Introduction and details of popular culture

The soil nourished by popular culture theory is a highly developed market economy in modern industrial society, which shows a lot of material and cultural consumption with high-tech production. Cultural consumption is a phenomenon, not culture itself; Culture is a spiritual product, not a concrete material. Industrial production solves the basic needs of human existence, that is, providing rich means of subsistence, while culture solves the advanced needs of human existence, that is, spiritual improvement and the construction of beauty, that is, how human beings realize their own value, explore their own potential and realize the ultimate concern for human nature. Advocates of pop culture obviously ignore this simple fact. Social production pursues the richness and diversity of materials and provides complex consumption composition for human beings as much as possible. The purpose of flattening and large-scale reproduction of popular culture is to dispel the individuality and creativity of culture. The richness and diversity of material pursuit and the simplicity and standardization of cultural pursuit obviously constitute the paradox of human existence. In a sense, the trend of western popular culture is an ideological movement against the mainstream ideology. It is based on the highly developed western economy, industrial civilization and people's freedom consciousness and ideological emancipation.

Mass culture is essentially a kind of citizen culture that originated in modern industrial society and adapted to the development of market economy. On the one hand, it differs from and corresponds to the official mainstream culture and academic elite culture in its tense of * * * *, on the other hand, it differs from various folk cultures and popular cultures in the traditional natural agricultural economy society in some principles, and its main basic characteristics are commercialization, popularization, entertainment and popularization.

On the Harmonious Value of Mass Culture The mass culture in China rose in the second half of the 20th century. With the spring breeze of reform and opening up, it awakens and grows in the fertile soil of market economy. In less than 20 years, it has rapidly grown into a social backbone cultural form that keeps pace with the mainstream culture from the government and the elite culture from academia. Its development fundamentally changed the traditional pattern of China culture, and had a positive impact on the shaping of national character and social development, but it also triggered multiple social effects and different evaluations and discussions, prompting people to think about its value, function and development control.

The mass culture we are talking about today is a specific category, which mainly refers to the contemporary cultural form that rises in contemporary cities, is closely related to contemporary big industries, and is produced in large quantities by globalized modern media (especially electronic media). It is a contemporary cultural consumption form in the era of consumption or quasi-consumption, which is planned and guided by consumption ideology and adopts fashionable operation mode. It is the product of the full development of modern industry and market economy. It is a contemporary social and cultural public space or public sphere in which contemporary people participate on a large scale, and it is the largest cultural event in history in which human beings participate extensively.

The definition of popular culture has several meanings: first, popular culture is a new cultural phenomenon in industrial society with strong commercial color as culture enters the field of industrial production and market goods. Second, mass culture takes mass media as the form of cultural communication and modern technology as the form of cultural production, so it can become a widely used form of cultural consumption, and mass culture should operate according to market rules. Third, mass culture takes modern urban masses as its main customers, and mass culture has become the common consumer goods of modern urban masses. It is related to the revolutionary mass culture and folk mass culture in the past, but it is quite different. The emergence of popular culture has changed the basic pattern of aesthetic fashion in contemporary society.

The advanced culture of contemporary China is a national, scientific and popular socialist culture facing modernization, the world and the future. Specifically, it includes six aspects: China's advanced culture is a culture guided by Marxism-Leninism, ideology and theory; It is a culture that serves and obeys the party's basic line in the primary stage of socialism and provides spiritual impetus for reform, opening up and modernization; It is a positive, healthy and progressive culture that carries forward the national spirit and condenses the will and strength of people of all ethnic groups; It is a culture that inherits and carries forward all the excellent cultural traditions of the Chinese nation and has China style and China style; It is also a culture that faces the public, serves the people and is loved by the broad masses of the people.

Relationship (1) Advanced culture can play a guiding role in popular culture.

1, cultural construction is the unity of "advanced" and "mass". On the one hand, advanced culture can only realize its function and value if it is accepted by the broad masses of the people. A prominent feature of cultural development is that it must be rooted in people's lives and go deep into people's psychological level to shape correct values, thus having a positive impact on the whole society. On the other hand, the general public is the main body of creating, practicing and enjoying culture. The development degree of popular culture directly affects or even determines the overall level of a social and cultural development.

