Introduction

Culture is a general concept covering various classes of phenomena. It is a complex, multi-layered, multi-level whole, including various phenomena. Depending on from what point of view, on what grounds to analyze it, one or another of its structural elements can be distinguished, differing in the nature of the carrier, in result, in types of activity, etc., which can coexist, interact, resist each other, change their status. Structuring culture based on its bearer, we single out as the subject of analysis only some of its varieties: elite, mass, folk culture. Because on present stage they receive an ambiguous interpretation, then in this control, we will try to understand the complex modern cultural practice, which is very dynamic and contradictory, as well as in conflicting points of view. The control work presents historically developed different, sometimes opposing views, theoretical foundations, approaches, and also takes into account a certain socio-cultural context, the ratio of various components in the cultural whole, their place in modern cultural practice.

And so, the goal control work is the consideration of varieties of culture, elite, mass and folk.

culture elite mass folk

The emergence and main characteristics of elite culture

Elite culture, its essence is associated with the concept of the elite and is usually opposed to popular, mass cultures. Elite (elite, French - chosen, best, selective), as a producer and consumer of this type of culture in relation to society, represents, from the point of view of both Western and domestic sociologists, culturologists, the highest, privileged strata (layer), groups, classes executing the functions of management, development of production and culture. This affirms the division of the social structure into higher, privileged and lower, the elite and the rest of the masses. The definitions of the elite in different sociological and cultural theories are ambiguous.

The selection of the elite layer has a long history. Already Confucius saw a society consisting of noble men, i.e. minorities, and a people in need of constant moral influence and guidance from these noble ones. In fact, Plato stood in the elite positions. Roman senator Menenius Agrippa most referred to the population as "draft cattle", for which drivers are needed, i.e. aristocrats.

Obviously since ancient times when the division of labor began to occur in the primitive community, the separation of spiritual activity from material activity, the processes of stratification according to property, status, and other characteristics, and not only the categories of rich and poor, but also the most significant people in any respect began to stand out (alienate) - priests (wizards, shamans) as carriers of special secret knowledge, organizers of religious and ritual actions, leaders, tribal nobility. But the actual elite is formed in a class, slave-owning society, when, due to the labor of slaves, the privileged strata (classes) are freed from exhausting physical labor. Moreover, in societies of various types, the most significant, elite layers that make up the minority of the population are, first of all, those who have real power, backed by the force of arms and law, economic and financial power, which allows them to influence all other areas. public life, including socio-cultural processes (ideology, education, artistic practice, etc.). Such is the slave-owning, feudal aristocracy (the aristocracy is understood as the highest, privileged layer of any class, group), the higher clergy, the merchants, the industrial, financial oligarchy, etc.

Elite culture is formed within the privileged in any area (in politics, commerce, art) layers, communities and includes, like culture, folk values, norms, ideas, ideas, knowledge, lifestyle, etc. in a sign-symbolic and their material expression, as well as ways of their practical use. This culture embraces different areas social space: political, economic, ethical and legal, artistic and aesthetic, religious and other areas of public life. It can be viewed at different scales.

In a broad sense, elite culture can be represented by a fairly large part of the nationwide (nationwide) culture. In this case, it has deep roots in it, including folk culture, in a different, narrow sense - it declares itself as a "sovereign", sometimes opposed to a national culture, to a certain extent isolated from it.

An example of an elite culture in a broad sense is the chivalrous culture as a phenomenon of the secular culture of the Western European Middle Ages. Its bearer is the ruling nobility-military class (chivalry), within which their own values, ideals, their own code of honor (loyalty to the oath, adherence to duty, courage, generosity, mercy, etc.) have developed. Their own rituals were formed, like, say, the ritual of knighting (concluding an agreement with a lord, oath of allegiance, taking vows - for obedience, personal perfection, etc.), ritualized and theatrical tournaments for the glorification of knightly valor. There are special manners, the ability to conduct small talk, to play musical instruments, compose poems, most often dedicated to the lady of the heart. Knightly musical and poetic creativity, nurtured on national languages and not alien to folk musical and intonational traditions, constituted a whole trend in world culture, but it died out with the weakening and departure of this class from the historical arena.

