With each of these developments social practices changed; new
alliances between formerly unconnected groups were forged on the basis of
taste and consumptive status; religious and moral codes were threatened not
only by the "questionable" content of the various media, but also by the
increasing contact among previously isolated groups and by the increasing
access of these groups to differing lifestyles and worldviews. The rapid
transformations in the social and economic structures -- combined with
profound shifts in the cultural fabric away from theological or autocratic
authority toward a secularized intelligentsia -- set the stage for the expansion of
social and cultural critics and philosophers who observed these trends with
varying degrees of disdain, alarm, or approval. The emergence of "mass
society" and "mass culture" thus occur at several crucial contextual
intersections: a) the context of the traditions of the Enlightenment, which
valued social and intellectual progress and improvement, b) the context of the
emergence of Art and Culture as domains of privileged access to the literate,
upper classes, c) the context of the emergence of localized popular cultures, d)
the context of increasing commercialization of culture (and Culture) via the
new mass media, and e) the peculiar predicament of American society, in
which national identity would collide with pluralist values. This assortment of
contingencies has been interpreted by theorists of mass culture in a variety of
ways, and it is to the theorists and their traditions that I now turn.
Traditional Theories of Mass Culture
Traditionally, "mass," when used to refer to a group of people (as in
"the masses"), is used as an aggregate concept that typically combines the
following conditions: the masses are large, widely dispersed, anonymous,
demographically heterogenous but behaviorally homogenous groups of people;
they lack self-awareness as masses; they lack binding social ties with one
another; they are an aggregate group of isolated individuals, and are incapable
of organizing themselves as masses; and they are acted upon by external forces
(McQuail 1988, DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach 1989).
This focus upon the nature of the ties or bonds between people in
industrialized society derives from 19th century social philosophy, including
the works of Comte, Tonnies and Durkheim.
Auguste Comte advocated the application of the "positive method" of
science to society. Borrowing from the biological sciences, Comte envisioned
society as an organism. Society, according to Comte, had structure, specialized
parts which functioned together, and could be observed to undergo evolutionary
change. Comte's social organism was threatened by the forces of over-
specialization, which he attributed to the increasing division of labor; he argued
that the links between individuals could be weakened by the division of labor
because greater differentiation of society led to greater differentiation of
experience; therefore, understanding between people would continue to erode.
Comte viewed this erosion of common frameworks (or consensus) (and, thus,
common linkages) between people as threatening to the equilibrium and
harmony of the social organism (DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach 1989); further, he
attributed the existence of social disorder to intellectual disorder. His main
prescription was the application of science (in particular, positivism) for the
purposes of, essentially, fine-tuning the social organism (Ritzer 1988).
Tonnies' characterizations (or ideal types) of the social bonds
corresponding to pre- industrial and industrialized societies have also been
influential within traditional theories of mass society. Tonnies argued that the
mutual integration of individual lives with one another created conditions of
mutual commitment, or "a reciprocal, binding sentiment ... which keeps human
beings together as members of a totality." This state of "reciprocal, binding
sentiment" he called Gemeinschaft. In contrast, industrialized societies
increasingly rely upon contractual relations between individuals; thus, relations
become impersonal and are based on agreed-upon fulfillment of contractual
obligations rather than an appreciation of the personal qualities of an
individual. Tonnies termed this latter condition Gesellschaft, and he was
concerned that gesellschaft ultimately harmed the well-being of society and the
individual.
Durkheim incorporated the organicism and empiricism of Comte with
Tonnies's emphasis on social solidarity in his major theoretical statements;
however, unlike Tonnies, Durkheim did not accept the argument that
conditions of Gesellschaft eliminated moral unity or binding connection
between individuals. On the contrary, while he recognized that the division of
labor in society could produce conditions of anomie, he tended to believe that
the division of labor increased, rather than decreased the mutual integration of
the social organism (a condition which he termed organic solidarity). Thus, the
division of labor contributes to the heterogeneity of the social organism, which
(by definition of progress and evolution) meant the social organism was
becoming more complex and was, consequently, improving. However, with
Comte, Durkheim believed that the countervening force against organic
solidarity was the increase (by virtue of increasing divisions of labor) with
which individuality was experienced and expressed.
T.S. Eliot's view of culture has a certain Durkheimian conservatism.
Eliot argues that "culture" is a manifestation of patterns of society as a whole.
