High Culture vs Low Culture

High Culture is produced on a mass scale with industrial techniques and is markted to profit to a mass of public consumers, rather than for the sake of art or expression. This definition details two criteria; the motives behind the production and the target audience. But using motive as something to define something else with is a problem in itself. In modern times, as unfortunate as it is, few things are ever produced unless there is a profit to be made from it, and if they are to be produced in the first place they are to be reproduced on a mass scale. High culture music of classical composers are made only to ensure that the cost of a successful production is outweighed by the profits, and if it is not the show is cancelled. Production of CDs will stop if demand is too low.

Shakespeare and Mozart did not produce their work for free, so is it arguable to say that they are mass media? Speculation is not enough to make an feasible decision. The fact that profit is generated does not prove that profit is the driving force being production. Many examples of that which is considered to be high culture today have existed for hundreds of years. Often, the reason these things have lasted so long is that their producers and consumers have had the wealth and influence required to preserve the. This is the reason that the works of people such as Tchaikovsky have survived to this day where the many efforts of the poor from the same era, such as folk music, are long forgotten. As these forms of entertainment have survived, so has their reputation for being high culture.

One would, however, not have to look far to find exceptions for this otherwise straightforward rule. But even if there were none, it is only a reason for the survival of certain forms of art and culture; it does not have to draw a line between high culture and popular media. Finding the origins of the categories would be useful n this endeavour. High culture has been described as a deliberately created, aggressive movement of the social elite. Widespread understanding of culture amongst the social elite became as hierarchical as it did legitimate, as it was distinct from the ideologies of commercialism.

In more modern times, Andy Warhol is a more modern idol of high culture. He rocked the art world by suggesting that celebrities are products as much as anything else, yet the manner in which they were produced placed his work under the name of mass media.