Diluted aesthetic experiences in mass media spread value reprocessing to broad audiences

Evidence

Firstly, we do not only observe the aesthetic experiences we are speaking of here in traditional places of ‘high culture’, in the elitist hangouts of the avant-garde and in cultural arenas where the public are invited into an ‘ascetic’ participation (which is demanding, difficult and therefore rare) – but also, in more or less diluted form, in the mainstream cultural offering which draws millions of spectators into its multiplex cinemas and in front of its small screens. Rare are the television series or Bollywood films that do not contain a fleeting moment of aesthetic adjournment – in the recess of an unforeseen twist in the plot, a suddenly inspired dialogue, a musical treasure or an unexpected edit. As standardized and mind-numbing as they may seem, the products of the cultural industries also distribute traces of past aesthetic experiences among the most extensive of audiences – whose forms may have a sense of déjà-vu for aficionados, but whose effects on less informed spectators are, for all that, no less real. So we must take into account processes of DIFFUSION BY DILUTION: what dilutes the radicalism of aesthetic experiences allows them progressively to infiltrate the broadest strata of the population, and in this way generalize the reprocessing of values taking place in a concentrated and narrow way in ascetic experiences. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 450

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘diffusion by dilution’: diluted aesthetic experiences infiltrate mass populations and generalize value reprocessing.
• ADDENDUM: Extends the Frankfurt-school dialectic between high and mass culture into a contemporary attention-ecology frame, complementary to the mass-culture-through-trees lens in ‘Grafting & Growth’.
• XREF: connects to: Aesthetic experience acts as a laboratory for reworking values — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 429; Postmodern aesthetic practices respond to an environment of image-and-message saturation — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 230

Broader Connections

• Postmodern aesthetic practices respond to an environment of image-and-message saturation #corroborates (0.82) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 230