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Pop Culture

Pop Culture

by danihammett, Apr. 2014

Subjects: ffweewf

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87 Cards in this Set

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	Mass Culture	The dominant culture that is accesible, widely available, and intended for consumpton by as many people as possible
	Sub and Counter Culture	Oppose dominant structures they see as limiting, repressive, or problematic - Can be absorbed into mainstream culture - Minority to the large majority culture, antagonistic relationship - Aim is to draw attention to the limits of pop culture, or offer new practices as an alternative - Pop culture often has an impact on how subcultures stylize themselves - Sub + Counter cultures flow through one another - Subcultures may be political, but countercultures are exclusively political -Subcultures often feed into countercultures - Something may start out as a subculture, then become a counterculture - Both are engaged in the struggle to create new and different forms of social reality - Both take culture seriously as a site of authenticity, personal, “ethical”, or political expression, and as a mean to articulate new way of being or living - Culture as a platform from which things can be articulated or lived out
	Subcultures	Practices are excluded from the norm, differ from social norms - Have their own spaces - Dissatisfaction with social norms - Seems more 'trendy' than countercultures - e.g. Gays + Lesbians Can be rooted in activities or particular lifestyles or communities that may not appear particularly political (e.g. bodybuilding) - Groups who depart from particular social norms and may have their own social norms - Often aligned with youth
	Countercultures	Demand a change - Used in reference mainly to 1960s anti-vietnam movement - Challenges order of things - Clothing, music, lifestyle that opposes the norm - Accomplishes more than subcultures A more specific conceptual category than subculture - Social movements seeking social/political change (outside mainstream politics) - Explicitly oppose the existing political/social order - Have an agena of changing the world/society - Countercultures have a privileged set of cultural objects - In politically opposing a social order, they also oppose the culture than produces that order
	Refus Global	Manifesto signed by 16 Quebecois artists that attacked social conservativism, and the power of the catholic church - Helped to inagurate the "quiet revolution"
	Representation of Subcultures	Shaped by pop culture (e.g. Sid + nancy) - Shown as either a treat, or "better" than the mainstream e.g. Indie music
	Culture Jamming	Turning manifestations of consumer culture, like advertising, against themselves for political ends - Recontextualizes them, causes people to reread tem Specifically addresses consumerism - Contesting mainstream ideas around consumerinm - e.g “Buy no gas day” - Interrupting the preferred reading of an ad
	Facebook Revolution	Population is gaining greater access to mass free speech - Arab Spring - Mobilized political interest on facebook, exposed secret police, organized protests
	Mainstream Culture	Streams of culture are always relative and relational (not absolute notions) - Mainstream refers to two features: prevalence/popularity of users or audience - Dominant sets of core beliefs, ideas, identities, etc circulated in pop culture - Given the breadth of the mainstream, elements of it are critiqued from within - Politically, this discourse of debate is limiting because it highlights small differences in ideas that are not radically different
	Dialectics	Overarching idea: Change is the result of internal stresses - Everything is relate, we are in multiple relations of dependence (e.g. advertiser, advertisee, laborers and workers) - Change is constant, and nothing is absolute or permanent - Change moves from qualitative to quantitative - Change results from the unity and struggle of opposites
	Single or Plural Popular Cultures	Do we have “popular culture” or do we have “popular cultures” - The volume is impossible to consume - Is popular culture fragmented or characterized by a multitude of different niches? - Have we gone beyond standardization, is there authentic diversity in the digital age?
