LECTURE 4 - CRITICAL POSITION ON THE MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE

• triangulate between , authentic culture, true culture, mass culture
• Disciplines of cultural studies - particular British scholars, Critical theory which is German Marxist
• If you think of culture of ideological then how does this affect society and its relation. 

• If you were to ask what is culture - one of the 2 or 3 most complicated words in the English language. 
• Simplify it 
• process of interlectual societies development through history, their growth, as they grow they become cultured. The process of interlectual development
• Describe a way of living, a sub culture has a set of values and way of thinking about the world. 
• Describe a cannon of really important artworks or works of literature. Works by Shakespeare, Da Vinci etc. At various points they are accepted as important points in history and the significance they represent so are accepted as part of a culture. 

• Marxist - have a particular class or works of relations and because of this a superstructure forms and which culture is a part of it.
• Culture, ideology and ways of thinking about the world evolve

• Culture emerges from the base and then almost legitimises and makes possible the base relations of production
• Quote - culture could be a site of policitcal / ideological conflict

• How POPULAR culture is talked about - very different answers from if you just think about culture
• The 4 definitions are fundamentally different
• 1st - the idea that POP culture is quantitatively measures, well liked by lots of people = popular culture e.g. Dr Who - however the problem with such an analysis is that it least to a varied results e.g. Shakespeare - well liked by many people but it is strange to call it popular culture. 
• 2nd - somehow a lesser or inferior form of real / high culture form e.g. arts, philosophy, ballet etc. So work that is mass produced. 
• 3rd - works that aspire to be inporant normally fail. Anything that aims to be popularist. Work that is elitist, less understandable is somehow more important, there is an elitism to both of these judgements. 
• 4th - culture made by people for the people, an organic root of popular culture. EG working class popular culture would be brass bands which are made by the people and symbolises them to show their idendity. 
• You need a taste maker to decide what is good and what is bad, as soon as you go into this you start the idea of IDEAOLOGY - making judgements on a large scale for the masses. With this you normally have a clash judgement. 
• These definitions are political

• You can find such attitudes - you get concepts of popular press and the quality press. THey have different contents and different linguistic codes. You get popular cinema, and then foreign language and art cinema.
• The latter is always aimed at speaking to the elite strap of society.

• LEFT - work of HIGH culture - shows the insignificance of man in the power of GODs universe - makes you question the cantien sublime
• RIGHT - doesnt make you question the cantien sublime. No one would talk about this in the powerful terms. Why don't people ask those sort of questions. 

• Examples of using popular culture of using the 4 definitons
• Top Left - mural of Body Sans, 
• They are examples of artifacts by Jeremy Deller called the FOLK ARCHIVE - they went round the country looking for examples of authentic popular culture - if you walk around the first thing you do is laugh, then look like poor attempts at creating art (why can you do better and why are you making judgements about what is good) We are coded in a certain way about what is good and what isn't. You have to start asking where these institutionalised ideas have come from. To judge by your aesthetic way of thinking is floored. 

• What happens when a pop culture is made by the people, enters into the spheres of high culture e.g. grafitti - started out as an expression of ghetto youths - a language which they have invented. What happens when that is translated into mainstream western culture and placed in galleries - does this change grafitti?
• Banksy - made a design on the wall, someone knocked down the wall then sold it to a gallery and is now being exhibited
• It is now being incorporated in the view of the few
• The dynamics between culture and popular culture is very complicated. 

• Concept of popular culture emerging to culture
• PRior to maternity - society had a common culture, on top of this there was a tiny culture for the elite. The first time this changes is with industrialisation and urbanisation - described well in "the making of the English working class". For the first time people are condensed together as a mass but clearly separated. Working class together in factories but separated from Bourgeoisie. As industrialisation happens you have a clear division between the classes - area of living in the cities. 
• You get a physical disticntion between the rich and the poor. This seperation starts to create a cultural seperation so the working class start to auther their own culture. They still eed things to amuse themselves - they create their own cultureal forms and activities (pub, binge drinking, playing piano, own form of literature and music). 
• In this period (late 19th century) you start to see a working class voice which is very different form the Bourgousie. Now you have two competing voices. NOt just art, design and literature, also talking about Politics - Chartism - campaine for the working class being able to vote.  They start writing their own culture and thinking about how it should be organised. 