Eliot writes:
- It is commonly assumed that there is culture, but that it is the property of a
small section of society; and from this assumption it is usual to proceed to one
of two conclusions: either that culture can be the concern of a small minority,
and that therefore there is no place for it in the society of the future; or that in
the society of the future the culture which has been the possession of the few
must be at the disposal of everybody (Eliot 1949, 31).
Eliot takes issue with both of these assumptions, arguing that the culture of the
individual cannot be isolated from the culture of the group. Culture, rather, is
an accumulation; it can only give meaning to the complexities of life after the
lived experiences of its inhabitants have already created meaning (it is, in
Durkheimian terms, an expression of the "collective conscience"). In addition,
Eliot argues that since culture is not the domain of any one group but is
(ideally) the expression of the whole, "it is only by an overlapping and sharing
of interests, by participation and mutual appreciation, that the cohesion
necessary for culture can obtain." Thus, Eliot embraces a form of organic
solidarity as essential to the formation of culture. This solidarity is likewise in
tension with the forces of individualism. While Eliot initially appears to be
offering a pluralistic and equalitarian argument, in his chapter, "The Class and
the Elite," his position becomes more clear.
According to Eliot, social philosophers tend to envision the social
differentiation and the division of labor in the society "of the future" as
completely isomorphic with individual talents. In such a perfectly functioning
society, so the argument goes, since each will be fulfilled there would be no
distinctions of superiority. Eliot sees this as an "atomic view" of society; the
emergence of elites is not only inevitable, but necessary, according to Eliot, for
the superior intellects (scientists, leaders, philosophers) can help guide a
culture's understanding of itself. The real problem, rather, is that the modern
condition has increasingly isolated elites from one another; their cohesion,
thus, is essential to the optimum integration of all sectors of society within
culture. And for Eliot, the real fear from mass culture is its tendency to level or
equalize all cultural forms (Brantlinger 1983, 202). He regarded his
contemporary culture as being clearly "in decline:" "We can assert with some
confidence that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture
are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidences of this decline
are visible in every department of human activity" ( 1968, 91).
Thus, Eliot is unwilling to surrender too much self-determination to
ordinary people; rather, ordinary folk require the guidance of enlightened elites
(similar, in a sense, to Durkheim's "social physicians" who might cure
particular pathologies of the social organism). Finally, like Durkheim, Eliot is
cautious regarding the separation of the individual from the "ties that bind."
The traditional approaches to the study of mass culture tend to assert,
as Brantlinger argues, a "negative classicism," in which the Culture of
yesteryear was superior to the "mass culture" of today; based upon this premise,
modern civilization is seen to be in a state of decay, a slouching toward Rome,
so to speak. Given this set of assumptions, it should therefore be no surprise
that traditional approaches seek to salvage some golden moment of the past
which was better -- or which has the potential for rescuing the future -- in order
to prevent or obstruct the recurring Fall of Rome.
"Mass culture" from this perspective is typically a pejorative concept
in that it implies a condition of inferiority in the quality of the cultural form(s)
mediated or commodified, as compared (implicitly) to "high culture," Culture,
or Art -- each of which has been canonized and legitimized by the application
of intellectual and/or aesthetic criteria of value, within a tradition of critique.
Mass culture also implies a condition of both spectacle and spectatorship, in
which the aesthetic, intellectual, spiritual and/or cultural qualities of "true"
Culture/Art are eliminated in exchange for sensational, titillating, vulgar or
demeaning content (i.e., spectacle), and which requires the "passive"
consumption from its audiences rather than their active participation in its
creation (i.e., spectatorship). Additionally, mass culture, from this perspective,
is believed (as alluded to above) to level taste, intellect, and the general social
enlightenment by virtue of having to consider too many (rather than only the
superior) preferences; in short, too many attempts to appeal to too many people
waters down the culture into into mere tasteless (and nutritionless) broth.
Ironically, one could make the argument that the very means and
practices that enabled the Enlightenment also provided the means and practices
of spectatorship. For example, John Dewey, in his spectator theory of
education, argues that the modern educational system forces students to be
spectators to the knowledge-gathering and -generating process. Since they are
required to read the observations or analyses of people who have already
observed something, they are actually spectators to spectators. Dewey argues
that knowledge can really only be acquired through interaction, through
discourse, through the exchange of common symbols; it is a conversational and
processual activity, rather than a passive, spectatorial activity. Dewey's
observations, combined with Walter Ong's arguments that it was printing (not
writing) that fixed the word into visual space, suggest that the conditions of
spectatorship were created with the emergence of print culture and of
institutionalized centers for learning (from which emerge cultural elites). This
particular tension -- that the Enlightenment contains the seeds of its own
destruction -- will be of special interest to the Frankfurt School scholars,
discussed below.