It is not only a sign of the state and degree of cultural development of a society as a whole, but also a sign of whether a social culture is mature or not. It is also the basis and environment for further cultural development and innovation, which directly determines the way and quality of further cultural innovation and development. Therefore, building advanced culture means building advanced mass culture, and the direction of advanced culture is also the direction of mass culture.

2. Popular culture plays an important role in the ranks of advanced culture. This is determined by the advanced nature of mass culture in contemporary China. Because the emergence of popular culture has greatly changed the closed state and single pattern of culture, realized the popularization and enjoyment of culture, promoted the prosperity of cultural market and the formation of cultural industry, expanded the customer base and communication space of culture, strengthened the connection between culture and production and life, and enhanced modern consciousness and spirit of the times. All these are necessary and beneficial for building a new socialist culture with China characteristics, which faces modernization, the world and the future. In the process of spreading modern consciousness and market consciousness enthusiastically, popular culture can often give people pioneering courage and enterprising spirit to a certain extent; Popular culture not only publicizes people's personality, but also provides modern technology and material means for the full development of human nature, which is conducive to improving people's quality of life and realizing people's all-round development. The development of popular culture will inevitably promote the development of cultural industry.

(B) The negative impact of the development of popular culture needs the guidance of advanced culture.

1, mass culture ignores the social benefits of cultural products, crowds out elegant culture and causes cultural ecological imbalance.

Popular culture is commercialized, and it pursues the maximization of profits. It often produces everything that can make money, its social benefits are often ignored, and the unique positive educational orientation of culture is weakened. In terms of ideological content, there have been a lot of contents advocating violence, pornography and superstition. These cultural rubbish are low in style, repetitive in content and similar in technique. Driven by market demand, these cultural wastes are often copied on a large scale and widely sold to all corners of society. As the crystallization of human wisdom, elegant culture has a long production cycle and a small number. Popular culture seizes the market with the advantages of fast speed and large quantity, resulting in the exclusion of elegant culture. Mass culture takes modern media as the carrier, and by virtue of its advantages of commercial speculation and secular enjoyment, it forms a situation of mass culture monopoly in the social and cultural field, which leads to a serious imbalance of social and cultural ecology. Social ideal, meaning of life, national spirit and traditional morality are diluted under the immersion of popular cultural spirit. Obviously, this is not conducive to the healthy development of advanced socialist culture.

2. Popular culture leads to the loss of personality, culture and humanistic spirit. The large-scale production and management of popular culture makes the content and form of cultural products similar and fixed, showing a monotonous tendency, making people's lifestyle choices converge, making the original colorful life simple and unified, leading to the loss of personality. Mass culture is also a kind of consumer culture, which is based on the principle of satisfying people's sensory happiness, and does not consider the humanistic significance and social value of cultural products at all in production. Under the guidance of popular culture, many recipients generally have a cultural mentality of refusing moral pursuit, seeking immediate happiness and moral nihilism, and also lose their sense of responsibility and morality to reality, which gradually leads to the loss of cultural and humanistic spirit.

Pop culture impels western thoughts to penetrate into our social life. Western developed countries have consciously infiltrated ideology and values into developing countries by virtue of their strong economic strength and advanced scientific and technological means. With the help of movies, television, the Internet and printed matter, the West can spread decadent and backward ideas with great fanfare, so that the socialist values and team spirit of the recipients are diluted, and even some people have developed from shallow cultural consumption to deep political identity.

Developing popular culture with advanced culture as the guide.

