Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934.

American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century. Michael Kammen. New York: Knopf, 1999. Kammen shows us how concepts of culture as well as its production and consumption have changed over time. Though glancing back to colonial times, he focuses on how these changes occurred hand-in-hand with economic, political, and personal developments in the twentieth century and on how they can be framed in distinct phases. While many see "mass" culture beginning with, say, the spread of newspapers in the eighteenth century, he sees it as really coming into its own with the advent of modern mass media, most signally television. But as he stresses, when TV was invented is not what matters; what's important for mass culture to come into being is the leisure time and disposable income to consume it. That came only after World War II and really took off in the late '50s when practically every American family had a TV. Preceding that, he sees what he terms a "protomass" culture beginning with the mass consumption of necessary goods as offered in Sears catalogues and burgeoning in the '20s with the increasing consumption of leisure goods and activities, ranging from arts to sports. Standardization of food in packages and in restaurants likewise illustrate these trends. And as Henry Ford realized, for his mass production of automobiles to succeed, he also had to have mass consumers. These were soon created by modern advertising and "PR." Occurring before that, in turn, is what Kammen calls "popular" culture, which he distinguishes from mass culture by stressing its participatory, interactive nature. Even though radio is a mass medium, for example, it still required listeners to construct their own "theatre of the mind" while TV presents everything to us ready-made. And because to watch it, we can't do other things as we can while listening to the radio, we are thus rendered more passive. Popular culture came into its prime between 1885 and 1935, when leisure time expanded and organized entertainment reached new heights and unprecedented audiences. Occurring at the same time was an increasing blurring between high- and low-brow culture. While cultural stratification or taste levels have persisted, they've become more widely shared across classes- Superbowl fans may listen to symphonies, and the "three tenors" sing for World Cup soccer. The marriage of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller in 1956 personifies this merging of cultures. A corresponding issue and change Kammen addresses is that of cultural authority and cultural power. Americans have taken their cultural cues from a shifting series of "cultural authorities." In colonial times these were the clergy and in the nineteenth century various reform figures. In the late Victorian era cultural "professionals" emerged, and authority gradually became insitutionalized in museums and musical and theatrical venues. After World War II, academics briefly held sway. But partly because of these academics' tiresome disagreements and partly because of the growth of public opinion polling, people tuned them out and paid more attention to the cultural authority the country's Gallups now granted the public itself. The relationship between cultural power and cultural authority also changed considerably. Earlier, movie studios and ad agencies might have been said to wield cultural power while museums and critics wielded authority. But today cultural authority is the province of large corporations which produce and promote culture (think Time/Warner and Disney). Books become bestsellers and movies blockbusters despite critics' "authority." Entertainment entrepreneurs have been able to combine their cultural power with authority by a savvy straddling of taste levels-- what might be "elitist" leadership modified by responding to public demand. …

American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century

Left Intellectuals and Popular Culture in Twentieth-Century America

The Dime Novel or How to Vitalize American Literature Classes.

The Motion Picture as a Stimulus to Culture

The popular comedic serial Vic and Sade can be viewed in relation to the mass culture critique, a series of criticisms advanced by twentieth century public intellectuals for the benefit of other intellectuals against the alleged negative impacts of mass entertainment, particularly radio, and other aspects of mass culture. A close examination of Vic and Sade's depiction of mass entertainment, specifically film, periodicals, and popular fiction, demonstrates that the program advanced its own critique of mass culture, one coming from the perspective of the masses and directed toward a mass audience.

John T. Hetherington

Papers

Critiquing Culture in the “Small House”: How Vic and Sade Brought the Mass Culture Critique to the Masses