The academic theories of consumer culture and consumer society mainly come from featherstone's Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, Baudrillard's Consumer Society and Lu Rui's Consumer Culture. On this basis, scholars believe that the main feature of consumer society is: "The production capacity is surplus to the traditional life style of moderate frugality, and for the production and reproduction of the mode of production itself, society will continue to stimulate consumption, making large-scale consumption a basic life style of society." [1] Scholars have different views on the definition of consumer culture.
Yin Shijie believes that consumption culture "is the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by people in the field of consumption, the expression of people's creativity in consumption, and the sublimation and crystallization of people's various reasonable consumption practices. Consumer culture includes beautiful natural environment, humanistic environment, material means of life and spiritual and cultural products carefully created by people, and creative consumption behaviors that are beneficial to people's physical and mental health. " [2] Wang Ning believes that "the so-called consumer culture is accompanied by consumer activities, a symbolic system that expresses a certain meaning or inherits a certain value system. This kind of consumption symbol is different from the natural and functional consumption behavior that meets the demand in the general sense. It is a symbol system, which expresses, embodies or implies a certain meaning, value or norm. This kind of behavior and object symbol system presented in consumer activities is what we call consumer culture. " [3] Xiao Haohui pointed out that "consumer culture in a broad sense refers to the sum of consumer material culture and consumer spiritual culture; The narrow sense of consumption culture is the reflection of consumption in people's ideology, including consumption concept, consumption value orientation, consumption morality, consumption behavior, consumption taste, consumption aesthetics and consumption psychology. This is the sum total of people's ideological forms that reflect consumption characteristics and understanding in consumption practice. " [4]
In my opinion, consumption culture refers to the sum of consumption concepts, consumption patterns, consumption behaviors and consumption environments in material production and spiritual production, social life and consumption activities in a certain historical stage. Consumer culture is an extremely important part of social culture, the crystallization of outstanding achievements created by human beings in the field of consumption, and the important content of social civilization. It includes material consumption culture, spiritual consumption culture and ecological consumption culture.
Material consumption culture is simply the consumption of basic daily needs such as food, clothing, housing and transportation. With the development of the times, people's quality of life and consumption level are constantly improving, and the requirements for goods are becoming more and more demanding. They prefer products that are both practical and beautiful, and require products that are both practical and beautiful.
Spiritual consumption culture refers to the consumption with spiritual products as the consumption object, in order to improve the cultural knowledge level of consumers, cultivate their thoughts and sentiments, and delight their emotions. Spiritual consumption culture meets the spiritual and cultural needs of consumers to a great extent. Because spiritual consumption takes spiritual products as the consumption object, and spiritual products are created by people through brain thinking, scientific concepts and artistic images, the consumption of spiritual products requires consumers not only to have economic consumption ability, but also to have the necessary cultural literacy and quality ability such as artistic appreciation ability and psychological endurance ability.
Ecological consumption culture is a green or ecological consumption pattern. It refers to the consumption behavior that conforms to the development level of both material production and ecological production, which not only meets people's consumption needs, but also does not harm the ecological environment. Ecological consumption is the first priority of spiritual consumption, which highlights people's spiritual and psychological needs, which is obviously different from the traditional high consumption of pursuing people's material needs. The more artistic the ecological consumption culture is, the more attractive it will be to the people around it, so that they can relax.
Since the 1990s, great changes have taken place in China society, the most obvious sign of which is the emergence of a new mass group of consumer culture. Influenced by the concept of consumerism, their consumption concept, consumption pattern and consumption behavior have changed greatly, and the demand for goods has surpassed its use value and pursued a higher level of cultural value, because its implied cultural choice and cultural morphological attributes have bred a sense of pride in high-quality consumption. Therefore, today's consumption has been transformed into a social value trend, and even consciously recognized by people's subconscious. The dimension of consumer culture is composed of many factors, and under the catalysis of modern science and technology and commercial operation, it has more and more obvious influence on all aspects of social life. The author intends to explain this problem from two aspects: the popularization of aesthetic culture and the generalization of public art caused by consumer culture.
Second, consumer culture leads to the popularization of aesthetic culture.