Elite culture is contradictory. On the one hand, it quite clearly expresses the search for the new, the still unknown, on the other hand, the attitude towards conservation, the preservation of the already known, familiar. Therefore, probably in science, artistic creativity, the new achieves recognition, sometimes overcoming considerable difficulties. Elite culture, including areas of an experimental, even defiantly nonconformist nature, has contributed to the enrichment of the ideological-theoretical, figurative-substantive canvas, to the expansion of the range of practical skills, means of expression, ideals, images, ideas, scientific theories, technical inventions, philosophical, socio-political doctrines.

Elite culture, including its esoteric (internal, secret, intended for the initiated) directions, enter into different spheres of cultural practice, performing different functions (roles) in it: informational and cognitive, replenishing the treasury of knowledge, technical achievements, works of art; socialization, including a person in the world of culture; normative-regulatory, etc. The cultural-creative function, the function of self-realization, self-actualization of the personality, aesthetic-demonstrative (it is sometimes called exhibition) comes to the fore in elite culture.

Elite culture- this is "high culture", opposed to mass culture by the type of influence on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective features and providing a meaning-forming function. Its main ideal is the formation of consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality. Historically, elite culture arose as the antithesis of mass culture and its meaning, the main value shows in comparison with the latter.

The essence of elite culture was first analyzed by X. Ortega y Gasset and K. Manheim. The subject of an elitist, high culture is a person - free, creative person capable of conscious activity. The creations of this culture are always personally colored and designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the wide dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of an elite culture is a representative of the elite.

Elite culture is a culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closeness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. According to I. V. Kondakov, elite culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and addressees (in any case, the circle of both is almost the same).

Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes the culture of the majority in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, the official culture of a particular estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of the technocratic society of the 20th century. etc.

Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and having a number of fundamentally important features:

• complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;
• the ability to form consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;
• the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience generations;
• the presence of a limited range of values ​​recognized as true and "high";
• a rigid system of norms accepted by this stratum as obligatory and strict in the community of "initiates";
• individualization of norms, values, evaluative criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;
• the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural outlook from the addressee;
• using a deliberately subjective, individually creative, “deleting” interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings the subject’s cultural assimilation of reality closer to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, to the extreme, replaces the reflection of reality in elite culture with its transformation, imitation with deformation, penetration into the meaning - conjecture and rethinking of the given;
• semantic and functional "closedness", "narrowness", isolation from the whole national culture, which turns the elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its carriers turn into a kind of "priests" of this knowledge, the chosen ones of the gods, "servants of the muses", "keepers of secrets and faith", which is often played up and poetized in elite culture.

The concept of subculture and counterculture

Subculture is a specific way of life, it is the realization of a person's need for self-expression, for personal development, for satisfying the sense of beauty, for comprehending one's purpose in the world. Subcultures appear regardless of politics, economics. Material needs, their quantity and quality associated with living conditions, cannot be essential to determine the reasons why a youth subculture appears.

Instruction

Elite culture includes works different types arts: literature, theater, cinema, etc. Since its understanding requires a certain level of training, it has a very narrow circle of connoisseurs. Not everyone understands the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Alexander Sokurov. A special type of thinking is needed to understand the works of Franz Kafka or James Joyce's Ulysses. The creators of an elite culture, like, do not try to achieve high fees. Much more valuable for them is creative self-realization.

Consumers of elite culture are people with a high educational level and a developed aesthetic taste. Many of them are themselves creators of works of art or their professional researchers. First of all, we are talking about writers, artists, art historians, literary and art critics. This circle also includes connoisseurs and connoisseurs of art, regular visitors to museums, theaters and concert halls.

