Characteristic signs of elite culture. Elite culture

Elite or high culture long years remains incomprehensible to most people. This explains its name. It is created and consumed by a narrow circle of people. Most people are not even aware of the existence of this form of culture and are unfamiliar with its definition.

Elite, folk and mass - are there any similarities?

Folk art is the founder of any other cultural direction generally. Her works are created by nameless creators, they come from the people. Such creations convey features of each time, the image and lifestyle of people. This type of art includes fairy tales, epics, and myths.

Mass culture developed on the basis of folk culture. It has a large audience and is aimed at creating works that will be understandable and accessible to everyone. It has less value than any other. The results of its activities are produced in large volumes, they do not take into account the refined tastes or spiritual depth of people.

Elite culture is created by professionals for a specific circle of people with a certain level of education and knowledge. She does not seek to win the sympathy of the masses. With the help of such works, masters seek answers to eternal questions, strive to convey depth human soul.

Over time, works of high creativity can be appreciated by the masses. Nevertheless, going to the people, such creativity remains the highest level in the development of any type of art.

Features and signs of elite culture

The best way the differences and characteristics of elite works of art can be seen in their comparison with mass ones.

All signs of elite art are contrasted with mass or folk art, which are created for a wide range of viewers. Therefore, its results often remain misunderstood and unappreciated by most people. Awareness of their greatness and significance occurs only after more than one decade, and sometimes even a century.

What works belong to elite culture

Many examples of elite works are now known to everyone.

The group of people for whom such masterpieces of art are created may not be distinguished by their ancient name, family nobility and other differences that in everyday speech characterize the elite. It is possible to understand and appreciate such creations only with the help of a certain level of development, a set of knowledge and skills, and a pure and clear consciousness.

Primitive mass creativity will not be able to help in developing the level of intelligence and education.

It does not touch the depths of the human soul, it does not strive to understand the essence of existence. It adapts to the requirements of the time and desires of the consumer. That is why the development of elite culture is very important for all humanity. It is precisely such works that help even a small circle of people preserve high level education and the ability to appreciate truly beautiful works of art and their authors.

Introduction

Culture is a sphere human activity, associated with a person’s self-expression, manifestations of his subjectivity (character, skills, abilities, knowledge). That is why every culture has additional characteristics, since it is associated with human creativity and everyday practice, communication, reflection, generalization and its everyday life.

Culture is specific method organization and development human life, presented in the products of material and spiritual labor, in the system social norms and institutions, in spiritual values, in the totality of people’s relationships to nature, among themselves and to themselves.

Within the society we can distinguish:

Elite - high culture

Mass - popular culture

Folk culture

The purpose of the work is to analyze the content of mass and elite culture

Job objectives:

Expand the concept of “culture” in a broad sense

Identify the main types of culture

Characterize the features and functions of mass and elite culture.

Concept of culture

Culture was originally defined as the cultivation and care of the earth in order to make it suitable for satisfying human needs. IN figuratively culture - improvement, ennoblement of a person’s bodily and spiritual inclinations and abilities; Accordingly, there is a culture of the body, a culture of the soul and a spiritual culture. In a broad sense, culture is the totality of manifestations, achievements and creativity of a people or group of peoples.

Culture, considered from the point of view of content, is divided into various areas, spheres: morals and customs, language and writing, the nature of clothing, settlements, work, economics, socio-political structure, science, technology, art, religion, all forms of manifestation of the objective spirit of a given people. The level and state of culture can only be understood based on the development of cultural history; in this sense they speak of primitive and high culture; the degeneration of culture creates either lack of culture and “refined culture.” In old cultures there is sometimes fatigue, pessimism, stagnation and decline. These phenomena allow us to judge how much the carriers of culture remained true to the essence of their culture. The difference between culture and civilization is that culture is the expression and result of the self-determination of the will of a people or an individual (“ cultured person"), while civilization is a set of technological achievements and associated comfort.

Culture characterizes the characteristics of consciousness, behavior and activity of people in specific areas public life(culture of politics, culture of spiritual life).

The word culture itself (in its figurative sense) has come into use social thought in the second half of the 18th century.

IN late XIX- At the beginning of the 20th century, the established evolutionary concept of culture was criticized. Culture began to be seen primarily as a specific system of values, arranged according to their role in the life and organization of society.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the concept of “local” civilizations - closed and self-sufficient cultural organisms - became widely known. This concept is characterized by the opposition between culture and civilization, which was considered as the last stage in the development of a given society.

