The definition of "masscult":
noun
the forms of culture, as music, drama, and literature, as selected, interpreted, and popularized by the mass media for dissemination to the widest possible audience.
Which raises the question of whether there is such a thing anymore. The companies that own broadcast TV networks are more interested in their streamers. Movies nominated for Academy Awards have barely caused a ripple (and the fact that the most recent exception is the 36-years-later sequel to Top Gun also speaks volumes). And while radio is middlebrow to a fault, it's not so much devoted to current music.
Does it matter if there's not a widespread popular culture? It might. You have to wonder if the absence is a factor driving political polarization.
2 comments:
The fact there's a word for it goes a long way to defining the 'masscult' all by itself. We need something short and snappy you can almost hear the hipsters saying - if there's still hipsters, that is.
For a long long time culture was a local phenomenon; I remember my parents telling me that dialects changed every few miles when they were young - before the invention of radio, never mind tv and the internet. When it comes to popular culture all the things we used to relate to in common - music, movies, tv shows etc. - have all become far more profuse and amorphous with each passing year. Now we have streaming and on demand viewing it's getting harder to find anyone who's had the same experience from one day to the next.
The other aspects that make for a shared cultural experience like watching professional sports with friends or, goodness knows, playing games with friends - even bowling - are far less available to most people. There are undeniably good things about our culture but the problem is that enjoying them is often a solitary pursuit.
It's no wonder people are politically polarized. Maybe when all this falls apart we can go back to village singalongs.
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ps: Great moment in internet history.
Hipsters as a concept seem to have peaked around the end of the 2000s. Most people didn't claim the title for themselves, but it a comforting idea in a way.
Britain seems to have more dialects than the US, or at least it certainly did in the not-too-distant past. Probably because it had all those centuries of pre-mass media existence. Say, Sheffield and Leeds sound different because they were built before there was TV or train service. Of course now we live in a media-saturated society with highly efficient media, but they don't unite us.
Society has become more atomized, to be sure. And somebody wants that. Our COVID response wouldn't have been what it was without powerful people who disapprove of human contact on principle.
Village singalongs might have promise At least they'd foster a sense of belonging rather than alienation.
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Gotta love those moments when life isn't so predictable.
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