The Media and Popular Culture

In France mass popular culture
really began in the 1860s, at the same time as "the paper age" with
its first cheap national newspapers, the spread of literacy and education and
the simplification of printing techniques. All this lead to a greater cultural
standardisation throughout the country. Today we can link mass culture with
such phenomena as photography, television, internet, magazines and other forms
of mass-produced image. According to
Dominique Kalifa, "mass cultural is visual culture". At the end of
World War II, the spread of the American way of life, whether real or imagined,
led to a Hollywood inspired popular culture. All the tools of a popular culture
ar available to the majority with no disticntions of social class or
geographical location. According to the designer R. Hamilton, popular culture
(for a mass audience) is defined as short-term, widely distributed, cheap,
mass-produced, youth-oriented and managed by big business. The Frankfurt School
of German intellectuals, founded in 1923, has studied the appearance of popular
culture in modern society – their most famous definition is that of Walter
Benjamin and his idea of cultural industry: "technology in the service of
the social system and its reproduction".