The third aesthetic discussion, which began in the late 1970s, led to the revival of aesthetic culture, which broke ground in the 1980s and flourished. Accompanied by this aesthetic upsurge, in philosophy, aesthetics and literary theory, young Marx's thoughts were valued, humanitarianism and alienation began to enter the academic field of vision, human subjectivity was highly valued, and aesthetic ideology theory began to appear. In the field of literary creation, the concept of pure literature began to take root in people's hearts. In the field of literary criticism, the fifth generation of critics began to step onto the historical stage, and aesthetic criticism became their criticism standard. In the film industry, the fifth generation of directors began to appear, and a number of exploratory, pioneering and aesthetic works shocked and refreshed people's audio-visual senses. In the field of translation, "Aesthetic Translation Series" and "Towards the Future Series" have become the forerunners of a new round of western learning spreading to the east, and people's ideological concepts and aesthetic concepts have undergone tremendous changes. In the reading world, some difficult philosophical and aesthetic works have become popular books at hand. Therefore, some people later summarized the 1980s as a period of "spiritual reading" to distinguish it from "material reading" in the 1990s and "utilitarian reading" since the new century. [5]
The phenomena listed above can generally indicate the development momentum of aesthetic culture in the 1980s, and also indicate the possibility of further prosperity of aesthetic culture. However, the fact is not what you think. "Many theorists believe that the emergence of consumer society is the most important social transformation today, which fundamentally changes the basic living landscape of human culture. Of course, it fundamentally changed the social outlook and presentation of aesthetic culture. " [6] Aesthetic culture is greatly influenced by consumer society and consumer culture, and gradually tends to be popular, mainly in the following three aspects:
1, the popularization of aesthetic subject
"In the old society, Wang Xietang flew into the homes of ordinary people." Since ancient times, aesthetics has only been the privilege of the upper class and literati, and ordinary people have stayed out of it. Nowadays, with the rapid economic development in China, people's economic income has greatly increased, and people have become the main buyers of commodities. At the same time, the strong impact of commodity economy and consumer culture has accelerated the pace of people's life and increased the pressure brought by fierce competition. Therefore, if goods want to quickly penetrate into people's life, study, entertainment and other aspects, their appearance design and functional design should cater to the public's tastes and satisfy the public's aesthetic psychology, so the popularization of aesthetic culture under the impact of consumer culture appears. "In Freud's view, the most important thing in the sublimation of instinct is the sublimation of aesthetics. Aesthetic sublimation, including artistic creation and appreciation, means that people's original instinctive desires are satisfied in an alternative way in aesthetic experience, and the tension, disappointment and pain caused by the accumulation of psychological energy are alleviated in this alternative way. " [7] This is Freud's psychoanalytic theory, which holds that the instinctive desire I need is vented through replacement, thus dispelling people's inner tension and depression. Beautiful and considerable goods, through this replacement method, quietly played a role in relieving people's mental stress and eliminating people's inner pain. Whether people realize it or not, they are attracted and unconsciously become the main body in aesthetic activities.
2. Popularization of aesthetic objects.
In classical culture, people think that what can be called aesthetic object is extremely limited. It seems that only poetry, drama, painting and calligraphy can be called "beauty", so people who appreciate beauty are only the patents of a few people. Since the end of 1980s, the whole society in China has undergone a transformation, and postmodern thoughts began to pour in, and postmodern culture appeared in China. Post-modern culture is free, diverse and inclusive, and it recognizes diverse lifestyles and aesthetics. As a result, popular culture is expanding day by day, and aesthetic objects are expanding infinitely. "The boundary between aesthetic and secular has been dissolved. From radio, television, VCD, DVD, internet to electronic newspapers, and even street posters flashing neon lights, beauty is attached to the mass media and melts in every corner of life. " [8] Aesthetic activities are carried out in all directions at the level of daily life: from transportation, diet, clothing, architecture, room decoration, to movies, TV, pop music, beauty and travel, all these life contents contain aesthetic and cultural factors. "[9] Post-modern culture makes the boundary between elegant art and popular art disappear, showing the phenomenon of aestheticization of daily life. The popularization of aesthetic objects makes our life artistic, and art seems to be less mysterious and a reflection of our daily life.
