Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>
> I prefer to look upon mass culture as `official' culture, that
> produced by the establishment for the masses. It has essentially
> nothing to do with traditional arts primarily because the media are
> different. So, whatever opinions or critiques of it are not critiques
> of the masses, but of officialdom.
>
I don't think you can ever regard any group of humans as wholly passive. Also this ascribes more unity and forethought to "the establishment" than it has. For one thing, one cannot assume that the actual reader of a text or listener to a song, etc. is the same as the implied reader/listener which one might derive from an analysis of the text or song.
Carrol
> Chuck Grimes