Critical positions on the media and popular culture
Aims
- Critically define 'popular culture'
- Contrast ideas of 'culture' with 'popular culture' and 'mass culture'
- Introduce Culture Studies & Critical Theory
- Discuss culture as ideology
- Interrogate the social function of popular culture
What is culture?
- 'One of the two or three most complicated words in the Enlgihs language'
- - Raymond Williams Keywords
- It is the general process of intellctural, spiritual and aesthetic development of a particular society at a particular time
- A particular way of life - Sub culture, set of values, a certain way of thinking about the world.
- Works of intellectual and especially artistic significance
- Culture can be used to describe a canon of important art works, literature etc - Da Vinci, Beethoven. Institutions accept these as 'canonic' which is why become part of our culture.
Marx's Concept of Base / Superstructure
Base
Forces of production - Material, tools, workers, skills etc
Relations of production - Employer, employee, class
Superstructure
Social instituions - Legal, political, cultural
Forms of consciousness - Ideology
The base determines content and form of superstructure which reflects form of, legitimises and makes possible, the base relations.
Raymond Williams (1983) 'Keywords'
There are 4 definitions of 'popular'
1) 'Well liked by many people'
Popular culture quantitively measured; well liked by a large amount of people. However, this may lead to confused results. Although Shakespeare is known and liked by many people, it may not be referred to as popular culture.
2) Inferior kinds of work
They aspire to be important. Who historically has acted as the 'taste-maker' or the judges of cultural importance?
3) Work deliberately setting out to win favour with the people
Anything that aims to be populist (understood by everyone) is referred to as popular culture. It is seen that works which are different is more important. There is an elitism in this judgement.
4) Culture actually made by the people themselves
Made by the people for the people - an organic popular culture which is usually associated with the working class. Symbolises the people and their identity.
**Our choices depend largely on our political decision**
Caspar David Freidrich (1809) 'Monk by the Sea'
Power of nature and makes you question the world and contemplate your relationship with nature
Jenny Morrison 'Sea & Sky in Watercolour'
Popular culture - no one would discuss and analyse this work in the same means as Freidrich's work
Inferioir of Residual Culture
Popular Press vs Quality Press
Quality newspapers as opposed to popular newspapers - what content do these have?
Popular Cinema vs Art Cinema
Popular cinema and foreign, art house cinema
Popular Entertainment vs Art Culture
Pop entertainment and TV and
The latter tend to target towards the 'elite' whereas the others appeal to the masses.
Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane (2005) 'Folk Archive Archive'
These works are examples of artefacts from an art show which toured around the country looking for example of popular culture made by the people, for the people. The first reaction to these works is to laugh as these are pieces of works which are either poorly made, have no significance or simply have humorous connotations. Where do these institutional ideas come from?
To judge by our aesthetic codes and institutional thinking is flawed and evidence of class judgement. Are we laughing at the working class trying to make art and failing?
What happens when this culture enters into the spheres of high culture.
Graffiti
Started out as the expression of youth in the South Bronx in the 1970s. The aesthetic was entirely sub-cultural and reflected in the language and stylised form it used.
Banksy
His art work is bought and sold, despite being applied to the walls of buidings in the form of graffiti. Although the work represents the people, it is translated to appeal to the interest of the few or minority. The inter-relation between the two forms of culture has broken down.
Urbanisation
Prior to modernity and urbanisation, society had a common culture with on top of shared culture, the elite are an extremely small minority. The working class work in factories as a mass and are clearly separated from the owners. When industrialisation emerges, there is a clear distinction between the working class and 'elite'. There is now a physical separation as opposed to an ideology which begins to form a cultural separation.
The working class begin to author their own culture as they now belong as a mass. They are cut off, ghettoised and therefore start their own cultural activities - devising their own form of literature. A working class voice emerges.
E.P. Thompson (1963) 'The Making of The English Working Class'
There are two competing voices working against each other and the first workers movement emerges - 'chartism'. The working class were not considered important enough to have a say in society.
Matthre Arnold (1867) 'Culture & Anarchy'
Culture
- 'The best that has been thought and said in the world' - What humanity has achieved; the idea of perfection and beauty of the world
- Study of perfection
- Attained through disinterested reading, writing and thinking - Without an agenda
- The pursuit of culture
- Culture is the force that can minster the diseased spirit of our time
Known as 'Arnoldism'
Anarchy
Culture polices 'the raw and uncultivated masses'
'The working class... raw and half developed... long lain half hidden amidst it's poverty and squalor... now issuing form it's hiding place to assert and Englishman's heaven born privilege to do a he likes, and beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, breaking what it likes'
(1960, p.105)
There is a definite class division
These theories emerge when the control (upper class) is threatened by the working class. This can still be seen in the modern day.
