Popular Culture: A Review of Its concepts, Evolution Course and Research Orientation

This paper concerns three points: First,the popular culture has gone through the concept tour:Popular Culture Kitsch→Mass Culture→Culture Industry→Popular Culture,in which implies a Western academic cognition,location and value judgment of popular culture in different historical periods.Second,popular culture has experienced the evolution from the emerging culture to the dominant culture,from the superstructure to the economic base and from middle-class culture to the youth subculture,which signifies that various changes have occurred in the composition,production and consumption mechanisms of today's popular culture.Third,correspondingly,the research attitude of popular culture is becoming peaceful and fair;theoretical approaches are heading for plural-symbiosis;relevant context is moving toward postmodernism;focus area is on the way to media culture,which has also brought the different views of popular culture theory.But no matter how it changes,the Western mass culture theory can almost be regarded as a variant of critical theory,culture studies and symbol studies.