	Marx and Freud + IDentitty	Normalizing and civilizing function to the development of identity - For Freud this is a balance: We suffer without normalization, but too much makes us ill - For Marx this makes us hollow, falsely identified, and alienated docile workers Identitty may be an illusion, but it works for some people in a way that doesn't for others - Capitalism/society establishes identity as a crucial focus of self-organization - It also prescribes and limits what kind of identities that are acceptable to adopt
	Mirror Stage	Lacan - Child’s recognition of himself as a separate being - Cognitive realization of a reflection of oneself - Outside view of ourselves, how others see us - Imagining how others see us - This is a misrecognition, as we always see ourselves more together than we actually feel inside - We appear stable, integrated, holistic - This sense of wholeness is haunted by how we feel we are always lacking and falling short of such completeness and coherency Forming a sense of self that always feels lacking (consumption soothes, media images as current ideals we fall short of)
	Performativity	We have no true self, no core, no essence - Media images ideologically covers this up social scripts about sexuality, gender and how they are enacted - We see examples of it - There Is nothing emotionally inside or biological that tells us masculinity and sexuality - we only know masculinity through how others perform it and give us an example - Social scripts about sexuality, gender, and other dimensions of identity are enacted - Not an actor playing an “artificial” role, different from performance - Instead no one ever gets out of performativity - We’re not born with sexual preference or sexual characteristics, we get an example and we act it as well - It is only at the surface level - It is the constant repetitions and viewings of these masculine behaviors that cause boys to act this way. We get the impression that there is some “core” to it, that must be the natural way - Sex is as culturally constructive as gender - Culture is obsessed with insisting how different men and women
	Regulatory Fictions/Factors	Logics of surveillance (imagining how others see us) produces technologies of the self - Technologies of the Self: Foucault. Our way of assessing, controlling, evaluating ourself - Produces an internalized gaze (self consciousness) in response to power/knowledge (social norms) - Setting in motion the idea of “normal” and what is not normal - Productive and constraining: Where there is a constraint, a skill set is created that has to go around the constraint - The ideas are “normal” but fictional in the sense that they are constructed (not natural) - Ideals change over time, are not the same in different cultures and times - The internalized gaze is the means by which we regulate ourselves - Not so much pressure from outside, but an internal gaze, and how we relate to outside pressures -- We draw upon social norms and understanding of what is normal and we use them to make sense of ourselves and how we are being seen - We think we are free but we are actually surveilling oursel
	Bodily and Emotional Normativities	Being happy, being successful has become a cultural and moral imperative - Political dissent is seen as angry and militant - Our culture orients us away from reckoning with loss, disappointment, and our imperfections - The narratives become variations of overcoming adversity. We only tolerate failure if it is turned into success - Cultural rules about bodies appear to us as bodies inherently lacking or people who do not take care of themselves
	Representation	There are multiple ways to represent any event - We can select and represent “facts” in a variety of ways - Editing, context, framing - Represetations play a role in the construction of social reality Stuart Hall: offers a common or old idea of representation and critiques it - Not only one idea Involves social production of meaning through sign systems - Signs are fundamental units of communication: Can be a word, a gesture, an expression, anything that conveys meaning and is recognized as doing so - Language by itself isn't the determining factor, rather it is language as the central medium of culture and how it influences the way we perceive the world around us Has a lot to do with power, what gets spoken about in what way by who on whose behalf - In media and sign systems, representation tends to reproduce existing relations of social power and make them seem natural - Classification and marginalization of relatively powerless members of society, works to keep them in thei
	Freud + Identity	Drive theory (biology) We are compelled biologically to be pleasure seeking - Nature element is the drivenness to seek pleasure - As soon as we’re born, all we want to do is feel good - In the womb, all needs are taken care of. - We have to resolve the Oedipus complex to accept social demands - We learn that we cannot have pleasure all the time, some things are punishable, embarrassing, not appropriate - Key for development of our gendered and sexual identities are acceptance of taboos on sexuality - e.g. No sexuality toward family members/no incest - Gender binaries, girls are one way boys are another - We employ all manners of defense mechanisms to meet these social demands e.g. denial - Which is also formative of our personalities and the nuances of how we live our identitites - Gender norms, sexuality norms, reinforced by popular culture
	Marx + Identity	Ideology is, in principle, the key external force - One’s class identity, identity as a consumer - How consciousness is involved - Identities we form alienate us - School teaches us to be a good worker - Ideological state apparatus (school and media) are the eans by which ideology is conveyed - We are interpellated by social roles, literally called into being and recognized as certain kinds of people (workers, consumers) - When you’re thought to be a way, you mold into that expectation - Media pushes us - identity is an armor people use as a way of coping with needs and society - Ideology is the primary force in creating identity and consciousness - The working class accepted their idetity by acceptng capitalism and its inevitability
