In what type of society did mass culture emerge? Media and popular culture

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5.4. Elite culture

The culturological opposition to mass culture is elitist culture (from the French e lite: best, selected, chosen).

Its origins date back to ancient philosophy Heraclitus and Plato, in which he first distinguishes intellectual elite as a special professional group – the custodian and bearer of higher knowledge.

IN During the Renaissance, the problem of the elite was posed by F. Petrarch

V his reasoning “On true nobility.” For the humanists of that time, “rabble”, “despicable” people are uneducated fellow citizens, self-righteous ignoramuses. In relation to them, the humanists themselves appear as an intellectual elite.

The theory of elites developed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The founders of the theory of elites are Italian scientists V. Pareto (1848–1923), G. Mosca (1858–1941), R. Michels (1876–1936). Before the Second World War, the theory of elites became widespread except in Italy - in Germany and France, after the war - in the USA. A recognized theorist of the elite was the Spanish philosopher J. Ortega y Gaset, who believed that there is an elite in every social class.

According to elite theory, it is necessary components any social structure is the highest privileged layer or layers that perform the functions of management and cultural development.

This is the elite.

The elite is the part of society most capable of spiritual activity, gifted with high moral and aesthetic inclinations, which ensures progress.

The elite is characterized by a high degree of activity and productivity. It is usually contrasted with mass.

There are many definitions of the elite; we will name only some of its specific features.

The elite consists of people who have such qualities as organization, will, and the ability to unite to achieve a goal (G. Mosca); enjoying the greatest prestige, status, wealth in society, having the highest sense of responsibility, intellectual or moral

superiority over the masses (J. Ortega y Gaset); this is a creative minority as opposed to the uncreative majority (A. Toynbee).

According to V. Pareto, society is a pyramid with an elite at the top. The most gifted of the lower classes rise to the top, joining the ranks of the ruling elite, whose members, in turn, degenerate, fall down to the masses. There is a circulation, or cycle, of elites; promotes elite renewal social mobility. Alternation, change of elites is the law of the existence of society. (As mentioned above, the idea of society as a social pyramid is also contained in the sociology of P. A. Sorokin, who also developed the problems of social mobility.)

Science has developed a classification of elite theories: 1) biological - the elite are people occupying the highest positions

place in society due to their biological and genetic origin;

2)psychological – based on the recognition of exclusively psychological qualities of an elite group;

3) technical - understands the elite as a set of people who own and manage technical production;

4)organizational – classifies executives, including the bureaucratically organized bureaucracy, as an elite;

5)functional – classifies among the elite people who perform the most important functions in society, in certain group or in a certain territory;

6)distribution – considers the elite to be those who receive the maximum amount of material and non-material benefits;

7)artistic and creative– includes representatives among the elite various fields spiritual production (science, art, religion, culture).

The elite is characterized by cohesion and activity, the ability to develop stable patterns of thinking, assessments and forms of communication, standards of behavior, preferences and tastes.

A striking example of the development of such samples and standards is the elite culture and elite art.

Typical of elite art is aesthetic isolationism " pure art", or "art for art's sake."

Elite art is a movement in Western artistic culture that creates art for the few, for the elite, for the aesthetic and spiritual elite, incomprehensible to the general public, the masses.

Elite art became especially widespread at the beginning of the twentieth century. It manifested itself in the variety of trends of decadence and modernism (abstractionism in painting; surrealism in fine arts, literature, theater and cinema; dodecaphony1 in music), which were oriented towards the creation of art of “pure form”, the art of true aesthetic pleasure, devoid of any practical meaning and social meanings.

Supporters of elite art opposed themselves to mass art, the amorphous mass, the trends of “massification” in culture, and opposed the vulgar ideals of a well-fed, bourgeois life.

The theoretical understanding of elite culture is reflected in the works of F. Nietzsche, V. Pareto, J. Ortega y Gaseta and other philosophers.

The concept of elite culture is most comprehensively and consistently presented in the works of J. Ortega y Gaset, who gave a philosophical assessment of the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century. In the book “The Dehumanization of Art” (1925), he divided people into “the people” (the masses) and the elite - a particularly gifted minority, the creators of genuine culture. He believed that impressionists, futurists, surrealists, and abstractionists split the art audience into two groups: artistic elite(outstanding people who understand the new art) and the general public (ordinary people who are unable to understand it). Therefore, the creative artist consciously appeals to the elite, and not to the masses, and turns away from the average person.

