1950s critics separated themselves from the masses by rejecting the ‘natural’ enjoyment afforded by products of mass culture through judgments based on a refined sense of realism. For example, in most critics championing Douglas Sirk’s films’ social critique, self-reflexivity, and, in particular, distancing effects, there is still a refusal of the ‘vulgar’ enjoyments suspected of soap operas. This refusal again functions to divorce the critic from an image of a mindless, pleasure-seeking crowd he or she has actually manufactured in order to definitively secure the righteous logic of ‘good’ taste. It also pushes negative notions of female taste and subjectivity. Critiques of mass culture seem always to bring to mind a disrespectful image of the feminine to represent the depths of the corruption of the people. The process of taste-making operated, then, to create hierarchical differences between the aesthete and the masses through the construction of aesthetic positions contrary to the perceived tasteless pleasures of the crowd.
* vulgar: 저속한, 서민의 ** aesthetic: 미학의, 심미적인