Features of the development of modern culture. Mass culture as a social phenomenon

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Mass culture as a social phenomenon

Sociology

Mass culture is a concept that embraces the diverse and heterogeneous cultural phenomena of the 20th century, which became widespread in connection with the scientific and technological revolution and the constant renewal of mass communications. The production, distribution and consumption of mass culture products is industrial and commercial in nature. The semantic range of mass culture is very wide, from primitive kitsch (early comics, melodrama, pop hit, soap opera) to complex, content-rich forms (certain types of rock music, “intellectual” detective, pop art). The aesthetics of mass culture is characterized by a constant balancing act between the trivial and the original, the aggressive and the sentimental, the vulgar and the sophisticated. By updating and anticipating the expectations of the mass audience, mass culture meets its needs for leisure, entertainment, play, communication, emotional compensation or release, etc.

Introduction

Mass culture, being one of the most striking manifestations of the sociocultural existence of modern developed communities, remains a relatively little-understood phenomenon from the point of view of the general theory of culture. Interesting theoretical foundations for studying the social functions of culture (including mass culture) have been developed in recent years by E. Orlova. In accordance with its concept, two areas can be distinguished in the morphological structure of culture: everyday culture, mastered by a person in the process of his general socialization in his living environment (primarily in the processes of upbringing and general education), and specialized culture, the development of which requires special (professional) education . Mass culture occupies an intermediate position between these two areas with the function of translating cultural meanings from specialized culture to ordinary human consciousness. Such an approach to the phenomenon of mass culture seems very heuristic. This work sets the goal of in-depth reflection on the socio-functional characteristics of mass culture in line with this concept and correlating it with the concept of social subcultures.

Since the time of decomposition primitive society, the beginning of the division of labor, social stratification In human groups and the formation of the first urban civilizations, a corresponding differentiation of culture arose, determined by the difference in the social functions of different groups of people associated with their way of life, material means and social benefits, as well as the emerging ideology and symbolism of social prestige. These differentiated segments of the general culture of a particular historical community eventually came to be called social subcultures. In principle, the number of such subcultures can be correlated with the number of specialized areas of activity (specialties, professions) available in the community, but the objectives of this article do not require such a fine-grained structuring of culture. It is enough to highlight only a few main social-class (estate) subcultures that unite large groups of people in accordance with their role and functions in the production of means of human physical and social existence, in maintaining or disrupting social organization and regulation of social life (order).

Types of subcultures

First of all, we are talking about the subculture of rural producers, called folk (in socio-demographic terms) or ethnographic (in terms of the greatest concentration of relevant specific features). Functionally, this culture produces mainly means of maintaining the physical (vital) existence of people - primarily food. From the point of view of the main characteristics, this subculture is characterized by a low level of specialization in individual professions (the “classical” peasant is, as a rule, a generalist worker: a farmer, a cattle breeder, a fisherman, and a carpenter at the same time, unless special landscape conditions specialize him more narrowly); low level of individual social aspirations of people; a slight gap between the everyday culture of peasant life and the specialized knowledge and skills of agricultural labor. Accordingly, the method of social reproduction of this subculture generally does not go beyond the simple intergenerational transmission of the local tradition of environmental management and the associated picture of the world, beliefs, rational knowledge, norms of social relations, rituals, etc., the transmission of which is carried out in the forms of ordinary upbringing of children in the family and does not require any special education.

The subculture of urban producers has somewhat different functions, which at the dawn of civilization was formed as a craft and trade one, and later began to be called bourgeois (burgher), industrial, proletarian, post-bourgeois (socialist), etc., although functionally it remained the same. This culture produces the means not so much of vital as of social existence of people - tools, weapons, household items, energy, transport, communications, urban habitat, knowledge about the world and about man, means of exchange (money) and the mechanisms of their functioning, trade, aesthetic values, etc. Moreover, all this, as a rule, is produced in commercial quantities.

This subculture is characterized by a relatively high and steadily increasing level of professional specialization of its subjects (even a craftsman of ancient times was a more or less narrow specialist in his field, not to mention later craftsmen, engineers, doctors, scientists, artists, etc.); moderate level of personal social aspirations (those representatives of the urban subculture who are distinguished by increased social ambitions usually strive to go into the elite or criminal spheres, and the ambitions of average urban producers are, as a rule, relatively moderate). The gap between the ordinary and specialized components of this culture in ancient times was small (the specialty of a craftsman or merchant was mastered in the process home education), but with scientific and technological development it has increased significantly (especially in knowledge-intensive professions). The processes of social reproduction of this subculture were divided accordingly: the everyday culture of the average city dweller is reproduced within the framework of family education and through the institutions of the national educational standard (which will be discussed below), and the specialized culture is reproduced through a network of secondary specialized and higher educational institutions.

The third social subculture is elite. This word usually means special sophistication, complexity and high quality of cultural products. But this is not the most important feature elite subcultures s. Its main function is the production of social order (in the form of law, power, structures of social organization of society and legitimate violence in the interests of maintaining this organization), as well as the ideology that justifies this order (in the forms of religion, social philosophy And political thought). The elite subculture is distinguished by a very high level of specialization (the training of clergy - shamans, priests, etc., is obviously the oldest special professional education); the highest level of social aspirations of the individual (love of power, wealth and fame is considered the “normal” psychology of any elite). The gap between the ordinary and specialized components of this social subculture, as well as in the bourgeois subculture, until recently was not very large. The knowledge and skills of an aristocratic upbringing acquired from childhood, as a rule, made it possible to perform the duties of a knight, officer, courtier, official of any rank, and even a monarch without additional training. Perhaps only the functions of clergy required special training. This situation lasted in Europe until the 18th-19th centuries, when the elite subculture began to merge with the bourgeois subculture, turning into the highest layer of the latter. At the same time, the requirements for the professional preparedness of performers of elite functions increased significantly, which led to the emergence of corresponding educational institutions (military, diplomatic, political and administrative).

Today, the discrepancy between the ordinary and specialized layers of the elite subculture has become very significant, because ruling circles Most countries are now replenished with people who, as a rule, have not received an aristocratic upbringing at home. Although there are no convincing signs of sustainable reproduction of the traditions of everyday elite culture in most developed societies of our time (the relic of the “Russian intelligentsia”, apparently, was preserved precisely due to its contradictory kinship-antagonism with the socialist utopia), nevertheless, talking about the “death » aristocratic tradition is still premature. It’s just that the political and intellectual elite itself has become different, almost unrelated to the hereditary aristocracy of previous times. And if its specialized forms are more or less continuous in relation to the historically established ones, then at the everyday level the new “elite style”, combining aristocratic and bourgeois traditions, is still far from harmony and its forms even in the USA and Western Europe.

And finally, another social subculture is criminal. This is a culture of deliberate violation of the prevailing social orders and ideology. It has many specific specializations: theft, murder, hooliganism, prostitution, beggary, fraud, national extremism, political terrorism, revolutionary underground, illegitimate sectarianism, heresy, sex crime, alcoholism, drug addiction and further under all articles of the criminal code, as well as lists of forms of mental deviations, social inadequacy, etc. This subculture has always existed and, apparently, it is based on some features of the human psyche, leading to one or another form of protest against the absolute regulation of social existence (implanted, naturally, by the elite culture ). The parameters of this subculture that interest us are distinguished by very contradictory (amorphous, unstructured) characteristics. Here there are both highly specialized (terrorism) and completely unspecialized (hooliganism, alcoholism) manifestations of criminality, and any stable distance between these components, as well as any pronounced tendency to increase the level of specialization, is not visible. The social ambitions of the subjects of the criminal subculture also vary from extremely low (homeless people, beggars) to extremely high (charismatic leaders of extremist political movements and sects, political and financial swindlers, etc.). The criminal subculture has also developed its own special institutions of reproduction: dens of thieves, places of detention, brothels, revolutionary underground, totalitarian sects, etc.

Reasons for the emergence of mass culture

Thus, it can be assumed that the traditional opposition between folk and elite subcultures from the point of view of understanding their social functions is completely unconvincing. The opposition to the folk (peasant) subculture is seen as the urban (bourgeois) subculture, and the counterculture in relation to the elitist (culture of standards of social order) is seen as the criminal (culture of social disorder). Of course, it is impossible to completely “shove” the population of any country into one or another social subculture. A certain percentage of people, for various reasons, are always in an intermediate state of either social growth (transition from a rural subculture to an urban one or from a bourgeois to an elite one), or social degradation (sinking from a bourgeois or elite “to the bottom” to a criminal one).

One way or another, the identification of groups of people as representatives of a particular social subculture seems most justified, first of all, by specific features the everyday culture they have mastered, realized in the appropriate forms of lifestyle. The way of life, of course, is determined, among other things, by the type of professional occupation of a person (a diplomat or a bishop inevitably has a different way of life than a peasant or a pickpocket), the indigenous traditions of the place of residence, but most of all - the social status of the person, his estate or class affiliation . It is the social status that determines the direction of the individual’s economic and cognitive interests, the style of his leisure time, communication, etiquette, information aspirations, aesthetic tastes, fashion, image, household rites and rituals, prejudices, images of prestige, ideas about one’s own dignity, norms of social adequacy, and general ideological attitudes. , social philosophy, etc., which constitutes the main array of features of everyday culture.

Everyday culture is not specifically studied by a person (with the exception of emigrants who purposefully master the language and customs new homeland), but is acquired by him more or less spontaneously in the process of childhood upbringing and general education, communication with relatives, the social environment, professional colleagues, etc., and is adjusted throughout the individual’s life as the intensity of his social contacts. Everyday culture is the possession of the customs of everyday life of the social and national environment in which a person lives and socially self-realizes. The process of mastering everyday culture is called in science general socialization and inculturation of the individual, which includes a person not just in the national culture of any people, but also - without fail - in one of its social subcultures, which are discussed above.

