Popular culture particular on graffiti or production of kitsch Essay

Popular culture particular on graffiti or production of kitsch - Essay Example Usually popular culture is considered to be a special social phenomenon which has its genesis, special features and tendencies of development. A great contribution to the development of study of popular culture was made by Stuart Hall. Popular culture, Stuart Hall argues, is constructed by the "double movement of containment and resistance." And it is really so because there are a lot of contradictions in popular culture though it is considered as a united system. According to Hall resistance in popular culture is caused by individual accepting the art works. It means that every persons understands the works of culture in a different way and that brings various meanings and opposite opinions. Another interesting statement of Stuart Hall is that culture is "a process, a set of practices." Hall considers that social processes affect the personal thinking and understanding of many things. So everything flows from the public to individual. Hall names some processes that cause resistance and containment at the same time. These processes are: personal and social interaction; mass media and global communication; rules, norms, and conventions existence; everyday rituals and practices of daily life; group identity and group differences1. The central place in this theory is occupied by the research of the mass society which was the result of such processes as industrialization and urbanization. Mass culture was considered as a special type of a culture which substitutes the traditional forms of the folk culture. This theory was supported by the works of F.Nitsche, M. Webber, Z.Freud, D.Thompson and others. In the works of these scholars popular culture was the expression of ‘spiritual non-freedom’2. So in the frames of this theory the phenomenon of popular culture had got the negative character. Here the main point was the notion of cultural industry