeeds in destroying all values and dissolving any form of barriers.
The homogenizing effects of kitsch also denote a blur in age segregation. The easy access
to all mass culture means that all forms of mass culture means that children are
subjected to the worst kind of capitalism; that which encourages infantile regression and
escape via consumption of commodities or 'over stimulation' resulting in growing up to
quickly, and a barrage of associated problems.
Without further detail, mass culture could reveal capitalism to be an exploitative class
society; rather than the harmonious commonwealth openly alleged.
This makes mass culture a form of political domination, as Soviet Communism and its own
kind of mass culture have shown.
The conservative proposal to rescue Avant-gardeesque values of old class lines from the
domination of the two great mass nations, USA and USSR, seems increasingly infallible,
due to internal causes and the increasing suffocation of the Avant-garde movement by mass
culture.
Where class lines ever-blur, the cultural tradition is absent, the greater kitsch
manufacturing abilities become, dragging any form of cultural elitism further downwards.
The result is the weakening of the intelligentsia, where work is limited to specialist
fields and whose isolation keeps greatening. This is an alarming prospect to confront,
considering the intelligentsia hold the key to our future development, and most
importantly, understanding of us.
Mass culture continually brings down the standards of the people and degrades high
culture, meaning it can never attempt to be equal to, or superior to, high culture. Only
a type of culture that was derived entirely from, not imposed upon, the people, such as
the Folk Art movement, could ever be comparable to high culture.