	Frankfurt School + Identity	Combined Freud and Marx - Growing up is about the pleasure principle giving way to the reality principle - The reality principle is informed by broader social conditions esp. demands of capitalism - The taming and containing of sexuality into the nuclear family, men as productive and women as reproductive - Go to school, get a job, get married, etc - Freud’s Cure: To enable us to love and to work
	Stuart Hall:	There is no single meaning to an event, so representation cannot conveny the meaning of an event truthfully or even inaccurately - The process of representing brings meaning to an event - Representation does not occur after the event, representation is constitutive of the event Encoding and Decoding: Dominant Hegemonic: The “preferred meaning” the creators wanted to evoke in us Negotiated Position: We grasp the intended meaning, but we modify it according to our own interests Oppositional Reading: We understand but reject the intended meaning because of alternative values/ideas
	Essentialism	Identity is a fundamental, unchanging core of meaning that transends culture and politics - Identity is grounded in nature and unquestionable truths
	Social Constructivism	Identities are produced through culture and politics - Genetics might establish broad parameters for what we do/think/feel, but it is cculture that helps us establish who we think we are
	Key Moments in Freudian Social Development	1) The recognition of sexual difference: The presence and absence of a penis - Imposes social meaning on our early desires, directing us away from the forbidden love object of our mother/father's body 2) Acquisition of Language: Works to channel our desire into acceptable forms of adult sexual orientation and gender identity
	Oedipal Triangle	Mother-Father-Child - Lays the groundwork for orientating the self in relation to others - Sexual feeling: The desire to possess the other - Identification: Recognition of similitarity between onesself and the other: Inspiring a desire to be the other - These two drives are the resolution of the oedipal complex, to reflect "proper" gender identification and sexual orientation - These patterns are then re-enforced culturally by education, family, and popular culture
	The Unconscious Mind	Civilization demands we repress socially unacceptable fears and desires into the unconscious - However, in the unconscious they create troubling ripples in our emotional lives, threatening the stability of our gender identification and heterosexual orientation - The determination to which we cling to our identities is partly a reflection of an unconscious tear of the consequences of ackowledging the ambivilance that underlies them - The stable and coherent selves we articulate to the world are constructions to control the chaotic drives and impulses that do not fit in society
	Ideological State Apparatuses	Social Structures through which ideology is produced - Rebision of Marx's theory - Rather than being absolutely determined by the economy, culture is desseminated through institutions - False consciousness that distracts from capitalism - Althusser
	Feminist Theory	Taken up the insights of Freud and Marks while showing the limits of psychoanalysis and Marxism - Concepts of unconscious and ideology help to explain how gender identity is socially constructed, and why it is so firmly entrenched - Very notion of gender is shot through with ideology - Women have been less okay historically with identity than men
	Interpellation	Althuser - Indiviuals are compelled through a mix of psychological and social imperatives to identify with social roles offered to them - For institutions to function, it requires individuals to take up assigned places in already established relationships and recognize and identify with their role
	Foucault's Identity and Power/Knowledge	Shows how power both constrains and produces social meaning -Marx saw power as belonging to a ruling class, Foucault saw it as circulating through society - Power concentrates continuously throughout society, concentrating in different places, and constituting particular meanings and identities as it does so - Foucault does not contest Maex that power is unequally distributed, rather he questions the stability and fluidity of that distribution - Power shapes society productively. This does not mean all effects of power are good, it means power is also discourses, whole systems, thought, speech, knwoledge production that structures institutions and social practices
	Discipline	Can be either method of training designed to enforce obedience, but also branches of knowledge characterized by particular rules or methods - Material consequences of knowledge are put into effect in institutions such as hospitals, schools, prisons - Then reproduces social heriarchies in the shaping of individuals
	Panopticon	A structure comprising of a tower erected in the center of a courtyard with cells arranged all around it - All cells were visible from the tower, but more importantly tower was visible from all cells - Spiritual disciplinary power was not from the fact that guards could always watch, but that prisoners always felt watched - Prisoners internalization of the disciplinary gaze represents a model of a more general process in which individuals came to subject themselves to a kind of social stability
	Foucault's Theory of Identity	Power works not by restriction but by the production of new meanings - Identity arises not from within individuals or groups, but from complex social structures and relations of power - Identity is historically specific, some aspects of identity (e.g. individualism) emerges in the context of significant social/economic arrangements - Identity is both imaginary and real. Imaginary in the sense that its qualities are ideologically or discoursively constructed, and real in the sense that those constructions have material consequences in the form of laws, policies, beliefs, and actions
