- Critically define 'popular culture'
- Contrast ideas of 'culture' with 'popular culture' and 'mass culture'
- Introduce cultural studies and 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 English language'
- General process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic developments of a particular society, at a particular time.
- A particular way of life.
- Works of intellectual and especially artistic significance.
- What is popular culture? Authentic, high, the mass culture- value judgements
Raymond Williams (1983) 'Keywords' - important cultural theorist
- 4 definitions of 'popular'
- Well liked by many people
- Inferior kinds of work
- Work deliberatly setting out to win favour with the people
- Culture actually made by the people themselves
1// Idea of popular culture as quantitively measured.
2// Most common: Inferior of real culture, aspires to be important but fails (someone needs to make a value judgement: what is good/ bad?
3// Anything that aims to be populist (something understood by everyone). Work not understandable is inferior/ elite, simple work for the people is not.
4// Culture made by people for the people (working class).
- Describing a way of living- set of values/ ways of thinking/ working/ sub/ elite/ global cultures
- Inferior or Residual Culture:
- Popular press vs quality press
- Popular cinema vs art cinema
- Popular entertainment vs art culture
Matthew Arnold (1867) 'Culture and Anarchy'
Culture is:
- 'The best that has been thought and said in the world'
- Study of perfection
- Attained through disinterested reading, writing, thinking
- The pursuit of culture
- Seeks 'to minister the diseased spirit of our time'
- Who decides whats significant in culture of the people?
- Marxist culture/ because of those relations- superstructure emerges from organisation of society
- Culture could be from political conflict.
Raymond Williams (1983) 'Keywords': Four definitions of 'popular'
- Idea of popular culture as qua natively measured
- Most common: interior of real culture; aspire to be more important but fail (someone needs to make a value judgement: what is good/ bad?
- Anything that aims to be populist (something understood by everyone) work not understandable is inferior and elite, simple work for the people is not.
- Culture made by people for people (working class- brass bands)
- Caspar David (Monk by the sea): Insignificance of man in Gods existence, makes you question= elite
- Sea and sky: Popular culture= inferior or residual?
- Quality and popular newspapers: what content and who are they for?
Newspapers like the Independent are designed to be inferior, the language and layout they use, including long words and small text. It is a newspaper for those who are more intellectual and come from an upper class background. The Sun is an example of a popular newspaper, the headlines, language and layout are simple and easy to read and understand, this means that it is a newspaper that everyone can read.
- Exhibitions:
- When it comes to art and defining on whether or not it is inferior or popular, we seem to struggle and blur the line. The image above shows a piece of work called culture eggs, the eggs have been painted with clown faces that represent different people. These would be seen as popular art as they dont seem to be taking art seriously. We laugh at work like this, but why? Is it because it looks crap and we think we could do better, why do we make judgements so easily, is it because we have been taught in an institutional way?
- This is graffiti created in south Bronx, this is an earlier example of graffiti on the streets and it is very hip hop and popular. By it being where it is it makes it less of a piece of art work. Banksy is another example of graffiti street artist, his work is done in the same manor as the Bronx work.
- But if you take a piece of graffiti and place it into an exhibition, does it change its meaning? If you start to sell pieces of graffiti, surely that makes it more inferior, as you would be limiting who can look and purchase a good piece of graffiti.
- Popular culture can start off representing people and being incorporated for the elite.
- The dynamics of culture and popular culture are very complex.
- There can be a physical distinction/ separation which creates culture division.
Matthew Arnold (1867) 'Culture and Anarchy':
Culture is:
- ' The best that has been thought and said in the world'
- Study of perfection
- Attained through disinterested reading, writing thinking
- The pursuit of culture
- Seeks to minister the diseased spirit of our time
Anarchy:
- Culture policies 'the raw and uncultivated masses'
- The working class..raw and half developed..long lain half hidden amidst its poverty and squalor.. now issuing from its hiding place to assert an Englishman's heaven born privilege to do as he likes, and beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, breaking what it likes (1960)
- Matthew Arnold (1867), first books were written about culture as a discipline, defining culture.
- He wants to define culture, its about perfection, beauty, truths and can only be done through disinterested reading (no agenda)
- Leavisism: cult figure
- Culture: minority keeping, defend culture from dumbing down.
- Popular fiction, collapse of authority- emerge of working class culture.
- Snobbery: dismiss things like big brother due to elitist inferior culture.
- Five important writers:
- Theodore Adorno
- max Horkheimer
- Herbert Marcuse
- Leo Lowenthal
-Walter Benjamin
- Authentic culture vs Mass culture:
- Qualities of authentic culture:
- Real
- European
- Multi-dimensional
- Active consumption
- Individual creation
- Imagination
- Negation
- Autonomous
Products of contemporary culture:
- X factor: de politicises people
- Hollyoaks: sexually objectifies
Adorno on popular music:
- Standardisation
- Psuedo- individualisation
- Social cement
- Produces passivity through rhythmic and emotional adjustment
Conclusion:
The culture and civilisation tradition emerges from, and represents, anxieties about social and cultural extension. They attack mass culture because it threatens cultural standards and social authority.
The Frankfurt school emerges from a Marxist traditon. They attack mass culture because it threatens cultural standards and depoliticises the working class, thus maintaining social authority.
Pronouncements on popular culture usually rely on normative or elitist value judgments.
Ideology masks cultural or class differences and naturalises the interests of the few as the interests of all.
The analysis of popular culture and popular media is deeply political, and deeply contested, and all those who practise or engage with it need to be aware of this.
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