РЕВЕРСИВНЫЕ ПРАКТИКИ МАССОВОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ

Abstract

The article examines the ability of modern mass culture to form a mythological picture of the world in the minds of its audience. It is noted that the complication of society at the end of the 20th century led to the fact that in the humanities, linear ideas about social progress were replaced by much less predictable nonlinear models of cultural dynamics. This made it difficult to predict future scenarios for both society as a whole and for its individual representatives, in particular. In the conditions of incomplete information about the most complex civilizational shifts, not only intellectuals who are able to respond to the challenges of our time, but also ordinary people found themselves in a problematic situation. These changes have led to the exacerbation of the problem of the formation of heuristic behavior patterns and the construction of corresponding life scenarios. Worrying about choosing the best trajectory for the future has become a massively recognized problem. The consciousness of a mass society representative begins to avoid responsibility for the rational choice of promising strategies and tactics. At the same time, the desire to ease the tension of choice encourages the individual not to seek new practices, but to turn to archaic patterns restored by mass culture, formed by the archaic mythological picture of the world. An irrational return to past behavioral patterns contributes to a change in the direction of the vector of cultural development, reorienting it from the future to the past. To illustrate such a reversion, this article examines the following two phenomena of mass culture: the industry of religious holidays and the “confessional” genres of media “cultural heroes”. The article identifies the reasons for the popularity of such mass cultural reversions, the main one of which is adaptation to the complexities of modern culture and the unpredictability of its dynamics. It is concluded that the result of such reversions for a mass society representative is an increasing loss of their subjectivity, which manifests itself in an appeal to the established mythological patterns of behavior transmitted by mass culture, instead of consciously constructing new ones.