To clarify about yesterday’s point for Q3:
Under the heading “Gresham’s Law in Culture”, Macdonald specified
that Folk Art was different from mass culture as we know it today, in a sense
that Folk Art “had its own special quality” and was born as a unique culture from
the common people, as opposed to High Art, which was a unique culture created
by the rich. This was expounded by Siu Yi in her discussion of the previous
question (using the private-little-garden-versus-great-formal-park analogy). My
point is that after democracy was introduced, there is no longer that fine line
between the two cultures any longer and everything (high culture and folk
culture) has been mashed together in a new culture known as kitsch throughout this article.
What I gathered from the reading of this was that Folk Art
had been “commercialized” and turned into mass culture for everyone. (Zul
raised a nice example about Taiwanese culture being incorporated into street
fashion.) But mass culture tries to include the rich upper classes as well, and
to appeal to them, some elements of High Culture have to be incorporated into
mass culture. Thus, I said that mass culture has an element of trying to be
like High Culture, and in doing so it has turned into something that belongs to
neither category; something crass.
In that sense, trying to cater to every kind of audience
without discrimination is threatening the existence of High Culture (“bad stuff
drives out the good”). Macdonald is extremely critical of kitsch, which he calls “(at best) a vulgarized reflection of High
Culture”.
Macdonald now moves on to discuss the concept of kitsch instead of Folk Art, and the main
differences between kitsch and High
Culture are as follows:
While High Art is specifically for the appreciation of the
aristocracy, kitsch is for everyone. It
is far easier to understand and to create than High Art is; thus it is more
popular. Additionally, while High Art is open to interpretation from various perspectives,
kitsch has already been interpreted
for the reader.
I apologize for causing confusion by commenting without
explaining. J
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