	Labels	Foucault highlights why we find labels so important - They restrict meaning, but they also produce meaning in recognizable categories of gender identity
	Self-Controlled Body	Existence has to be negotiated with an increasing awareness - The civilized body is one that is subject to an expanding set if taboos and social codes - Self restraint, a clear sense of seperation between private andd public
	Habitus	A term connoting both living space and habit - Describes the way in which particular social environemnts are internalized by individuals in the form of dispositions toward particular bodily orientations and behaviors - Social differences are reporduced at the level of the individual body - e.g. class dictates social location and taste - Working class bodies vs. dominant class bodies
	Biopolitical	Employs new forms of info and knowledge to enhance life and health at the level of the population as a whole
	Structuralism	Language does not simply reflect, but constructs our understanding of reality - Structuralists are concerned not with what words mean, but how they mean according to the structure and rules of the system in which they are generated
	Semiotics	How the individual elements of langauge and signs work together according to the rules of selection and combination, to produce meaning - Relationship between the two parts of a sign: A word (signifier) and the concept behind it (signified) - Not natural, determined by convention - Words derive their meaning by association and difference - Meaning is produced by selecting a series of particular elements from a whole paradigm of possibilities and combining them into a particular order, or syntagm
	Signification	Making meaning according to principles of difference, especially binary opposition - Concepts acquire meaning through what they're not
	Connotative Label	A label that drags along with it a whole referential context, with particular assumptions and values - Symbolic baggage (e.g. mugging) for a greater idea (american social problems and fears) - Reflects broader issues in society - Mythological significance
	Semiotic Reading	Focuses on the way in which meaning is generated through the relationships between signs in a text - Meaning and substance re determined by the cultural context, and the broader system of social relations that determines not only what has meaning in a culture, but who gets to say what under what circumstances and with what social effect
	Discourse	Describes the way speech and writing work i conjuction with specific structures and insittutions to shape social reality - Defines broad rules in the context of speech/writing, who is officially permitted to speak on particular subject, and the authority the particular speaker carries - Knowledge is constituted through relations of power, which determine what is true, and what material effects that knowledge will have in the world - Knowledge i s power: It comes into being through the operations of power, and it exercises power by making things happen - Science, medicine, law are broadly connected with social power: Define and manage human subjects through study, treatment, incarceration, etc - Legitimizes forms o social control over particular groups in society (e.g. unfit, socially ill, criminals) - Incorporates forms of representation with forms of social practices
	News	An account assembled from a mass of chaotic data according to particular principles of selection and ordering framed by internal organization contraints and broader social codes - Gives equal weight to moderate and extremist views (cult of balance) - dominant institution determines how issues are framed, what questions can/cannot be asked - uses consensus - "Voice of all of us" - Lack of symbolic representation translates into a more concrete lack of power - Gains substance through the power of myth Inside vs. Outside Perspective: Inside represents community, concerned citizens, the media thratened by an outside, irrational forcee
	Consensus	Represents society as if threre are no major cultural or economic conflicts or breaks, and if there is, there is a legitimate and institutionalized way of settling it
	News Value	Out of the ordinary, dramatic in a tragic way, easily personalized, can be incorporated into broader pattern of stories
	Photographs	Stands out more vividly than actual experience - Tears objects out of their place in space and time and context - Apparent naturalness conceals the mediating role of culture in its construction - Decisions made by photographer what to include/exclude, cultural resources viewers bring to their interpretation all changes the photograph
	Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding	Suggests that audiences are not passive consumers, they read cultural texts finding in them sources of irony, humor, fantasy - Meaning does not exist solely in the heads of creators or in the show itself - Meaning is created and altered by viewers who construct it using signs and narrative forms supplied by the surrounding culture and their position in that culture - Does not suggest audiences are free to take whatever they wish because they have accepted the legitimacy of a preferred reading, but modify it in light of personal circumstances to an oppositional or counter hegemonic reading position - Challenges the passive consumer of television who takes it however the creator intends, and that viewers are completely uncritical - Not viewer misinterpretation, but a deeper reading thanks to cultural values and opinions - e.g. NYPD scene
	4 Characteristics of Culture	Culture is learned - our culture is not natural or inevitable. - We have to figure out culture, - we aren’t born with a grasp on it.
