Com 323 Communication In Pop Culture Exam#1

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Popular Culture

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• Widely favored and liked by many
• Different from high culture
• It is commercial culture
• Originates from the people

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Approaches to Ideology

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• a systematic body of ideas articulated by a particular group
• A certain masking, distortion, or concealment
o Ideological forms -
• Ideology operates mainly at the level of connotations, the secondary, often unconscious meanings that texts and practices carry or can be made to carry
• As Material practice – creates expectations within society

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Rhetoric

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• Not the flowery, ornamental speech laden with metaphors and freedom of speech
• The art of persuasion
• If using signs to influence others, then editorials, ads, your lunch, your blue jeans, Beyonce’s latest CD are all ways that influence is materialized, or made manifest, in texts found in real life
• The study of techniques in discourse and as an element of all symbolic, social actions since all human action depends on mean-making, and all making of meanings is contingent and persuasive

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Culture

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– a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development

• High – Shakespeare, James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, Bach, Mozart, Opera
• Mid – Newspapers, National Public Radio, Harry Potter, Oprah, CNN, PBS, Public Museums
• Low- Tabloids, Jerry Springer, American Idol, Howard Stern, Budweiser Commercials, Infomercials

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Features of Popular Culture

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using diverse elements from different levels of culture
o Bricolage – emphasizes disproportion, parody, irony
o Pastiche – admixture of elements in a work or spectacle intended to imitate or satirize another work or style
o Nostalgia – emotional nature to popular culture symbols and works of our eras

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Dimensions of Rhetoric

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• 1. Humans are the creators of rhetoric
• 2. Symbols as the medium for the rhetoric
• 3. Communication as the purpose for rhetoric

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Functions of Rhetoric

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• Makes things happen
o Ex. Encourage voting, selling, buying, etc.
• Manifestation – takes on a physical form that can be seen/heard
• Traditional Texts
o Verbal – main took is language
o Expositional – functions to argue/explain
o Discrete: distinct across time/space
o Hierarchical – relation to individual speaking

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Two Factors of Popular Culture

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o Industrialization – more people have access to information
o Urbanization – more people begin to live in large cities as well as commodities are easier to access

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Culturalism

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• Richard Hoggart & Raymond Williams
• Foundational texts of cultural studies
o Ordinary people adapt texts for this own purposes
o Texts are sites of struggle that are rarely taken to mean what those in power intend them to mean
o How power is resisted

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Three main contributions
1. Ideal - culture is a pursuit of perfection
2. Documentary Record - practices survive time
3. Social - culture explains a way of life

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Critical Theory

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Issues of Power, What is Power, Who has it, and how is this Power shared and maintained

• Looking at issues of power
o How it is used
• Critical in attitudes in beliefs and methods
o Promoting change
o Social action
o Critical intervention
• Critical of methods
o Ideological
o Narrative

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Sign

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– represents something; a foundational communication element
o Indexical Sign – a sign that points to or indicates something else it is often connected to. Ex. Smoke = Fire
o Iconic Signs – signs that bear some resemblance to the things to which they refer. Ex. Construction signs

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Symbol

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a person, place, action, or thing that (by association, resemblance, or convention) represents something other than itseld
• We use symbols to describe how we feel about those we love
• Increased heart rate, nervousness = we are not conscious or make these choices
• People are symbol-creating, symbol-using, and symbol-misusing animals

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Analyzing the Artifact
(Narrative Criticism)

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The basic procedure for conducting a Narrative Criticism involves two steps: (1) comprehensively examining the narrative; and (2) selecting which elements of the narrative on which to focus

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Context

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o The relationship of the images to other images; the historicity of the image

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Death of Author

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o A change in the attitude towards the role of the author in our interpretation of literary works

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Marxism

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(goal, base/structure, ideologies defined in Marxism lecture) (SEE HANDOUT)
• GOAL to identity ideology at work in cultural productions & to analyze how that ideology supports or undermines the socioeconomic system

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Ideological Criticism

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• In ideological criticism, rhetorical artifacts are deconstructed. Deconstruction is the methodical questioning of artifacts – to bring to light the self-evidence of assumptions, and the dominant ideology that formulates those assumptions. The primary goal of the ideological critic is to discover and make visible dominant ideologies embedded in artifacts and the ideologies that are being muted in it.