(1) In terms of direction, we should follow the direction of advanced culture and lead the healthy development of popular culture with advanced culture. In contemporary China, developing advanced culture means developing socialist scientific culture facing modernization, the world and the future, and building socialist spiritual civilization. Therefore, according to the basic program of the cultural spirit in the primary stage of socialism, we can determine the value coordinates of China's mass culture construction, adhere to the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, ideology and theory, adhere to the direction of "two ones" and the policy of "letting a hundred flowers blossom", and develop the scientific socialist mass culture of the "three modernizations" nation with the goal of cultivating "four haves". Correctly handle the relationship between the ideology of popular culture and consumption and entertainment, and the relationship between the economic benefits and social benefits of popular cultural products, strive to achieve the unity of the two, constantly meet the growing spiritual and cultural needs of the people, and inject lasting cultural support into China's economic development and social progress.

(2) In terms of content, we should carry and spread advanced culture and carry forward humanistic spirit. First, we should inject healthy and progressive advanced cultural content with a sense of mission into popular culture. Pop culture pays more attention to the happiness and relaxation of life. Although it meets the needs of the public to relax and entertain, and relieves the physical and mental fatigue of the public, it lacks the depth and ideological connotation it deserves. Therefore, the sense of mission and responsibility of advanced culture must be injected into the production, production and dissemination of mass culture, so that mass culture can become a cultural front for serving the people and building Socialism with Chinese characteristics. Secondly, we can make use of relaxed and happy popular culture to publicize, so that people can feel experience and happiness, and at the same time understand their responsibilities and missions. Thirdly, strengthen the cultivation of social citizens' humanistic spirit, especially the propaganda and popularization of the humanistic tradition of the Chinese nation, so that people can develop patriotic feelings, strengthen their ideals and beliefs in life, establish cultural values suitable for modern market economy life, and enhance the humanistic spirit content of mass culture.

(3) In management, standardize the mass culture market and adhere to the dominant position of mass culture. Comrade * * pointed out at the Sixth Congress of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles: "The country should be independent, not only politically and economically, but also ideologically and culturally." Therefore, adhering to the guidance of culture cannot be ignored at any time. The first is to formulate scientific cultural development strategies and cultural market management rules, so that serious culture and mass culture, elite culture and mass culture can develop in a balanced and coordinated way, thus eliminating the abnormal phenomenon of abnormal expansion and disorderly development of the current mass cultural market. Secondly, it is necessary to strengthen the legislation and law enforcement of the cultural market, form a systematic and complete system of cultural market management policies and regulations, and ensure that the mass cultural market really has laws to follow. Third, strengthen the management of the cultural market, improve the efficiency of managing the cultural market according to law, and make the mass cultural market truly become a place for Chinese people to relax and cultivate their sentiments. Finally, we should guide the producers and operators of popular culture to actively seek the best combination of social and economic benefits of popular culture products, which can neither be divorced from the needs and appreciation interests of consumers of popular culture, nor let vulgar and inferior products of popular culture poison the hearts of the public. (Author: School of Politics and Law, Huazhong Normal University) Editor/Pan Ying

Commercialization of characteristic attributes

The establishment of market economy in China has effectively promoted the development of productive forces and the improvement of people's material living standards. People's economic income and leisure time have increased, and cultural consumption has become a universal need, which provides realistic possibilities for the emergence and development of popular culture. Moreover, the operating mechanism of market economy has created suitable conditions for the commercialization of popular culture. Therefore, popular culture is the product of market economy and the result of the marriage of culture and industry. As a consumer culture, it has the commodity attribute produced by cultural industry institutions for modern mass consumption. Elegant culture is often shy, does not recognize its commodity characteristics, or deliberately downplays it. It seems that once art becomes attached to commodities, it will be covered with a copper smell and blaspheme the sanctity of aesthetics. Popular culture appeared in the form of commodities from the beginning and never concealed its commodity attributes. On the contrary, as a cultural commodity, it tries its best to open up the cultural market and get the maximum profit from culture and aesthetics. Film studios, TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, websites and so on are all production institutions of these cultural goods. In this way, cultural products are no longer just products created by writers and artists, but the results of industrial production. From creative planning, fund raising, production, publicity and actual consumption, cultural products enter the market as a mass-produced industrial product. Therefore, it must follow the commercialization rules of market economy and aim at pursuing commercial value. If the profit target of cultural enterprises cannot be achieved, its operation process will be affected, and even lead to losses, closure or bankruptcy of cultural enterprises. Therefore, every link in the production and circulation of popular culture must follow the law of production and operation, grasp the pulse of cultural market, conform to the consumer psychology and taste of the public, adapt to the ever-changing market, and finally achieve the purpose of selling cultural products. Because of this, Frankfurt School believes that mass culture has lost the creativity of artistic works in the technological world, showing a trend of commercialization and having the characteristics of commodity fetishism. Hawk Hammer and Adorno pointed out: "With the appearance of a large number of cheap series products and widespread fraud, art itself is more commercialized. Today, it is nothing new for art to explicitly admit that it has the nature of a commodity, but surprisingly, art swears to deny its independence and is proud of turning itself into a consumer product.