At the same time, works of the same types of art can belong to both elite and mass culture. For example, classical music is for elite culture, and popular music is for mass culture, Tarkovsky's films are for elite culture, and Indian melodramas are for mass culture, etc. At the same time, there are literary genres that always belong to mass culture and are unlikely to ever become elite. Among them are detective stories, ladies' novels, humorous stories and feuilletons.

Sometimes there are curious how works belonging to an elite culture can, under certain conditions, go into the category of mass. For example, Bach's music is undoubtedly a phenomenon of elite culture, but if it is used as an accompaniment to a program figure skating, then automatically turns into a product mass culture. Or quite the opposite: many of Mozart's works for their time were, most likely, " light music”(i.e. could be attributed to mass culture). And now they are perceived, rather, as an elitist.

Most of the works of elite culture are initially avant-garde or experimental. They use tools that will become clear to the mass consciousness after a few decades. Sometimes experts even call the exact period - 50 years. In other words, examples of elite culture are half a century ahead of their time.

Related article

The term "classical music" is sometimes interpreted extremely broadly. It includes not only the works of outstanding composers of past years, but also those that have become world famous. famous hits popular artists. Nevertheless, there is a strictly authentic meaning of "classical" in music.

In the narrow sense, classical music is called quite short period in the history of this art, namely, the XVIII century. The first half of the eighteenth century was marked by the work of such outstanding composers as Bach and Handel. The principles of classicism as the construction of a work in strict accordance with the canons were developed by Bach in his works. His fugue became a classical - that is, exemplary - form of musical creativity.

And after the death of Bach, a new stage opens in the history of music, connected with Haydn and Mozart. The rather complex and heavy sound was replaced by lightness and harmony of melodies, grace and even some coquetry. And yet, it is still a classic: in his creative search, Mozart sought to find the ideal form.

Beethoven's works are a junction of the classical and romantic traditions. In his music, passions and feelings become much more than rational canons. During this period of the formation of the European musical tradition, the main genres were formed: opera, symphony, sonata.

A broad interpretation of the term "classical music" implies the work of composers of past eras, which has withstood the test of time and has become a standard for other authors. Sometimes classical refers to music for symphonic instruments. The most clear (although not widely used) can be considered classical music as authorial, clearly defined and implying performance within the given framework. However, some researchers urge not to confuse academic (that is, squeezed into certain limits and rules) and classical music.

In the evaluative approach to the definition of classics, as the highest achievements in the history of music, the possible is hidden. Who is considered the best? Can the masters of jazz, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and other established songwriters and performers? On the one hand, yes. That's what we do when we call exemplary. But on the other hand, in pop-jazz music there is no strictness of the author's musical text, characteristic of the classics. In it, on the contrary, everything is built on improvisation and original arrangements. There is a fundamental difference between classical (academic) music and the modern post-jazz school.

Related videos

Related videos

Sources:

• What is culture? Definition of the word culture. The meaning of the word culture and photo

There are several types of literature, each of which has its own characteristics. Yes, under classical literature understand works that are considered exemplary for a particular era.

History of the term

Classical is a rather broad concept, since to this species include works different eras and genres. These are universally recognized works, considered exemplary for the eras in which they were written. Many of them are included in the compulsory program.

The concept of classics has developed in three recent centuries epochs of antiquity. Then it denoted certain writers who, according to different reasons were considered role models. One of the first such classics was the ancient Greek poet Homer, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

In the 5th-8th centuries AD. formed the authors of the texts, which determined the theories and norms transmitted in the learning process. In different schools, this canon differed minimally. Gradually this list replenished with new names, among which were representatives of pagan and Christian faith. These authors have become cultural property public who were imitated and quoted.

The modern meaning of the concept

During the Renaissance, European writers turned their attention to the authors of antiquity, as a result of the liberation of secular culture from excessive pressure. The result of this in literature was an era in which it became fashionable to imitate ancient Greek playwrights such as Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and follow the canons of classical drama. Then the term "" in the narrow sense began to mean the whole ancient literature.

