Three Dimensions Of Thinking About Mass Culture Of Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag's thinking on mass culture has its clear sequence, and relates to several key issues in cultural study. In general, her views had come across three dimensions. In 1960s, she spoke in defense of mass culture for its subversive power in aesthetics. From late 1960s to middle 1970s, as devoted to politics, she found the ideological control of mass culture. Since middle 1970s, she focused on morality and criticized mass culture which had been occupied by consumerism, because she thought it encouraged the irresponsible moral standard. Susan Sontag always stood with the minority. The change of her views actually reflects the inherent contradiction of mass culture:between fighting and tameness, seriousness and anti-intellectualism. Maybe the rational attitude is to be vigilant all the time, just as what Susan Sontag did.Among the studies about Sontag we already have, most attribute her thinking of mass culture to her thinking of art and literature, neglecting the independent sequence of the former and its deep reason. This thesis aims at analyzing the change of Sontag's views toward mass culture, trying to fill the blank of this study field in China. As for the study method, this thesis uses close reading and biography analysis, because Sontag's different expressions about mass culture relate to her own experience, and the analysis of the two may helps understand her attitude's change about mass culture.The innovation of this thesis lays on the discussion about how to treat mass culture with ration or intelligence. "Mass culture" is a complex concept which has its inner contradiction. On one hand, it is for the common people, so as if it is born to be democratic. But on the other hand, it praises simplicity, ease and consumerism, so it's easy to be induced to the contrary of democracy. Therefore, it may be arbitrary to criticize mass culture as anti-intellectual; but it may also be overoptimistic to believe that mass culture is a symbol of democracy. This thesis expresses the thinking about two kinds of "anti-intellectual". One is Nietzsche-like, discarding ration in the surface, searching after wisdom in fact, because in some kind of ruling system, wisdom would have been the accomplice. The other one is the true anti-intellectual, refusing any trace of ration at all and indulged in the joy of the surface. How to tell the two kinds of anti-intellectual not only matters the estimation of mass culture, but also matters the cultural atmosphere surrounding us. Nowadays, everyone can't refuse the flowing mass culture. What's important is not to intentionally neglect it, but to rationally treat it. From the very beginning, Sontag treated mass culture with seriousness, so she didn't lose herself. In such an era of mass culture, what we must caution is just the loss.