1 Dodecaphony (from Greek dōdeka: twelve +phōnē: sound) is a method of composing music developed in the 20th century Austrian composer A. Schoenberg. Based on a specific sequence of 12 sounds of different pitches.

History of the emergence of the subculture

Non-normative (deviating from socially accepted norms, antisocial) behavior of young people first became the object of attention of scientists in the United States of America in the 30-50s. XX century.

Sociologists, psychologists, and lawyers have studied the emergence and functioning of youth gangs in big cities, primarily Chicago (many of you will remember the resounding success american film"Gangs of Chicago" with Leonardo DiCaprio in leading role). Here, non-normative (that is, non-standard from the point of view of social norms) behavior of young people was considered. The film, naturally, due to the specifics of the genre, somewhat romanticizes images and situations; researchers analyzed their causes and essence. Research has shown that members of such gangster associations live in accordance with their own rules and norms, which are a deviation from the basic socio-cultural norm. It was to them, these associations, that the concept of “subculture” was first applied. Subculture began to be called a subsystem of society that is not recognized by society as a whole, primarily by state authorities.

After the Second World War, the term “youth subculture” came into use among sociologists and began to be used not only in relation to criminal groups, but also to all cultural phenomena associated with youth. It was noted that growing prosperity leads to an increase in the purchasing power of young people, and this in turn gives rise to the emergence of a new, independent market for goods and services aimed at young buyers. It has been called a "teen culture breakthrough." However, during this period, deviations from the basic norms and values of society among young people were insignificant and many researchers, on this basis, denied the existence of the concept " youth culture", arguing their position by the fact that powerful means of influence and control over the lifestyle of the younger generation are concentrated in the hands of the older generation.

But those who viewed adolescence as the beginning of a new intracultural process were right. The production of widely available “cultural goods” (pop music, fashion, etc.) has led to the fact that teenagers have become an international style movement, producing and consuming not only a variety of fashion and music. youth subculture gradually differentiated, various movements arose in it, which were associated not only and not so much with fashion and music, but with socio-political views - this process covered culture in the 60-70s. Then they started talking about the “conflict of generations”, and as a result, interest in research studying this problem sharply increased.

History of the emergence of mass culture

The emergence of mass culture is associated with the formation at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. mass society. The material basis of what happened in the 19th century. Significant changes were the transition to machine production. But industrial machine production involves standardization, and not only of equipment, raw materials, technical documentation, but also the skills of workers, working hours, etc. The processes of standardization and spiritual culture were affected.

Two spheres of a working person’s life have become quite clearly defined: work and leisure. As a result, effective demand arose for those goods and services that helped to spend leisure time. The market responded to this demand by offering a “standard” cultural product: books, films, gramophone records, etc. They were intended primarily to help people have an interesting time. free time, take a break from monotonous work.

The use of new technologies in production and the expansion of mass participation in politics required certain educational preparation. In industrial developed countries Important steps are being taken aimed at developing education, especially primary education. As a result, a large readership appeared in a number of countries, and after this, one of the first genres of mass culture arose - mass literature.

The direct connections between people, weakened with the transition from traditional to industrial society, were partly replaced by the emerging means mass communication, capable of quickly broadcasting various kinds of messages to a large audience.

Mass society, as many researchers have noted, gave birth to its typical representative - the “man of the masses” - the main consumer of mass culture. Philosophers of the early 20th century. gave him predominantly negative characteristics- “a man without a face”, “a man like everyone else”. In the first half of the last century, the Spanish philosopher X. Ortega y Gaset was one of the first to give critical analysis this new social phenomenon- “mass man”. It is with the “mass man” that the philosopher associates the crisis of high European culture and the established system of public power. The masses displace the elite minority (“people with special qualities") from a leading position in society, replaces it, begins to dictate its terms, its views, its tastes. The elite minority are those who demand a lot from themselves and shoulder burdens and obligations on themselves. The majority does not demand anything; for them, living means going with the flow, remaining as they are, without trying to surpass themselves. X. Ortega y Gaset considered the main features of the “mass man” to be the unbridled growth of life’s demands and innate ingratitude towards everything that satisfies these demands. Mediocrity with an unbridled thirst for consumption, “barbarians who poured out of the hatch onto the stage of the complex civilization that gave birth to them” - this is how unflatteringly characterizes most philosopher of his contemporaries.

