Beware of So-Called Popular Culture

Abstract

After the smashing of the fetters of cultural autocracy imposed by the Gang of Four, a scene of unprecedented flourishing has emerged in culture and art. Popular culture has been very active, especially since the mid-1980s. Incomplete statistics indicate that China today has more than 200,000 song-and-dance halls, more than 60,000 video theaters, more than 100,000 kiosks and stalls for books and publications, and nearly 4,000 cinema houses and drama theaters; further, 80 percent of China's inhabitants have televisions. Truly, times have changed and are most encouraging. But this is exactly where the problem lies: What kind of culture is being transmitted by these cultural institutions, by these media of transmission? There is no denying, for sure, that much of it is mainstream and classical culture and that there is some true popular culture. But the overall situation is quite confused and does not inspire optimism. "Owing to the ambiguity of the term popular culture, Marxist researchers should strictly differentiate between the ‘pop culture’ of bourgeois society (which is popular according to its form or relatively popular nature, popular by quantitative measurement, but anti-popular in its ideological content)."1 But many researchers and practical workers in this country have made no "strict distinction" between genuine popular culture and so-called pop culture, and therefore frequently fall into errors both in theory and practice-manifestations of which are that some people blindly promote the development of so-called pop culture, whereas others blindly reject genuine popular culture.