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Analysis Of Marcuse's Mass Culture

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According to him capitalistic society creates a dominant culture which shapes the desires and attitudes of people. In this process individuals are forced to adapt to the needs of this system and should accept the ‘REALITY’ as portrayed by capitalistic society. To explain this he used Freudian concept of Repression and divided it into 2 levels namely basic and surplus (related to libidinal energy). Surplus repression is defined as the restrictions on human behavior necessitated by social and cultural domination. The recent changes in the system lead to that extent of repression in which productivity of products introduced by capitalistic realm resulted into the decomposition and fragmentation of private sphere. In addition to that individuals lose self identity because of mass culture as the pleasure doesn’t last long. …show more content…

He describes how tastes and class structure are interrelated to each other. The underlying system of domination provides base for the formation of these tastes. This notion of Habitus is flexible and can modify itself through experiences. This susceptibility of the opinion patterns of group behavior and tastes can be easily manipulated by the capitalistic society. This is much more evident when we consider Cultural capital. These people hold a certain value and distinct tastes in the society although they are not economically

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