THE IDEA OF A DEMOCRATIC CULTURE: THE EVOLUTION OF POPULAR MUSIC FROM 1955 TO 1975
Abstract
This project seeks an understanding of the contributions of popular culture in contemporary America. Using popular music as an indicator of popular culture, this work examines the tension between the creative and commercial intentions in offering popular songs to a mass audience. In following the process of creation and appreciation of these songs, attention is given both to the artists and the industry which promote popular music and to the audience which supports them. This examination of popular music in the everyday world is conducted with the intent of revealing a democratic model of culture. By offering a model of democratic culture two goals will be attained. First of all by revealing a model of culture that is philosophically grounded, the language and thought of American culture will be liberated from the dominant patterns of the elite model. The elite model that is examined is grounded upon an a priori dualism of high culture--low culture. This dualism, which lies unexamined at the base of the elite model, is reviewed and replaced by a continuum of expression that better reflects the flux and process of cultural and social reality. The democratic model of culture is grounded by a phenomenologically based methodology appropriate to the investigation of social and cultural reality. Drawing upon this methodology, the democratic model proposes a new understanding of the relations between the products of culture and their audience. Operating from a critical philosophical stance the democratic model offers an understanding of the products of mass culture as we relate to them in the everyday world.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
American studies
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