Popular Culture: Formulation Of The Meaning And Tension Of The Theory

The basic position of this text is that stagnant culture facts and a general value system of aesthetics and culture never exist. Culture changes due to the influence of different forces, which is a proactive process to create a new world, not a course accepting passively. From elite art to popular culture, all kinds of aesthetics and culture theories have launched fierce disputes around the formulation and explanation of the new meaning, thus showed us the most direct way to understand popular culture. The focal point of this text is not the explanation of the numerous and complicated phenomena of popular culture, but the various theory resources and positions backing the explanation and the tense relation formed historically between them, which is a short-cut to grasp popular culture at a higher level. The meaning of doing it in this way lies in that since the dawn of human civilization there are no cultures other than popular culture becoming the focus of various theories and conflicts. As a symbol system expressing meaning, popular culture is more like a collectivity whose meaning is in constant generation and change. This collectivity is the result of struggles among all forces during the transformation of society and culture, and it is also a condensed point from which we can produce empirical descriptions of popular culture in terms of different theories, but we can never have a explanation once and for all. This is not only because it is the centre of modern cultural conflicts, but also because its meaning is still undergoing nonstop transformation and generation.But for a long time, a kind of static aesthetic thinking hinders the further investigation into popular culture. When people are used to taking popular culture into consideration from one angle, this angle will become the protective screen covering other perspectives. As a very important part of modern culture, popular culture is in a complicated situation. We must break through the static mode of thinking and probe into popular culture from multidimensional visual angles, including cultural spirit transformation, cultural politics, ideology, media, post-modern aesthetics, economy, etc.We should focus on the relations between popular culture and traditional elite art, on the unity of opposites between popular culture and modernism as well as the coincidence between it and post-modernism, and so on. Meanwhile, popular culture itself offers unique food for thought on various culture and art phenomena and traditional theories. Therefore, based on principles of aesthetics and art, this paper tries to probe into popular culture, focusing on its multidimensional theory and its tension. It is hoped to be of some use for the pervasive simplex way of studying popular culture.Necessarily, this thesis first introduces the history and development of popular culture in China, then explains the background and cultural logic of Frankfurt school's theory being introduced in China, and finally defines popular culture according to western theories. It is thought that popular culture is surrounded by a range of technical terms due to its western theory background, and it can not be simply annotated with the existing terms in our experience. As a modern phenomenon, popular culture forms when social productivity, market economy, media technology and relevant social structure develop into certain stage. Popular culture is a category with specific meaning. It contains "cultural industry" what Frankfort school referred to as well as cultural consumption. In a broad sense popular culture includes every aspect of our daily life, thus it symbolizes the meaning and value of modern social life.The full text is divided into five chapters altogether.Chapter one: Analyzing the cultural logic in the course from elite art to popular culture according to the acquisition and loss of the sacred meaning of art. The article has it that the sacredness of art in pre-modern times stems form religion to the exclusion of itself. After the decline of religion, "talent" and secular political power have become the new spirit of elite art. However, with the changes of culture in the 20th century, the traditional culture is on the decline and the old elite cultural stratum disintegrates, and finally the worship value of art is no longer the centre on the stage of history. This is not a wasteland, but a new world that is coming into being. With the push of the recreational, technical and popular tide, art gets back to the daily life again, becoming a part of life.This is completely different from the traditional elite art.Chapter two: For a long time, a kind of parochial aestheticism thinking has ruled the criticism of popular culture. Theoretically, aestheticism criticism is usually based on classical and modern mainstream aesthetics, upholding autonomy and disinterestedness of art. Actually it looks on elite aesthetics as the only source of the meaning of culture. Eagleton explained ideology of aesthetics; Bourdieu revealed the hidden class origin behind the so-called elegant or legal interest covered under the superficial objectivity and justness. As for Adorno's popular culture theory ,since it is part of negative aesthetics which criticizes capitalism as a whole, its limitation is obvious. So breaking through aestheticism thinking, looking for the formulation of the new meaning and providing explanation for it is the primary road leading to a breakthrough in popular culture study nowadays. All these theories, such as post-modernism, Pragmatist Aesthetics, Fiske's text relevance theory and the fast unfolding culture industries theory ,etc. provide new horizons beyond the aestheticism thinking. Following this train of thought, the next three chapters discuss the acquisition of the legitimacy of popular culture in different ways concerning cultural politics, media and new aesthetic paradigms, and so on.Chapter three: Modern aesthetics levels a unfair criticism at popular culture due to its basis on elite art which is separated from daily life, whereas popular culture is part of daily life and social practice, consequently, such kind of criticism brings nothing new to the popular culture study. Only when popular culture is liberated from the trial platform of highbrow aesthetics and art, can the door to its political potential be opened. Because of the appearance of popular culture, the stand-alone concept of culture which takes art as its core is rewritten progressively. As part of daily life popular culture has become a place where social differences struggle with each other. From Arnold and Leavis via Gramsci, Althusser as well as Britain cultural studies school, till Fiske , the development of western popular culture theory has shown the great changes of this hidden cultural politics.Chapter four: This chapter analyses the reason why media culture rises and the...