It is customary to distinguish three types of culture: popular, elite and mass. Moreover, if a popular culture was formed directly in the popular environment, and a popular culture is understandable and accessible to the masses of people, then an elite culture is created and consumed only by a narrow circle of the elect. Her language is usually difficult for an unprepared person to understand.
Instruction manual
1
Elite culture includes works of various types of art: literature, music, painting, theater, cinema, etc. Since her understanding requires a certain level of training, she has a very narrow circle of connoisseurs. Not everyone understands the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Alexander Sokurov. A special type of thinking is necessary for understanding the works of Franz Kafka or the James Ulysses novel by James Joyce. Creators of an elitist culture, as a rule, do not try to achieve high fees. Much more valuable to them is creative self-realization.
2
Consumers of an elitist culture are people with a high educational level and a developed aesthetic taste. Many of them are the creators of works of art or their professional researchers. First of all, we are talking about writers, artists, musicians, art historians, literary and artistic critics. Also in this circle are connoisseurs and connoisseurs of art, regular visitors to museums, theaters and concert halls.
3
At the same time, works of the same types of art can belong to both elitist and mass culture. For example, classical music belongs to the elite culture, and popular music to the mass, Tarkovsky’s films to the elite, and Indian melodramas to the mass, etc. At the same time, there are literary genres that always belong to popular culture and are unlikely to ever become elitist. Among them - detective stories, ladies' novels, humorous stories and feuilleton.
4
On occasion, there are curious examples of how works related to elitist culture can, under certain conditions, become mass ones. For example, Bach's music is undoubtedly a phenomenon of elitist culture, but if it is used as musical accompaniment to the figure skating program, it automatically turns into a product of mass culture. Or a completely opposite example: many of Mozart's works for their time were most likely “easy music” (that is, they could be attributed to popular culture). And now they are perceived, rather, as belonging to an elitist one.
5
Most works of elitist culture are initially avant-garde or experimental in nature. They use artistic means, which will become clear to the mass consciousness after several decades. Sometimes experts even call the exact term - 50 years. In other words, samples of elite culture are half a century ahead of their time.
Related article
Valentina Aleksandrovna Malyavina: biography, career and personal life