The study of the everyday culture of rural producers, according to established tradition, is mainly dealt with by ethnography (including cultural anthropology, ethnic ecology, etc.), and the everyday layer of culture of other social strata, by necessity, is general history (historical anthropology, etc.), philology (social semiotics, “ Moscow-Tartu semiotic school), sociology (sociology of culture, urban anthropology), but most of all, of course, cultural studies.

At the same time, it is necessary to take into account that until the 18th-19th centuries, none of the described social subcultures, nor even their mechanical sum (on the scale of one ethnic group or state) could be called the national culture of the corresponding state. First of all, because there were no unified national standards of social adequacy and unified mechanisms for the socialization of the individual throughout the entire culture. All this arises only in modern times during the processes of industrialization and urbanization, the formation of capitalism in its classical, postclassical and even alternative (socialist) forms, the transformation of class societies into national ones and the erosion of class barriers that separated people, the development of universal literacy of the population, the degradation of many forms traditional everyday culture of the pre-industrial type, the development of technical means of reproducing and broadcasting information, the liberalization of morals and lifestyles of communities, the increasing dependence of political elites on the state of public opinion, and the production of mass consumption products on the stability of consumer demand regulated by fashion, advertising, etc.

A special place here is occupied by the processes of mass migration of the population to cities, massification political life communities (the emergence of multimillion-dollar armies, trade unions, political parties and electorates). In the last decades of the twentieth century, the dynamics of the technological revolution were added to the listed factors - the transition from the industrial stage of development (intensification of mechanical manipulation of working bodies) to the post-industrial stage (intensification of management processes - obtaining and processing information and decision-making).

Under these conditions, the tasks of standardizing sociocultural attitudes, interests and needs of the bulk of the population, intensifying the processes of manipulating the human personality, its social aspirations, political behavior, ideological orientations, consumer demand for goods, services, ideas, one’s own image, etc., have become equally relevant. n. In previous eras, the monopoly on this kind of control of consciousness on a more or less mass scale belonged to the church and political authorities. In modern times, private producers of information, consumer goods and services also entered into competition for people’s consciousness. All this required a change in the mechanisms of general socialization and inculturation of a person, preparing the individual for the free realization of not only his productive labor, but also his sociocultural interests.

If in traditional communities the problems of general socialization of the individual were solved primarily by means of personal transmission of knowledge, norms and patterns of consciousness and behavior (activity) from parents to children, from a teacher (master) to a student, from a priest to a parishioner, etc. (and in the content of the transmitted social experience, a special place was occupied by personal life experience teacher and his personal sociocultural orientations and preferences), then at the stage of addition national cultures such mechanisms of social and cultural reproduction of the individual begin to lose their effectiveness. There is a need for greater universalization of the transmitted experience, value orientations, patterns of consciousness and behavior; in the formation of national norms and standards of social and cultural adequacy of a person; in initiating his interest and demand for standardized forms of social goods; in increasing the efficiency of the mechanisms of social regulation due to the unifying effect on the motivation of human behavior, social aspirations, images of prestige, etc. This, in turn, caused the need to create a channel for transmitting knowledge, concepts, sociocultural norms and other socially significant information to the broad masses of the population, covering the entire nation, and not just its individual educated classes. The first steps in this direction were the introduction of universal and compulsory primary and, later, secondary education, and then the development of mass media and information (media), democratic political procedures, drawing ever larger masses of people into their orbit, etc.

It should be noted that in national culture (as opposed to class culture), the children of, say, the British queen and the children of a day laborer from Suffolk receive a general secondary education according to more or less the same type of programs (national educational standard), read the same books, study the same English laws, watch the same television programs, support the same football team, etc., and the quality of their knowledge of the poetry of Shakespeare or British history depends more on their personal abilities than on differences in programs general education. Of course, when it comes to obtaining a special education and profession, the opportunities of the compared children vary significantly and depend on the social circumstances of their lives. But the national standard at the level of general secondary education, uniformity in the content of general socialization and inculturation of community members, the development of the media and the gradual liberalization of information policy in modern countries more or less ensure the nationwide cultural unity of citizens and the unity of the norms of their social adequacy. This is national culture, in contrast to class culture, where for different social groups Even the norms of social behavior differed.

The formation of a national culture does not negate its division into the social subcultures described above. National culture complements the system of social subcultures, is built as a unifying superstructure over them, reducing the severity of social and value tensions between various groups people, setting certain universal standards for some sociocultural features of a nation. Of course, even before the formation of nations, the same kind of features of ethnic culture uniting different classes took place: first of all, language, religion, folklore, some household rituals, elements of clothing, household items, etc. At the same time, it seems that ethnographic cultural traits inferior to national culture primarily in terms of its level of universality (due to its predominantly non-institutionalized nature). The forms of ethnic culture are very plastic and variable in the practice of different classes. Often even the language and religion of the aristocracy and the plebs of the same ethnic group were far from identical. National culture sets fundamentally uniform benchmarks and standards, implemented by publicly available specialized cultural institutions: general education, press, political organizations, mass forms artistic culture, etc. For example, some forms of fiction exist among all peoples who have written culture, but before the historical transformation of an ethnos into a nation, it does not face the problem of forming a national literary language that exists in different regions in the form of various local dialects. One of the most significant characteristics of national culture is that, in contrast to ethnic culture, which is primarily memorial, reproducing the historical tradition of collective forms of life of the people, national culture is primarily prognostic, articulating goals rather than the results of development, developing knowledge, norms , contents and meanings of a modernization orientation, imbued with the pathos of intensification of all aspects of social life.

However, the main difficulty in the dissemination of national culture is that modern knowledge, norms, cultural patterns and meanings are developed almost exclusively in the depths of highly specialized areas of social practice. They are more or less successfully understood and assimilated by relevant specialists; for the bulk of the population, the languages ​​of modern specialized culture (political, scientific, artistic, engineering, etc.) are almost incomprehensible. Society requires a system of means for semantic adaptation, translation of transmitted information from the language of highly specialized areas of culture to the level of everyday understanding of unprepared people, “interpretation” of this information to its mass consumer, a certain “infantilization” of its figurative incarnations, as well as “control” of the consciousness of the mass consumer in interests of the manufacturer of this information, offered goods, services, etc.

This kind of adaptation has always been required for children when, in the processes of upbringing and general education, “adult” meanings were translated into the language of fairy tales, parables, entertaining stories, simplified examples, etc., more accessible to children’s consciousness. Now such interpretive practice has become necessary for a person throughout his life. A modern person, even being very educated, remains a narrow specialist in one field, and the level of his specialization (at least in the elite and bourgeois subcultures) is increasing from century to century. In other areas, he requires a permanent “staff” of commentators, interpreters, teachers, journalists, advertising agents and other kinds of “guides” who lead him through the boundless sea of ​​information about goods, services, political events, artistic innovations, social conflicts, economic problems, etc. n. It cannot be said that modern man has become stupider or more childish than his ancestors. It’s just that his psyche, apparently, cannot process such a quantity of information, conduct such a multifactorial analysis of such a number of simultaneously arising problems, use his social experience with due efficiency, etc. Let’s not forget that the speed of information processing in computers is many times higher than the corresponding capabilities of the human brain.

This situation requires the emergence of new methods of intelligent search, scanning, selection and systematization of information, pressing it into larger blocks, the development of new technologies for forecasting and decision-making, as well as the mental preparedness of people to work with such voluminous information flows. It can be assumed that after the current “information revolution”, i.e. increasing the efficiency of information transmission and processing, as well as the adoption management decisions With the help of computers, humanity expects a “forecasting revolution” - a sudden increase in the efficiency of forecasting, probabilistic calculation, factor analysis, etc., although it is difficult to predict with the help of what technical means (or methods of artificial stimulation of brain activity) this can happen.

In the meantime, people need some kind of remedy that relieves excess mental stress from the information flows that fall on them, reduces complex intellectual problems to primitive dual oppositions (“good-bad”, “us-strangers”, etc.), giving the individual the opportunity to “relax” “from social responsibility, personal choice, to dissolve it in the crowd of soap opera viewers or mechanical consumers of advertised goods, ideas, slogans, etc. Mass culture has become the implementer of this kind of needs.

Mass culture

It cannot be said that mass culture generally frees a person from personal responsibility; rather, it is precisely about removing the problem of independent choice. The structure of existence (at least that part of it that concerns the individual directly) is given to a person as a set of more or less standard situations, where everything has already been chosen by those same “guides” in life: journalists, advertising agents, public politicians, show business stars etc. In popular culture, everything is already known in advance: the “correct” political system, the only true doctrine, leaders, place in the ranks, sports and pop stars, fashion for the image of a “class fighter” or “sexual symbol”, films where “our “always right and will certainly win, etc.

This begs the question: weren’t there problems in earlier times with translating the ideas and meanings of a specialized culture to the level of everyday understanding? Why did mass culture appear only in the last one and a half to two centuries and what cultural phenomena performed this function earlier? Apparently, the fact is that before the scientific and technological revolution of recent centuries, there really was no such gap between specialized and everyday knowledge (as there is still almost no gap in the peasant subculture). The only obvious exception to this rule was religion. It is widely known how great the intellectual gap was between “professional” theology and the mass religiosity of the population. Here, a “translation” from one language to another was really necessary (and often in the literal sense: from Latin, Church Slavonic, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. to national languages believers). This task, both linguistically and in terms of content, was solved by preaching (both from the pulpit and missionary). It was the sermon, in contrast to the divine service, that was delivered in a language absolutely understandable to the congregation and was, to a greater or lesser extent, a reduction of religious dogma to publicly accessible images, concepts, parables, etc. Obviously, the church sermon can be considered the historical predecessor of the phenomena of mass culture.

