Unpacking Popular Culture

Power, Discourse, and Representation

CULTURE

personalities and lifestyles– of individuals and groups– That are either accepted or taboo in a society – Based on their similarity (to) or difference

(from) the dominant ideologies of that society

Who’s culture is Popular Culture?

– PC was not about what's popular

– PC is has an agenda

– It reproduces a very particular type of culture as normal (dominant culture)

– That culture/ideology in America is:

white, middle class, male, heterosexual

Popular Culture as “contested space”

– The place where economic difference:• was made real• legitimated• crystallized

– This is the making, marking, and maintaining of social difference (Bourdieu)

SOCIETY

Children’s own culture

IDEOLOGIES

MEDIA/POPULAR CULTURE

CULTURAL INSUITUTIONS

ADULTS

Inventing Popular Culture

Scholars talk about popular culture in 8 ways:

1. PC as folk culture

2. PC as mass culture

3. PC as the “other” of high culture

4. PC as an arena of hegemony

5. PC as postmodernism

6. PC as the “root” and “routes” of cultural identities

7. PC as popular and mass art

8. PC as globalization

Folk Culture

Culture outside of the market

Mass Culture

Baby food

• the critique here is that: – art has become a fetish

• use value replaces exchange value – Before its fetishization:

• art was political • art worked to ACTIVATE the political citizen.

– After its fetishization, • art is entertainment• art works to DE-ACTIVATE the political citizen.

FETISH

Other of High culture

High culture is what rich white people do.

Other is everything else

TASTE =DISTINCTION

Hegemony

Resistance is possible!

Its all about negotiation.

How does meaning get made?

production

production

consumption

consumption

NEGOTIATION

Political Economy and British Cultural Studies

Political Economy• Focus:

– System of production– who is producing?

• The Big Question :– Who gets represented?

• Representation = – Access (to the system of

production)• Meaning Gets Made

– System of production• Therefore:

– we are sheep• Type of PC

– mass

British Cultural Studies Focus:

– Consumption– how do we consume and what

are we consuming?• The Big Question :

– Who gets represented?• Representation =

– Voice • Meaning Gets Made

– Us • Therefore:

– we have agency • Type of PC

– hegemony

The 3 pronged approach (kellner)

Political economy

Audience receptionTextual analysis

Postmodernism

Pastiche or Brick Layers

The Postmodern Condition

Which can be seen by•the perpetual circulation of images, signs, and texts•changes in audience competence and narrative techniques•change in what is considered entertainment and cultural literacy

Often described as:Negatively

•Schizophrenic

•Pastiche

•Flatness

Positively•Bricolage

•Empowering

•accessible

remember cultural relativity?

Roots/Routes

Where we are coming from and where we are going

roots

routes

Popular Art and Mass Art

another step in the high/low stair case

*What Benjamin is interested in*

Aura?

• For Benjamin, mechanical reproduction has removed aura from art. • Benjamin doesn’t see this as such a bad thing

– if there is aura- • it has a natural, intrinsic value• one that some people get and others don’t• we are back to the high/low distinction argument.

– if there is no aura to the film, • the viewer is free to make and mark their own meanings to

the film (agency)

• Benjamin argues for films to be more educational to ENGAGE and ACTIVATE the viewer as political citizen.

Globalization

It’s a small word afterall.

USA! USA!

Globalization – lets define it!

• 1.) the 4 C’s; commodities/capital/communication/culture

• -there is a global flow with all of this across borders

• 2.) Time and space are displaced • 3.) The Global Village:

– Hybridization (mixing cultures) OR– Homogenization (sameness of culture-American culture

• 4.) People are moving!