In some other concepts, the criticism of culture begun by Rousseau was carried to the point of its complete denial, the idea of ​​the “natural anti-culture” of man was put forward, and any culture is a means of suppressing and enslaving man (Nietzsche).

The diversity of types of culture can be considered in two aspects: external diversity - culture on a human scale, the emphasis of which lies in the progress of culture on the world stage; internal diversity is the culture of a particular society, city; subcultures can also be taken into account here.

But the main task of this work is a specific consideration of mass and elite culture.

Mass culture

Culture has gone through many crises throughout its history. The transitions from antiquity to the Middle Ages and from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were marked by deep crises. But what is happening to culture in our era cannot be called one of the crises along with others. We are present at a crisis of culture in general, at the deepest upheavals in its thousand-year-old foundations. The old ideal of classically beautiful art has finally faded. Art frantically strives to go beyond its limits. The boundaries that separate one art from another and art in general from what is no longer art, what is higher or lower than it, are being violated. Man wants to create something that has never happened before, and in his creative frenzy he transcends all limits and boundaries. He no longer creates such perfect and beautiful works as he created more humble person bygone eras. This is the whole point popular culture.

Mass culture, the culture of the majority, is also called pop culture. The main characteristics are that it is the most popular and predominant among a wide section of the population in the society. It may include such phenomena as everyday life, entertainment (sports, concerts, etc.), as well as the media.

Mass culture. Prerequisites for the formation

Prerequisites for the formation of mass culture in the 18th century. inherent in the very existence of the structure of society. José Ortega y Gasset formulated a well-known approach to structuring based on creative potential. Then the idea of ​​a “creative elite” arises, which, naturally, constitutes a smaller part of society, and of the “mass” - quantitatively the main part of the population. Accordingly, it becomes possible to talk about the culture of the “elite” - “elite culture” and about the culture of the “mass” - “mass culture”. During this period, a division of culture occurs, with the formation of new significant social layers. Gaining an opportunity for conscious aesthetic perception cultural phenomena, newly emerging social groups, constantly communicating with the masses, make “elite” phenomena significant on a social scale and at the same time show interest in “mass” culture, in some cases their mixing occurs.

Popular culture in modern understanding

At the beginning of the 20th century. mass society and the mass culture associated with it have become the subject of research by prominent scientists in various scientific fields: philosophers Jose Ortega y Gasset (“Revolt of the Masses”), sociologists Jean Baudrillard (“Phantoms of Modernity”), and other scientists in different areas Sciences. Analyzing mass culture, they highlight the main essence of this culture, it is entertainment, so that it has commercial success, so that it is bought, and the money spent on it makes a profit. Entertaining is determined by the strict structural conditions of the text. The plot and stylistic texture of mass culture products may be primitive from the point of view of elitist fundamental culture, but it should not be poorly made, but on the contrary, in its primitiveness it should be perfect - only in this case will it be guaranteed readership and, therefore, commercial success . Mass culture requires a clear plot with intrigue and, most importantly, a clear division into genres. We see this clearly in the example of mass cinema. The genres are clearly demarcated and there are not many of them. The main ones are: detective, thriller, comedy, melodrama, horror film, etc. Each genre is a closed world with its own linguistic laws, which in no case should be crossed, especially in cinema, where production involves the greatest amount of financial investment.

We can say that mass culture must have a rigid syntax - an internal structure, but at the same time it may be semantically poor, it may lack deep meaning.

Mass culture is characterized by anti-modernism and anti-avant-gardeism. If modernism and the avant-garde strive for a sophisticated writing technique, then mass culture operates with an extremely simple technique, worked out by the previous culture. If modernism and the avant-garde are dominated by an attitude toward the new as the main condition for their existence, then mass culture is traditional and conservative. It is focused on the average linguistic semiotic norm, on simple pragmatics, since it is addressed to a huge readership and viewing audience.

We can therefore say that mass culture arises not only thanks to the development of technology, which led to such a huge number sources of information, but also through the development and strengthening of political democracies. An example of this can be given that the most developed mass culture is in the most developed democratic society - in America with its Hollywood.

