The Lecture Notes from today's session- which will help form a basis of knowledge, understanding and ideas for further research in preparation for my CTS Popular Culture Seminar in the up and coming weeks.
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Looking at what defines popular culture- and what is culture?
AIMS//
- Critically define 'popular culture'
- Contrast ideas of 'culture' with 'popular culture' and 'mass culture'
- Introduce cultural studies & critical theory [German//Marxist]
- 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 & aesthetic development of a particular society, at a particular time
- A particular way of life
- Works of intellectual and especially artistic significance
Culture can be used to describe a cannon of important art works, literature, etc. Works by Shakespeare, Da Vinci, operas by Beethoven- etc. Institutes accept these as cannonic, and this becomes 'culture'- but who decides that works are at this sort of significance?
MARX'S CONCEPT OF BASE//SUPERSTRUCTURE [The way we will be looking at culture]
BASE
Forces of production- Materials, tools, workers, skills, etc
Relations of production- Employer/Employee, class, master/slave, etc
SUPERSTRUCTURE
Social institutions- legal, political, cultural
Forms of conciousness- Ideology
Culture emerges from the base.
Culture could be a sight of political/ideological conflict.
RAYMOND WILLIAMS (1983) 'Keywords' [wrote about culture]
* 4 definitions of 'popular'//DEFINITIONS HIGHLY POLITICAL
- Well liked by many people
- Inferior kinds of work * A lesser form of "high culture" (arts, philosophy, ballet, fine arts, etc- mass produced, kitsch, etc. Works that aspire to be important, but for various reasons fail- you make a subjective culture based on your world view)
- Work deliberately setting out to win favour with the people (anything that aims to be popularist- Jack Vetriano prints, etc- aimed to be understood by everyone/a level of snobbery is detached- easy work for the people- somehow deemed less important, flawed- elitism rejects it)
- Culture actually made by the people themselves (organic, popular culture- eg the working class popular culture of brass bands- mining communities, for mining communities- symbolising themselves and their identities)
EG Doctor Who is "popular culture"
Shakespeare, for example, is well liked by many people, but it would be strange to name it "popular culture", unlike Doctor Who...
INFERIOR OR RESIDUAL CULTURE
- Popular press vs Quality Press
- Popular cinema vs Art Cinema
- Popular Entertainment vs Art Culture
Popular culture is regarded as "peoples culture"
Eg Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane (2005) 'Folk Archive'- Tate Gallery Exhibit, creating popular culture- such as men fashioned as turnips, photographs of gurning competitions- kitsch, playful, etc.
You automatically laugh at this- not just due to humour, but because they look like poor attempts to make something artistic- look a bit crap- but why do we make these judgements of what is good, and what is bad?
We are programmed to have a view of what is both good and bad in aesthetics- where do these institutional devices come from? When/where are they established?
OTHER POPULAR CULTURES, EG//What happens when low culture combines with high culture?- When it is translated over to mainstream Western culture... Is this selling out? Does it change (eg) graffiti (see example below)...
- Graffiti in South Bronx//Banksy piece exhibited in Covent Garden
No longer is low culture graffiti for the community, but for the buying elite.
The dynamics between culture and popular culture are very complex.
WORKING CLASS/PROLETARIAT//BOURGEOISE
Prior to modernity and urbanisation, society had a reasonably common culture. On top of the shared, common culture there was a tiny strata of the elite for aristocrats, the elite, etc. The first time this changes (base effecting the superstructure) is with ubranisation and industrialisation.
E.P Thompson (1963) 'The Making of The English Working Class'
People are condensed, yet also physically separated from the Bourgeoisie (higher classes). Where these working class start to live, with the start of industrialisation, shows the working class moved into "slums" as opposed to the luxury of the Bourgeoisie.
A physical distinction of the ruling and the working classes. This physical separation starts to create a cultural separation also. They start to author their own culture- still need things to do, create, and be inventive with- working classes created own cultural activities- own forms of music and literature are founded.
At this period in the late 19th century, we start to see the emergence of an organic working class voice and culture which is far removed from that of the Bourgeoisie.
Until this moment, the only persons who distinguished true culture were the upper classes- but now there were two classes defining culture and taste- this was reflected in arts, literature, music, and also in politics.
Massing working classes together makes them consider how their society and cultures should be organised.
Matthew Arnold (1867) 'Culture & Anarchy'- one of the first books written about culture as a discipline itself.
The first thing he wanted to do in the book was to define culture...
Social studies began to emerge.
Culture is:
- 'the best that has been thought & said in the world' [the most important things that society have achieved]
- study of perfection
- attained through disinterested reading, writing thinking [without agenda- any that does is biased culture]
- the pursuit of culture [one gains culture through the pursuit of culture]
- seeks 'to minister the diseased spirit of our times' [anarchy, the emerging working class culture that seeks to have it's own voice heard- "the raw and uncultivated masses"]
"The working class... raw and half developed... long lain half hidden amidst it's poverty and squalor... now issuing from it's 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, p. 105)"
This pattern has continued throughout the 20th century and can still be seen now. Legitimises the rulings of the upper class and mocking the culture of the working class as worse.
LEAVISM- F.R LEAVIS & Q.D LEAVIS- very similar to Arnoldism
READING LIST//
"Mass Civilisation & Minority Culture"
"Fiction & the Reading Public"
"Culture & Environment"
- Still forms a kind of repressed, common sense attitude to popular culture in this country,
- For Leavis- C20th sees a cultural decline
- Standardisation & levelling down
- 'Culture has always been in minority keeping' [there's always been an elite to "preserve culture for humanity"]
- 'The minority, who had hitherto set the standard of taste without any serious challenge have experienced 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.