Although the commercialization of popular culture has brought unattainable art and aesthetics to the people and highlighted their status as gods, its negative effects are also obvious. As far as the creative subject is concerned, artists become freelancers when they enter the cultural market. They seem to get rid of the shackles of "words don't talk, scholars don't manage money" and gain the freedom of creation. In essence, when their works or performances directly face consumers as commodities at the same time, they will inevitably be influenced by cultural markets such as movies, audio-visual, performances, books and periodicals. The change of public aesthetic taste and the pursuit of economic interests by cultural companies will inevitably restrict or even dominate their artistic creation. In this case, it is difficult for artists to truly create according to the laws of art, and it is also difficult for art to truly ensure its independence and creativity. But also affect the public's values, ways of thinking and lifestyles. When art, as a kind of consumer goods, goes out of the circle of elegant culture and elite culture and becomes a means of mass entertainment, its value is often evaluated by popularity, entertainment, attendance, ratings and bestsellers, rather than originality, transcendence and criticism. The aesthetic character of art and the individual consciousness of independent thinking are greatly weakened. As Hausel, an American art sociologist, pointed out, "The entertainment circle rarely or never teaches people who walk on the road to think independently".

Media of communication

Mass culture is closely related to mass media. Mass communication professional groups use mass media to spread information in large quantities and quickly, and exert influence on customers. Mass media include mechanical print media such as newspapers, magazines and books, and electronic media such as radio, television, movies and the Internet. The application of mass media has expanded the public sphere of mass culture and the object and scope of mass culture. The sooner we accept the symbolic transcendence and unchangeable material characteristics of human existence, the better. Many exotic, rare birds and animals, high-level concerts and sports meetings at home and abroad, which were impossible to watch in person before, can now be seen everywhere in movies and television.

It is precisely because the mass media has a large amount of information and a large number of customers that mass culture uses modern media, mass production and mass reproduction to attract audiences and attract audiences. Qian Zhongshu's popularity has a lot to do with his works being put on the screen, not to mention Jin Yong's extensive influence, the republishing of novels and the repeated adaptation of movies and TV series. The two are closely related and promote each other, which shows the great power of mass culture and media. In the spread of popular culture, it is often seen that a TV series is talked about by everyone and a popular song is sung by everyone. In 2004, Yang's online love song "Mice Love Rice" became popular overnight, which not only quickly topped the mp3 download list, but also set the highest click-through rate of 654.38 billion people in the same period in Internet history. It is precisely because of the platform of online media that it provides communication conditions for a large number of customers, so that for a time, mice love rice to sing everywhere in small towns, streets and alleys of big cities, inside and outside the campus. It can be seen that it is an important feature of popular culture to use modern mass media to produce and disseminate a large amount of information in batches and act on customers.

Production standardization

Modern science and technology provide technical means for the emergence of popular culture, not only in the media, but also in production. The introduction of high technology, the updating of equipment, especially the use of computer technology, has improved the quality of popular culture, such as the realistic effect brought to the audience by the high-tech lens in the movie Titanic. At the same time, the mode of production of popular culture has been brought into the industrialized stylized production process, and it has become increasingly socialized and collectivized. Therefore, popular culture can be stylized, scaled, batched and standardized like industrial products, forming a competitive cultural industry in the market.