Leavisism
F.R Leavis & Q.D. Leavis
Became a cult figure and his lectures were massively attended
Very similar to Arnoldism - almost an extension
- Still forms a kind of repressed, common sense attitude to popular culture
- For Leavis, the 20th century sees a cultural decline - degraded and dumbed down
- Standardisation and levelling down
'Culture has always been in minority keeping'
- There has always been an elite whose role it is to preserve culture for humanity
- To defend culture against this 'dumbing down' and the rise of debates and less important forms of culture
'The minority, who had hitherto set the standard of taste without any serious challenge have experience a collapse of authority'
- Collapse of traditional authority comes at the same time as mass democracy (anarchy)
- Nostalgia for an era when the masses exhibited an unquestioning deference to cultural authority
- Culture is more desirable how it was then, than now
- Popular culture offers addictive forms of distraction an compensation whereas real culture is empowering and uplifting - he believes popular novels, for example, creates 'cheap' thrills
- Form of snobbery in attitudes towards popular culture, still seen today
Frankfurt School - Critical Theory
Culture was very different in Germany
Institute of Social Research, University of Frankfurt (1923-33)
Relocated to the University of Columbia in New York (1933 - 47)
Its relocation was because it was closed down by the Nazis due to the emerging Marxist thinkers
5 of the most important writers
- Theodore Adorno
- Max Horkheimer
- Herbert Marcuse
- Leo Lowenthal
- Walter Benjamin
Adorno & Horkeimer
- Reinterpreted Marx for the 20th century - era of "late capitalism"
- Defined "The Culture Industry"
- Culture produced in a 'factory'
- 'All mass culture is identical'
For them, culture in America was mass produced as they believed people began to expect the same things in popular culture. In a way, we start to want these conventions.
'As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will be rewarded, punished or forgotten'
'Movies and radio need no longer to pretend to be art. The truth, that they are just business, is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce.'
The idea of art under capitalism has become a business and all existing notions of art has gone
It is now masquerading as 'real' culture
Herbert Marcuse (3)
Popular Culture vs Affirmative Culture
He believes we are coded to think about the world in certain ways as we are receiving. We become one-dimensional as were are stripped of an identity and opinion and think of the world in one way. 'The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood... it becomes a way of life.'
Arnoldists and Leavisists were concerned about mass culture as it represents a threat to the authority of the ruling class. They worried that this anarchy would overcome the ruling class and find its way into 'high' culture.
'Authentic Culture vs Mass Culture'
- Products of the contemporary 'culture industry'
- Depoliticises the working class
- Aspects of culture have become neutralised and simply becomes a symbol
Che Guevara - Used to be a symbol of revolution but has now become part of popular culture; it is stripped of any sense of importance
X Factor - Judged by the middle class of England; teaches people this is the only way they can succeed
Big Brother - No skills required but still forms an aspiration for many people
**We become identified by the culture we consume**
Qualities of auethentic culture
- Real
- European
- Multi-Dimensional
- Active Consumption
- Individual creation
- Imagination
- Negation
- Autonomous
Adorno 'On Popular Music' (1)
The Frankfurt school attacked all forms of mass culture from TV and movies to art and theatre.
- He believes popular music is standardised
- Peculiarity of the industry does your thinking for you and leads your thought processes
- Reduces your capacity for independence and free thought
- Becomes a 'social cement'
- Listening to such popular music makes you passive and adjust your behaviour in various ways; you begin to regulate your behaviour which results in 'rhythmic' and emotional 'adjustment'
- Music becomes an emotional escape from the 'horrors' of the world
- As soon as culture becomes mass produced, it is lost forever
Walter Benjamin (5)
'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1936)
The way in which techniques of mass production change the status of works of culture.
Mona Lisa
- Significant example of our culture
- However, we know nothing of its origin/meaning
- In an institution, it is placed behind bulletproof glass, connoting its importance
- It is not in one place for the rich and privileged
- We can now redefine the meaning and challenges the meaning of the original
'The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes plurality of copies for a unique existence...'
Mass production allows us to redefine culture against the way of 'taste makers' decided it would be
In a way, we are allowed the possibility of challenging high culture
The aura of high culture begins to eradicate
Adorno - When culture becomes mass produced, it is lost forever
Benjamin - Amongst mass production and plurality, there is an opportunity to form your own meaning
Hebdige, D (1979) 'Subculture: The Meaning of Style'
Young people begin to develop cultures that are challenges to the mainstream/status Quo
Symbolic challenge, radical, creating possibilities
Creates new industries and becomes conventional
- Incorporation - Similar to Banksy and graffiti, these radical challenges are incorporated into mass culture and become neutralised
- Ideological form
- Commodity form