In the middle of the 20th century. The “mass man” increasingly began to be correlated not with “rebellious” violators of the foundations, but, on the contrary, with a completely well-intentioned part of society - with the middle class. Realizing that they are not the elite of society, middle class people are nevertheless satisfied with their material and social situation. Their standards, norms, rules, language, preferences, tastes are accepted by society as normal and generally accepted. For them, consumption and leisure are no less important than work and career. The expression “mass middle class society” appeared in the works of sociologists.

There is another point of view in science today. According to it, mass society disappears from the historical stage altogether, and so-called demassification occurs. Uniformity and unification are being replaced by emphasizing the characteristics of an individual person, personalization of personality, replacing “ to the mass person"Industrial Age Comes 'Individualist' Post" industrial society. So, from the “barbarian who burst onto the scene” to the “respectable ordinary citizen“- such is the diversity of views on the “mass person”.

The term "mass culture" covers various cultural products, as well as the system of their distribution and creation. First of all, these are works of literature, music, fine arts, films and videos. It also includes patterns of everyday behavior, appearance. These products and samples come into every home thanks to the media, advertising, and the fashion institute.

In contact with

Classmates

The concepts of mass and elite culture define two types of culture in modern society, which are associated with the peculiarities of the way culture exists in society: the methods of its production, reproduction and distribution in society, the position that culture occupies in the social structure of society, the attitude of culture and its creators towards Everyday life people and socio-political problems of society. Elite culture appears before mass culture, but in modern society they coexist and are in complex interaction.

Mass culture

Definition of the concept

In modern scientific literature There are various definitions of popular culture. Some associate mass culture with the development in the twentieth century of new communication and reproductive systems (mass press and book publishing, audio and video recording, radio and television, xerography, telex and telefax, satellite communications, computer technology) and the global information exchange that arose thanks to the achievements scientific and technological revolution. Other definitions of mass culture emphasize its connection with the development of a new type of social structure of industrial and post-industrial society, which led to the creation of a new way of organizing the production and transmission of culture. The second understanding of mass culture is more complete and comprehensive, because it not only includes a changed technical and technological basis cultural creativity, but also considers the socio-historical context and trends in cultural transformations of modern society.

Popular culture This is a type of product that is produced in large quantities every day. This is a set of cultural phenomena of the 20th century and the peculiarities of the production of cultural values in modern industrial society, designed for mass consumption. In other words, this is a conveyor belt production through various channels, including the media and communications.

It is assumed that mass culture is consumed by all people, regardless of place and country of residence. This is the culture of everyday life, presented on the widest possible channels, including TV.

The emergence of mass culture

Relatively prerequisites for the emergence of mass culture There are several points of view:

Mass culture arose at the dawn of Christian civilization. As an example, simplified versions of the Bible (for children, for the poor) designed for a mass audience are cited.
In the XVII-XVIII centuries Western Europe The genre of adventure, adventurous novel appears, which significantly expanded the readership due to huge circulations. (Example: Daniel Defoe - the novel “Robinson Crusoe” and 481 other biographies of people in risky professions: investigators, military men, thieves, prostitutes, etc.).
In 1870, a law on universal literacy was passed in Great Britain, which allowed many to master the main form of art. creativity XIX century - novel. But this is only the prehistory of mass culture. In the proper sense, mass culture manifested itself for the first time in the United States in turn of XIX-XX centuries.

The emergence of mass culture is associated with the massification of life at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At this time, the role of the human masses increased in various areas of life: economics, politics, management and communication between people. Ortega y Gaset defines the concept of the masses this way:

Mass is a crowd. A crowd in quantitative and visual terms is a multitude, and a multitude from a sociological point of view is a mass. Weight - average person. Society has always been a moving unity of the minority and the masses. A minority is a set of persons who are specially singled out; the mass is a group of people who are not singled out in any way. Ortega sees the reason for the promotion of the masses to the forefront of history in the low quality of culture, when a person of a given culture “does not differ from the rest and repeats the general type.”

The prerequisites for mass culture also include the emergence of a system of mass communications during the formation of bourgeois society(press, mass book publishing, then radio, television, cinema) and the development of transport, which made it possible to reduce the space and time necessary for the transmission and dissemination of cultural values in society. Culture emerges from local existence and begins to function on the scale of a national state (a national culture emerges, overcoming ethnic restrictions), and then enters the system of interethnic communication.

