Common assumptions put forward by masssociety theorists, and taken up by its researchers, included notionsthat mass culture was crude and that its consumers were little morethan undiscriminating dupes who were being injected with, and takingon board, media messages wholesale.
It's interesting how these criticisms of mass society emerged right before postmodernism, which had a major focus on challenging universal truths and messages. I wonder if this is the research community's response to modernism. Does the film industry ever respond to what comes out of related research fields?