Speaking about art in general, a roughly similar trend was noted by Pitirim Sorokin in the mid-20th century: “As a commercial product for entertainment, art is increasingly controlled by merchants, commercial interests and fashion trends. This situation creates the highest connoisseurs of beauty out of commercial businessmen and forces artists to submit to their demands, which are also imposed through advertising and other media.” IN beginning of XXI century, modern researchers state the same cultural phenomena: “Modern trends are fragmented and have already led to the creation of a critical mass of changes that have affected the very foundations of content and activity cultural institutions. The most significant of them, in our opinion, include: the commercialization of culture, democratization, the blurring of boundaries - both in the field of knowledge and in the field of technology - as well as a predominant attention to the process rather than to the content."

The relationship between science and popular culture is changing. Mass culture is “the decline of the essence of art.”

Table 1. The influence of mass culture on the spiritual life of society

PositiveNegativeHer works do not act as a means of authorial self-expression, but are directly addressed to the reader, listener, viewer, and take into account their needs. It is democratic (its “products” are used by representatives of different social groups), which corresponds to the time. It meets the needs and needs of many people, including the needs of in intensive rest, psychological time row. Has its peaks - literary, musical, cinematic works that can be classified as “high” art; Lowers the general level of spiritual culture of society, since it indulges the undemanding tastes of the “mass person”; Leads to standardization and unification of not only the way of life, but also the way of thinking of millions people Designed for passive consumption, as it does not stimulate any creative impulses in the spiritual sphere Plants myths in people’s minds (“Cinderella myth”, “myth” simple guy", etc.) Forms artificial needs in people through massive advertising. Using modern media, replaces for many people real life, imposing certain ideas and preferences

Elite culture

Elite culture (from the French elite - selected, selected, best) is a subculture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closedness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. A select minority, as a rule, are also its creators. Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes mass culture.

Political and cultural elites differ; the former, also called “ruling”, “powerful”, today, thanks to the works of many learned sociologists and political scientists, have been studied in sufficient detail and deeply. Much less studied are cultural elites - strata united not by economic, social, political, and actual power interests and goals, but by ideological principles, spiritual values, and sociocultural norms.

Unlike political elites, spiritual and creative elites form their own, fundamentally new mechanisms of self-regulation and value-semantic criteria for activity choice. In the Elite culture, the range of values ​​recognized as true and “high” is limited, and the system of norms accepted by a given stratum as mandatory and strict in the community of “initiates” is tightened. The narrowing of the elite and its spiritual unity is inevitably accompanied by its quality and growth (intellectual, aesthetic, religious, and other respects).

Actually, for the sake of this, the circle of norms and values ​​of the Elite culture becomes emphatically high, innovative, which can be achieved by various means:

) mastering new social and mental realities as cultural phenomena or, on the contrary, rejection of anything new and “protection” of a narrow circle of conservative values ​​and norms;

) inclusion of one’s subject in an unexpected value-semantic context, which gives its interpretation a unique and even exclusive meaning.

) development of a special cultural language, accessible only to a narrow circle, insurmountable (or difficult to overcome) semantic barriers to complex thinking;

Historical origin elite culture

In primitive society, priests, magi, sorcerers, and tribal leaders become privileged holders of special knowledge, which cannot and should not be intended for general, mass use. Subsequently this kind The relationship between elite culture and mass culture in one form or another, in particular secular, has repeatedly raised disagreements.

Ultimately, the elitism of knowledge, skills, values, norms, principles, traditions that was formed in this way was the key to sophisticated professionalism and deep subject specialization, without which cultural historical progress, postulate, value-semantic growth, contain, enrichment and accumulation of formal perfection - any value-semantic hierarchy. Elite culture acts as an initiative and productive principle in any culture, performing a predominantly creative function in it; while mass culture stereotypes.

Elite culture flourishes especially productively and fruitfully at the “breakdown” of cultural eras, with a change in cultural and historical paradigms, uniquely expressing the crisis states of culture, the unstable balance between “old” and “new.” Representatives of elite culture were aware of their mission in culture as “initiators of the new”, as ahead of their time, as creators not understood by their contemporaries (such, for example, were the majority of romantics and modernists - symbolists, cultural figures of the avant-garde and professional revolutionaries who carried out cultural revolution).

So, directions, creative quests various representatives of modern culture (symbolists and impressionists, expressionists and futurists, surrealists and dadaists, etc.) - artists, movement theorists, philosophers, and publicists - were aimed at creating unique samples and entire systems of elite culture.

