Aims of the lecture:-
- Critically define ' popular culture'
- Contrast ideas of 'culture' with 'popular culture' and 'mass culture'
- Introduce Cultural Studies & Critical Theory
- Discuss culture as ideology
- Interrogate the social function of popular culture
What is Culture
Raymond Williams - three uses of the term culture - intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic
development - you grow you become cultured
A way of life - living together. Elite - working class - global culture.
Intellectual and artistic significance - Beethoven.
Marx Reading of culture - different class of relations - forms a superstructure bond which forms culture.
Culture emerges from the 'bass' and almost legitimises superstructure and makes it possible.
- well liked by people - e.g Dr. Who
- inferior kinds of work - e.g. Shakespeare
- work trying to win favour with people - populist, understood by everyone
- culture made by people themselves - taste makers - subjective judgement
The view you'll have will depend on your political stand point
Who are each aimed at?
Quantity and content?
Left above is culture - grand, essential, emotions
Right above is popular culture - mass produced, decorative, disposable
We're coded into judging what is good and bad.
Belfast political murals.
Graffiti - ghetto expression - what happens when its transferred over to western culture? - culture can appropriate art.
Different definitions of culture but also different dynamics of culture.
Materialistic reading - before modernism (broadly speaking) society had a common culture.
This first changed with industrialisation, workers kept together away form the Bourgeoisie - moved into slums - higher class lived in nicer parts of the cities.
Visual and physical separation form cultural separations - cut off and ghettoised - they find their own music, literature and entertainment (culture).
At that point only the ruling class had a say, now there are two voices competing against each other. The working class have a say in what goes on and how things are run.
One of the first writers to write about culture - tried to define what it was (see slides) opposite to culture is anarchy - defined as the working class.
Leavisism - lectures were followed and attended popularly
- similar to Arnoldism
- throughout 20th cent - gradual dumbing down of culture - decline
- there was a time when culture was perfect in his eyes.
'Minority keeping' - elitist groups keep the culture - there to maintain it.
The snobbery of dismissing T.V. shows (X factor) is a hangover of Leavis' and Arnold's readings - a disinterested culture.
Closed down when the Nazis came to power - Marxist theorists studying popular culture wrote about radio and T.V. etc
Americas popular culture was much further ahead than Germany so when they moved there it was a massive dfference
Fordism - stems from economical systems that Ford put in place (production line mass production)
All mass culture is identical - films made to a formula (see quote on slide above)
As we consume mass produced mass culture we become 1 dimensional instead of multi dimensional beings.
X Factor - your salvation from a miserable life is resolved by going on a show and being judged by the middle class - the taste makers.
Adorno - on popular music (he hates it)
All is standardised (the same) same instruments, same beats, similar names
'The...somethings', trends and styles.
- peculiarity of culture industry is that it does the thinking for you - reduces capacity for free thought - limited engagement.
Listening to pop music causes rhythmic and emotional adjustments a kin to the production line of the factory - mindlessly dancing to the rhythm of their own oppression.
Culture, once mass produced and made into a commodity is lost forever.
What happens when you repeat art over and over and over?
e.g. Mona Lisa - whats it a bout? we all know of it but few know what its about, its purpose, who created it, where it is.
It's now everywhere - previously you would have to go to the Louve in Paris, your meeting the work on its own and the galleries terms. Now its accessible on your terms.
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