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Analyzing the Artifact
(Ideological Criticism)

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o The basic procedure for conducting ideological criticism involves revealing ideas imbedded in the artifact:
1. Ask what the artifact expects the audience to think, feel and/or believe
2. Identify the rhetorical strategies (the components of the artifact) that support that ideology
3. Determine whose interests (ideas and/or beliefs) are represented in the artifact
• Ideological criticism asks what ideas are embedded in the artifact, and if there are implications associated with this ideology. Ideological criticism also asks what ideas dominate, and what ideas dominate at the expense of other ideas.

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Narrative Criticism

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• Narrative criticism is based on Alasdair MacIntyre’s idea that human beings are story-telling animals. Narratives help us impose order on the flow of our experiences so that we can make sense of events and actions in our lives.

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Comprehensive Examination of the Narrative

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In order to understand the narrative as a whole, the critic explores the various dimensions of the narrative:
1. Setting: What is the setting or the scene of the narrative? Does the setting change at any time? How does the setting relate to the plot and characters?
2. Characters: Who are the main characters in the narrative? Are some of the characters non-human or inanimate? What are the physical and mental traits of the characters? How dimensional are the characters (one trait vs. many)? Are there relationships between the characters, or the characters and audience?
3. Narrator: Is the narrative presented directly to the audience or is it mediated by a narrator? Does the audience directly witness the narrative of is the audience told about the events? If the narrator is audible, what traits does the narrator have? What vocabulary and style of delivery does the narrator use? What authority does the narrator utilize?
4. Events: What are the major events in the narrative? How are the events presented?
5. Temporal Relations: What are the time relationships between the events recounted in the
narrative? How is time utilized in the narrative?
6. Audience: Who is the audience or the person or people to whom the narrative is addressed? Is it addressed to an individual or group? Is the audience a participant in the narrative? What can be inferred about the audience’s attitudes, knowledge, beliefs or situation from the narrative?
7. Theme: What is the major theme, or general idea, generated by the narrative?

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Which Elements Are Most Persuasive in a Narrative?

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o After exploring the various narrative components, identify which feature(s) is/are the most significant and relevant to the research question being asked by the critic. These features are those that provide the clearest, most coherent, and most insightful answers – and reveal structures, direct tactics and implied strategies for encouraging meaning in audiences.

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What is a narrative?

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• Two Events
o May be either active (expressing action)
o Stative (expressing a state or condition)
• Example – “The mice ran after the women”
• The events in a narrative are organized by time order
Ex. The girl swam, the girl ate breakfast, the girl did homework, and the girl went to the movie” No time reference
Ex. The girl swam before breakfast, spent the day doing homework, and went to a movie that evening. Time reference
• Causal or contributing relationship among events in a story
Ex. A person is trying to get into law school
• Need a application
• Apply
• Etc.
Narratives must be about a unified subject

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Structuralism (goal, characteristic of structures)

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The world consists of two levels
o Visible – countless objects, activities, and behaviors we observe and participate in everyday
o Invisible – structures that underlie and organize all phenomena so that we can make sense of them
o Ex. Stop Light – system works not be expressing a natural meaning but by marking a difference

GOAL - Language organizes and constructs our sense of reality.
Meaning is made possible by language

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Poststructualism (characteristics; important scholars)

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o Reject the idea of an underlying structure upon which meaning can rest secure and guaranteed
*Concepts are nothing more than words.
*We are the ones that constructed words so they are not natural
• Difference (derrida)
o Deconstruction: erase boundaries between opposition
o Specification of meaning is infinite and a endless process

