Salvador Dali 'Mass Culture'

I've been thinking about the shift in postmodernism towards mass culture and egalitarianism and away from things like defining "high culture." I think this is reflected in our glorifying mass media and kind of ignoring or hating things that are exclusive or hard to understand. This idea kind of came from Amusing Ourselves to Death and the whole idea of Americans starting to think in the language of TV. From Niel Postman's other book I'm reading for class, How to Watch TV News, he says:

"The need to 'include everyone,' an identifying feature of commercial television in all its forms, prevents journalists from offering lengthy or complex explanations, or from tracing the sequence of events leading up to today's headlines." (113)

Okay, so take that idea, of TV news having to cater to the lowest common denominator. Because, if people don't understand it, they shut the TV off. Well, if it's a cultural value to cater to ALL of society, and your business depends on quantity of viewers, not especially quality of programming, then it's kind of an odd form of communism. I don't know a lot about communism, but I think one of the general ideas was that if it's not something necessary for everyone, than no one gets it. Like, say I really like reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but no one else does, then it's going to be hard or impossible for me to get it.

In summary, maybe making sure that everyone is cool with everything and making sure that we keep everyone interested all the time isn't the best of goals, especially for TV news.