Of course, some elements of specialized knowledge and samples from elite culture always entered the popular consciousness and, as a rule, underwent a specific transformation in it, sometimes acquiring fantastic or popular forms. But these transformations are spontaneous, “by mistake,” “by misunderstanding.” Phenomena of mass culture are usually created by professional people who deliberately reduce complex meanings to primitiveness “for the uneducated” or, at best, for children. It cannot be said that this kind of infantilization is so simple in execution; It is well known that the creation of works of art intended for a children’s audience is in many respects more difficult than creativity “for adults,” and the technical skill of many show business stars evokes sincere admiration among representatives of the “art classics.” Nevertheless, the purposefulness of this kind of semantic reduction is one of the main phenomenological features of mass culture.

Among the main manifestations and trends of mass culture of our time, the following can be distinguished:

industry of “childhood subculture” ( works of art for children, toys and industrially produced games, products for specific children's consumption, children's clubs and camps, paramilitary and other organizations, technologies for collective education of children, etc.), pursuing the goals of explicit or camouflaged standardization of the content and forms of education of children, introduction into their consciousness of unified forms and skills of social and personal culture, ideologically oriented worldviews that lay the foundations of basic value systems officially promoted in a given society;

a mass comprehensive school that closely correlates with the attitudes of the “subculture of childhood”, introducing students to the fundamentals of scientific knowledge, philosophical and religious ideas about the world around them, to the historical sociocultural experience of the collective life of people, to the value orientations accepted in the community. At the same time, it standardizes the listed knowledge and ideas on the basis of standard programs and reduces the transmitted knowledge to simplified forms of children's consciousness and understanding;

mass media (print and electronic) broadcasting current events to the general public up-to-date information, “interpreting” to the average person the meaning of ongoing events, judgments and actions of figures from various specialized spheres of social practice and interpreting this information in the “necessary” perspective for the client engaging this media, i.e., actually manipulating the consciousness of people and forming public opinion on certain or other problems in the interests of their customer (at the same time, in principle, the possibility of the existence of unbiased journalism is not excluded, although in practice this is the same absurdity as an “independent army”);

a system of national (state) ideology and propaganda, “patriotic” education, etc., controlling and shaping the political and ideological orientations of the population and its individual groups (for example, political and educational work with military personnel), manipulating the consciousness of people in the interests of the ruling elites, ensuring political reliability and desirable electoral behavior of citizens, “mobilization readiness” of society for possible military threats and political upheavals, etc.;

mass political movements (party and youth organizations, manifestations, demonstrations, propaganda and election campaigns, etc.), initiated by the ruling or opposition elites with the aim of involving broad sections of the population in political actions, most of them very far from the political interests of the elites, few understanding the meaning of the proposed political programs, for the support of which people are mobilized by whipping up political, nationalistic, religious and other psychosis;

mass social mythology (national chauvinism and hysterical “patriotism”, social demagoguery, populism, quasi-religious and parascientific teachings and movements, extrasensory perception, “idol mania”, “spy mania”, “witch hunt”, provocative “information leaks”, rumors, gossip etc.), simplifying the complex system of human value orientations and the variety of shades of worldview to elementary dual oppositions (“ours - not ours”), replacing the analysis of complex multifactorial cause-and-effect relationships between phenomena and events with appeals to simple and, as a rule, fantastic explanations (world conspiracy, the machinations of foreign intelligence services, “drums”, aliens, etc.), particularizing consciousness (absolutizing the individual and random, while ignoring the typical, statistically predominant), etc. This, ultimately, liberates people, not prone to complex intellectual reflection, from efforts to rationally explain the problems that concern them, gives vent to emotions in their most infantile manifestation;

entertainment industry, which includes mass artistic culture (almost all types of literature and art, perhaps with the certain exception of architecture), mass staged entertainment performances (from sports and circus to erotic), professional sports (as a spectacle for fans) , structures for organized entertainment leisure (appropriate types of clubs, discos, dance floors, etc.) and other types of mass shows. Here the consumer, as a rule, acts not only as a passive spectator (listener), but is also constantly provoked into active involvement or an ecstatic emotional reaction to what is happening (sometimes not without the help of doping stimulants), which is in many respects the equivalent of the same “subculture” childhood”, only optimized for the tastes and interests of an adult or teenage consumer. At the same time, technical techniques and performing skills of “high” art are used to convey simplified, infantilized semantic and artistic content, adapted to the undemanding tastes, intellectual and aesthetic needs of the mass consumer. Mass artistic culture often achieves the effect of mental relaxation through a special aestheticization of the vulgar, ugly, brutal, physiological, i.e., acting on the principle of the medieval carnival and its semantic “reversals.” This culture is characterized by the replication of the unique, culturally significant and its reduction to the everyday and publicly accessible, and sometimes irony over this accessibility, etc. (again, based on the carnival principle of profaning the sacred);

the industry of recreational leisure, physical rehabilitation of a person and correction of his bodily image (resort industry, mass physical education movement, bodybuilding and aerobics, sports tourism, as well as a system of surgical, physiotherapeutic, pharmaceutical, perfume and cosmetic services to correct appearance), which, in addition to the objectively necessary physical recreation of the human body, gives an individual the opportunity to “tweak” his appearance in accordance with the current fashion for the type of image, with the demand for types of sexual partners, strengthens a person not only physically, but also psychologically (raises his confidence in his physical endurance, gender competitiveness and etc.);

industry of intellectual and aesthetic leisure (“cultural” tourism, amateur performances, collecting, intellectually or aesthetically developing interest groups, various societies of collectors, lovers and fans of anything, scientific and educational institutions and associations, as well as everything that falls under the definition of “popular science”, intellectual games, quizzes, crosswords, etc.), introducing people to popular science knowledge, scientific and artistic hobbyism, developing general “humanitarian erudition” among the population, updating views on the triumph of enlightenment and humanity, on the “correction of morals” through an aesthetic impact on people, etc. etc., which fully corresponds to the “Enlightenment” pathos of “progress through knowledge” that still persists in Western culture;

a system of organizing, stimulating and managing consumer demand for things, services, ideas for both individual and collective use (advertising, fashion, image making, etc.), formulating in the public consciousness the standards of socially prestigious images and lifestyles, interests and needs, imitating the forms of elite samples in mass and affordable models, including the ordinary consumer in the rush demand for both prestigious consumer goods and behavior patterns (especially leisure activities), types of appearance, culinary preferences, turning the process of non-stop consumption of social benefits into an end in itself of the individual’s existence ;

various types of gaming complexes from mechanical slot machines, electronic consoles, computer games, etc. to systems virtual reality, developing a certain kind of psychomotor reactions of a person, accustoming him to the speed of reaction in informationally insufficient situations and to choice in informationally abundant situations, which is used both in training programs for certain specialists (pilots, cosmonauts), and for general developmental and entertainment purposes;

all kinds of dictionaries, reference books, encyclopedias, catalogues, electronic and other banks of information, special knowledge, public libraries, the Internet, etc., designed not for trained specialists in relevant fields of knowledge, but for mass consumers “from the street”, which also develops the Enlightenment mythology about compendiums of socially significant knowledge (encyclopedias) that are compact and popular in language of presentation, and essentially return us to the medieval principle of “registry” construction of knowledge.

We can list a number of other particular areas of mass culture.

All this has already taken place at different stages of human history. But living conditions (the rules of the social community game) have changed radically today. Today, people (especially young people) are focused on completely different standards of social prestige, built in a system of images and in a language that has actually become international and which, despite the grumbling of the older generation and traditionally oriented groups of the population, quite suits those around them, attracts and attracts . And no one is imposing this “cultural product”. Unlike political ideology, nothing can be imposed on anyone here. Everyone retains the right to turn off the TV whenever they want. Mass culture, as one of the most free distribution of goods in the information market, can only exist in conditions of voluntary and rush demand. Of course, the level of such excitement is artificially maintained by interested sellers of goods, but the very fact of increased demand for precisely this, made precisely in this figurative style, in this language, is generated by the consumer himself, and not by the seller. In the end, the images of mass culture, like any other image system, show us nothing more than our own “cultural face”, which in fact has always been inherent in us; It’s just that in Soviet times this “side of the face” was not shown on TV. If this “person” were completely alien, if there were no truly massive demand for all this in society, we would not react to it so sharply.

But the main thing is that such a commercially attractive component of mass culture put up for free sale is by no means its most significant feature and function, but may even be its most harmless manifestation. Much more important is that mass culture represents a new in sociocultural practice, a fundamentally higher level of standardization of the system of images of social adequacy and prestige, some kind of new uniform organization of the “cultural competence” of modern man, his socialization and inculturation, a new system of managing and manipulating his consciousness, interests and needs, consumer demand, value orientations, behavioral stereotypes, etc.

How dangerous is this? Or maybe, on the contrary, in today's conditions it is necessary and inevitable? No one can give an exact answer to this question.

Two points of view on popular culture

Currently, people do not have a single point of view on mass culture - some consider it a good thing, because it still carries a semantic load and forces society to pay attention to certain facts. Others consider it evil, a tool for controlling the masses by the ruling elite. Below these points of view will be discussed in more detail.

About the benefits of mass culture

For several decades now, cultural experts in Europe have been criticizing mass culture for its primitive level, market orientation, and dumbing effect. The assessments “kitsch”, “primitive”, “flea market literature” are typical. But in recent years, defenders of elite art have increasingly begun to notice that elite literature does not convey socially important information. And entertainment products like “ Godfather» Mario Puzo turns out to be quite accurate and in-depth analysis Western society. And it may be that the success of such literature is due precisely to its educational, rather than entertaining, side.

