Reification and utopia in mass culture

Abstract

The theory of mass culture - or mass audience culture, commercial culture, "popular" culture, culture industry, as it is variously known - always tends to define its object in opposition to so-called high culture, without reflecting on its objective status. of this opposition. Quite often, positions in this field are based on two mirror images, which are presented primarily in terms of value. Thus, the familiar theme of elitism argues for the priority of mass culture, based on the sheer number of people exposed to it; the pursuit of high culture, or hermetic culture, is then stigmatized as a pastime typical of the status of a restricted group of intellectuals. As its anti-intellectual impulse suggests, this essentially negative position has little theoretical content, but it clearly refers to a revelation with deep roots in American populism and articulates a widely established idea that high culture is an important system, irredeemably marked by its association with as institutions, in particular with the university.