Conclusion

Based on the above, we can conclude that mass and elite culture have their own personality traits and features.

Culture is important aspect in human activity. Culture is a state of mind; it is the totality of manifestations, achievements and creativity of a people or a group of peoples.

But one feature can be identified that can be attributed to an elite culture - the greater the percentage of residents who adhere to its ideology, the higher the level of the highly educated population.

The work fully characterized mass and elite culture, highlighted their main properties, and weighed all the pros and cons.

mass elite culture

Bibliography

Berdyaev, N. “Philosophy of creativity, culture and art” T1. T2. 1994

Ortega - and - Gasset X. Revolt of the masses. Dehumanization of art. 1991

Suvorov, N. “Elite and mass consciousness in the culture of postmodernism”

Philosophical encyclopedic Dictionary. M., 1997

Flier, A.Ya. "Mass culture and its social functions»

Tutoring

Need help studying a topic?

Our specialists will advise or provide tutoring services on topics that interest you.
Submit your application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.

Elite culture is a high culture that is contrasted with mass culture not by the nature of its social content, not by the features of its reflection of reality, but by the type of impact on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective characteristics and providing a meaning-forming function. Its main ideal is the formation of a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality. This understanding of elite culture, explicated from its similar awareness as a culture high, concentrating spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience generations, seems more accurate and adequate than the understanding of the elite as avant-garde.

It must be emphasized that historically elite culture arises precisely as antithesis of mass and its meaning, its main meaning, manifests itself in comparison with the latter. The essence of elite culture was first analyzed by J. Ortega y Gasset (“Dehumanization of Art,” “Revolt of the Masses”) and K. Mannheim (“Ideology and Utopia,” “Man and Society in the Age of Transformation,” “Essay in the Sociology of Culture”) who considered this culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and possessing a number of fundamental important features, including the method of verbal communication - a language developed by its speakers, where special social groups - clergy, politicians, artists - use special languages ​​closed to the uninitiated, including Latin and Sanskrit.

Subject elitist, high culture is personality - free, creative person capable of conscious activity. The creations of this culture are always personally colored and are designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the widespread dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of elite culture is a representative of the elite.

At the same time, objects of high culture that retain their form - plot, composition, musical structure, But changing the presentation mode and acting in the form of replicated products, adapted, adapted to an unusual type of functioning, as a rule, move into the category of mass culture. In this sense, we can talk about the ability of form to be a carrier of content.

If you mean art popular culture, then we can state the different sensitivity of its species to this ratio. In the field of music, the form is fully meaningful, even its minor transformations (for example, the widespread practice of translation classical music V electronic variant its instrumentation) lead to the destruction of the integrity of the work. In area visual arts a similar result is achieved by translating an authentic image into another format - reproduction or digital version (even when trying to preserve the context - in virtual museum). As for literary work , then changing the mode of presentation - including from traditional book to digital - does not affect its character, since the form of the work, the structure, are the laws of its dramatic construction, and not the medium - printed or electronic - of this information. Defining such works of high culture that have changed the nature of their functioning as mass works is made possible by a violation of their integrity, when their secondary, or at least non-primary, components are emphasized and act as leading ones. Changing the authentic format phenomena of mass culture leads to a change in the essence of the work, where ideas are presented in a simplified, adapted version, and creative functions are replaced by socializing ones. This is due to the fact that, unlike high culture, the essence of mass culture is not creative activity, not in production cultural values, and in the formation « value orientations» , corresponding to the nature of prevailing social relations, and the development of stereotypes mass consciousness members of the "consumer society". Nevertheless, elite culture is for the masses a unique example, acting as a source of plots, images, ideas, hypotheses, adapted by the latter to the level of mass consciousness.

Thus, elite culture is the culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closedness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. According to I.V. Kondakova, elite culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and recipients (in any case, the circle of both almost coincides). Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes majority culture in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, official culture of one or another estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of the technocratic society of the 20th century. etc. Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and having a number of fundamentally important features:

· complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;

· the ability to form a consciousness ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;

· the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;

· the presence of a limited range of values ​​recognized as true and “high”;

· a rigid system of norms accepted by a given stratum as mandatory and strict in the community of “initiates”;

· individualization of norms, values, evaluation criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;

· the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural horizon from the addressee;

· using a deliberately subjective, individually creative, “defamiliarizing” interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings closer cultural development reality by the subject to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, to the limit, replaces the reflection of reality in elite culture with its transformation, imitation with deformation, penetration into meaning with conjecture and rethinking of the given;

· semantic and functional “closedness”, “narrowness”, isolation from the whole national culture, which turns elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its bearers turn into a kind of “priests” of this knowledge, chosen ones of the gods, “servants of the muses,” “keepers of secrets and faith,” which is often played out and is poeticized in elite culture.