And with regard to old Soviet films, for example films by Eldar Ryazanov, there is no doubt about their educational value. But this is not specific information about some realities of existence, but a representation of the structures of relationships, typical characters and conflicts. These are ideological orientations of the bygone past, primarily the relations of collectivism, the concept of a common cause, a bright future and heroic behavior. What has lost its appeal at the ideological level retains it at the level of mass consciousness. And here the prediction of the German philosopher and theologian Romano Guardini unexpectedly comes true, who wrote in 1950 in his work “The End of Modern Times” that one should not be afraid of “mass society”, but should hope that it will overcome the limitations of an individualistic society in which a full-blooded development is possible only for a few, and orientation towards common tasks is generally unlikely.

The complication of the world, the emergence global problems threatening humanity requires a change in orientation from individualism to solidarity and camaraderie. What is required is a unification of efforts, a coordination of activities that “is no longer possible for individual initiative and cooperation of people of an individualistic nature.”

What a representative of an individualistic society dreamed of has already been achieved in our country, has been lost, and is now somehow being restored again at the level of the “culture of poverty” and in the imagination. It is imagination that is the main sphere of realization of mass culture. New myths of Eurasianism, geopolitics, the clash of civilizations, and the return of the Middle Ages are being formed in Russia and filling the ideological vacuum of the post-Soviet space. Thus, the place of the classical pre-industrial and fairly systematized industrial Russian culture being pushed out of Russia is being replaced by the eclectic culture of a transitional society.

In contrast to the mass culture of developed countries, which mosaically complements the rigid systematicity of the technological and socio-normative levels and thereby creates a new manipulative totality, the mass culture of Russia chaotically fills the chaotic social reality.

Mass culture, as we know, does not produce values. She replicates them. The ideologeme precedes the mythologem - it is no longer interesting to talk about how mass culture uses archaic methods of reproduction. And, of course, one should not accuse her of “new barbarism.”

The mechanism of culture is not always identical to its content - completely barbaric methods of spreading culture can be put at the service of civilization. Thus, American cinematography has been successfully promoting violence in the name of freedom, preaching law-abidingness and justifying private life for many years.

And the mythologems of post-Soviet mass culture come from themselves. There are no clear and distinct ideologies that would articulate a consciously accepted and hierarchically structured system of social values.

It is quite natural that people who have not mastered the production of ideologies are far from adequately interpreting the phenomena of mass culture. More precisely, most often they are not noticed.

Mass culture is evil

Currently, Western civilization is entering a phase of stagnation and ossification. It should be noted that this statement relates mainly to the realm of the spirit, but since it determines the development of other spheres human activity, then stagnation will also affect the material levels of existence. Economics is no exception here, because at the end of the 20th century it became obvious that most of the world's population made a voluntary or forced choice in favor of the economy of market liberalism. A new, first, economic totalitarianism is coming. At first it will be “soft”, since the current generations of Western people are accustomed to eating well and having an easy and pleasant living environment. Accustoming new generations to less comfortable living conditions and the subsequent reduction of old generations will make it possible to introduce a more rigid model, which will require appropriate control over social relations.

This process will be preceded by a toughening and simplification of the position of the media. This trend can be observed in all countries and, in fact, at any level, from respectable newspapers and magazines and “first” television channels to the tabloid press.

It is clear that the establishment of a “new world order” in its totalitarian form requires not only economic and ideological support, but also an aesthetic basis. In this area, the fusion of liberal democratic ideology and positivistic-materialistic individualistic philosophy gives rise to the phenomenon of mass culture. The replacement of culture with mass culture should simplify human control, since it reduces the entire complex of aesthetic sensations to animal instincts, experienced in the form of a spectacle.

In general, the destruction of culture is a direct consequence of Western liberal democracy. After all, what is democracy? Democracy is a government that represents the majority of the population of a particular region or organization. Liberalism embodies absolute adherence to market laws and individualism. In the absence of authoritarian and spiritual counterweights, producers of an aesthetic product are guided only by the opinions and tastes of the crowd. It is obvious that under such a combination of circumstances, the phenomenon of “revolt of the masses” inevitably arises. The masses demand, first of all, bad taste, endless bestsellers and soap operas. If the elite does not care about the formation and instillation of high ideals among the masses, then these ideals will never establish themselves in the masses. folk life. High is always difficult, and the majority always choose what is easier and more convenient.

A curious paradox arises in which mass culture, being the product of broad democratic strata of society, begins to be used by the liberal elite for governing purposes.

By inertia, part of the “top” still continues to strive for true masterpieces, but the system does not favor either creativity or consumption of the latter. Thus, the boor who created mass culture begins to be controlled by a boor who is part of the elite. From now on, belonging to the “higher” class is determined only by purely technical, intellectual abilities, the amount of money controlled and clan affiliation. There is no longer any talk of any spiritual or ethical superiority of the elite over the masses.

There is no need to think that this process has no impact on everyday life. Rudeness makes its way both in the jargon of the language, and in the decline in the level of, as they say, humanitarian knowledge, and in the worship of the spirit of plebeianism that reigns on television. Most totalitarian dictators of the past can be accused of misanthropy, pathological cruelty and intolerance, but almost none can be accused of banality. They all ran away from vulgarity in every possible way, even if they did it poorly.

Now, at last, the opportunity has arisen to merge in eschatological ecstasy with the boor leading and the boor being led. Everything that does not fit into their ideas about the structure of the world will be marginalized, or will be completely deprived of the right to exist.

Conclusion

Although mass culture is, of course, an “ersatz product” of specialized “high” areas of culture, it does not generate its own meanings, but only imitates the phenomena of a specialized culture, uses its forms, meanings, professional skills, often parodying them, reducing them to the level of perception of the “low-cultural” "consumer, this phenomenon should not be assessed negatively. Mass culture is generated by objective processes of social modernization of communities, when the socializing and inculturating functions of traditional everyday culture (class type), accumulating the social experience of urban life in the pre-industrial era, lose their effectiveness and practical relevance, and mass culture actually takes on the functions of an instrument for ensuring primary socialization individuals in a national society with erased class and class boundaries. It is likely that mass culture is the embryonic predecessor of some new, still emerging everyday culture, reflecting the social experience of life already at the industrial (national) and post-industrial (in many ways transnational) stages of development, and in the processes of selection of its still very heterogeneous according to its shape characteristics, a new one can grow sociocultural phenomenon, the parameters of which are not yet clear to us.

One way or another, it is obvious that mass culture is a variant of the everyday culture of the urban population of the era of a “highly specialized individual”, competent only in his narrow field of knowledge and activity, and otherwise preferring to use printed, electronic or animate reference books, catalogs, “guides” ” and other sources of economically compiled and reduced information “for complete fools”.

In the end, the pop singer dancing around the microphone sings about the same thing that Shakespeare wrote about in his sonnets, but only in this case translated into simple language. For a person who has the opportunity to read Shakespeare in the original, this sounds disgusting. But is it possible to teach all of humanity to read Shakespeare in the original (as the Enlightenment philosophers dreamed of it), how to do this and - most importantly - is it necessary at all? The question, it must be said, is far from original, but lies at the basis of all social utopias of all times and peoples. Popular culture is not the answer. It only fills the gap left by the absence of any answer.

I personally have a twofold attitude towards the phenomenon of mass culture: on the one hand, I believe that any culture should lead people upward, and not sink to their level for the sake of commercial profit, on the other hand, if there is no mass culture, then the masses will be separated from culture at all.

Literature

Electronic encyclopedia “Cyril and Methodius”

Orlova E. A. Dynamics of culture and goal-setting human activity, Morphology of culture: structure and dynamics. M., 1994.

Flier A. Ya. Culture as a factor of national security, Social Sciences and Modernity, 1998 No. 3.

Foucault M. Words and things. Archeology of humanities. St. Petersburg, 1994.

A. Ya. Flier, mass culture and its social functions, Higher School of Cultural Studies, 1999

Valery Inyushin, “The Coming Boor” and “M&A”, Website “Polar Star”, (design. netway. ru)

Subject description: “Sociology”

Sociology (French sociologie, Latin Societas - society and Greek - Logos - the science of society) is the science of society, individual social institutions (state, law, morality, etc.), processes and public social communities of people.

Modern sociology is a variety of movements and scientific schools that explain its subject and role in different ways and answer the question of what sociology is in different ways. There are various definitions of sociology as the science of society. “A Brief Dictionary of Sociology” defines sociology as the science of the laws of formation, functioning, and development of society, social relations and social communities. The “Sociological Dictionary” defines sociology as the science of the laws of development and functioning of social communities and social processes, of social relations as a mechanism of interrelation and interaction between society and people, between communities, between communities and individuals. The book “Introduction to Sociology” notes that sociology is a science that focuses on social communities, their genesis, interaction and development trends. Each of the definitions has a rational grain. Most scientists tend to believe that the subject of sociology is society or certain social phenomena.

Consequently, sociology is the science of the generic properties and basic patterns of social phenomena.

Sociology not only chooses empirical experience, that is, sensory perception as the only means of reliable knowledge and social change, but also theoretically generalizes it. With the advent of sociology, new opportunities have opened up to penetrate into the inner world of the individual, to understand his life goals, interests, and needs. However, sociology does not study a person in general, but his specific world - the social environment, the communities in which he is included, way of life, social connections, social actions. Without diminishing the importance of numerous branches of social science, sociology is still unique in its ability to see the world as an integral system. Moreover, the system is considered by sociology not only as functioning and developing, but also as experiencing a state of deep crisis. Modern sociology is trying to study the causes of the crisis and find ways out of the crisis of society. The main problems of modern sociology are the survival of humanity and the renewal of civilization, raising it to a higher level of development. Sociology seeks solutions to problems not only at the global level, but also at the level of social communities, specific social institutions and associations, social behavior of an individual. Sociology is a multi-level science, representing the unity of abstract and concrete forms, macro- and micro-theoretical approaches, theoretical and empirical knowledge.

Sociology

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Mass culture is a natural attribute of mass society that meets its requirements and ideological guidelines. The dependence of the formation of social consciousness of the individual, the spiritual and moral development of the people on the content of the development of mass communication.