It is precisely because mass culture can be produced in batches and copied indefinitely that it has obvious characteristics of standardization and simplification, but it lacks irreplaceable personality characteristics of real works of art, such as TV dramas, popular novels, radio short plays, advertising sketches and pop songs. Generally, they are made according to certain formats and procedures, forming a certain standardized model. For example, popular TV series usually "set up rich and luxurious environment, arrange complex clues, construct fascinating plots, weave graceful stories and arrange unified personalities". So people often call the director of this kind of TV series "Kan". It seems that you don't need any rich life accumulation and profound artistic preparation, just apply a fixed format.

It is an inevitable trend of social development that mass culture becomes a commodity. The application of modern science and technology has accelerated the production speed of cultural products, shortened the production cycle, reduced the production cost and greatly improved the efficiency and economic benefits of cultural production. However, cultural production is different from material production after all, and the spiritual level is far greater than the material level. The level it has reached cannot be measured by the speed, efficiency and economic benefits of production. As a work of art, it must be original and show distinctive personality and style, but the mode of production and mass production cannot achieve this goal. Cultural products not only need the exquisite combination of modern high-tech means and sound and painting, but also should study cultural taste and cultural spirit, which is precisely the fundamental charm of culture. Therefore, the standardization of popular culture makes the personality of real works of art disappear, and the form and content tend to be more and more similar.

Daily aesthetics

As far as cultural aesthetics is concerned, popular culture has broken through the boundaries between art and non-art, aesthetic activities and daily life. In the past a long historical period, beauty and art were alienated from ordinary people; Today, with the help of mass media, cultural industries and other means, beauty and art have been popularized, the classicality of aesthetics and daily life have moved from tit-for-tat to harmonious unity, and the desires, temptations and interests suppressed by classical aesthetics have been promoted to the supreme position. What is at the cultural center or hot spot is no longer the traditional classic art, but various aesthetic forms such as pop songs, TV dramas, advertisements, fashion, model performances, online literature, bestsellers, animations, online videos, online games, mobile phone videos, and mobile phone short messages are constantly emerging. Aesthetic activities are no longer limited to elegant art places that are divorced from daily life, such as concert halls, opera houses and art galleries. Instead, it happens in the living space of ordinary people, such as shopping centers, street parks, stadiums, resorts and so on. In these places, cultural activities, aesthetic activities, social activities and commercial activities are integrated and inseparable. Even aesthetics, as a kind of cultural consumption, enters ordinary families and is linked with daily life, such as environmental design, street beautification, home decoration, beauty and fitness, and chatting and laughing while watching TV dramas in leisure. Aesthetic process and daily life are intertwined, regardless of each other. This feature of popular culture will inevitably have an impact on elegant culture and classic art, prompting them to change their forms, seek new display methods and present them to the public in new forms. Concerts by Pavarotti and other three tenors in the world were held in the Palace Square. Poems in Tang and Song Dynasties attract attention with exquisite pictures, and newspapers and magazines are colorful and dazzling, attracting readers. The increasing popularity of popular culture and the aestheticization of daily life have led to changes in the production, dissemination and consumption patterns of literature and art and the whole cultural field, thus meeting the needs of people's aesthetics and daily life.

