Contenu du sommaire : La culture de masse aux Etats-Unis.

Although the « popular language » concept is never referred to as such, a socio-lexicographic analysis reveals that popular speech in the US is a form of spontaneous, everyday-life English which comprises characteristics alien to British English ; it is a linguistic emblem of independence. Paradoxically, many Americans take a conservative view of linguistic usage. A discrepancy is therefore visible between the Americans' practice of popular speech and their dislike of linguistic permissiveness.

The gay community has asserted its right to be a visible part of the country's culture through its use of gay slang. Gay men (mostly) have responded to the terms used about them by reappropriating appellations or insults from the dominant discourse. By re-routing terms which were equated with deviance, gays meant to combat their invisibility. This article wishes to underscore the part played by the slogans chanted during the mass demonstrations of the 70s, the gay pride parades of the 80s and 90s and to examine a few examples of the gay practice of re-coding language.

The works of California artist Mike Kelley are not just repulsive. His battered objects function as critical tools. His stuffed animals are part of a visual discourse exposing the pathological effects of cultural and artistic hierarchies, while denouncing a consumer society where reification and fetishism reign supreme. Only when the object is concealed is desire fully released.

What makes a magazine successful ? Besides entertaining its readers better than its competitors, Reader's Digest owes its success to its being a euphemizer : it tells about the world and, at the same time, seems to make it a better place to live in. The readers are thereby led to accept the world as it is, feeding on a strange mixture of idealism and realism which unfortunately tends to blunt their ideas and eventually prevents them from thinking.

This is an attempt at emphasizing some general trends in the evolution of American movie and TV products since the early 80s. Contrary to current views on the quantitative invasion and qualitative decline of contemporary TV products, it is argued that cinema and TV may be inverting their former positions on the scales of cultural creativity. While movies grow ever more spectacularly escapist and barrenly self-referential, the new TV realism — in its various and occasionally scandalous forms — brings about new impetus in the American pictures of the 90s.

Critics have often debated the value of rock music. Should it be regarded as the ' standardized product of mass culture or rather as the true expression of the people ? No definite answer can be given insofar as rock music, whose success relies on the American business organization, has repeatedly tried to sever its links with mass consumption and assert itself as a popular counter-culture. However, no rock movement has remained counter-cultural for long before being absorbed by the logic of the marketplace. Such cyclical movements lend its value to rock music, whose true nature lies in this dynamic, regenerative process.

A multi-media entertainment concept as well as a record company, Motown was born in the socially transitional 50's. Its founder Berry Gordy was the intuitive entrepreneur capable of using his musical, social, and economic backgrounds to build a monumental cross-over business which, for the first time in history, unified the previously separate rhythm'n'blues and pop audiences on a massive scale. Purists find that this global breakthrough was completed at the expense of the black musical heritage and the African-American identity, not to mention the fact that culture ought not to be weighed in terms of dollars. But then, the Motown phenomenon can only be measured within the American context in which all enterprise, including culture, is valued « at the bottom line ».