Elite culture has rather blurred boundaries, especially nowadays with the tendencies of mass elements to strive for the expression of individuality. Its peculiarity is that it is doomed to be misunderstood by most people, and this is one of its main characteristics. In this article we will find out elite culture, what its main characteristics are and compare it with mass culture.

What it is

Elite culture is the same as “high culture”. It is contrasted with mass, which is one of the methods for detecting it in general cultural process. This concept was first identified by K. Mannheim and J. Ortega y Gasset in their works, where they derived it precisely as the antithesis of the concept of mass culture. They meant by high culture one that contains a core of meaning capable of developing human individuality, and from which the continuation of the creation of its other elements can follow. Another area that they highlighted is the presence of special verbal elements accessible to narrow social groups: for example, Latin and Sanskrit for clergy.

Elite and mass culture: contrast

They are contrasted with each other by the type of impact on consciousness, as well as by the quality of the meanings that their elements contain. Thus, the mass one is aimed at a more superficial perception, which does not require specific knowledge and special intellectual efforts to understand the cultural product. Currently, there is an increased spread of popular culture due to the process of globalization, which, in turn, is distributed through the media and is stimulated by the capitalist structure of society. unlike elitist, it is intended for a wide range of people. Now we see its elements everywhere, and it is especially pronounced in programs television channels and cinema.

Thus, Hollywood cinema can be contrasted with arthouse cinema. Moreover, the first type of film focuses the viewer’s attention not on the meaning and idea of ​​the story, but on the special effects of the video sequence. Here quality cinema implies an interesting design, an unexpected but easy-to-understand plot.

Elite culture is represented by arthouse films, which are assessed by different criteria than Hollywood products of this kind, the main one of which is meaning. Thus, the quality of the footage in such films is often underestimated. At first glance, the reason for the low quality of filming is either the lack of good funding or the amateurism of the director. However, this is not so: in arthouse cinema, the function of video is to convey the meaning of an idea. Special effects can distract from this, so they are not typical for products of this format. Arthouse ideas are original and deep. Very often, in the presentation of a simple story, a deep meaning is hidden from a superficial understanding; the real tragedy of the individual is revealed. While watching these films, you can often notice that the director himself is trying to find the answer to the question posed and studying the characters as he shoots. Predicting the plot of an arthouse movie is almost impossible.

Characteristics of high culture

Elite culture has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from mass culture:

1. Its elements are aimed at displaying and studying the deep processes of human psychology.
2. It has a closed structure, understandable only to extraordinary individuals.
3. It is distinguished by original artistic solutions.
4. Contains a minimum of visual aids.
5. Has the ability to express something new.
6. It tests what may later become a classic or trivial art.

Collocation "Mass culture" there is a name social phenomenon, the existence of which, as a rule, is not questioned. This is a symbol included in cultural circulation since the late forties, indicating how in philosophical literature, and in social journalism, quasi-obvious content. The role of “proof” of the existence of a special “mass culture”, possible only through confirmation of its qualitative differences from a certain culture in general, is still the conviction in its existence and empirical illustrations of this conviction: “idols” and “stars” of leisure, standardization of philistine life , extreme institutionalization of communication, etc. Despite the fact that the idea of ​​“mass culture” is borrowed from Western journalism, the thesis is expressed about the existence of a problem of “mass culture” in a socialist society.

