Wyznaczniki kultury masowej

Abstract

This article attempts to answer the question about the determinants of mass culture in modern world. There are at least seven dimensions to the phenomenon of mass culture: homogenization and the principle of a common dominator, semiotics, economization, destruction of individualization, democratization, postmodernism, nihilism and egalitarism. Thus the self-realization of man in the world, as cultural context who needs a persistent system of moral values and rules, manifests itself in the formation of patterns of behaviours, in the evolvement of cultural creation and activity. The humanization of the world are manifestations of human spirit. Under this aspect, culture is perfected so as to become an the embodiment of the social justice and solidarity. The mass culture is the artificial secondary environment that man imposes on the natural. It comprises habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, inherited factors and values which are imparting through mass mediums. We have seen here that contents of mass culture are uniformly, schematic and reduce all ideas to a common denominator. Among remaining factors: economization promotes efficiency, calculation and remunerativeness, democratization forces tastes of majority, postmodernism mixes various styles, levels, scales and creates electronic hiperreality, nihilism ruins system of universal values and egalitarism destroys individualism.