1953/06/01 by Dwight Macdonald · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Asian Culture and Media Studies #Cultural Industries and Urban Development #Globalization and Cultural Identity
paper · doi:10.1177/039219215300100301
openalex publication_date 1953/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
For about a century, Western culture has really been two cultures: the traditional kind—let us call it ‘High Culture’—that is chronicled in the textbooks, and a ‘Mass Culture’ manufactured wholesale for the market. In the old art forms, the artisans of Mass Culture have long been at work: in the novel, the line stretches from Eugène Süe to Lloyd C. Douglas; in music, from Offenbach to tin-pan alley; in art, from the chromo to Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell; in architecture, from Victorian Gothic to suburban Tudor. Mass Culture has also developed new media of its own, into which the serious artist rarely ventures: radio, the movies, comic books, detective stories, science-fiction, television.