GER100 Lecture Notes - Zeitgeist, Culture Industry, F. R. Leavis
16 Mar 2013
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Noun: the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time: the story captured the zeitgeist of the late 1960s. Observable behaviour and artefacts: visible organisation structures and processes. Espoused values: strategies, goals, philosophies (justifications) Leavis, siegfried kracauer) argue that modern industrialization and urbanization is disruptive. The mass media (radio, film, television, etc. ) produce surrogate culture, not real culture. Mass culture threatens to destroy or displace high culture: under normal circumstances, people in working classes can"t afford to go to operas, plays, cinemas. These critics are people of middle-class or richer, and as such these statements are condescending and snobbish to those lower classes. Novels/books in the 17th century were seen as cocaine ; they"re distractions and fictitious: women reading will stop doing their housework ; similar with showgirls in the 1870s, the working class should be working and nothing more .
