Pop Culture Exam 1

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Culture

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• Constant struggle over meaning
• Study of how cultural practices maintain or disrupt power relations
• WHO makes (pop) culture?
• Hierarchy?

a system that includes beliefs, rituals, performances, art forms, lifestlye patterns, symbols, language, clothing, music, dance, and any other mode of human expressive, intellectual and communicative behavior that is associated with a community durning a particular time period.

subdivided into categories of highs and lows.

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Cultural Relativism

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• Understand culture historically & subjectively
• Avoid current standards
• morally
• aesthetically (nature of beauty)

claimed that culture is the primary template through which worldview is formed.

language of a culture shaped the though patterns of its users.

This means we have to work hard to not morally or even aesthetically judge forms of pop culture by current standards. This doesn’t mean we can’t form and share opinions, just that the practice of cultural critique involves analyzing culture on “its own terms”

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Convergence Culture

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how media, technology and cultural forms intertwined & indistinguishable

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Symbolic Artifacts

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conflation (occurs when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places, sharing some characteristics of one another, become confused until there seems to be only a single identity) of culture, society & science (pop culture trends)

Traditional symbols of love include red roses, hearts, and rings (like a wedding ring)

something that symbolizes social status or money. (gold, cash)

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Spectacle

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grand-scale entertainment

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Nostalgia

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emotional nature that contributes to staying power of pop culture

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Power

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This concept is crucial in critically analyzing popular culture. Everyday life may feel as it moves along naturally, put our actions and experiences are very much tied to politics and people/institutions. This doesn’t just mean economic but also cultural and identity politics. Martins argument, grounded in Marx and Gramsci, encourages an understanding of structures and policies that organize and command our lives and choices, but also that we interrogate how we operate within, around (or perhaps beyond) these rules and forces.

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Articulation (more power)

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determinate moment(s) of meaning; contextual

the process by which particular classes appropriate cultural forms and practices for their own use

recognizes the complexity of cultural fields. It preserves a relative autonomy for cultural and ideological elements (...) but also insists that those combinatory patterns that are actually constructed do mediate deep, objective patterns in the socio-economic formation, and that the mediation takes place in struggle: the classes fight to articulate together constituents of the cultural repe[r]toire in particular ways so that they are organized in terms of principles or sets of values determined by the position and interests of the class in the prevailing mode of production."

Gramsci

For example: Elvis Presley's linking of elements of "youth rebellion, working-class 'earthiness', and ethnic 'roots', each of which can evoke the others, all of which were articulated together, however briefly, by a moment of popular self-assertion"

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Hegemony (more power)

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The term is often mistakenly used to suggest brute power or dominance, when it is better defined as emphasizing how control is achieved through consensus not force.

How a ruling class (or other identity marker) maintains power (consent v. coercion)

(giver v. receiver)

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Ideology (more power)

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is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions.

can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things (compare worldview), as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies, or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society (a "received consciousness" or product of socialization). The main purpose behind this is to offer change in society, and adherence to a set of ideals where conformity already exists, through a normative thought process.

are systems of abstract thought applied to public matters and thus make this concept central to politics.

it's how societies see things

Mental frameworks of knowledge which different classes and social groups display in order to make sense of societies

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Ethical Implications

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• We make judgements through cultural experience (negotiated & natural; not overt)
• Everyday knowledge; not just the Spectacle
• Familiarity: common frame of reference
• Contemporaneity: we relate to the times
• Consumption/Construction of values

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Matthew Arnold

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• Function of culture is to produce a middle class with the “necessary cultured authority” to hold this class system in place

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F.R. Leavis

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• Argued that the cultured minority were at risk, as “mass culture” ushered in by industrial revolution would break through hegemonic forces...the machine would triumph

the ideology of another class is accepted because it is seen as 'common sense' (gramsci)

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Culturalism

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• By analyzing cultural practices and products of a society we can understand and possibly work to transform culture (Storey, p. 23)

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Richard Hoggart

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• While still critical of the behavior of young men working in the factories and living sexually loosely off the clock, he at least found value in this generation’s cultural expressions

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Hall & Whannel

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• Explain that pop music is the sole property of the teenager
• Highly emotional content deserves critique since the genre is mostly produced by adults

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E.P. Thompson

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• Argued that class distinctions of culture don’t always have to be in opposition
• Importance of historical specificity of cultures
• Cultures are always in conflict & struggle; co-existing

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Raymond Williams

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• Three ways of thinking about culture
• Ideal (universal values)
• Documentary record (recorded texts/practices)
• Social definition (description of a particular way of life)