Forms of entertainment

In the market economy society, popular culture is a kind of consumption culture. The public are ordinary people, and their attitude towards culture has obvious secular consumption tendency, which is different from that of cultural elites in this respect. In the cultural pattern of the whole society, popular culture does not emphasize rational reflection like elite culture, but pays attention to perceptual pleasure. It creates a cultural form to entertain the public, so as to attract the public and gain commercial profits. "We not only strive to obtain the greatest intensity of aesthetic pleasure in the possible scope, but also apply aesthetic considerations more widely to the handling of practical affairs." [7] Therefore, entertainment on the emotional level has become a prominent feature of popular culture. Since the reform and opening up, due to the popularity of TV, the increase of TV channels and broadcast time, TV cultural programs have become an indispensable aesthetic object in people's daily life, and TV culture has become one of the important cultural phenomena. The production of TV cultural festivals has changed from obvious propaganda "education" in the past to "entertainment" as the center, paying attention to the audience's participation and improving the ratings, showing a purpose of meeting the aesthetic needs of the public and realizing the entertainment of the public. The annual "Spring Festival Gala" has become a mass carnival feast. Variety parties and various games and entertainment programs held by various traditional festivals or economic activities flocked to form new "folk customs" and new cultural landscapes. Here, entertainment is not a means of publicity and education, but the purpose of popular culture itself. Entertainment is a subjective life experience, an emotional feeling of the main body of life, and even a natural physiological demand. As a perceptual culture, popular culture is only to satisfy the entertainment instinct of life and physiology, and to provide a perceptual pleasure or entertainment enjoyment in daily life. Looking back at the TV screen, from sketches, popular dramas, New Year's films to a wide variety of entertainment programs, regardless of the complexity of the story, the blandness of the plot and the sadness and joy of the ending, its cultural mission is to provide entertainment, leisure and entertainment for the public, so that they can get relaxed satisfaction, sensory and spiritual comfort. Therefore, it is difficult for mass culture to bear a heavy sense of historical mission and rational criticism like elite culture. On the other hand, this has also become the reason why popular culture tends to be vulgar, low-level and superficial.

Quwei fashion

In order to produce cultural products with pleasant feelings, popular culture often absorbs and draws lessons from the characteristics of elite culture and folk culture at the beginning, creates original new models, and then quickly becomes popular through the media or mass production, forming a fashion trend. In the pop music world, after Li Chunbo wrote "Letter from Home", a number of imitations such as "Go home often and have a look" and "I wish you peace" appeared one after another; On TV programs, following Happy Story of Hunan Satellite TV, games and entertainment programs such as Lucky 52, Happy Camp, Holiday Story and Very Weekend appeared one after another. After Shandong Pictorial published the first batch of "Old Photos" series, inspired and influenced by this, a large number of books such as "Hundred Years Old Photos", "Old Album", "Red Lens", "Black Lens", "Long Lens", "Blue Lens" and "Golden Lens" appeared in other publishing houses, which formed the phenomenon of "reading pictures" in the publishing industry. As a result, fashion has brought the "noise" of popular culture, making it rich and diverse. On the other hand, under such circumstances, it is impossible for a form to dominate the world for a long time and spread rapidly. In this way, it will follow the trend and become patterned. Therefore, most fashions and fashions can only be a flash in the pan, and the scenery is short-lived and difficult to last.

When it comes to the fashion of popular culture, we can't help but mention the phenomenon of creating "stars" and chasing "stars" In the era of highly developed mass media, stars come forth in large numbers, widely existing in the fields of popular culture such as drama, film and television, and become the "idols" of mass aesthetics, which are accepted, imitated and worshipped by the public. On the one hand, as the "manufacturing" and "packaging" star of the media, it has entered thousands of households with its flat and consumer character and appearance, and has become the focus of public attention and interest in daily life. BiBi Zhou and Jane Zhang are fashion stars carefully planned by the program director of Hunan Satellite TV's Super Girl, actively guided by the judges, and eagerly watched and participated by the audience. Chris Lee also appeared on the cover of American Time Magazine, making stars a special fashion and pursuit of mass media. On the other hand, stars have also brought different levels of consumers, higher ratings and better economic benefits to the mass media.

On the surface, stars are made by the media, which reflects the director's image planning and design level, as well as the energy and influence of the media. It is the need of the current cultural market competitiveness, but fundamentally speaking, it is inseparable from the choice of the public and the emotional value orientation of the public aesthetic consumption. What is hidden behind the pursuit of "stars" is the aesthetic taste and fashion of the public, which is their psychological demand. The public's obsession, pursuit and worship of stars are not only their love and appreciation of star image design, knowledge and personality, but also their publicity and expression of self-ideal, and their choice and affirmation of self-aesthetic interest. Therefore, mass culture should accurately grasp the aesthetic taste and psychology of the masses, carefully design and cultivate the stars worshipped by the masses, and lead the civilized, healthy and positive trend of the times in the whole society.