	Culture	- Culture is rooted in symbols: physical, vocal, and gestural signs that have arbitrary, socially learned meanings. Formal and informal. - Culture is a system shared by all members of a society. Unspoken social rules - The elements of a culture are largely integrated: The components fit together, even though there may be contradictory of conflicting elements e.g. Love yourself but lose weight Messy, black and white, not always agreed upon. Culture as a way of life, folk culture (shared values, beliefs, ideas), high culture, mass culture and popular culture, countercultures and subcultures, - What counts as “good” culture is debatable - There are no singular truths or meanings in cultural practices and products The practices that define us collectively and in distinct groups, as human - Social production and reproduction of sense, meaning, and consciousness
	Consumer Society	Late capitalism - Consumerism is not an inevitable consequence of a burgeoning economy - Efficiently produces low cost goods + rise in wages + consumer sensibility - Capitalists dependent on the poor class so that they spend enough money so they can make profit - Consumer sensibility: We have to actually want things - CIT Theory: This consumer sensibility and desire is superficial, one group influences anothers behavior. Ideology, a need for things and a need to get them from the market
	Commodities	Objects and services produced for consumption or exchange by someone other than their producer - Produced specifically for exchange - You have to create desire
	Use Value & Exchange Value	A Marxist concept that refers to the quality of utility of a commodity - The price or quantity of other commodities a commodity can be exchanged for - A commodity’s use value has a variable rather than a fixed relationship with its exchange value e.g. Designer purse has high exchange value vs a plastic bag
	Fetishism:	When an inatimate object has godly or magical qualities - Commodity Fetishism: Enigmatic, special magic object. Represents something important to us in life or in the sense of ourselves - According to Marx, in commodity fetish the link between the laborer and the commodity is severed - It is an entity on its own - We see the finished product and how its represented - We see the value in the commodity itself only - Labor and process has to be separated for the illusion to work. E.g. Diamond being seen as symbol of love and marriage even though it was mined in Africa and is a blood diamond an is actually worthless -.g. lifestyle
	- Barthes’ Mythology	Sign = Signifier + Signified - Signifier = The object, physical image, actual sound, something we can observe - Signified = The meanings that arise as we experience the signifier (concepts, feelings, connotations). Subjective, but culturally informed
	Advertising	The prime function of media is to deliver “us” to advertisers - The content of media is the way it is because of advertising - Mortar holding the bricks of mediated pop culture together - Advertising exists because the products available are not very valuable. We need to be persuaded that we need them - Aiming for deep emotional resonance, powerful desires and anxieties
	Branding	Removes the product from advertisements - Instead, associated with lifestyle - Represents deeply held cultural beliefs, values, desires, anxieties - Companies do not sell us the product, but lfiestyles - Disappearance of actual commodity in advertising
	Alienation	Separation between the worker and their labor - Loss of control over process, product, and the surplus value created - Working recreates oppression, dehumanizes work