The concept of culture in modern society is unique. It unites everyday ideas about culture as a process of familiarization with the values ​​created by humanity, about certain canons of behavior in society, as well as the fundamentally different thoughts about it from researchers.

The latter have been trying to comprehend the secret of culture since antiquity. It has always been obvious to scientists that culture is fundamentally irreducible to its external manifestations of a normative order and, even more so, to leisure realities.

Today, the number of definitions of culture is measured in four-digit figures, which simultaneously reflects both the significance and the extreme complexity of comprehending this phenomenon. Such statistics do not so much create a need for new definitions as oblige us to clearly outline the social background against which they arise. This is the historically maturing humanity. Each of its representatives is a creature that, unlike animals, feels uncomfortable in its natural environment and therefore is forced to create an artificial environment for social life, i.e. culture.

The last decades of the past millennium have radically transformed global society in many ways. The locomotive of this transformation turned out to be culture. For perhaps the first time in human history, the universal influence of culture has extended to virtually the entire civilized population. It is this circumstance that allows today’s culturologists to confidently declare: “Where there used to be society, culture has become” ( G. Berking). The latter, compared to previous eras, has certainly changed, having absorbed all those classical parameters that formed it over two millennia as a holistic and harmonious mechanism. The very cultural universalism of the modern era has changed beyond recognition.

What are the contours of this new culture and what does it bring to the individual and society?

The phenomenon of modern culture can be quite successfully described in two dimensions: post-industrial and post-modern. Culture develops as a result of the interaction of these two global approaches to transformation, as well as to the assessment of reality. It turns out that the first directly regulates the ways in which modern social and technological realities are formed. The second one creates and transmits values ​​that arise within modern culture.

Post-industrial society is usually interpreted as a structure based on knowledge. However, what is knowledge for modern culture? In post-industrial coordinates, knowledge is, first of all, information that has practical value and serves to obtain specific results. Such total practicality is one of the basic characteristics of modern culture.

The role of the post-industrial vector of evolution is still stronger than the power of postmodernity, with all their complementarity, primarily because in the world, as J. Baudrillard aptly put it, more and more information appears and less and less meaning becomes available.

Post-industrial society, as it were, sets the “rules of the game” for the postmodern mentality in the objective and information worlds, shaping the formation of the latter in its new quality. The influence of postmodernity manifests itself, rather, in the ways of understanding the post-industrial direction social development, rather than in the actual possibilities of steps to change it. The postmodern perception of the world, rather, focuses on the passive acceptance of post-industrial processes, refusing attempts to correct them both by individuals and society as a whole.

Culture is inseparable from history. However, “cultural construction” itself goes through various stages in its evolution. “In any culture,” wrote N. A. Berdyaev, “after flourishing and refinement, the drying up of creative forces, the withdrawal and extinguishing of the spirit, the decline of the spirit begin. The whole direction of culture is changing. It is directed towards the practical implementation of power, the practical organization of the spirit in the direction of its ever greater expansion across the surface of the earth.” This practical organization of the spirit gradually alienates culture from its essence, leveling its spiritual origin and turning into civilization.

Berdyaev is certainly right in his assertion that all cultural products, including material ones, have a spiritual basis. When a culture is put on stream, then, degenerating into a civilization, it inevitably comes to a stage of crisis development. This stage never proceeds evolutionarily. The ninth wave of cultural revolutions, destroying systems of traditional spiritual values ​​and transforming a harmonious whole into scattered fragments of the past, brings with it the harbinger of a new cultural meaning.

At the same time, however, there is no basis for the assertion that cultural innovations imply a total oblivion of the traditions of the past. Rather, a new type of culture forms itself through polemics with the previous one, and then through its revival in a new quality. Thus, the Middle Ages built its cultural cosmos on polemics with antiquity, but the latter in this era turned out to be not only the object of criticism, but also the basis of the theoretical constructions of medieval theology. The voices of modern cultural scientists sound even more intriguing when, in relation to the current era, they state, as, in particular, Umberto Eco, that “the Middle Ages have already begun.” Thus, it can be argued that crises in culture are a factor in the actualization of the social memory of humanity.

Even the ancient sages were able to understand that culture is the spiritual bonds of society, without which neither man nor his formation in history and development in a society of one type or another is possible. It unites people into society and provides a connection between generations. But what is the mechanism of formation of society through culture? Since Plato, researchers of different eras have answered this question in different ways. This, however, did not prevent modern researchers from classifying the entire array of existing theoretical ideas about culture into four main areas, which capture such levels of this phenomenon as:

– development and continuation of nature, or Divine plan;

– unity of values ​​created by humanity;

– accumulation and transfer of social experience;

– the process of producing life styles.

For the purposes of this discussion, the last three views are most significant. It is they who make it possible to trace the process of transition from modern to “post-modern” – as scientists now call it – society. The source of this transformation is culture as a way of producing life styles, which is impossible without the accumulation and transmission of social experience of the past. And although thinkers of almost all eras have made clarifications to this basic interpretation of culture, its essence remains unchanged and means the social memory of generations, as well as the ways, norms and values ​​of perceiving the world by the human community.

The presented set of definitions largely explains why today, when science and technology demonstrate the realities of the information period, culture lags behind, reproducing industrial standards, the main one of which is its mass character. We will not find anything surprising in this if we remember that the life style of an industrial society is still reproduced on a mass scale and it will take time to accumulate the emerging information realities in everyday life.

Paradoxes of mass culture

Becoming social cultural space industrial society, the phenomenon of mass consciousness as a unified form of existence of many people was facilitated by the mass nature of production and consumption, as well as urbanization. The massification of society, in turn, required the creation of a channel for broadcasting socially and culturally significant information and semantic “translation”, adaptation of this information to the language of everyday understanding, as well as a method of controlling and manipulating the consciousness of the consumer in the interests of the manufacturer. As a response to this sociocultural need, mass culture arose.

The assimilation of products of mass culture, unlike classical culture, does not require either labor or special knowledge. This is how researchers form a view of modern society as a new Middle Ages, or a new barbarism of the 21st century, in which there is a transition from text to screen form of transmitting information and cultural invariants. The vector of this movement is characterized by the evolution of the triad “TV + radio + newspaper” in the direction of “computer + TV + video”. These are the main postulates of negative assessments of mass culture, firmly established in the minds of intellectuals.

Much less frequently reproduced is the thesis about such a basic function of mass culture as recreational, based on the understanding that in order to restore neuropsychic costs, the human body actually requires much stronger recreational influences than when replacing energy losses due to physical labor. The stress factor of modern society objectively contributes to the search for effective mechanisms of adaptation to changed environmental conditions. And in this sense, the phenomenon of mass culture turned out to be a very successful social innovation.

I will refer to my personal experience of the perception of Las Vegas, which was initially loaded with negativism about mass culture in general and its standard manifestations in the electronic media. However, American reality forced us to abandon stereotyped prejudices.

Las Vegas offers a completely egalitarian, but at the same time, individualized, hand-made model of the celebration of life. It has long been estimated that 30% of those who come here do not play at all. What they are looking for here is not winning at the casino, but a feeling of celebration. And it is everywhere here: in the convenience and comfort of designer hotel interiors (the lobbies of which are open to visits by everyone), in bright free street shows, in sales of endless shopping centers. Even the Las Vegas airport is just a ten-minute walk from the main street of the city, which is always warm and sunny.

Of course, this apotheosis of mass culture is a one-piece product. This uniqueness only confirms that an innovative idea in any field human existence always original and creative, even if, as in this case, it is designed for implementation in a mass consumer society. The question of the prospects for the latter is also very important from the point of view of the evolution of modern culture.

A significant contribution to the study of this problem was made by the work of theorists of the post-industrial information society, and above all E. Toffler. In the context of this consideration, two basic theses of the American futurologist are most significant. The first concerns evolution modern society from the industry of product consumption to the industry of sensations, from material to mental satisfaction. The example of Las Vegas, as well as the current worldwide tourism boom, is quite appropriate to illustrate this point. Just like Toffler’s remark that human sensations are the most short-lived, but also the most stable product. In terms of personal development, this vector can, on the one hand, be considered positive, since it is known that the desire for self-realization through purchases indicates the disintegration of personality. Another thesis, on the contrary, indicates that the pursuit of sensations cannot always take socially acceptable forms. Here the researcher illustrates his position with reference to the famous American film “The Thomas Crown Affair”, the main character of which, a man of high professionalism and financial wealth, organizes the theft of a painting from the Metropolitan Museum in his free time. Probably, this example provides very eloquent confirmation that overcoming the stage of mass culture will not at all mean achieving complete harmony in the sociocultural interaction of the individual and society.

Culture, technology, market

Culture today is inseparable both from the technological aspects of the organization of society and from the processes of formation of new human value guidelines. The first include:

– development of the service and information sector of the economy, as well as its leading position in production in terms of scale and significance;

– changing resource priorities compared to industrial society;

– high technologies and network structures as the basis for the progress of society;

– the innovative nature of the evolution of society: so “if it took humanity 112 years to master photography and 56 years to organize the widespread use of telephone communications, then the corresponding periods for television, transistor and integrated circuit were 12.5 and 3 years.” Innovations today are consciously produced by society and culture and appear as a kind of regulator, a kind of formative beginning of sociocultural development, if not completely displacing tradition in this capacity, then at least dominating it;

– a sharp and extremely dynamic change in the structure of employment, in which real social groups are replaced by virtual networks.

Let us also note the fact that the post-industrial world has significantly expanded the community of intellectuals, not without reason including today not only the sphere of academic science (in its global, and by no means only Russian understanding), but also leading specialists in the design and technological sphere, as well as media ideologists, banking and financial strategists and management. The basis of their success is creative skills, i.e. the classic attitude towards novelty.