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Culturalism

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• Subject – the person or object represented
• Other: the representative entity outside the self—that is outside one’s own gendered, social group, class, culture or civilization
• Context- the relationship of the images to other images; the historicity of the image
• Intention (Authorial intention) the purpose of the artist for the creation of the image

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Panopticon

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One watchtower where everything can be seen
• The all seeing EYE
• Jeremy Bentham (1787)
o Said that society is now panoptic
• EX. Facebook: people now want to be seen
• Traffic cameras

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Althusser’s problematic

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• Marxism & popular culture
• What is the ‘problematic’ according to Althusser
o Believes that determines not only the questions and answers he/she is able to bring into play but also the absence of problems and concepts in their work.
• EX. Range Rover

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Key points to The Consumer as Foucauldian article

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Shopping on Amazon
• Consumer thinks of self in light of past/present preferences (consumer identity)
• Categorizations and predictions based on lifestyle data from science
• “we suggest you add items that interest you to your wish list or shopping cart. We don’t want you to miss out on anything you enjoy”
• “Through surveillance that Amazon.com has the power to individuate” (pg. 302)
o observation and cookie= consumer-created wish list
• creation of segment makes consumer easier to sell
o have power to sell information to other companies
• what is seen and written down for later use
• cookies= surveillance
o personalization to identity & track
o rating, contributions to list, reviews (“listamania!”)
o scopophilia: “image culture”; desire to watch & be watched (narcissism)
MP3s
o Devalue sign value formally symbolic information (songs)=noncommodity status
o Resistance:
• Renovation of capitalist system
• Hacking critiques undermining norms of capitalist exchange

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Steps or ways of doing a rhetorical criticism

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1. Selecting an artifact
2. Analyzing the artifact
3. formulating a research question
4. writing the essay

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What were some keys moments in the development of popular culture?

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• Popular culture has always existed
• Common folk have always produced music, stories, and other forms of expression used for recreation & engagement
• However… popular culture today more widespread because of mass media
1820s-1940s
• Publication of popular magazines, cheap newspapers, and dime novels
• 1894: Movie theater (1905 commercial areas/immigrant neighborhoods)
The Roaring Twenties
• Readers Digest (1922)
• Big 5 ( Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, RKO
• Little 3 (Columbia, Universal, United Artists)
• Jazz
1950s & 1960s
• After WWII
o Teenagers have money to spend
o Rebel Without a Cause (1955): James Dean
o Blackboard Jungle (1955): Marlon Brando
o Teenagers not only a distinct market category, they were a culture of their own
• Elvis / Rock-n-Roll / DJ
o Brought more provocative dancing and song lyrics
o Sports Illustrated (1964) – Targeted to youth
1960s – media, technology, business & young people
• Ex. Hula Hoops, The Twist, Hippies (Drugs and Sexual activities)
• Happening: the lyrics of performers spurred youths on to social activism
• Television began to dominate culture
1970s-1990s
Punk Culture – chains, dog collars, army boots, Mohawks were designe to communicate degradation, mockery, social caricature, & insubordination
o Antibourgeois / anti-capitalist
o Contemporary form mock theater
o BUT has never really changed culture socially
• Youth culture comes highly fragmented
• Megastores began to dominate the market
o Centralizing entertainment
• Online
o 1991: Marked the arrival of the World Wide Web
o 1993: Browsers
o 1998: Cable television went digital
o No other technology has existed that is able to connect and interact with people regardless of location
2000s
• Until 1990s, most information on the Internet consisted of print text
Today
o A surplus of information and rapidity at which the information can be accessed
o Indie culture, post own art, writing, music, movies, blogs
o Redefining the roles of author and reader of a text
o Popular in pop culture is now taking on more and more of a literal meaning because readers interact with authors, scholars, artists