‘High’ Culture, Art and Aesthetics

Abstract

Some studies of the media which examine the processes by which culture is produced and the ways in which ‘society’ and ‘culture’ relate to each other, frequently employ the terms ‘high’, ‘popular’ and ‘mass’ culture, in an attempt to clarify those processes. Often, the argument rests on the concept of culture as a commodity which is consumed according to the class structures and groupings which dominate within a society. One of the problems which arises out of this approach is that assumptions and values behind each of these terms are ignored and instead they are taken to be objective descriptions of different types of culture. This confusion of the subjective and objective is not restricted to the Frankfurt School, Marxian cultural studies and American sociologists (see Chapter 1). It is apparent in Leavis’s, Gasset’s, Zeraffa’s and Scruton’s writings on culture and its debasement (Leavis and Thompson, 1933; Gasset, 1932, 1961; Scruton, 1974; Zeraffa, 1976). At their heart lies the argument that modern industrial societies have produced populations with the physical abilities to consume culture, but devoid of the intellectual capacity to discriminate or select. Within the academic world, ‘mass’ retains the pejorative connotations which it was first given by the Frankfurt School; ‘popular’ has become the focus of Marxian cultural studies and some American cultural theory, and ‘high’ remains the central concern of cultural critics in academic and other institutions. These divisions are not clear-cut, however and American usage of ‘mass’ and ‘popular’ overlaps (see discussion in Chapter 6; also Caughie, 1986; Dunn, 1986; Gans, 1974).