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Structure of Feeling

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• Shared values of a particular group, class or society
• Structure refers to specific internal relations
• Feeling refers to how we actually live and feel meanings and values

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Marxism Political Theory

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• Directed toward change
• Historical conditions of production
• Per Marx, each significant stage in history is constructed around a particular “mode of production” that produces distinct social relations being in different classes and social institutions

is not about the relationship between commodities, prices, supply and demand: it is first and foremost about people and the social relationships between them – about the owners of wealth and how they use it to exploit others; about what is produced and how

in contrast, starts from relations between people and classes, and tries to understand the economy not as a perfect clockwork mechanism but as a dynamic system full of contradictions and doomed to be replaced.

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Marxism Economic Theory

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• Capitalism (vs. communism, socialism, etc.)
• (post)Marxists singled out economic determinism (the theory which attributes primacy to the economic structure over politics in the development of human history) that led to revolution & communism
• The dominant class (because it controls the means of production) is all but guaranteed control over the means of intellectual production, which leads to ideological struggle

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Popular Charts

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• TV
• Film
• Games
• YouTube
• Music

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Culture Industry (ies)

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• Describes the processes and products of mass culture
• uniform
• predictable
• empty
• Depoliticizes the working class
• Corrupts authentic culture through profit motive

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Problems With Popular Music

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• is an element of Standardization (pseudo-individualization) “endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market on the basis of standardization itself. It keeps [consumers] in line by making them forget that what they listen to is already listened to for them, or ‘pre-digested,’” (Adorno). In this manner, Adorno is expressing that by listening to [Popular Music], consumers believe that they are expressing their own individuality, when in reality, they are really imitating others.

• Promotes passive consumption (escape/boredom)

• Operates as social cement (catharsis)

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Pop culture

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makes little if any categorical distinctions.
evolving not only on biology's terms but also on its own terms- through the symbols, arts, technologies, and other artifacts humans make.

for the people, made by the people

bestowing on common people the assurance that culture is for everyone, not just for an elite class of designated artists or authority figures

is beset by a constant turnover of artifact, both expressive and material.

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Levels of Culture (Cultural Heirarchy)

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judged in an intuitive sense rather than a formal or critical way.

crisscrosses into all levels, difference between pop culture and all other cultures.

High: Shakespere, Bach

Medium: newspapers, oprah, bob dylan

low: tabloids, jerry springer, infomercials, budweiser

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two issues related to celebrity

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1. how stars operate as a financial and ideological system within the film and entertainment industries.
2. ask why the media are becoming more and more obsessed with celebrities, and how this affects popular culture and sociery.

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Star

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originate as a term in relation to the entertainment industries, particularly the cinema, but also popular music and sport. they are people who excel in their chosen field but more importantly attract a popular following. they appear literally larger than life in the cinema or they are seperated from the audience on a stage or a sports field where the audience tries to get as close to them as possible.

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Celebrity

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biographical information

is sustained not be someone's excellence or ability in their chosen profession.

relies almost entirely on the individuals charisma and the ability to attract sustained media interest in their private life and public appearences at high profile events. doesn't happen because someone has extraordinary qualities, it is discursively constructed by the way in which the person is publicised and meanings about them circulate, 'a consequence of the way individuals are treated by the media'

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Contemporary Culture

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is 'addicted to celebrity'

gossip and personality in which today virtually all events are presented in terms of stars, celebrities and personalities a phenomenon driven by market force.

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Political Economy

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may broadly refer to an interdisciplinary approach that applies economic methods to analyze how political outcomes and institutions affect economic policy or vice versa.It is available as an area of study in certain colleges and universities.

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Structuralism

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in which human culture is analysed semiotically (i.e., as a system of signs).

originated in the linguistics

argues that a specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structure—modelled on language—that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas or the imagination—the "third order."

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Post-Structuralism

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Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Repressive State Apparatuses: rule by force
fascist governments or police states for example

Ideological State Apparatuses: interpellate us into cultural discourse who identify with the narrative at hand
religion, education, media, etc
Ideology, according to Althusser, can only function because we allow it to. We often don’t question the policies and people in positions of power in these social institutions. As such, we’re always already limited by the ideologies fostered by the courts, schools, newspapers and so on
Althusser can be positioned as a post-structuralist because he encourages us to question the liminal space of these shifting structures, and moreover, our own role in accepting the identities formed by these structures
he’s considered part of the post-structuralist movement with folks like Derrida and Foucault.
Foucault, Method