Modernity and Mass Culture is a wide-ranging analysis of the relationship among industrialization, democracy, and art in the 20th century. US and British scholars discuss the interaction of "high," "popular," and "mass" art, showing how Western culture as a whole is affected by the transition from the modern to the postmodern era. Their essays deal with advertisements, films, recorded music, television, and mass-market literature. Among the topics discussed are assembly-line manufacturing, home entertainment, popular reception, avant-garde theory, "post-feminist" fiction, and "retro" style.