It is creativity that becomes one of the important characteristics of a new type of intellectual worker and at the same time embodies the needs of modern production. Thus, the “reasonably working” person of the industrial era, whose image is formed by everyday routine work that habitually ensures his existence, in the era information technologies When the nature of intellectual work acquires a creative connotation, he turns into a “playing person” with high creative potential.

Meanwhile, there is no reason to believe that this quality will become ubiquitous in modern culture. For the majority of the population, the coming “digital age” is distinguished by a clear shift in emphasis from creative activity to reproductive activity, and in all branches of human labor: from the most algorithmic to science and art. They become the same kind of production as material production. As V.S. Bibler noted, “cooperation of theoretical activity aimed at “differentiation - specialization - simplification” of individual scientific developments and theoretical problems leads to the production of not a unique, but a massive, serial result. This result is increasingly suitable as a commodity and less and less able to serve as a further provocateur and catalyst. creative activity» .

Already today, in developed countries, a process of changing the structure of employment in industry and services is underway on a large scale. At the same time, the number of jobs for skilled workers and ordinary engineers, the so-called, is extremely reduced. "blue collar" workers. At the same time, the number of jobs in the unskilled labor sector is increasing. The above is clearly illustrated by the example of the automotive industry. So, if previously cars were assembled on an assembly line by skilled workers who used good tools and machines that were repaired and adjusted by engineers located here, now cars are assembled by robots. And they are controlled at the “on-off” level by unskilled workers, and the software for these robots is unified and produced by a small group of white-collar intellectuals. For the latter, the number of jobs is also increasing, although much more slowly than for representatives of unskilled labor.

A number of Western authors argue that the middle class in industrialized countries is eroding, and the trend - albeit distant - is that in the future it will disappear almost completely. There will be a division of society into a narrow circle of intellectuals and everyone else who can perform only the simplest mental operations in a professional sense, which will be quite enough for a secure existence. Thus, if the middle class arose by alienation from large property and power, then in the future its disappearance will be initiated by alienation from creativity. The fact that this trend may well come true is evidenced, in particular, by the current structure of unemployment in Western Europe and the United States, where it is the middle class that is experiencing the greatest difficulties in the labor market. The professional skills of many of its representatives are only partially in demand – or not at all.

Accordingly, with the release of significant groups of the population from the labor force and a significant number of unemployed, a person seeks to fill the resulting

employment vacuum through consumption activity. With what values ​​does he affirm himself in it? Modern mass media proclaim the former values ​​of a rational “social contract” as archaic, appealing not so much to logic as to emotions. Consumption is declared a sphere free choice: “If in the past the subject was in complete submission to the law, Divine or social, then in the modern world he is in danger of becoming a victim of a consumer society, which, on the one hand, manipulates him, and on the other, constantly pushes him to race for more and more benefits ".

Meanwhile, the spiritual bonds of society cannot remain strong in the conditions of the predominance of entertainment over value judgments and the rejection of the oppositions of progress and regression, high and low, moral and immoral, characteristic of classical culture. Over the “consuming person,” of course, control is needed, which can be exercised either by a society organized on a bureaucratic principle or by a self-organized society. The latter is certainly preferable, although it is much more difficult to achieve, since it implies the locality of management actions at different levels of society. But in conditions of the massive growth of network structures and mass culture that had already taken root by the middle of the 20th century, one can only dream about this.

Overtly commercial in nature, postmodern culture has proclaimed the time of wish fulfillment. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the sphere of the unconscious (the sphere of Desire) is the sphere of freedom and creativity, and one should not strive to establish control over it. But this is exactly what the founder of psychoanalysis, Freud, called for, although at the same time arguing that culture as a system of normative values ​​leaves traces of wounds on the human psyche.

Man became such not only thanks to a biological factor - the evolution of the brain, but also through such an element of sociality as a system of prohibitions (taboos). Permissiveness is also unacceptable for a person of modern culture, whose desires, at least to some extent, should be regulated by reason, and not by biased media. Meanwhile, the latter “we are increasingly stuffed with short modular bursts of information - advertising, commands, theories, snippets of news, some cut-off, truncated pieces that do not fit into our previous mental cells.”

It is precisely this kind of cultural instability that modern man is forced to adapt to. One of its symbols exactly 50 years ago, in 1959, was the Barbie doll. Then, for the first time, it was proposed to part with old dolls, which often served several generations, in the name of an interchangeable standard plastic toy. Disposability, modularity and continuous change have come to the world, accompanying a person throughout his life. Nowadays, he is required, first of all, to adapt to constant changes in society and culture, to the “eternal present” ( M. Castells).

Problems of such complexity, perhaps, have not yet faced humanity since its inception. After all, the inert majority, led by a creative minority, in all eras has made its choice of life styles, as well as values, passively and dependently.

Even at the beginning of the 20th century, N.A. Berdyaev quite reasonably argued that the masses do not like freedom and are afraid of it. Meanwhile, it was the only thing that intellectuals raved about at all times. By the end of the second millennium, it was finally given - primarily thanks to the mass media - to humanity, which did not expect such a gift. It came face to face with freedom in the spheres of economics, politics, morality, and art. At the same time, only a few of those who, through the power of creative thought, were able to follow what was happening as if from the outside, bitterly stated that the acquired “freedom from” does not imply “obligations to.” Moreover, now for the first time in the history of mankind, culture as a way of producing lifestyles “is being shaped by electronic media focused on maximum profits. Never before has a society allowed the commercial market to almost completely determine its values ​​and role models.”

As a result, in just four decades, the intellectual elite came, purely empirically, to understand that, unlike the culture of industrial reality, the problem of modern culture “is not whether a person can withstand strict regulation and standardization of life... The problem is whether he can withstand freedom.”

So freedom is out of control. Moreover, society and culture got out of control. The significance of modern cultural autonomy is largely reflected by the relatively recently coined term “industry.”

culture”, meaning both the direct impact of technological innovation on world culture, and any commercial endeavors that use creativity. This applies to all traditional forms of art and a wide range of all activities related to design, fashion, audio, video, film production, multimedia and others - even the production of computer programs.

At the same time, there is an extensive inclusion of various spheres of culture, such as economics, politics, education, science, art, into the electronic space of the Internet communication network. The consequence of this, in turn, is the virtualization of both the processes of activity in these areas of culture and its products. As a result, the line between the real and the imaginary becomes more and more fluid in the subject’s consciousness. The discovery of these processes in modern socio-cultural reality makes obvious the virtualization of culture currently taking place.

Moreover, it is precisely in line with modern computer technologies and the opportunities they provide that the term “virtual reality” has received the most widespread application and wide resonance in modern culture. With the development of computer networks and the global spread of the Internet, this term began to be applied to the electronic communication environment of interactions within a single conglomerate of networks.

Indeed, as predicted back in the 60-70s. last century M. McLuhan, electronic means communications become the nervous system of humanity. And if we turn to a specific consideration of various areas of culture, we will find that all of them are necessarily present in network virtual reality. Largely preserving traditional forms industrial interaction, they transfer them into an interactive mode.

Thus, in the economy today there are such phenomena as the electronic market, e-commerce, virtual product, virtual production, virtual factory, virtual bank and, of course, virtual organizations (enterprise, corporation) in general. Initially, the virtual sphere of the economy took shape as a “second economy”, reproducing in reflected monetary forms the processes and relationships existing in the real sector. However, then it began to transform from the “second” to the “first”, determining the global dominance of financial speculative capital over production capital with all the now well-known consequences.

Politics today uses the global information network as a means and environment for its activities. Almost all political actions are accompanied by the creation of specialized servers and web pages, through which a politician’s image is formed, campaigning is conducted, communication with supporters is carried out, etc. Through the network, it is possible to receive consultations, as well as seek information from various government political structures.

Higher education is represented online by virtual universities distance learning; information websites of real educational structures, virtual conferences organized by scientific and educational communities; educational portals, databases of virtual electronic libraries.

Art is present in cyberspace in all the breadth of its manifestations: virtual museums, virtual galleries, virtual workshops. Moreover, with the formation of the multimedia environment of the Internet, a kind of interactive Internet art arises and network literature appears.

Thus, the virtualization of culture in the information technology aspect occurs as a kind of immersion in a single electronic virtual environment, forming a new cultural reality, which began with the advent of the personal computer and the formation of computer networks.

According to the famous representative of postmodern thought, J. Baudrillard, our life today is a continuous circulation of signs. This process includes what happened in the world (news signs), the impression that a person wants to make on others (signs of himself), the position of the individual in society (signs of status and respect), the functional load of the infrastructural environment (architectural and interior signs ), existing aesthetic preferences (posters, table settings, advertising, design), etc. However, if earlier signs, first of all, pointed to the reality hidden behind them, today there are candy wrapper signs that only simulate and, rather, hide the essence , rather than giving a real idea about it

The structural unit that dominates modern culture, according to J. Baudrillard, is the “simulacrum,” i.e., a pseudo-thing that replaces the “agonizing reality” through simulation. As a consequence, with the reign of artificiality, the distinction between the real and the unreal, the authentic and the inauthentic, between the true and the false disappears. And modern culture, thus, appears as a kind of virtual system, where genuine sociocultural reality is replaced by a simulation - hyperreality.

So, if in the economic sphere the main characteristics were previously productivity and solvency, and the main thing was considered to be the creation of goods, that is, things whose objective property is good, then today everything has changed. Production of a product is no longer difficult; the main thing now is to make it attractive in the eyes of the buyer and sell it. And, accordingly, it is not so much a thing that is produced as an image ( fashionable style, confidence, strength, attractiveness, respectability). The actual economic process, i.e. the production of value, leaves design bureaus and assembly lines and moves to marketing departments, advertising and PR agencies, media studios, etc. The image of a thing in an advertising message economically prevails over the thing itself.