3. Popularization of aesthetic standards.
Since ancient times, people's definition of good things seems to be relatively simple. Reaching a certain standard means beauty, and vice versa. For example, in China, the traditional beauty standards are tall, big eyes, gentle, kind, virtuous and natural and graceful. This has been the definition of female beauty for a long time, but now it is not the only way to become a beautiful woman. For example, good personality, good temperament and unique personality charm can all be called beauty. Similarly, the aesthetics of other things have become diversified, and there is no single standard. When talking about aesthetic fashion, a scholar said: "When an aesthetic fashion strikes, most people will go with the flow. Under the impact of aesthetic fashion, it is often difficult for people to maintain their own consistent aesthetic standards and shift to fashion standards. Therefore, many objects that did not seem to be within the aesthetic scope in the past have become aesthetic objects because of the role of aesthetic fashion, although individuals may not be able to obtain real beauty from them. " [10] Therefore, when showing individuality becomes a fashion, people will not stick to the traditional aesthetic standards, but people advocate showing individuality and emotional entertainment more. Therefore, for goods, its function is more important to cater to the public's aesthetics, stimulate the public's feelings, and show what they want to convey to others, thus stimulating the public's desire to buy and being popular. In fact, this kind of consumer culture virtually turns culture into commodities, cancels the distinction between commodities and works of art, commercializes art, and breaks the traditional aesthetic standards, leading to the popularization of aesthetic culture.
To sum up, the current consumer culture often uses the packaging of aesthetic culture to decorate the facade, thus gradually completing the misappropriation and transformation of aesthetic culture, making the popularization trend of aesthetic culture increasingly obvious, and the popularization of this aesthetic culture will directly lead to the decline of aesthetic judgment, which in turn will lead to the satisfaction of desire becoming everything. Therefore, the reconstruction of consumer culture and the restoration of aesthetic appreciation and judgment are imperative.
Third, consumer culture leads to the generalization of public art.
In recent years, with the development of urbanization in China and the practice of art theory, public art has entered the urban public space on a large scale in the form of diversified and changeable appendages, and has become an integral part of the urban public space service system, which has attracted more and more attention and is likely to flood. Why is there a phenomenon of generalization of public art?
Adorno, a theorist of Frankfurt School, pointed out that a basic feature of mass culture, namely the exchange and circulation logic of mass production and consumption, directly led to a consumerist ideology. This ideology makes people's consumption sometimes not for reasonable practical needs, but to meet the needs formed by consciously stimulated desires, and the current consumer culture seems to show this trend. However, the aesthetic concept from the perspective of consumer culture is completely different from that of modern times. It appeals more to external images, pursues sensory pleasure, and tends to take aesthetic care of the surrounding things based on the daily life world, so that "aestheticization of daily life" and "aestheticization of daily life" directly lead to the generalization of public art. Simply put, "aestheticization of daily life" means directly introducing "aesthetic attitude" into real life. People's daily life is full of more and more "artistic temperament", that is to say, aestheticize what was originally mediocre or even vulgar or apply aesthetic principles to daily life, so that the traditional elegant taste is closer to the modern mass aesthetic custom, and the elite culture and mass culture cross the border, thus filling the gap between them. In this way, the image and visual characteristics of the artistic environment and public art are most closely related to us, including architecture, sculpture, entertainment facilities, celebration devices and so on. Can you give every citizen who passes by it an equal opportunity to appreciate, judge or communicate and interact, just like the German artist Joseph? Powys's performance art of planting 7,000 oak trees in Kassel for several years in succession, some large-scale public art works "The Big Ice Cream Egg Roll" created by Audenberg, and the one in Paris? The huge bicycle sculpture in Villette Park, which is half buried in the soil, is now in the public art of the subway station. Their diversity in form dispels the sacredness of traditional art, fundamentally changes the relationship between works of art and the public, and makes public art, like popular culture, become a kind of * * * enjoyment culture, and blend into the daily life of ordinary people, so that the mediocre daily life presents an aesthetic landscape and satisfies the public.