American Culture,american Tastes

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Coming to Terms with Defining Terms A decade ago, when I began to teach courses on the evolution of taste levels and cultural stratification in the United States--courses concerned with culture in a democratic society, the commodification of culture, the changing nature and uses of leisure, culture and national identity, those kinds of issues--a troublesome lack of definitional clarity and precision in the pertinent literature quickly became apparent. Since then this disarray has become a genuine challenge, not just to me personally, I believe, but to anyone seriously interested in understanding popular culture. Adding to my perplexity, this lack of clarity even appeared evident among the best and brightest--sociologists, historians, literary scholars, art historians, those working in cultural studies, American Studies, and journalism; the problem looked to be ubiquitous. The most obvious puzzles, in my view, arose from the habit of using the phrases "popular culture" and "mass culture" interchangeably, as though there were and are no discernible differences. I shall offer only a few representative examples on the grounds that giving excessive evidence of bad habits may only encourage them. (A batting coach shows players what to do rather than what not to do.) In 1984, for instance, an innovative cultural historian wrote the following in an otherwise brilliant essay titled "Books and Culture": "The 1930s joined the European voice to the American perception in a situation where the fear and distaste of modern mass or popular culture seemed justified by the twin totalitarian viciousness of fascism and communism." We even have serious writers who casually refer to "mass popular culture"; and National Public Radio now has a Popular Culture commentator who mostly seems to report on mass culture phenomena, such as film. It must be acknowledged that sometimes the conflation of mass and popular culture occurs in the context of (or with reference to) the Great Debate over the evils of mass culture that occurred primarily during the mid- and later 1950s. In these instances, it is frequently unclear whether the author is directly at fault or simply repeating the muddled usage of predecessors. Either way, however, the reader who needs definitional clarity gets fuzziness instead. Yet another cause for confusion occurs when a writer chooses to discuss popular culture within the framework of something casually labeled "mass society" in which "mass communication" has begun to occur. Mass society is a demographic phenomenon (dramatic population growth) once commonly associated with vulnerability to charismatic demagogues capable of swaying the masses toward either socialism or fascism, particularly during the second quarter of the twentieth century. Mass communication involves a technological transformation once identified with universal access to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, but now more frequently identified with satellites, computers, and the Internet. Mass society may very well serve as a host or context for mass culture; but historically the former antedated the latter in ordinary usage, whereas the latter seems to have outlived the former in common parlance. Mass communication certainly facilitates the dissemination of mass culture; and both are undeniably dependent upon the venturesomeness of innovative entrepreneurs. Yet to intermingle the two only confuses the vehicle with the voluminous load it is supposed to distribute. The one has wheels, wires, and wavelengths. The other has comic books, cartoons, sitcoms, and videocassettes. A few writers have bothered to differentiate thoughtfully, but they have not done so systematically or in depth. Almost four decades ago Oscar Handlin remarked that mass culture--by which he meant culture disseminated through the mass media--had a "disturbing" effect u