-Popular culture offers addictive forms of ditraction and compensation.
- 'This form of compensation... is that very reverse of recreation, in that it tends, not to strengthen and refresh the addict for living, but to increase his unfitness by habituating him to weak evasions, to the refusal to face reality at all' (Leavis & Thompson 1977: 100).
FRANKFURT SCHOOL//CRITICAL THEORY
Institute of social research, University of Frankfurt, 1923-33
University of Columbia New York 1933-47
University of Frankfurt, 1949-
CLOSED DOWN IN NAZI DICTATORSHIP- moved to New York temporarily before moving back to Frankfurt
- Theodore Adorno
- Max Horkheimer
- Herbert Marcuse
- Leo Lowenthal
- Walter Benjamin
Studied mass//popular culture.
Moving to NY saw the mass popular culture- changed studies and ways to seeing popular culture- the perfect place to be for analysing capitalism.
THEODORE ADORNO & MAX HORKHEIMER
Reinterpreted Marx, for the 20th century- era of "late capitalism"
Defined "The Culture Industry":
2 main products- homogeneity & predictability
"All mass culture is identical"
"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 whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry... The culture industry can pride itself on having energetically executed the previously clumsy transportation of art into the sphere of consumption, on making this a principle... film, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole in every part... all mass culture is identical."
//A big market of standardised, bleak products.
FORDISM (1920 onwards)- Ford production line- cars made by thousands of people, economic conditions of production.
FRANKFURT SCHOOL, HERBERT MARCUSE//Popular Culture vs Affirmative Culture
From One Dimensional Man, 1968...
"The irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers more or less pleasantly to the producers and, through the latter, to the whole. The products indoctrinate and manipulate they promote a false consciousness which is immune against it's falsehood... it becomes a way of life..."
//Affirms the status quo, doesn't challenge it.
Arnoldists were concerned with mass culture, as this threatened the ruling class- worried that it would over throw the ruling class.
Frankfurt school felt that working class culture was bad because it codes you into a way of thinking about the world that "de-politicises" you. If you absorb yourself with "dumbed down culture industry" it denies the opportunity to fight back, and to think politically.
PRODUCTS OF CONTEMPORARY 'CULTURE INDUSTRY'
- Hollyoaks- de-politicses and sexualises woman- makes women think it's okay to be treated this way, or percieved in this way.
- Che T-shirts- populist, neutralised into a symbol of cool- just becomes a symbol, not even one of revolution any more.
- Big Brother//X Factor- salvation in life is not to form a political party or create social change, but the solution is to go on a TV show and sing a song to be judged by the middle classes- judged by the taste makers- de- politicised, not through education.
We start to identify ourselves by the culture we consume.
Frankfurt School attacked all forms of mass culture- from TV, movies, to radio, popular art, theatre, etc.
Adorno particularly liked writing about music 'On popular music'... His views:
//Standardisation [all works around the same instruments, rhythms, beats- because everything is standardised, it opens you up to liking new bands of a similar style- lead through taste- reduces capacity for independence and free thought/the engagement you have with this is limited/a social cement].
//Social cement.
//Produces passivity through 'rhythmic' and emotional 'adjustment' [We adjust our behaviour in certain ways/eg dance music- modern dance music with it's insistent rhythm is a kin to the rhythm of modern production, factories, following orders- you're a slave to the beat- people "mindlessly dance to the rhythm of their own oppression"- de- politicises you with emotional adjustment].
//CAUSES YOU TO BE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY
AUTHENTIC CULTURE VS MASS CULTURE
Qualities of authentic culture
- Real
- European
- Multi-dimensional
- Active consumption
- Individual creation
- Imagination
- Negation
- AUTONOMOUS [independent from the rules]
WALTER BENJAMIN//'The Work Of Age In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction' [1936]
"One might generalise by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced objects from the domain of tradition. By making may reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own situation, it reactivates the objects produced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition... Their most powerful agent is film. It's social significance, particularly in it's most positive form, is inconceivable without it's destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage "
What all of this means is that mass production allows us to redefine culture against the way that taste makers have decided it shall be. In a way, we are, democratically, allowed in, and allowed to take high culture and manipulate it into low culture as a "political gesture".
There is now the opportunity to refine your own meaning in culture.
Arnoldist approach was popular until 1960s.
Hebdige, D (1979) 'Subculture: The Meaning of Style'.
The Birmingham School were the first to cake popular culture seriously.
Young people try to create cultures that are challenges to modern status- punks, mods, etc- anti-capitalist gesture, unemployment of black and white- reggae music attempts to create anarchy, to "over- throw" the system.
For example, graffiti, at one point, was rebellious- now it's incorporated and modified for the upper class elites.
CONCLUSION
- The culture & civilisation tradition emerges from, and represents, anxieties about social and cultural extension. They attack mass culture because it threatens the cultural standards and social authority.
- The Frankfurt School emerges from a Marxist tradition. They attack mass culture because it threatens cultural standards and depoliticies the working class, thus maintaining social authority.
- Pronouncements on popular culture usually rely on normative or elitist value judgements.
- Ideology masks cultural or class differences and naturalises the interests of the few as the interests of all.
- Popular culture as ideology.
- The analysis of popular culture.
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