Let's consider these processes using a particular example. One of the most striking illustrations of what is happening is the dynamics of the mobile communications market. Nowadays, the attention of manufacturers and marketers is focused not so much on the main function of a mobile phone - providing communication, but on its design, the decoration of the case and the presence of a mass of secondary functions. Moreover, advertising encourages such a style of consumer behavior as a continuous change of models, successfully promoting new additional functions to the market. mobile phones, actually forgetting about the main thing.

In politics, the struggle for power is increasingly taking place in the form of television debates and advertising. Video clips, ratings, image makers, press secretaries and show business “stars” recruited for political campaigns have supplanted party functionaries. Power becomes largely a function of political image. The political process has left the cabinet meetings of functionaries, and politics itself is now predominantly done in television studios and on concert venues. Parties that initially emerged to represent class, ethnic, religious, and regional interests have turned into “signs” - emblems and advertising slogans that traditionally attract the electorate through effective political technologies.

The main components of artistic practices - work, style, aesthetic appreciation - are simulated, as well as the work of art itself. The main basic technique of the latter is quoting. At the same time, the public is not looking for novelty and an original interpretation of the eternal problems of existence in art, but is looking for “traces” - recognizable references to textbook works and styles. The creation of a work turns into a “project”, a complex of PR actions, in which the differences between advertising and advertising are lost. artistic practices in the traditional sense.

One of the latest examples of such aesthetics is the publication of the novel by American author Dan Brown “The Da Vinci Code,” its film adaptation and the controversy surrounding it. In this project, the public around the world found a full range of postmodern aesthetic explorations: from recognizable biblical heroes, traditional detective genre, to a large extent, the advertising scandals surrounding the release of the film of the same name.

In addition, readers of the novel also use it as a popular guide on excursions to Rome and the Louvre. So the history of the “eternal city” comes down to an illustration of a fashionable detective story, and the wealth of the Louvre to its three masterpieces indicated in the “Da Vinci Code”: Gioconda, Venus de Milo and Nike of Samothrace. This is how not only the realities of our time, but also the heritage of bygone eras turn into “candy wrapper signs.”

“Everyone normal person, - according to G. Chesterton, - there is a period when he prefers fiction. Fiction to fact, for fact is what it owes to the world, while fiction is what the world owes to it.” The analysis of the presented cultural spheres illustrates the simulation of sociocultural practices carried out through information and advertising technologies, as well as the transformation of culture into a market commodity.

The sociocultural unification and primitivization noted above almost everywhere turn culture into civilization. At the same time, “cultures do not receive an impulse for self-discovery, but are leveled out; countries do not co-evolve, collaborating, but are unified. Everywhere they wear the same thing, eat, drink, sing, Disneyland and McDonald’s are everywhere.” In this regard, the issue of preserving the diversity of cultures and their equality becomes extremely important for humanity. Perhaps, it is this element of the standard model of culture that is most in demand today and signifies that each of the cultures existing on Earth is valuable, original and unique. Nowadays this approach forms the basis of multiculturalism.

Theory and practice of multiculturalism

Compared to the above-mentioned elements of the classical model of culture, such as the postulates of civilizational transformation and interconnectedness with the historical process, the idea of ​​equality of cultures, having overcome the stages of various cultural “centrisms,” appeared much later. Meanwhile, today it is she who has united in a methodological, and in the future also in a prognostic scheme, such a modern image of the cultural process, which is described by the dyad “post-industrialism - postmodernism”.

Ideas of cultural tolerance and multiculturalism as a special practice and policy conflict-free coexistence in one national-state space, many heterogeneous cultural groups are gaining more and more adherents.

Multiculturalism offers the integration of cultures without their fusion. Attempts to pursue a strategy of assimilation in a multiethnic environment almost everywhere brought with them a mass of well-known negative results. In addition, national cultures are now experiencing both pressure from the emerging global culture and from reviving local and ethnic cultures that were previously dominated by national cultures. Wherein global culture postulates homogeneity, while local cultures, on the contrary, absolutize autonomy.

There is no doubt that both tolerance and dialogue in the context of the interaction of the majority culture with cultures introduced from outside should be encouraged in every possible way. However, it is unlikely that the “era of tolerance” will overnight remove all the contradictions that the “era of pluralism” has already accumulated. After all, even the majority culture today faces the threat of unification in the context of the realities of the postmodern worldview. Nowadays, classical culture is subjected to such massive pressure from electronic network structures that it itself has to look for some kind of support in order not to lose the originality accumulated over centuries. In addition, tolerance collectivizes the subject, leveling his ability to make individual choice and determine his own identity.

It is unlikely that a multicultural worldview should be considered as a universal remedy for all the cultural ills of our time. The latter today appear, first of all, as a loss of individual identity and immersion in the ocean of mass consumption.

In an implicit way, a multicultural strategy can contribute to the preservation of original folk cultures. As is known, the culture of the modern era consists of three levels: elite (“high”), mass (“low genres”) and folk components. And the most difficult fate is in store for modern postmodern culture precisely for its elite component and the classical heritage of previous eras. Postmodernism declares the latter to be an essence that is by no means universal and unambiguously positive, exposing the claims classical culture on the interpretation of the ultimate truths.

Arising from the avant-garde, postmodernism at the same time opposes itself to this direction. If the aesthetics of the avant-garde was aimed at excluding and destroying examples of classical art, then postmodernism, on the contrary, does not exclude the classics, but endlessly appeals to it, ironically constructing images and forms classical works in his writings.

Hence the removal of the opposition between mass and elite art: postmodernity appeals to everyone, combining, on the one hand, the themes and techniques of popular mass culture, and on the other, a parodic understanding and ironic interpretation of the plots and techniques of previous art. This is how he becomes in demand both by the masses and the intellectual elite.

The main problem of modern culture, first of all, is not aesthetic, but social. It appears as the impossibility of building effective interaction between the attitudes of consumer individualism and socially significant values. And only through a rational awareness of the threats to culture from modern society lies the path to preserving the fruits of the Enlightenment as opposed to the chaos of Consumption. At the same time, in fairness, it should be noted: Plutarch also said that it is the excess that makes us happy, and not what we need.

In modern culture, post-industrialism with its technological dominance of a society that is not only built on innovation, but also promotes education throughout life, including as a form of leisure, acts as a counterbalance to postmodernism. But it is precisely this, to quote the ancient sage Diogenes, that “restrains the young, consoles the old, enriches the poor, adorns the rich.” Thus, in the future, the omnipotence of Consumption can be contrasted with the educational rationalism of the post-industrial world order, without which society will not survive. And, finally, modern culture is still not destined to become the “new Middle Ages” also because human history, fortunately, develops not in a circle, but in a spiral. And this contains both the highest wisdom and hope.

Bibler V.S. On the culture of thinking of a theorist of modern times // Science and history of culture. Rostov n. /D. , 1973. P. 158.

A. Touraine. Are we capable of living together? Equal and different // New technocratic wave in the West. M., 1999. P. 469.

L. Thurow. The future of capitalism // New post-industrial wave in the West. M., 1999. pp. 217–218.

Pchelintsev O. S.. Problems of forming an economic system of sustainable development // Economic Science modern Russia, 2001, No. 4. P. 7.

Mass culture is a concept that is used to characterize modern cultural production and consumption. This is cultural production, organized according to the type of mass, serial conveyor industry and supplying the same standardized, serial, mass product for standardized mass consumption. Mass culture is a specific product of a modern industrialized urban society.

Mass culture is the culture of the masses, culture intended for consumption by the people; this is the consciousness not of the people, but of the commercial cultural industry; it is hostile to truly popular culture. She knows no traditions, has no nationality, her tastes and ideals change with dizzying speed in accordance with the needs of fashion. Mass culture appeals to a wide audience, appeals to simplified tastes, and claims to be folk art.

In modern sociology, the concept of “mass culture” is increasingly losing its critical focus. The functional significance of mass culture, which ensures the socialization of huge masses of people in the complex, changing environment of a modern industrial urbanized society, is emphasized. While affirming simplified, stereotypical ideas, mass culture nevertheless performs the function of constant life support for a wide variety of social groups. It also ensures mass inclusion in the consumption system and thereby the functioning of mass production. Mass culture is characterized by universality; it covers a broad middle part of society, affecting both the elite and marginal layers in a specific way.

Mass culture affirms the identity of material and spiritual values, equally acting as products of mass consumption. It is characterized by the emergence and accelerated development of a special professional apparatus, the task of which is to use the content of consumed goods, the technology of their production and distribution in order to subordinate mass consciousness to the interests of monopolies and the state apparatus.

There are quite contradictory points of view on the question of the time of the emergence of “mass culture”. Some consider it an eternal by-product of culture and therefore discover it already in ancient times. Much more justified are attempts to connect the emergence of “mass culture” with the scientific and technological revolution, which gave rise to new ways of producing, disseminating and consuming culture. Golenkova Z.T., Akulich M.M., Kuznetsov I.M. General sociology: Textbook. - M.: Gardariki, 2012. - 474 p.

There are a number of points of view regarding the origins of mass culture in cultural studies:

• 1. The prerequisites for mass culture have been formed since the birth of humanity.
• 2. The origins of mass culture are associated with the appearance in European literature of the 17th-18th centuries of the adventure, detective, and adventurous novel, which significantly expanded the readership due to huge circulations.
• 3. Big influence The development of mass culture was also influenced by the law on compulsory universal literacy adopted in Great Britain in 1870, which allowed many to master the main form of artistic creativity of the 19th century - the novel.

Nowadays, the mass has changed significantly. The masses have become educated and informed. In addition, the subjects of mass culture today are not just the masses, but also individuals united by various connections. Since people act simultaneously as individuals, and as members of local groups, and as members of mass social communities, the subject of “mass culture” can be considered as dual, that is, both individual and mass at the same time. In turn, the concept of “mass culture” characterizes the features of production cultural values in a modern industrial society, designed for mass consumption of this culture. At the same time, mass production of culture is understood by analogy with the conveyor belt industry.