Finally, "popular culture" traditionally shares some of the features of
mass culture, in that popular culture also lacks a canonized set of aesthetic
criteria exterior to itself by which to judge its forms; however, popular culture
has, historically, referred to a localized set of cultural forms or customs that are
related in some substantial way (even functionally) to the lived experiences of
its consumers. For example, embroidery as a form of popular culture not only
expressed the aesthetic sentiments of its producers, it could also be worn.
Popular cultures have tended to be viewed as much more local, more authentic
(in a folk-sense), and, typically, vulnerable to omission in official "historical"
accounts of the times (with some exceptions, of course). Handlin (1961) argues
that once a popular culture is mediated the local ties to lived experiences are
eliminated; thus, with mass culture, the relevance, intimacy and spontaneity of
emotion characteristic of a popular culture is diffused. Consequently whatever
was organic, was authentic, or was expressive of a particular group's lived
experience is disconnected from the cultural form; the result is that the
massification of the popular renders whatever was valuable in the popular
ineffective for the maintenance of the culture.
Radical or Critical Traditions
The radical or critical approaches to mass culture derive from
substantially differing sources than do the traditional approaches, yet they share
similar concerns. Contributors and influences upon this tradition include
Marx, Weber, the Frankfurt School scholars, (especially Adorno, Horkheimer,
Marcuse, and Benjamin), Gramsci, Mills, and Althusser. While each of their
influences have been inflected in mass theory debates in somewhat differing
ways, the common denominator among them is an interest in ideology.
Karl Marx viewed modern, industrialized, capitalist society as
inherently oppressive and inhumane; it separated people from nature,
alienating them and isolating them not only from their society but also from
themselves. According to Marx, ownership of the means of economic
production necessarily facilitates a division of labor wherein owners exploit
workers. As capitalism and private ownership progresses, society is stratified
according to labor (into the bourgeoise, the proletariate, and the
lumpenproletariate). This division among society, while stemming from
economic realities, also corresponds to a division of ideology. Marx's theory of
historical materialism argues that economics determines the social relations of
productions, and that the social relations of production determines class
consciousness. Thus, the consciousness of the bourgeoisie tends to be oriented
toward maintenance of their material conditions. The bourgeoisie also own the
means of mental production (such as newspapers), and are adept at the creation
of ideologies that perpetuate the acceptance of the social order.
Therefore, according to Marxian perspectives, mass culture produced
within the capitalist system tends (at least) to reproduce the patterns of
domination and oppression at the level of ideology (within the superstructure).
The actual nature of this tendency -- whether ideology (and, more largely,
culture) is, "in the last analysis," a matter of economic determinism, is a topic
open to debate and revision. Raymond Williams writes, "The basic question, as
it has normally been put, is whether the economic element is in fact
determining. I have followed the controversies on this, but it seems to me that it
is, ultimately an unanswerable question ... [T]he difficulty lies in estimating the
final importance of a factor which never, in practice, appears in isolation"
(Williams 1958, 280). While Williams is willing to grant economics
determining force, if they are determining, they necessarily impact a "whole
way of life;" since economics can never be isolated from the whole way of life,
Williams prefers to try to understand culture from a more holistic perspective
(that is, from the Weberian position of verstehen). He is therefore skeptical of
the tendencies of some Marxists to dismiss any cultural form produced within
"decadent" society as decadent by definition. "To describe English life, thought
and imagination in the last three hundred years simply as 'bourgeois', to
describe English culture now as 'dying', is to surrender reality to a formula"
(Williams 1958, 281-282). Because Williams attempts a more integrative
approach in his own work, and because he requires from Marxism a better
definition of culture, he more resembles Weber than Marx.
Max Weber's social order resembles Marx's in that he does give
acknowledgment to the economic base resulting in classes. However, Weber
disagreed that history could be so neatly packaged according to ownership and
the divisions and struggles resulting from ownership. History, and society, for
Weber (as for Williams) were far more complex; the mechanisms of change
and evolution were subtle, interwoven and resistant to precise causalities. Also,
Weber embraces both aspects of idealism and materialism, but resists being
confined to either. For example, Weber would agree that members of the upper
economic classes tend to have higher "status" than do members of lower
classes; however, unlike Marx, Weber acknowledges that status cannot be based
upon class, alone. A starving artist would be accorded higher status than the
starving thief, even though both occupy similar economic positions; the
difference is therefore cultural rather than material. Central to unraveling (or
at least describing) such complexities is Weber's concept of verstehen.
