北師研究生英語(yǔ)課程-wenkub
2023-04-19 00:09:25 本頁(yè)面
【正文】 d’s famous definition of culture (“the best that has been thought and said in the world”) from his book Culture and Anarchy implies a clear dichotomy between culture produced by the social elite and the “anarchic” culture made by mon people, which considered degenerative in nature. His works strongly influenced another cultural critic, F. R. Leavis, who perceived “mass civilization” as inherently manipulatory and therefore dangerous. Their works, nevertheless, initiated further studies on massproduced culture (in England represented by the works of such eminent theorists as Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall) and opened up an academic discussion which continues till the present day. See for example John Storey, An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Pop Culture, (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993). its definition, status, and the character of its signifying practices still remain ambiguous. While some strands in postmodern theory have emphasized the importance of popular culture in the everyday experience of individuals, the view that mass culture should not be merely thought of in negative terms, either as a tool of capitalist ideology in maintaining the political and social status quo, or as the exclusive determinant of individual and collective identity is still relatively unmon. Studies on various aspects of the popular have drawn attention to the plexity of practices of popular culture and have initiated semiotic discussions on it. The Structuralist approach is represented in Barthes’ early works, the prime example being Mythologies. Still, in accordance with structuralist and semiotic thought, popular texts have e to be understood as bearers of meaning and ideologies, connoting prevalent cultural myths.Marxist and the Frankfurt School critics, whose approach pervaded the most influential schools of prewar critical thought, believed that “the culture industry of capitalism homogenized people into a mass, and deindividualise them by debasing their taste into that of the lowest mon denominator.” John Fiske, Television Culture, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 38. They also coined the term “mass culture”, suggesting the “uncultured” character of this kind of cultural output, and as such, the embodiment of characteristics which was entirely at variance with those so far associated with art and original cultural creation. In response to works emphasizing ideological prevalence in culture and to the pessimism of some strands in postmodern philosophy aimed aimed at popular consumption, the 1980s gave birth to a number of studies on popular culture which questioned the derogatory status of mass entertainment, the production of which was no longer perceived as simply the effective dissemination of dominant meanings. Graeme Turner discusses the writings of theorists such Michel de Certeau, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Roland Barthes, thinkers who influenced modern thinking about popular culture. See Graeme Turner, Brit
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