Mass Culture

mass cultureDefinition of Mass Culture
Mass culture is the set of ideas and values that develop from a common exposure to the same media, news sources, music, and art. Mass culture is broadcast orotherwise distributed to individuals instead of arising from their day-to-day interactions with each other. Thus, mass culture generally lacks the unique content of local communities and regionalcultures. Frequently, it promotes the role of individuals as consumers. With the rise of publishing and broadcasting in the 19th and 20th centuries, the scope of mass culture expanded dramatically. Itreplaced folklore, which was the cultural mainstream of traditional local societies. With the growth of the Internet since the 1990s, many distinctions between mass media and folklore have become blurred.Mass culture also reduced art to a commodity produced under circumstances similar to a production line for profit. Workers are reduced to highly specialized tasks with strict compartmentalization ofstages of production and created in large quantities, resulting in the destruction of any creativity, experimental forms or intellectual challenges often associated with higher art forms. Theaudience is reduced to the role of consumer, allowing their emotions and sensibilities to be manipulated, along with their needs and desires distorted and thwarted. Leavis goes so far to suggest mass cultureprevents individuals from developing normally (whatever normal means).
Mass culture is at the root of cultural imperialism, where one form of culture, in this case American, dominated the artisticlandscape so powerfully it overwhelms native culture, resulting in cultural forms that are superficial, artificial and standardized.

Popular culture studies is the academic discipline studyingpopular culture from a critical theory perspective. It is generally considered as a combination of communication studies and cultural studies.
Following the work of the Frankfurt School, popular culture...