	Late Capitalism	: Capitalism as a way of life - Individualism - Consumerism - Debt culture
	Ideology	: Our ideas arise out of certain contexts: Historical, social, relations of power - A body of assumptions, ideas, and values that combine into a coherent world view - Ideology develops through agents of socialization, everyday experiences, education, media - Those with economic power have control over ideologies and values - Ideology is a process, beliefs and values that bind individuals together become naturalized - In naturalizing, ideological processes mask or hide historical processes - Successful ideologies convince us that present conditions are natural, inevitable, or unchangeable - Ideology is a political tool - How dominant groups exercise control over weaker groups - Domination not through force or violence, but through consent - So that the unequal distribution of power seems legitimate and natural - Actively seeks willing co-operation of subordinate groups -The process by which a set of values and beliefs that bind indiviuals together in a society become "natura
	Liberalism:	Capitalism’s ideology - Produces and maintains the wealth and power of the ruling classes - This ideology serves some better than others - Sellers have the freedom to compete in the marketplace - Consumers have the freedom to buy from whoever they chose - Everyone has the freedom to work hard, to accumulate capital - “Equality of opportunity”
	Hegemony	Traditionally it refers to how dominant groups exercise control over weaker groups - Domination occurs not through force or violence but through consent so that the unequal distribution of power seems legitimate and natural - Actively seeks willing co-operation of subordinate groups, instead of fighting them or tricing them - Constant struggle between groups and oppositional consciousness
	How are we influenced by popular culture?	- Bombarded/Influenced (Passive victim) - Consumers/buyers - Participants/creators
	Three typical reactions to popular culture we want to think beyond:	Unconscious consumption, unaware and therefore open to manipulation 2) Contemptuous dismissal (PC Is trash), 3) Cynical Consumption (I know this trash but I like it anyway)
	Capitalism	Capitalist economy/industrialization changed work, as well as time and space for popular culture - Alters and produces new, more organized, codified, and morally inflected forms of popular culture. (e.g. sports getting rules, safety concerns, sanctions) - Pub culture (commodity) - Things becoming commodified - Demands of capitalist productivity are in conflict with certain practices - How is the production of popular culture increasingly shaped by economics? - Popular culture is increasingly commodified (profit driven) - How does efforts to control the masses operate through commodified PC? - Distraction from economic inequality, blowing off steam - Political use? - e.g. Harry Potter: Books, films, video games, theme parks, etc. Capitalism speads things widely to commodify as much as possible - Harry Potter worth $15 bil. Can only be done with capitalism
	culture industry thesis	The thesis: Mass produced culture operates to manipulate people, produce false needs, and render people politically docile - The myth of progress (freedom) and the “real” function of incessantly re-producing the values of capitalist culture - Money/Capitalism is the answer to the problem, the path to happiness - How do institutions like banks construct (about themselves) myths and what ideological effects do you think they are trying to accomplish?
