Abstract

PUERTA DOMINGUEZ, Simón. Mass culture, ornamentation and film. A Siegfried Kracauer's critique to modernity. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2017, vol.40, n.1, pp.257-273. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v40n1.61961.

Siegfried Kracauer was a witness to the precipitous transformations that began the twentieth century: the growth of cities and the inherent logic therein, extension of industrial dynamics areas to arenas of recreation and social massification. Advanced modernity, supported by technical development, led to social and cultural ruptures which this author identified in particular phenomena that arose with the emergence of the new social actor: the masses. Kracauer not only witnessed the change, he also interpreted it and sought to understand its more detailed and subtle expressions. This spectacle of the masses, determined and leading to a radical change in taste, captured his attention: ornamental, loud, noisy, it was for him an aestheticification of the prevail ing social confusion. Influenced by Simmel but imprinted with his unique perspective which nourished the sociological reflection of Critical Theory, Kracauer revealed in the urban cultural phenomenon of the first decades of the XX century the rationalizing trends with which modernity shook and subsumed the individual and his/her percep tion. This text gives account of the modern experience from Kracauer's postulates and interpretations, with emphasis on their validity and conceptual wealth, a great contribu tion to the sociology of modernity. Concrete phenomena such as film, mass consump tion literature and ornamental spectacles in large stadiums reveal the main features of modernity and problematize the freedom-repression relationship generated between the individual and the social organization. This form of interpreting the modern experi ence has great validity because of its concrete focus and offers enriching social analysis for each era and its issues.

Keywords : abstractness; cinema; entertainment; massification; modernity; ornament..

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