The prerequisites for mass culture also include the creation within bourgeois society of a special structure of institutions for the production and dissemination of cultural values:

The emergence of public educational institutions ( secondary schools, professional school, higher education institutions);
Creation of institutions producing scientific knowledge;
The emergence of professional art (academies of fine arts, theater, opera, ballet, conservatory, literary magazines, publishing houses and associations, exhibitions, public museums, exhibition galleries, libraries), which also included the emergence of the institute art criticism as a means of popularizing and developing his works.

Features and significance of mass culture

Mass culture in its most concentrated form is manifested in artistic culture, as well as in the spheres of leisure, communication, management and economics. The term "mass culture" was first introduced by the German professor M. Horkheimer in 1941 and the American scientist D. MacDonald in 1944. The content of this term is quite contradictory. On the one hand, mass culture - "culture for everyone", on the other hand, this is "not quite culture". The definition of mass culture emphasizes spreadthe vulnerability and general accessibility of spiritual values, as well as the ease of their assimilation, which does not require special developed taste and perception.

The existence of mass culture is based on the activities of the media, the so-called technical arts (cinema, television, video). Mass culture exists not only in democratic social systems, but also in totalitarian regimes, where everyone is a “cog” and everyone is equal.

Currently, some researchers abandon the view of “mass culture” as an area of “bad taste” and do not consider it anti-cultural. Many people realize that mass culture has not only negative features. It influences:

the ability of people to adapt to the conditions of a market economy;
respond adequately to sudden situational social changes.

Besides, mass culture is capable:

compensate for the lack of personal communication and dissatisfaction with life;
increase the population's involvement in political events;
raise psychological stability population in difficult social situations;
make the achievements of science and technology accessible to many.

It should be recognized that mass culture is an objective indicator of the state of society, its misconceptions, typical forms of behavior, cultural stereotypes and the real value system.

In the field artistic culture it calls on a person not to rebel against the social system, but to fit into it, to find and take his place in a market-type industrial society.

TO negative consequences popular culture refers to its ability to mythologize human consciousness, to mystify real processes occurring in nature and society. There is a rejection of the rational principle in consciousness.

There were once beautiful poetic images. They talked about the wealth of imagination of people who could not yet correctly understand and explain the action of the forces of nature. Nowadays myths serve the poverty of thinking.

On the one hand, one might think that the purpose of mass culture is to relieve tension and stress in a person in an industrial society - after all, it is entertaining. But in fact, this culture does not so much fill leisure time as stimulate the consumer consciousness of the viewer, listener, and reader. A type of passive, uncritical perception of this culture arises in a person. And if so, a personality is created, whose consciousness easy mamanipulate, whose emotions are easy to direct to the rightside.

In other words, mass culture exploits the instincts of the subconscious sphere of human feelings and, above all, feelings of loneliness, guilt, hostility, fear, self-preservation.

In the practice of mass culture, mass consciousness has specific means of expression. Mass culture is more focused not on realistic images, but on artificial created images- images and stereotypes.

Popular culture creates a hero formula, repetitive image, stereotype. Similar situation creates idolatry. An artificial “Olympus” is created, the gods are “stars” and a crowd of fanatical admirers and admirers arises. In this regard, mass artistic culture successfully embodies the most desirable human myth - myth of a happy world. At the same time, she does not call her listener, viewer, reader to build such a world - her task is to offer a person refuge from reality.

The origins of the widespread spread of mass culture in modern world lie in the commercial nature of all social relations. The concept of “product” defines all the diversity social relations in society.

Spiritual activity: cinema, books, music, etc., in connection with the development of mass media, become a commodity in the conditions of assembly line production. The commercial attitude is transferred to the sphere of artistic culture. And this determines the entertaining nature works of art. It is necessary that the clip pays off, the money spent on the production of the film produces a profit.