In a broad sense, any work that created a canon in its genre began to be called a classic. For example, there are eras of modernism, eras, realism, etc. There is the concept of domestic and foreign, as well as world classics. Thus, A.S. Pushkin, F.M. Dostoevsky, etc.

As a rule, in the history of literature different countries and nations there is an age in which fiction gained the greatest, and such a century is called classical. There is an opinion that the work acquires public acceptance, when it carries "eternal values", something relevant for all times, encourages the reader to think about any universal problems. The classics remain in history and are opposed to one-day works, which eventually fall into oblivion.

The ability of a person to emotionally-sensory perception of reality and to artistic creativity prompted him to express his experiences figuratively, with the help of colors, lines, words, sounds, etc. This contributed to the emergence artistic culture in a broad sense.

What is included in the concept

Artistic culture is one of the spheres of public culture. Its essence is a creative reflection of being (, society and its life activity) in artistic images. It has important functions, such as the formation of aesthetic perception and consciousness of people, social values, norms, knowledge and experience, and a recreational function (rest and recovery of people).

As a system it includes:
- art as such (individual and group), works and artistic values;
- organizational infrastructure: institutions that ensure the development, preservation, dissemination of artistic culture, creative organizations, educational institutions, demonstration sites, etc.;
- the spiritual atmosphere in society - perception, public interest in artistic creative activity, art, state policy in this area.

Artistic culture includes mass, folk, artistic culture; artistic and aesthetic side various kinds activities (political, economic, legal); regional artistic subcultures; artistic subcultures of youth and professional associations, etc.

It manifests itself not only in art, but also in everyday life, and in material production, when a person gives expressiveness to the objects he creates for practical and utilitarian purposes and, realizing his need for aesthetics and beauty, in creativity. In addition to the material realm and physical objects, it also concerns the spiritual realm.

Artistic culture in the narrow sense

The core of artistic culture is professional and everyday art. This includes Tip 6: Who are geisha, one of which is the word "man", the other - "art". Already from the etymology of the word, one can guess that geisha are not Japanese courtesans. For the latter, there are separate words in Japanese - jero, yujo.

Geishas were perfect at being a woman. They raised the spirits of men, creating an atmosphere of joy, ease and emancipation. This was achieved through songs, dances, jokes (often with erotic overtones), teahouses, which were demonstrated by geisha in male companies along with easy conversation.

Geisha entertained men both at social events and on personal dates. At the tete-a-tete meeting there was also no place for intimate relationships. A geisha can have sex with her patron, who deprived her of her virginity. For geishas, ​​this is a ritual called mizu-age that accompanies the transition from apprentice, maiko, to geisha.

If a geisha marries, then she retires from the profession. Before leaving, she sends out to her clients, patron, teachers with a treat - boiled rice, thereby informing her about the break in communication with them.

Outwardly, geisha are distinguished by their characteristic make-up with a thick layer of powder and bright red lips that make the woman's face look like a mask, as well as an old high, lush hairstyle. The traditional geisha is a kimono, the main colors of which are black, red and white.

modern geisha

It is believed that geisha appeared in the city of Kyoto in the 17th century. The quarters of the city where the geisha houses are located are called hanamachi (“flower streets”). There is a school here, where from the age of seven or eight they are taught to sing, dance, conduct a tea ceremony, play the national Japanese instrument shamisen, conduct a conversation with a man, and also learn how to make up and put on a kimono - everything that a geisha should know and be able to do. .

When in the 70s years XIX century, the capital of Japan was moved to Tokyo, and noble Japanese, who made up the bulk of geisha clients, also moved there. Geisha festivals, which are held with certain periodicity in Kyoto and became his hallmark.

After the Second World War, Japan was captured by mass culture, leaving Japanese national traditions in the background. The number of geishas has dwindled significantly, but those who remain true to their profession consider themselves to be the guardians of true Japanese culture. Many continue to follow the old way of life of a geisha completely, some only partially. But to be in the company of a geisha is still the prerogative elite layers population.

