Popular Culture and State Socialism

The paper is aimed to explore possibilities of analysing popular culture of the era of the state socialism. There is demonstrated how the relationship between popular culture and the so­cialist society can be described by the same model as in West European societies - from the viewpoint of the Gramscian concept of hegemony. The paper deals with the role of popular culture in the Czechoslovak society, particularly with its participation in the process of reaching a con­sensus between the governing minority and subordinated majority. These topics are related to the fundamental question of the applica­bility of cultural studies concepts and theories to the situation of state socialist so­cieties. The institutional frame of popular culture pro­duction and function is shown as well as the role of popular media as the Czechoslovak society's inner communicative functioning mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, when the new post invasion authorities readily decided to rely on popular culture and restricted consumerism to create people's acceptance of the status quo, rather than to force them to enthusiastically follow the renewed regime. The most popular genre of the period – TV serials – became a space, where the conscientiously controlled dominant ideology met the mindsets and opinions of the audience.