What are the economic prerequisites for the formation and social functions of mass culture? The desire to see a product in the sphere of spiritual activity, combined with the powerful development of mass communication, led to the creation of a new phenomenon - mass culture. A predetermined commercial installation, conveyor production - all this largely means the transfer to the sphere of artistic culture of the same financial-industrial approach that prevails in other branches of industrial production. In addition, many creative organizations are closely connected with banking and industrial capital, which initially predetermines them to produce commercial, box office, and entertainment works. In turn, the consumption of these products is mass consumption, because the audience that perceives this culture is the mass audience of large halls, stadiums, millions of viewers of television and movie screens. IN socially mass culture forms a new social stratum, called the “middle class,” which has become the core of life in industrial society. He also made mass culture so popular. Mass culture mythologizes human consciousness, mystifies real processes occurring in nature and in human society. There is a rejection of the rational principle in consciousness. The purpose of mass culture is not so much to fill leisure time and relieve tension and stress in a person of industrial and post-industrial society, but to stimulate consumer consciousness in the recipient (that is, the viewer, listener, reader), which in turn forms a special type - passive, uncritical perception of this culture in humans. All this creates a personality that is quite easy to manipulate. In other words, the human psyche is manipulated and the emotions and instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings are exploited, and above all feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear, and self-preservation.

IN In the twentieth century, culture became the object of powerful expansion from new - audiovisual and electronic - means of communication (radio, cinema, television), which covered almost the entire space of the planet with their networks. In the modern world, the media have acquired the importance of the main producer and supplier of cultural products designed for mass consumer demand. This is why it is called mass culture because it does not have a clearly defined national coloring and does not recognize any national boundaries. As a completely new cultural phenomenon, it is no longer the subject of anthropological (ethnological) or humanitarian (philological and historical) study, but sociological knowledge.

The masses are a special kind of social community, which should be distinguished from both the people (ethnic group) and the nation. If a people is a collective personality with a uniform program of behavior and a system of values ​​for everyone, if a nation is a collective of individuals, then the masses are an impersonal collective formed by individuals that are internally unrelated to each other, alien and indifferent to each other. Thus, they talk about the mass of production, consumer, trade union, party, spectator, reader, etc., which is characterized not so much by the quality of the individuals who form it, but by their numerical composition and time of existence.

The most typical example of a mass is a crowd. The masses are sometimes called “a crowd of lonely people” (this is the title of a book by the American sociologist D. Riesman), and the twentieth century is called the “century of crowds” (the title of a book by social psychologist S. Moscovici). According to the “diagnosis of our time” made by the German sociologist Karl Mannheim back in the 30s. past wreath, “the major changes we are witnessing today are ultimately due to the fact that we live in a mass society.” It owes its emergence to the growth of large industrial cities, the processes of industrialization and urbanization. On the one hand, it is characterized by a high level of organization, planning, and management; on the other, it is characterized by the concentration of real power in the hands of a minority, the ruling bureaucratic elite.

The social basis of a mass society is not citizens who are free in their decisions and actions, but clusters of people indifferent to each other, brought together on purely formal grounds and grounds. It is a consequence not of autonomization, but of the atomization of individuals, whose personal qualities and properties are not taken into account by anyone. Its appearance was the result of the inclusion of large groups of people in social structures that function independently of their consciousness and will, imposed on them from the outside and prescribing for them a certain way of behavior and action. Sociology arose as the science of institutional forms of social behavior and actions of people in which they behave according to the functions or roles prescribed to them. Accordingly, the study of mass psychology is called social psychology.




Being a purely functional formation, the masses do not have their own program of action that internally unites it (it always receives the latter from the outside). Everyone here is on their own, but all together is a rather random association of people, easily susceptible to external influences and various kinds of psychological manipulations that can evoke certain moods and emotions in her. The masses have nothing behind their souls that they could consider to be their common value and shrine. She needs idols and idols that she is ready to worship as long as they command her attention and indulge her desires and instincts. But she also rejects them when they oppose themselves to her or try to rise above her level. Mass consciousness It gives birth, of course, to its own myths and legends, can be filled with rumors, is subject to various phobias and manias, and is capable, for example, of panicking for no reason, but all this is the result not of conscious and thoughtful actions, but of irrationally arising experiences and fears on a mass basis.

The main value of mass society is not individual freedom, but power, which, although different from traditional power - monarchical and aristocratic - in its ability to control people, to subjugate their consciousness and will, far exceeds the latter. People of power get here true heroes of the day (the press writes about them most, they do not leave television screens), replacing the heroes of the past - dissidents, fighters for personal independence and freedom. Power in mass society is as impersonal and depersonalized as society itself. These are no longer just tyrants and despots whose names everyone knows, but a corporation of people running the country hidden from the public eye - the “power elite.” The instrument of her power, replacing the old “system of supervision and punishment,” are powerful financial and information flows, which she disposes of at her own discretion. Whoever owns finances and the media really owns power in mass society.

In general, mass culture is the instrument of power of mass society over people. Being designed for mass perception, appealing not to everyone separately, but to huge audiences, its goal is to evoke in them a homogeneous, unambiguous reaction that is the same for everyone. National composition this audience is not of significant importance. The mass nature of perception, when people who are little familiar and unrelated to each other seem to merge in a single emotional response - specific feature introduction to popular culture.

It is clear that it is easier to do this by appealing to the simplest, most elementary feelings and moods of people, which do not require serious mental work and spiritual effort. Mass culture is not for those who want to “think and suffer.” In it they are mostly looking for a source of thoughtless fun, a spectacle that caresses the eyes and ears, a leisure-filling entertainment, the satisfaction of superficial curiosity, or even just a means for “catching a buzz” and obtaining various kinds of pleasures. This goal is achieved not so much through words (especially printed ones), but through images and sound, which have an incomparably greater power of emotional impact on the audience. Mass culture is predominantly audiovisual. It is not intended for dialogue and communication, but to relieve stress from excessive social overload, to ease the feeling of loneliness among people who live nearby but do not know each other, allowing them to feel like one for a while, emotionally discharge and release the accumulated energy.

Sociologists note an inverse relationship between watching television and reading books: as the time of the former increases, the latter decreases. The society from “reading” gradually becomes “gazing”; written (book) culture is gradually being replaced by a culture based on the perception of visual and sound images (“the end of the Gutenberg galaxy”). They are the language of mass culture. The written word, of course, does not completely disappear, but is gradually devalued in its cultural meaning.

The fate of the printed word, and books in general, in the era of mass culture and the “information society” is a large and complex topic. Replacing a word with an image or sound creates a qualitatively new situation in the cultural space. After all, the word allows you to see what cannot be seen with the ordinary eye. It is addressed not to vision, but to speculation, which allows one to mentally imagine what it denotes. “The image of the world revealed in words” has been called the ideal world since the time of Plato, which becomes accessible to a person only through imagination or reflection. And the ability for it is formed to the greatest extent by reading.

Another thing is a visual image, a picture. Its contemplation does not require special mental effort from a person. Vision replaces reflection and imagination here. For a person whose consciousness is formed by the media, there is no ideal world: it disappears, dissolves in the stream of visual and auditory impressions. He sees, but does not think, sees, but often does not understand. An amazing thing: the larger the amount of such information settles in a person’s head, the less critical he is of it, the more he loses his own position and personal opinion. While reading, you can still somehow agree or argue with the author, but long-term communication with the screen world gradually kills any resistance to it. Due to its entertainment and accessibility, this world is much more convincing than the book word, although it is more destructive in its impact on the ability to judge, i.e. on the ability to think independently.

Mass culture, being essentially cosmopolitan, has clearly lowered the threshold of individual receptivity and selectivity. Put on stream, it is not much different from the production of consumer goods. Even with good design, it is designed for average demand, average preferences and tastes. By limitlessly expanding the composition of their audience, they sacrifice to it the uniqueness and inimitability of the author's principle, which has always determined the originality of the national culture. If today anyone is still interested in the achievements of national culture, it is already in the status of high (classical) and even elite culture, looking back to the past.

This makes it clear why most Western intellectuals saw the masses as the main enemy of culture. National forms of life were replaced by the cosmopolitan city with its standardized regulations and regulations. In such an environment, culture cannot breathe, and what is called it has no direct relation to it. Culture is behind us, not ahead of us, and all the talk about its future is meaningless. It has turned into a huge leisure industry, existing under the same rules and laws as the entire market economy.

Konstantin Leontyev was also surprised that the more European peoples gain national independence, the more they become similar to each other. It seems that national borders in culture exist only to preserve for some time the ethnocultural differences between peoples coming from the past, otherwise extremely close to each other. Sooner or later, everything that separates them in terms of culture will turn out to be insignificant against the background of the ongoing integration processes. National culture already frees the individual from the unconditional power over him of the direct collective and traditionally transmitted customs and values ​​of his group, and includes it in a broader cultural context. In its national form, culture becomes individual, and, therefore, more universal in its meanings and connections. Classics of any national culture are known all over the world. The further expansion of the boundaries of culture taking place in mass society, its entry to the transnational level is carried out, however, due to the loss of its clearly expressed individual principle in the process of both creativity and consumption of culture. The quantitative composition of the audience consuming culture is increasing extremely, and the quality of this consumption is decreasing to the level of a publicly accessible primitive. Culture in mass society is driven not by a person’s desire for individual self-expression, but by the rapidly changing needs of the crowd.

What, then, does globalization bring with it? What does it mean for culture? If within the existing nation states Since mass culture still somehow coexists with high examples of culture created by the national genius of the people, then won’t culture in the global world become synonymous with human facelessness, devoid of any heterogeneity? What is the general fate of national cultures in the world of global connections and relationships?