Sources:

• geisha world

Elite culture has rather blurred boundaries, especially at the present time with the tendencies of the elements of the mass to strive for the expression of individuality. Its peculiarity is that it is doomed to be misunderstood by most people, and this is one of its main characteristics. In this article, we will find out the elite culture, what are its main characteristics and compare it with the mass one.

What it is

Elite culture is the same "high culture". It is opposed to the mass, which is one of the methods of its detection in the general cultural process. This concept was first singled out by C. Manheim and J. Ortega y Gasset in their works, where they deduced it precisely as the antithesis of the concept of mass culture. They meant by high culture that which contains a semantic core capable of developing human individuality, and from which the continuation of the creation of its other elements can follow. Another direction they singled out is the presence of special verbal elements accessible to narrow social groups: for example, Latin and Sanskrit for clergy.

Elite and mass culture: opposition

They are opposed to each other by the type of impact on consciousness, as well as by the quality of the meanings that their elements contain. Thus, the mass is aimed at a more superficial perception, which does not require specific knowledge and special intellectual efforts to understand the cultural product. At present, there is an increased spread of mass culture due to the process of globalization, which, in turn, is spread through the media and stimulated by the capitalist structure of society. unlike the elite, designed for a wide range persons. Now we see elements of it everywhere, and it is especially evident in television programs and cinema.

So, Hollywood cinema can be opposed to arthouse cinema. At the same time, the first type of films focuses the viewer's attention not on the meaning and idea of ​​the story, but on the special effects of the video sequence. Here, high-quality cinema implies an interesting design, an unexpected, but easy-to-perceive plot.

Elite culture is represented by arthouse films, which are evaluated according to different criteria than Hollywood products of this kind, the main of which is meaning. So, the quality of the video sequence in such films is often underestimated. At first glance, the reason for the low quality of shooting is either the lack of good funding, or the dilettantism of the director. However, this is not the case: in arthouse cinema, the function of video is to convey the meaning of an idea. Special effects can distract from this, so they are not typical for products of this format. Arthouse ideas are original and deep. Very often in the presentation of a simple story is hidden from superficial understanding deep meaning reveals the true tragedy of the individual. When watching these films, you can often see that the director himself is trying to find the answer to the question posed and is studying the characters in the course of shooting. Predicting the plot of an arthouse movie is almost impossible.

Characteristics of high culture

Elite culture has a number of characteristics that distinguish it from mass culture:

1. Its elements are aimed at displaying and studying the deep processes of human psychology.
2. It has a closed structure, accessible to understanding only outstanding individuals.
3. Differs in originality of artistic solutions.
4. Contains a minimum of figurative means.
5. Has the ability to express something new.
6. It is an approbation of what in the future may become a classic or trivial art.

Elite culture- this is a culture of privileged groups of society, characterized by fundamental closeness, spiritual aristocracy and value-semantic self-sufficiency. This is a “high culture”, which is opposed to mass culture in terms of the type of influence on the perceiving consciousness, preserving its subjective features and providing a meaning-forming function. A type of culture characterized by the production of cultural values, samples that, due to their exclusivity, are calculated and available in the main narrow circle of people (the elite). Its main ideal is the formation of consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity. Elite culture is able to concentrate the intellectual, spiritual and artistic experience of generations.

Historical origin of elite culture

The historical origin of elite culture is precisely this: already in the primitive society, priests, sorcerers, sorcerers, tribal leaders become privileged possessors of special knowledge that cannot and should not be intended for general, mass use. Subsequently, this kind of relationship between elite culture and mass culture in one form or another, in particular secular, was repeatedly reproduced (in various religious denominations and especially sects, in monastic and spiritual knightly orders, Masonic lodges, in religious and philosophical meetings, in literary -artistic and intellectual circles around a charismatic leader, scientific communities and scientific schools, in political associations and parties - including especially those that worked secretly, conspiratorially, underground, etc.). Ultimately, the elitism of knowledge, skills, values, norms, principles, traditions that was formed in this way was the key to refined professionalism and deep subject specialization, without which historical progress, progressive value-semantic growth, content enrichment and accumulation of formal perfection are impossible in culture - any value-semantic hierarchy. Elite culture acts as an initiative and productive beginning in any culture, performing a predominantly creative function in it; while it stereotypes, routinizes, profanes the achievements of elite culture, adapting them to the perception and consumption of the socio-cultural majority of society.