Mass culture forms a social stratum in society, called “ middle class» . This class became the core of life in industrial society. For modern representative"middle class" is characterized by:

Striving for success. Achievement and success are the values that culture in such a society is oriented towards. It is no coincidence that stories about how someone escaped from poor to rich, from a poor emigrant family to a highly paid “star” of mass culture are so popular in it.
Second distinguishing feature"middle class" person possession of private property . A prestigious car, a castle in England, a house on the Cote d'Azur, an apartment in Monaco... As a result, relations between people are replaced by relations of capital, income, i.e. they are impersonally formal. A person must be in constant tension, survive in conditions of fierce competition. And the strongest survive, that is, those who succeed in the pursuit of profit.
The third value characteristic of a “middle class” person is individualism . This is recognition of individual rights, its freedom and independence from society and the state. The energy of a free personality is directed into the sphere of economic and political activity. This contributes to the accelerated development of productive forces. Equality is possible stey, competition, personal success - on the one hand, this is good. But, on the other hand, this leads to a contradiction between the ideals of a free personality and reality. In other words, as the principle of the relationship between man and man individualism is inhumane, and as a norm of a person’s relationship to society - antisocial .

In art and artistic creativity, mass culture performs the following social functions:

introduces a person to the world of illusory experience and unrealistic dreams;
promotes the dominant way of life;
distracts the masses of people from social activity, forces you to adapt.

Hence the use in art of such genres as detective, western, melodrama, musicals, comics, advertising, etc.

Elite culture

Definition of the concept

Elite culture (from the French elite - selected, best) can be defined as a subculture of privileged groups of society(while sometimes their only privilege may be the right to cultural creativity or to preserve cultural heritage), which is characterized by value-semantic isolation, closedness; elite culture asserts itself as the creativity of a narrow circle of “highest professionals”, the understanding of which is accessible to an equally narrow circle of highly educated connoisseurs. Elite culture claims to stand high above the “ordinariness” of everyday life and to occupy the position of the “highest court” in relation to the socio-political problems of society.

Elite culture is considered by many culturologists as the antithesis of mass culture. From this point of view, the producer and consumer of elite cultural goods is the highest, privileged layer of society - elite . In modern cultural studies, the understanding of the elite as a special layer of society endowed with specific spiritual abilities has been established.

Elite is not easy upper layer society, ruling elite. There is an elite in every social class.

Elite- this is the part of society most capable ofspiritual activity, gifted with high moral and aesthetic inclinations. It is she who ensures social progress, so art should be focused on meeting her demands and needs. The main elements of the elite concept of culture are contained in philosophical works A. Schopenhauer (“The World as Will and Idea”) and F. Nietzsche (“Human, All Too Human,” “The Gay Science,” “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”).

A. Schopenhauer divides humanity into two parts: “people of geniuses” and “people of benefit.” The former are capable of aesthetic contemplation and artistic activity, the latter are focused only on purely practical, utilitarian activity.

The demarcation between elite and mass culture is associated with the development of cities, book printing, and the emergence of a customer and performer in the sphere. Elite - for sophisticated connoisseurs, mass - for the ordinary, ordinary reader, viewer, listener. Works that serve as standards of mass art, as a rule, reveal a connection with folklore, mythological, and popular popular constructions that existed before. In the 20th century, the elitist concept of culture was summarized by Ortega y Gaset. The work of this Spanish philosopher, “The Dehumanization of Art,” argues that the new art is addressed to the elite of society, and not to its masses. Therefore, art does not necessarily have to be popular, generally understandable, universal. New art should alienate people from real life. "Dehumanization" - and is the basis of the new art of the twentieth century. There are polar classes in society - majority (mass) and minority (elite) . New art, according to Ortega, divides the public into two classes - those who understand it and those who do not understand it, that is, artists and those who are not artists.

Elite , according to Ortega, this is not the tribal aristocracy and not the privileged layers of society, but that part of it that has a “special organ of perception” . It is this part that contributes to social progress. And it is precisely this that artists should address with their works. The new art should help ensure that “...the best get to know themselves, learn to understand their purpose: to be in the minority and fight with the majority.”

A typical manifestation of elite culture is theory and practice of “pure art” or “art for art’s sake” , which found its embodiment in Western European and Russian culture at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. For example, in Russia the ideas of elite culture were actively developed by artistic association“World of Art” (artist A. Benois, magazine editor S. Diaghilev, etc.).

The emergence of an elite culture

Elite culture, as a rule, arises in eras of cultural crisis, the breakdown of old ones and the birth of new ones. cultural traditions, methods of production and reproduction of spiritual values, changes in cultural and historical paradigms. Therefore, representatives of elite culture perceive themselves either as “creators of the new”, towering above their time, and therefore not understood by their contemporaries (these are mostly the romantics and modernists - figures of the artistic avant-garde, making a cultural revolution), or “guardians of the fundamental foundations”, who should be protected from destruction and the significance of which is not understood by the “masses”.