Mass culture- term used in modern cultural studies to denote a specific type of spiritual production, aimed at the “average” consumer and suggesting the possibility of wide replication of the original product. The appearance of M.K. It is customary to associate it with the era of the emergence of large-scale industrial production, which required the creation of an army of hired workers for its maintenance. The simultaneous disruption of traditional social structure feudal society also contributed to the emergence of a mass of people cut off from the usual forms of activity and the spiritual traditions associated with them. M.K. arises, on the one hand, as an attempt by new social strata (wage workers and employees) to create their own version of urban folk culture, on the other hand, as a means of manipulating mass consciousness in the interests of the dominant political and economic structures. M.K. seeks to satisfy the natural human longing for an ideal with the help of a set of stable ideological clichés that form an implicit code of worldview and behavior patterns. M.K. operates, as a rule, with basic archetypal ideas and feelings (desire for love, fear of the unknown, desire for success, hope for a miracle, etc.), creating on their basis products designed for an immediate emotional reaction of the consumer, similar to a child’s direct perception of reality . M.K. creates modern mythology, designing own world, which is often perceived by its consumers as more real than their own everyday existence. An essential aspect of M.K. is the exact choice of the addressee-consumer (age, social and national groups), which determines the choice of appropriate artistic and technical techniques and, if successful, brings significant income. M.K. traditionally opposed to an elitist culture capable of creating unique artistic value products that require certain intellectual efforts and initial cultural baggage for their perception. The element of innovation in M.K. is insignificant, since its creators are mainly engaged in creating simplified versions of the achievements of “high” culture, adapted for the mass consciousness. At the same time, it is unlawful to consider M.K. a reserve of vulgarity and bad taste, which has nothing in common with true art. In fact, M.K. serves as a kind of mediator between the generally accepted values ​​of elite culture, the avant-garde “underground” and traditional folk culture. Transforming esoteric revelations and marginal artistic experiments into part of the “naive” consciousness, M.K. contributes to its enrichment and development. At the same time, recording the mass attitudes and orientations existing in society, M.K. has the opposite effect on elite cultural creativity and largely sets the perspective modern reading cultural tradition. Dynamics of M.K. is able to give a fairly accurate picture of the evolution of social ideals and ideological models, the main trends in the spiritual life of society. M.K. is a natural product modern civilization. The most striking phenomena of M.K. (comics, “black” crime novel, family saga) are often considered as varieties of urban folklore. Therefore, the significance of a specific product M.K. is determined not by its universal value, but by the ability to express the illusions, hopes and problems of the era in the language of its time.

Elite culture- a type of culture characterized by the production of cultural values, samples, which, due to their exclusivity, are designed and accessible mainly to a narrow circle of people (elite). E.K.- a specific sphere of cultural creativity associated with the professional production of cultural texts, which subsequently acquire the status of cultural canons. The concept of "E.K." appears in Western cultural studies to designate cultural layers that are diametrically opposed in content to “profane” mass culture. Unlike communities of sacred or esoteric knowledge inherent in any type of culture, E.K. represents the sphere of industrial production of cultural samples, existing in constant interaction with various forms of mass, local and marginal culture. At the same time, for E.K. characterized by a high degree of closedness, due to both specific technologies of intellectual work (forming a narrow professional community) and the need to master the techniques of consumption of complexly organized elite cultural products, i.e. a certain level of education. Samples of E.K. In the process of their assimilation, they imply the need for a targeted intellectual effort to “decipher” the author’s message. In fact, E.K. puts the recipient of an elite text in the position of a co-author, recreating in his mind a set of its meanings. Unlike mass culture products, elite cultural products are designed for repeated consumption and have fundamentally ambiguous content. E.K. sets the leading guidelines for the current type of culture, defining the set of " mind games", as well as a popular set of "low" genres and their heroes, reproducing the basic archetypes of the collective unconscious. Any cultural innovation becomes cultural event only as a result of its conceptual design at the level of E.K., including it in the current cultural context and adapting it for mass consciousness. Thus, the “elite” status of specific forms of cultural creativity is determined not so much by their closeness (characteristic of marginal culture) and the complex organization of the cultural product (inherent in mass production). high class), how much the ability to significantly influence the life of society, modeling possible ways of its dynamics and creating scenarios of social action adequate to social needs, ideological guidelines, art styles and shapes spiritual experience. Only in this case can we speak of the cultural elite as a privileged minority expressing the “spirit of the times” in their creativity.

Contrary to the romantic interpretation of E.K. as a self-sufficient “bead game” (Hesse) far from the pragmatism and vulgarity of the “profane” culture of the majority, the real status of E.K. most often associated with various forms of “playing with power”, servile and/or non-conformist dialogue with the current political elite, as well as the ability to work with the “grassroots”, “garbage” cultural space. Only in this case E.K. retains the ability to influence the real state of affairs in society.