A Study On Contemporary Mass Culture Aesthetic Perception With College Aesthetic Education

In view of social development in China, it puts forward in this thesis that mass culture and aesthetics have become the main cultural background of contemporary young people, and especially university students. It is thought in this thesis that cultural representation in the consumption era is mass culture, which leads both the rhythm and the content of our life in addition to our cultural life.This thesis argues that in the framework of "culture of commodity economy" development is to understand and analyze the mass culture of contemporary China, and the aesthetic expression of the mass culture is not a unidirectional flow of products and its significance from the creator to the receiver, but a bidirectional flow of meaning-creating activities and their product vector between the subject and the receptor. Mass culture is changing the public’s aesthetic orientation, and thus has brought unprecedented changes to social life, especially students. It is suggested in this thesis that specific analysis should be made of the questions of both aesthetic influence of mass culture on college students and the promotion of college aesthetic education. In reference to the various aesthetic reflections on mass culture, this paper focuses on mass culture aesthetic characteristics, aesthetic value and limitation, and puts forward the cultural promotion direction of the students beyond the aesthetics of mass culture.As a necessary consequence of the commodity economic and cultural development, mass culture and its aesthetic expression has an inevitability of a certain age. College students’infatuation with it should not be attributed to their lack of high ideological pursuit. Ideological and political work must be done to dissect the aesthetic mechanism and the corresponding cultural psychological structure. Therefore, we must absorb the critique results from Frankfurt school to contemporary western cultural theory and extract the academic achievements from classical Marxist writers to cultural aesthetics research of today. We should take the aesthetics of mass culture as a kind of cultural element of contemporary education and combine it into college education. Only in this way can we make a further study of the contemporary culture and education. This paper presents that ideological and political education should help college students gradually realize the connotation of identity in between aesthetic pursuit and the growth of the people, namely the two both have a value beyond the realization of man’s freedom and creativity. On the basis of full analysis and argumentation of the contemporary aesthetic culture practice, this paper presents a few perspectives concerning some critical viewpoints on the current situation of college student’ aesthetic ideas and some advice concerning their aesthetic culture promotion.The full text is divided into four parts:Chapter I Mass Culture in Social Transformation. With the help of the socialist market economy, China’s social development has entered the consumer society. On the one hand, consumers are dominated by modern media; on the other hand, they also express their cultural choice through the market, which has cut down on the traditional dominant culture and elite culture, and constructed the contemporary mass culture. The impact of mass culture is not limited to the urban society or the public class. Through a variety of consumption symbol and aesthetic trend it has been spread to areas of all levels and classes, and the young people are especially the most sensitive group of popular culture influence. This paper thinks that we should recognize the mass culture as an age category, taking it as a by-product of the development of commodity economy, modernization and urbanization. Mass culture is not only a kind of cultural activity and a way to enjoy life, but also a form of cultural life operated in a fashion way, influenced by consumerist ideology and guiding the masses. This cultural ideology has filled every part of our life through intentional symbol.As the mass culture spread to all levels of society through symbolic aesthetic extension, the popular culture has become the newly developed aesthetic trend in society. The field in which aesthetics is applied has been expanded in an unprecedented way---it is no long confined to the aesthetic field of higher end of the society, nor is it confined to some cultural or elite occasions. It exists everywhere accompanied by sensory appeal and has become a typical culture form of the business age. Starting from the nineteen thirties "critique of culture industry theory" of the Frankfurt school, technical and commercial features of mass culture has been pointed out to be incompatible with the development of humanistic spirit and the deep pursuit in human spirit. However, the opposition of the commercial culture and humanistic spirit is not the end of our study. Defining aesthetics of mass culture as a vulgar cultural phenomenon and thus criticizing it is not, either.Chapter II Aesthetic Duality of Mass Culture. Today features of popularization and democratization has been developed from mass culture as a result of the co-effect of market economic system, globalization of culture and the self-development of social culture. It is thought in the contemporary cultural theory that "mass culture expresses the class social expectations and aspirations and the visional participation in a higher class form, fashion and symbol. This is a cultural adaptation to the consumer society." Aesthetics of mass culture has produced dual tension of consumption and saving. The mass culture not only has the obvious characteristics of aesthetic modernity, which corresponds to the life structure of modern high information, high enjoyment and high cost of living, it also has the result of cultural desire and secularism caused by fully-marketized aesthetics, and thus forms "aestheticization of everyday life" and the cultural standard of consumer society marked by "talisman".Chapter III College Aesthetic Education from the Perspective of Mass Culture. The aesthetic education of college students now has multiple meanings and the value of the times. Since aesthetic has transformed from "refining of goodness" to satisfaction aesthetic focusing on self feeling and physiological desires, the aesthetic education of college students has become a major subject of Ideological and political workers. Thesis analysis of a subject and presentation of an aesthetic activity is emotional activity conducted by men with the help of "humanized object". It is a sensuous agreement in its actuality. So the students’aesthetic must transform accompanied by the background of market economy development and the practice of personal growth. It is inevitable that they are influenced by the mass culture aesthetic in a certain period of time. But in the pursuit of the ideal of university students and the shaping of their aesthetic taste, education of Marxist aesthetic view is a must. Commodity alienation in Marx’s time has now entered into cultural and aesthetic field, so we must conduct cultural criticism in education. As mass culture is participated in jointly by the subject of culture and receptor so as to form a integrated chain of meaning production and circulation, the necessity of aesthetic reflection and exceeding the vulgar outlook on life must be presented. We must point out that aesthetic pursuit is a practical way to obtain and develop human freedom, and artistic aesthetic has the pushing power to human life transcendence.Chapter IV Aesthetic education and Advanced Culture Transformation. College education in aesthetic should be developed in the current socialist cultural innovation. At the same time of further revealing mass culture aesthetic, we should use the experience of creating advanced cultural aesthetic on the one hand, on the other, we should abandon the pursuit of sense organ and pleasure in the mass culture. In doing so, we should not only inherit and develop the classical aesthetic pursuit of transcendence, we should also seek to break the binary opposition between the two aesthetic deadlocks, and achieve the exceeding over such popular aesthetic as the mass culture in theory. We should try our best to seek the sublimation of ideological world and life’s ultimate care in a cultural way through aesthetic activities.