	- Frankfurt School:	Beginning of critical theory - Culture industry thesis - 1915-1960 - Neo-Marxist thinkers: Interested in analyzing the role of culture in society - Their view of culture leans on ideology and hegemony - Thesis: Mass produced culture operates to manipulate people, produce false needs, and render them politically docile - CIT: Social progress is a myth. Humanity is improving. We are freer and socially better than before. Popular culture perpetuates this myth - If we believe the myth, we are dominated whilst believing we are free - Real function: Incessantly re-producing the values of capitalist culture - How does PC mask the economic conditions of its own production? - To what extent is PC produced by an economic elite? How does PC ideologically justify the status quo of society - How and do what extent does PC play a role in people consenting to their domination in society? (hegemony)
	Standardization:	Culture is packaged in a limited number of predictable forms: - Time, genre, plots, themes, characters - Emotional experiences and desires are created, produced, and reproduced - Rather than popular culture capturing our emotions, to what extent does it actively manufacture our emotional responses through repetition? Culture comes packages in a small number of predictable forms by a small number of sources - Nothing original, passes off old things as new - Standardized so that reactions become standardized
	Pseudo-Individualism	We live in a culture that celebrates individuality - The infinite choices in popular culture seem to offer the means for constructing individuality - This individuality is false/has no depth. People fundamentally follow fads and fashions. - Conditions of standardized production suggest our decisions are made by others before us - If we think we are being individual, standardization has ideologically succeeded - Suggests we are free
	Folk Culture	Culture that has developed within a particular group or community - Communicated from generation to generation - Shared only by creators and people they know - Direct expression of life experiences
	Mass Culture	Produced impersonally for an unknown audience - Tries to get message to largest possible audience - Maximum profit is ultimately goal - Folk and mass culture can overlap
	Culture Wars	Traditional idea of culture vs new cultures such as feminism
	Industrial Revolution	Refers to the period during British history from the mid 18th century to the Mid 19th century that transformed average life from rural to urban - Small scale farm production to organized mechanical production - Increasing capitalist organization and mechanization of work - Workers became less connected to their labor - Enclosure Acts - Urbanization - No more large, open free spaces, fragmented community
	Regulation	To ensure a conpliant work force, employers had to be disciplinary - Extremely low wages, punch clock - New class conscioysness, chasm between rich and poor
	Rational Recreation	Recreation to improve/distract lower class - Upper class wanted to keep behavior of the lower class in check - Larger police forces - Social order built around dominance of lower class
	Popularity	Not how many people buy your stuff, but how powerful you are
	Commodity Culture	Sophisticated mass media turns culture into a commodity - Tries to appeal ot as many social classes as possible for the most profit - Public transit, like trains, created a mohbile audience that could travel to commodities (e.g. Cinema)
	Culture Industries	Institutions in our society that employ modes of production to produce symbols in the form of cultural goods and services, generally commodities - e.g. a corporation that creates films - Is every industry a culture industry? - Culture is produced through an industrial process - Culture industy theory argues that capitalism is the dominant system of cultural production - Pop culture is a distraction
	Myth of Progrress	fRANKFfurt school - Myth that humanity is progressing and slowly becoming more free - iNSTRUmental rationality - Culture indsutry dominates us, lying that it is providing freedom - Produces culture that is designed to decieve us - Pop culture emphasizes capitalist culture, keeps us from raalizing we are being exploited - consumer choice does not equal freedom
	Instrumental Rationalisty	The rise of capitalism introduces instrumental rationality into all spheresof life - Tries to achieve efficiency in all parts of life: Preset values,, efficient pursuit of profit
	Criticism of the CIT	Elitist: Implies the masses are vulgar and homogenius, even the most grassroot expression is corrupted by capitalism Argument: Not vulgar or corrupt but effictiveness is just dimmed by hegemony Historically Limited: when the CIT was written in the mid 40s things were mroe controlled Totalizing: Implies resistance is futile
	Stylization	Products are coveted because of an aesthetic, not because of what they do - Myth of lifestyle - Style is essential
	Market Segmentation	Culture producers have to gear their products to increasingly small and specialized groups of consumrs
	Consumer Society	Rise of consumer society is associated with the industrial revoltuion - Expansion of industry resulted in a massively increased amount fo goods produced cheaply and quickly - Consumer society fixed the problem of overproduction - "Come what may" consumer turns into materialistic consumer - Shift away from religion to materialism - "Benefit to the individual and the economy" - Department store: Shoping becomes an experience
	Myhthology in Advertising	Actual objects being sold are not valuable enough on their own for us to want them - We have to be perusaded that we need them by associating them with something deeper to invoke desire - Plays on our desires for acceptance, security, friendship
	Agency	The ability of individuals to act as self conscious willful social agents - Do we have free will? Or do we follow trends? Do we need items like a car to be free?
	Bourdieu + Taste	Whenever we consume, we are engaging in forms of social differentation - taste is a way the rich make decisions about what is acceptable to consume - taste is social - Differences in consumption express pre-existing class division - Groups in power have made their tastes the right tastes - THe idea that we consume freely is a myth - Clas status is lost of one doesn't follow consumerism rules

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