Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In Rosenberg and White's book Mass Culture, MacDonald [in his article "A Theory of Mass Culture"] argues that "Popular culture is a debased, trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure, tragedy) and also the simple spontaneous pleasures. . . . The masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial and comfortable cultural products." Ernest Van Den Haag argues that "...all mass media in the end alienate people from personal experience and though appearing to offset it, intensify their moral isolation from each other, from reality and from themselves."" --Sholem Stein |
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Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America (1957) is a book on mass culture edited by Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White. It features "A Theory of Mass Culture" by Dwight Macdonald, "Simenon and Spillane: The Metaphysics of Murder for the Millions" (1952) by Charles Rolo and "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939) by Clement Greenberg.
From the publisher
- "Comprehensive collection of writings on mass culture in film, literature, radio, TV, advertising, and popular music. Forty nine articles by varied writers including Alexis de Tocqueville, Walt Whitman, S.I Hayakawa, Marshall McLuhan, Hortense Powdermaker, and George Orwell. Articles include: "Avant-Garde and Kitsch", "The Problem of Paperbacks", "Simenon and Spillane: The Metaphysics of Murder for the Millions", "How to Read L'il Abner Intelligently", "Mass Appeal and Minority Tastes", "Popular Songs vs. the Fact of Life", and "Popular Culture and the Open Society". The writers address the question "Should we adopt the classic intellectual rejection of mass culture, or should we give mass culture our critical support?" The Free Press engage two editor who were in radical disagreement on this question in order to be certain that both sides were well supported."
TOC
1. The issues joined
- Mass culture in America / by Bernard Rosenberg
- Mass culture in America: another point of view / by David M. White
2. Perspectives of mass culture
- In what spirit the Americans cultivate the arts / by Alexis de Tocqueville
- From "democratic vistas" / by Walt Whitman
- The coming of the masses / by Jose Ortega y Gasset
- Historical perspectives of popular culture / by Leo Lowenthal
- A theory of mass culture / by Dwight MacDonald
- The people and the arts / by Gilbert Seldes
- Avant-garde and Kitsch / by Clement Greenberg
3. Mass literature Books
- Is there a best seller formula? / by Frank Luther Mott
- Who reads what books and why? / by Bernard Berelson
- The book business in America / by Alan Dutscher
- The problem of the paper-backs / by Cecil Hemley
Detective fiction Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd? / by Edmund Wilson Raffles and
- Miss Blandish / by George Orwell
- Simenon and Spillane: the metaphysics of murder for the millions / by Charles J. Rolo *Mickey Spillane and his bloody hammer / by Christopher La Farge
Comic books and cartoon strips
- Comic strips and their adult readers / by Leo Bogart Paul, and Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham / by Robert Warshow
- The opinions of Little Orphan Annie and her friends / by Lyle W. Shannon
- How to read Li'l Abner intelligently / by Arthur J. Brodbeck and David M. White
- Magazines Values in mass periodical fiction, 1921-1940 / by Patricke Johns-Heine and Hans H. Gerth
- Majority and minority Americans: an analysis of magazine fiction / by Bernard Berelson and Patricia J. Salter
4. Motion pictures
- national types as Hollywood presents them / by Siegfried Kracauer
- Hollywood and the U.S.A. / by Hortense Powdermaker
- The good-bad girl / by Martha Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites
- God, radio, and the movies / by Frederick Elkin
- The creator-audience relationship in the mass media: an analysis of movie making / by Herbert J. Gans
- Company-town pastoral: the role of business in "executive suite" / by Eric Larrabee and David Riesman
5. Television and radio
- Social research in television / by Rolf B. Meyerson
- The phantom world of TV / by Gunther Anders
- In defense of television / by Henry Rabassiere
- The mike in the bosom / by Murray Hausknecht
- Mass appeal and minority tastes / by Kurt Lang
6. Divertissement
- Popular songs vs. the facts of life / by S.I. Hayakawa
- The new popularity of jazz / by Morroe Berger
- Listening to popular music / by David Riesman
- card playing as mass culture / by Irving Crespi
- Broadway and the flight from American reality / by Henry Popkin
7. Advertising
- American advertising / by Marshall McLuhan
- Hollywood's newspaper advertising: stereotype of a nation's taste / by David M. White, Robert S. Albert, and R. Alan Seeger
8. The overview
- Mass communication, popular taste and organized social action / by Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton
- Television and the patterns of mass culture / by T.W. Adorno
- Sight, sound, and the fury / by Marshall McLuhan
- Notes on mass culture / by Irving Howe
- Of happiness and of despair we have no measure / by Ernest Van Den Haag
- The middle against both ends / by Leslie A. Fiedler
- Popular culture and the open society / by Melvin Tumin
- The public arts /by Gilbert Seldes.
See also