Origin of the term

Elite culture as the antithesis of the mass

Historically, elite culture arose as the antithesis of mass culture and its meaning, the main value shows in comparison with the latter. The essence of elite culture was first analyzed by X. Ortega y Gasset (“Dehumanization of Art”, “The Revolt of the Masses”) and K. Manheim (“Ideology and Utopia”, “Man and Society in an Age of Transformation”, “Essay on the Sociology of Culture”) , who considered this culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and having a number of fundamentally important features, including the method of verbal communication - the language developed by its speakers, where special social groups - clergymen, politicians, artists - also use special , closed to the uninitiated languages, including Latin and Sanskrit.

Deepening contradictions between elite culture and mass

This trend - the deepening of the contradictions between the elite culture and the mass - has increased unprecedentedly in the 20th century and inspired many sharp and dramatic. collisions. At the same time, there are many examples in the history of culture of the 20th century that clearly illustrate the paradoxical dialectics of elite culture and mass culture: their mutual transition and mutual transformations, mutual influences and self-denial of each of them.

Elitization of mass culture

So, for example, (symbolists and impressionists, expressionists and futurists, surrealists and dadaists, etc.) - and artists, and theorists of trends, and philosophers, and publicists - were aimed at creating unique samples and entire systems of elite culture. Many of the formal refinements were experimental in nature; the theorists of the manifesto and the declaration substantiated the right of the artist and thinker to creative incomprehensibility, separation from the masses, their tastes and needs, to the inherently valuable being of “culture for culture’s sake”. However, as everyday objects, everyday situations, forms of everyday thinking, structures of generally accepted behavior, current historical events etc. (albeit with a “minus” sign, as a “minus device”), modernism began - involuntarily, and then consciously - to appeal to the masses and mass consciousness. Shocking and scoffing, grotesque and denunciation of the layman, buffoonery and farce - these are the same legitimate genres, stylistic devices and means of expression mass culture, as well as playing up clichés and stereotypes of mass consciousness, poster and propaganda, farce and ditty, recitation and rhetoric. The stylization or parody of banality is almost indistinguishable from the stylized and paraded (with the exception of the author's ironic distance and general semantic context, which remain almost imperceptible to mass perception); on the other hand, the recognizability and familiarity of vulgarity makes its criticism - highly intellectual, subtle, aestheticized - little understandable and effective for the bulk of recipients (who are not able to distinguish mockery of base taste from indulgence to it). As a result, the same work of culture acquires double life with different semantic content and opposite ideological pathos: on one side it turns out to be turned to elite culture, on the other - to mass culture. Such are the many works of Chekhov and Gorky, Mahler and Stravinsky, Modigliani and Picasso, L. Andreev and Verharn, Mayakovsky and Eluard, Meyerhold and Shostakovich, Yesenin and Kharms, Brecht and Fellini, Brodsky and Voinovich. Especially controversial is the contamination of elite culture and mass culture in postmodern culture; for example, in such an early phenomenon of postmodernism as pop art, there is an elitization of mass culture and, at the same time, a massification of elitism, which gave rise to the classics of modern art. postmodern W. Eco to characterize pop art as “low-browed highbrow”, or, conversely, as “highbrow lowbrow” (in English: Lowbrow Highbrow, or Highbrow Lowbrow).

Features of high culture

The subject of an elitist, high culture is a person - a free, creative person capable of conscious activity. are always personally colored and designed for personal perception, regardless of the breadth of their audience, which is why the wide distribution and millions of copies of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare not only do not reduce their significance, but, on the contrary, contribute to the wide dissemination of spiritual values. In this sense, the subject of an elite culture is a representative of the elite.