Derived from hermeneutics -- the interpretation of both structural
features of and authorial intentions for texts (published writings, in particular) -
- Weber's method of verstehen sought to apply the tools of hermeneutics to
social actors (thus, extending the definition of a "text" to include events or
actions of human agency, typically on the macro (rather than micro or
individual) scale -- an extension that will reappear in the symbolic traditions of
mass culture theory). For example, Weber's analysis of rational bureacracy in
the West led him to explore the possibilities that particular religious practices
encouraged or discouraged such structures of social organization. Weber's
studies of Hinduism and Confucianism point out that the ideology of those
religions impeded the growth of rational-legal bureacracies to the extent that
they entrenched rigid and impermeable class distinctions, beyond which no one
had the possibility of moving. The caste system, in particular, is tolerated,
according to Weber, because of the Hindu promise of reincarnation and the
belief that one's caste placement is the result of karma -- an irrefutable
judgment based on behavior in a previous life. Contrasted with the Protestant
work ethic, in which monetary or material gain was evidence of exemplary
conduct and glory to God, the West was peculiarly suited to the development of
the rational-legal bureacracy. Further, commandments and strict rules of
conduct advocated by the harshest of the Protestants, the Calvinists, were
amenable to rationalization and eventual codification within a legal system. In
this case, Weber attempted to understand a particular feature of society within a
holistic context that considered the social relations, the histories, and the belief
systems of the people involved.
Returning then, to Williams, the cultural forms of a given society in a
given moment in history must be understood within their particular contexts;
one should not superimpose a particular definition of the situation upon the
context. With that said, however, Williams also acknowledges that it is quite
difficult to get away from "formulas" that impose definitions on existing
situations. When he says, "There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of
seeing people as masses," he is arguing that "real business" of culture theory is
to critically examine itself (p. 300). In particular, Williams objects,
extensively, to the whole notion of a "mass" anything:
- The idea of the masses, and the technique of observing certain aspects of mass
behavior -- selected aspects of a 'public' rather than the balance of an actual
community -- formed the natural ideology of those who sought to control the
new system and to profit by it (Williams 1958, 312).
Inherent in the concept of the "masses" are assumptions about social
control, about the nature of communication (for example, as "transmission"),
and about the nature of social relations. The concept of the "masses," Williams
argues, is an interested concept -- not neutral, nor even accurately descriptive of
social reality. Yet the concept has so blinded theorists of communication that it
becomes difficult to imagine mass communication in terms outside of the
definition; it is tautological.
As Todd Gitlin (1982, 426) says, "So much is tautology."
Or is it?
Is there no such thing as mass behavior, as mass messages, as mass
culture? Doesn't the very point of social science disappear if, in fact, social
science is only tautology, only ... phenomenology?
From the point of view of symbolic or cultural theorists, the answers to
those questions might be: "Yes. And no." or "Well, what was the point?"
Cultural and Symbolic Approaches
Among these traditions the human faculty to manipulate symbols is, in
part, definitive of being human; further, the ability to manipulate symbols is
contingent not only upon superior mental development (as compared to apes,
for example) -- it is also contingent upon a cultural context.
Kenneth Burke's famous definition of man -- symbol-using, inventor of the negative, separated
from natural conditions by instruments of [his] own making, goaded by the
spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection -- offers an interesting
commentary upon social science, itself, and upon the debates regarding mass
culture, in particular. It is human nature, according to Burke, to be discontent
(rotten with perfection), to be provoked into differencing as a symbolic activity
("this is good, but that is better," or "Bach but not Bird," for example). When
applied to questions about the condition of modernity with regard to culture,
one certainly can discern a tendency to be discontent with the present (as
compared with a utopian past or future), to be fixated upon designating the
superiority and inferiority of cultural forms, to separate (and be separated by)
discourses.
Because culture is the arena in which symbols are created and invested
with meaning, for Geertz (1973), culture necessarily precedes the development
of language. Thus, prior to linguistic expressions culture (and, consequently,
"terministic screens," "formulae," "pictures in our head") had already flavored
the soup. There's no getting around culture except ... perhaps, by exposing its
existence; as Sontag suggests in her essay, "On Style," the silences of a work of
art (or of a culture, or a man) are as revealing as its utterances.
