By Group 1:

Silfiyah Ramanda (17320005)

M. Khamaduddin (17320006)
Johan Duwi Saputra (17320013)
Dewi Cahya Husnul Haq (17320016)
Nabelda Taufika Misai (17320018)
Andrew Ross:
 Mass: one of the key terms that governs the
official distinction between
“American/UnAmerican”
Mass Culture-Intellectuals:
 An aesthetic-liberal position that bemoans the
fact that given the choice the majority of the
population choose so-called second and third
rate cultural texts and practices in preference to
the texts and practices of high cultures.
 The corporate-liberal or progressive-
evolutionist position that claims that popular
culture serves a benign function of socializing
people into the pleasures of consumption in the
new capitalist-consumerist society.
 The radical or socialist position which views
mass culture as a form of, or means to, social
control.
Point of View:
1. Where was the mass culture originated from:
America/Russia/Western Society?

2. How do scholars see the mass culture:

Optimistic/Pessimistic?
Benard Rosenberg:
 The material, wealth and well-being of American
society are being undermined by the
dehumanizing effects of mass culture.
 “At worst, mass culture threatens not merely to
cretinize our taste, but to brutalize our senses
while paving the way to totalitarianism”-
Pessimistic
 Mass culture is not American by nature, or by
example, nor is it inevitable culture of
democracy.
 Mass culture is nowhere more widespread than
in the Soviet Union. Its author is not capitalism,
but technology.-Soviet Union, democracy
White:
 Every period in history has produced men
who preyed upon the ignorance and
insecurities of the largest part of the
populace…and therefore we need not be
shocked that such men exist today.
 The extent to which high culture flourishes in
America; e.g. Shakespeare on TV, record
figures for book borrowing from libraries,
etc.-optimistic
 Mass culture = American Culture
Dwight Macdonald:
 Mass culture is imposed from above. It is
fabricated by technicians hired by
businessmen; its audience are passive
consumers, their participation limited to the
choice between buying and not buying.
Macdonald:
 America is not the land of mass culture.
 U.S.S.R is the land of mass culture.
 In Soviet Union, mass cultures are used for
political reasons.
 American mass culture quality is lower than
Soviet Union mass culture.
 American mass culture still has a problem
that high culture (elite culture) that is vague,
can cause homogenized culture (Greshman’s
law of culture: the bad will drive out the
good).
Macdonald (Conclusion):
 Far from mass culture getting better, we will
be lucky if it doesn’t get worse.
Van Den Haag:
 Mass culture is a drug which ‘lessens
people’s capacity to experience life itself.
 The consumption of mass culture is a form
of repression; the empty texts and practices
of mass culture are consumed to fill an
emptiness within, which grows ever more
empty the more the empty texts and
practices of mass culture are consumed.
 The result is a nightmare in which the
cultural ‘masturbator’ or the ‘addict’ of mass
culture is trapped in a cycle of non-
fulfilment, moving aimlessly between
boredom and distraction
Van Den Haag:
 The disheartening fact is that when they do
he empties them of the very meaning he
unconsciously yearns for by using them as
distractions.
 Popular culture impoverishes life without
leading to contentment.
 Industry has impoverished life he is talking
nonsense
Edward Shils:
 The present pleasures of the working and
lower middle class are not worthy of
profound aesthetic, moral or intellectual
esteem but they are surely not inferior to the
villainous things.
 The problem is not mass culture, but the
response of intellectuals to mass culture.
Leslie Fiedler:
 Mass culture is popular culture that “refuses to
know its place”.
 Mass culture is peculiarly American phenomena.
 Mass culture is not only found in US.
 He explains: “contemporary vulgar culture is
brutal and disturbing: the quasi spontaneous
expression of the uprooted and culturally
dispossessed inhabitants of anonymous cities,
contriving mythologies which reduce to
manageable form the threat of science, the
horror of unlimited war, the general spread of
corruption in a world where the social bases of
old loyalties and heroisms have long been
destroyed”.
Leslie Fiedler:
 What is wrong with American Mass Culture?
1. The inevitability of the American experience
makes the argument meaningless; the
argument against industrialization, mass
education, and democracy. He sees
America‘in the midst of a strange two-front
class war’. In the centre is ‘the genteel
middling mind’, at the top is ‘the ironical-
aristocratic sensibility’, and at the bottom is
‘the brutal-populist mentality’.
2. American mass culture = hierarchical and
pluralist, rather than homogenized and
leveling.
Edward Shills:
 Superior or refined culture at the top
 Mediocre culture in the middle, and
 Brutal culture at the bottom.
Ernest van den Haag (1957):
 Mass culture is inevitable outcome of mass
society and mass production.
 Mass production of article tends to be
average taste to get accessed by mass
society.
 Therefore, there was a deliberate debasement
of taste (lower taste).
 Two factors which support the spread of
mass culture are: i) the financial rewards, ii)
the potentially enormous audience
Shils (1978):
 America is the house of mass culture.
 Mass culture is not wholly bad. For example,
individuality can contribute to the liberation
of powers, and possibilities are infused in
mass society.
Conclusion:
 The democracy is deeply related to mass
culture.
 Capitalization makes the taste.
 The choice is between buying or not buying.

 “America and Americans have available to

them the resources, both of mind and matter,
to build and support the finest culture the
world has ever known” -Melvin Tumin (1957).