Mass Culture Theory

To put it bluntly, this is a theory which argues that the mass production of commercial products is ruining today’s society. As with many theories such as this, it pulls its arguments focus to the younger generations. Why does this not come as a surprise? However the quote from Paul Johnson ‘huge faces, bloated with cheap confectionary and smeared with chain store make up…broken stiletto heels’ does give me instant flashbacks to my hometown in Essex. Mass culture within this theory is described as ‘superficial’ ‘trivial’ and ‘formulaic’, just to name a few, making it abundantly clear that MacDonald and Q.D. Leavis are not its greatest fans. It is also referred to as ‘Americanisation’.

MacDonald uses the example of the expansion of Hollywood, and its effect on theatre, to illustrate his argument. He claims that the development of sound film not only standardised the theatre, through the mass production of plays, it also standardised the film industry itself. Movies lost their artistic merit and became more about the prospect of profit. This represents how popular culture over the years has begun to undermine and devalue high culture, which poses problems for the archaic view of class, and strikes fear in members of the aristocracy. MacDonald is described as a ‘cultural pessimist’ as he believes ‘bad culture’ is driving out what was ‘good culture’.

However he gives us hope in the form of ‘avant-garde’ which sole purpose is to stay separate from the main market, and is a way to ensure that serious artists, and the culture they portray, can still survive. When I think ‘avant-garde’ I think pretentious minuet portions at an extortionate price, in a restaurant which I can’t pronounce the name of. When McDonald, and cultural pessimists like him, thinks of ‘avant-garde’ they see a ‘faint glimmer of hope’. 

This form of ‘mass culture theory’ is heavily criticised as being elitist and therefore unjustified. Elite values are considered to be superior and the standard against all other forms of culture should be judged. This claim however has no real evidence to support it; it is an assumed theory which has remained unexamined. Elitism also fails to account for the diversity that arises within popular culture, seeing it as ‘homogenous and standardised’. However this is clearly not the case, taking television programmes as an example, there is a larger range of programmes presented on different national networks at the same time. Although they will all take a standard format they can all present very different view of the same situation.

The elitist argument disregards the concept that taste and style are culturally and socially determined, instead arguing that there is an objective and universal ‘authentic’ culture. This argument romanticises the past giving an idealised account of a ‘golden age’. But when exactly was this ‘golden age’? When exactly did it begin to decline? Alongside the absence of a precise definition of ‘mass culture’, the ‘mass culture theory’ has limited its ability to validate its argument. What was once seen as ‘pop culture’ is now widely regarded as ‘high culture’, for example jazz. Now jazz is appreciated as art but originally jazz was condemned as mass culture. What is classed as high culture and what is classed as mass culture shifts with the generations.

Mass culture theory claims that the audience are drones open for manipulation by the media. It doesn’t consider the possibility of preference, or the possibility of different types of cultural taste. Within this theory it’s not possible for the audience to watch or read something just because they enjoy it. This poses problems for those of us with guilty pleasures such as Hollyoaks.