At the same time, objects of high culture that retain their form - plot, composition, musical structure, but changing the mode of presentation and appearing in the form of replicated products, adapted, adapted to an unusual type of functioning, as a rule, they pass into the category of mass culture. In this sense, we can talk about the ability of form to be the bearer of content.

If we keep in mind the art of mass culture, then we can state the different sensitivity of its types to this ratio. In the field of music, the form is fully meaningful, even its minor transformations (for example, the widespread practice of translating classical music into an electronic version of its instrumentation) lead to the destruction of the integrity of the work. In the field of fine arts, the translation of an authentic image into a different format - a reproduction or a digital version - leads to a similar result (even if the context is preserved - in a virtual museum). As for literary work, then changing the presentation mode - including from traditional book to digital - does not affect its character, since the form of the work, the structure are the laws of its dramatic construction, and not the medium - printing or electronic - of this information. To define such works of high culture that have changed the nature of their functioning as mass works allows the violation of their integrity, when secondary or, at least, not their main components are accentuated and act as leading ones. Changing the authentic format of the phenomena of mass culture leads to the fact that the essence of the work changes, where ideas appear in a simplified, adapted version, and creative functions are replaced by socializing ones. This is due to the fact that, unlike high culture, the essence of mass culture is not in creative activity, not in the production of cultural values, but in the formation of "value orientations" that correspond to the nature of the dominant public relations, and the development of stereotypes of the mass consciousness of members of the "consumer society". Nevertheless, elite culture is a kind of model for the mass, acting as a source of plots, images, ideas, hypotheses, adapted by the latter to the level of mass consciousness.

According to I. V. Kondakov, elite culture appeals to a select minority of its subjects, who, as a rule, are both its creators and addressees (in any case, the range of both is almost the same). Elite culture consciously and consistently opposes the culture of the majority in all its historical and typological varieties - folklore, folk culture, the official culture of a particular estate or class, the state as a whole, the cultural industry of a technocratic society of the 20th century, etc. Philosophers consider elite culture as the only one capable of preserving and reproducing the basic meanings of culture and possessing a number of fundamentally important features:

• complexity, specialization, creativity, innovation;
• the ability to form consciousness, ready for active transformative activity and creativity in accordance with the objective laws of reality;
• the ability to concentrate the spiritual, intellectual and artistic experience of generations;
• the presence of a limited range of values ​​recognized as true and "high";
• a rigid system of norms accepted by this stratum as obligatory and strict in the community of "initiates";
• individualization of norms, values, evaluative criteria of activity, often principles and forms of behavior of members of the elite community, thereby becoming unique;
• the creation of a new, deliberately complicated cultural semantics, requiring special training and an immense cultural outlook from the addressee;
• using a deliberately subjective, individually creative, “deleting” interpretation of the ordinary and familiar, which brings the subject’s cultural assimilation of reality closer to a mental (sometimes artistic) experiment on it and, to the extreme, replaces the reflection of reality in an elitist culture with its transformation, imitation - with deformation, penetration into the meaning - conjecture and rethinking given;
• semantic and functional “closeness”, “narrowness”, isolation from the whole national culture, which turns the elite culture into a kind of secret, sacred, esoteric knowledge, taboo for the rest of the masses, and its carriers turn into a kind of “priests” of this knowledge, the chosen ones of the gods , "servants of the muses", "keepers of secrets and faith", which is often played up and poeticized in elite culture

Elements of high culture

• The science
• Philosophy
• Specialized (vocational) education, especially higher education (intellectual elite)
• Literature, especially classical, poetry
• Intellectual literature (as opposed to mass literature) and auteur cinema (as opposed to mass cinema)
• art
• Musical art, classical music, opera, ballet, symphonic music, organ music
• Theatre
• Etiquette
• public service
• Military service as an officer
• Fine cuisine and good wine
• High-fashion
• Manifesting yourself as a person