In such a situation, the elite culture acquires features of esotericism- closed, hidden knowledge, which is not intended for wide, universal use. In history, the carriers of various forms of elite culture were priests, religious sects, monastic and spiritual knightly orders, Masonic lodges, craft workshops, literary, artistic and intellectual circles, underground organizations. Such a narrowing of the potential recipients of cultural creativity gives rise to awareness of one's creativity as exceptional: “true religion”, “pure science”, “pure art” or “art for art’s sake”.

The concept of “elite” as opposed to “mass” is introduced into circulation in late XVIII century. The division of artistic creativity into elite and mass manifested itself in the concepts of the romantics. Initially, among the romantics, the elitist carries within itself the semantic meaning of being chosen and exemplary. The concept of exemplary, in turn, was understood as identical to the classical. The concept of the classical was especially actively developed in. Then the normative core was the art of antiquity. In this understanding, the classical was personified with the elitist and exemplary.

Romantics sought to focus on innovation in the field of artistic creativity. Thus, they separated their art from the usual adapted artistic forms. The triad: “elite - exemplary - classic” began to crumble - the elitist was no longer identical to the classical.

Features and significance of elite culture

A feature of elite culture is the interest of its representatives in creating new forms, demonstrative opposition to harmonious forms classical art, as well as an emphasis on the subjectivity of the worldview.

The characteristic features of an elite culture are:

the desire for the cultural development of objects (phenomena of the natural and social world, spiritual realities), which stand out sharply from the totality of what is included in the field of subject development of the “ordinary”, “profane” culture of a given time;
inclusion of one’s subject in unexpected value-semantic contexts, creation of its new interpretation, unique or exclusive meaning;
the creation of a new cultural language (language of symbols, images), accessible to a narrow circle of connoisseurs, the decoding of which requires special efforts and a broad cultural outlook from the uninitiated.

Elite culture is dual and contradictory in nature. On the one hand, elite culture acts as an innovative enzyme of the sociocultural process. Works of elite culture contribute to the renewal of the culture of society, introducing new issues, language, and methods of cultural creativity into it. Initially, within the boundaries of elite culture, new genres and types of art are born, a cultural, literary language of society is developed, extraordinary scientific theories, philosophical concepts and religious teachings are created, which seem to “break out” beyond the established boundaries of culture, but then can become part of the cultural heritage of the entire society . That is why, for example, they say that truth is born as heresy and dies as banality.

On the other hand, the position of an elite culture, opposing itself to the culture of society, may mean a conservative departure from social reality and its pressing problems into the idealized world of “art for art’s sake,” religious, philosophical and socio-political utopias. This demonstrative form of rejection existing world can be both a form of passive protest against it, and a form of reconciliation with it, recognition of one’s own powerlessness of elite culture, its inability to influence cultural life society.

This duality of elite culture also determines the presence of opposing - critical and apologetic - theories of elite culture. Democratic thinkers (Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, Plekhanov, Morris, etc.) were critical of elitist culture, emphasizing its separation from the life of the people, its incomprehensibility to the people, its serving the needs of rich, jaded people. Moreover, such criticism sometimes went beyond the bounds of reason, turning, for example, from criticism of elite art into criticism of all art. Pisarev, for example, declared that “boots are higher than art.” L. Tolstoy, who created high samples novels of modern times (“War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina”, “Sunday”), in late period of his work, when he switched to the position of peasant democracy, he considered all these works unnecessary for the people and began to compose popular stories from peasant life.

Another direction of theories of elite culture (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Berdyaev, Ortega y Gasset, Heidegger and Ellul) defended it, emphasizing its meaningfulness, formal perfection, creative search and novelty, the desire to resist the stereotypedness and lack of spirituality of everyday culture, and considered it as a haven of creative personal freedom.

A variety of elite art in our time is modernism and postmodernism.

References:

1. Afonin V. A., Afonin Yu. V. Theory and history of culture. Tutorial For independent work students. – Lugansk: Elton-2, 2008. – 296 p.

2.Cultural studies in questions and answers. Toolkit to prepare for tests and exams in the course “Ukrainian and foreign culture» for students of all specialties and forms of study. / Rep. Editor Ragozin N.P. - Donetsk, 2008, - 170 p.