What are the silences of the debates of mass culture? What are its
terministic screens?
Carey suggests (as have others), that our current, most dominant
metaphor for understanding the nature of mass communication, is the
transmission metaphor. Carey argues that in the transmission metaphor,
"Communication was viewed as a process and a technology that would,
sometimes for religious purposes, spread, transmit, and disseminate knowledge,
ideas, and information farther and faster with the goal of controlling space and
people" (1989, 17). On the one hand, liberalist visions of a superior mass
culture suggest that the highest quality cultural forms could be made available
to the masses for (ideological/moral/religious) purposes of obtaining an
Enlightened society; allegedly, from this position, "democracy" would be
improved once the citizenry had acquired certain intellectual standards. Yet,
interestingly enough, once "the people" entered into that "democratic" domain
of culture, they became "the masses." On the other hand, in radical Marxist
visions of a superior culture, intrusions of "the people" (prior to the
achievement of Communist utopia) upon the domain of culture were a priori
dismissed as symptoms merely of "false consciousness." From both the
democratic and socialist approaches, then, once the popular became popular it
was suspect; thus one wonders -- for whom, exactly, were such perspectives
attempting to argue? For "the people?" Or... for the theorists? In this context
the second half of Carey's assertion (the goal of controlling space and people)
becomes even more salient.
Of course, Carey offers an important contribution as partial corrective
to the silences and screens of the considerations of communication and of
culture. Rather than continue with the transmission metaphor, Carey suggests
adopting a "ritual" metaphor. He explains,
- A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of
messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of
imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs. If the archetypal
case of communication under a transmission view is the extension of messages
across geography for the purpose of control, the archetypal case under a ritual
view is the sacred ceremony that draws persons together in fellowship and
commonality (1989, 18).
There are two directions to pursue with regard to Carey's ritual view.
First, in the context of "mass" culture, the ritual view demands a reorientation
toward what is valued as legitimate, meaningful, quality, sacred, and aesthetic.
Such a reorientation requires taking seriously that which has been relegated to
the trash heaps of "mass" culture; it requires asking -- rather than telling --
people what is "good," "valuable," "quality," "aesthetic," and, even, "sacred."
The second direction in which I would apply Carey's ritual view is in
the direction of the debate itself. I suggest that the mass culture debate ---
typified as it is by incompatible but similarly silent positions -- constitutes in
itself a set of ritual utterances, a set of ritual practices deployed, in varying
degrees, for the purposes of the maintenance of an intellectual community.
Perhaps an elaboration upon this latter suggestion would be helpful; I
will conclude, then, with a brief examination of the mass culture discourse from
the perspective of "symbolic pollution" (Douglas 1966).
Discourse Out of Place
Mary Douglas' famous essay, "Symbolic Pollution," provides a
framework through which the debates over mass culture could be interpreted.
Douglas considers "dirt" to be "matter out of place." Consequently, dirt reveals
what being "in place" means; that is, it reveals an underlying structure for
guiding conduct, belief, and ritual. Says Douglas, "...[O]ur pollution behaviour
is the reaction which condemns any object or idea likely to confuse or
contradict cherished classifications" (Douglas, in Alexander & Seidman 1990,
p. 155). Douglas goes on to also argue that pollution is "a particular class of
danger ... which is not likely to occur except where the lines of structure,
cosmic or social, are clearly defined."
The analogy being offered here, then, is that "mass culture" is
symbolic pollution in Culture (as conceived, affirmed, legitimated, structured
and ritualized by Critics of Culture). "Mass culture" is discourse out of place,
since it is regarded as "dirt" (even "trash"). The discourse out of place
becomes, indeed, a particular class of danger among conservatives, liberals, and
Marxists, because it is a discourse that did not originate within the sacred circle
of critique; rather, it is an outsider's discourse -- a discourse "of the people,"
which is to say, not of the academy -- not of, perhaps more precisely, that class
of literate experts which has for centuries been the arbiters of what counts as
acceptable discourse.
Therefore, the debates about mass culture could be analogous to
pollution behavior that "condemns any object or idea likely to confuse or
contradict cherished classifications." In essence, pollution behavior reifies the
classifications, purifies them, and saves them. If popular fare become moral
offenses that demand address -- and purification -- via rituals of reconciliation,
expungement, fumigation, and so on, not only do these offenses reveal the
ritual order of commentary on mass society, they also enable the commentary to
continue.
Copyright © 1995, Kristina Ross.
Mass
Culture