• The first form of cultural studies starts to emerge. 
• This book is one of the first books written about culture as a dicipline itself. 
• He tried to define what culture was / is. 
• It is about ARNOLDISM - way of thinking. He wants to define what culture is. Quote ' the best that has been thought...it is about perfection and about finding truths"...the only way you can do htis is through disinterestered reading, writing and thinking (without and andgenda). Any culture that has an agenda (political) is not true culture because it is biast
• The persuit is important - quote - the opposite of culture, the anorchy - this emerging working class culture that seeks to have its own voice heard

• Quote - if you teach them about stuff then they can be brought into the upper class culture rather than just starting their own one. 
• Quote - they were once hidden but now they are coming up and marching where they like. Definite class division. 
• The theories emerge when the control of the upper class is threatened by the emergence of a new culture.
• Now a view that the upper class culture is better than the lower class culture. It attempts to legitimise the culture of the upperclass and mock the culture of the working class. 

• Became a cult figure - lots of people attended lecture were attended and lots of followers. Spawned from historians, cultural, theorists
• ARNOLISM - book "Mass Civilisation & Minority Culture
• seen a gradual duming down of culture - he thinks that at a point the culture was perfect - when everything was right and everyone did what they were told do.
• For him, throughout the 20th century there was a gradual decline. There has always been an elite - he feels that he needs to defend culture against it dumming down.
• quote 2 - for him that is bad, tradgic, that culture is coming down and challenges the rise of popular culture e.g. fiction, musical plays
• The collapse of authority comes at the same time as the rise of the working class

• Constantly talking about how culture was and what desirables there are to be now. 
• Finds ways of proving points - popular novels offer cheap emotional thrills
• They say popular culture is addictive like drugs, and real culture is fullfilling. 
• Quote - their genuine culture makes you think about the world and life and the universe, the working class culture, culture of the masses does none of that and just is a form of distraction.

• You still see this now - snobbery - e.g. TV programs - X-Factor, Big Brother, - examples of authentic working class culture. The snobbery which people dismiss these programs. 
• Their readings of high culture as disinterested is totally interested (has an agenda) as the culture they are trying to dismiss. 
• Institue of social reserach 1922-1933 - closed down when the NAZIs came to power. Here they were MARXIST thinkers - they relocated the Frankfurt school to New York temporarily. 
• They were studying the mass culture - wrote alot on radio, TV, Film - when they went to the US they entered a place that was the most developed in terms of popular culture. Hyper extended scale (Hollywood) advertising and consumer culture. As people were analysing capitalism it was a perfect place to be. 
• Those are the 5 most imporant writers about it. They described the emergence of the CULTURE INDUSTRY.

• The CULTURE INDUSTRY - there is an idea of culture but it is isn't there - culture that is produced in a factory. 
• At that time there was the growth of mass production - FORDISM - they equated that process to the growth of culture. There were various different art / cultural artefacts were produced on mass, all are the same. 
• QUOTE - films are knocked out to set standards, sold as commodities, it means that people start to expect the same things from films e.g. the other quote. Culture that is mass produced - movies and radio no longer pretend to be art, the truth is now they are a business which they can now justify themselves for the rubbish they now produce. 
• quote - the idea of art / culture under capitalism has been turned into a business, so all notions of art has gone, now masquerading as culture. 

• As you start to consume this (same TV, film, Radio) it starts to code us into thinking about the world in a certain way. 
• Quote - this sort of stuff causes us to be 1 demential - reduces the capacity for free thought. We are locked into a system where were are bound into the producers of the industry. 
• Arnoldists and Levidisets were concerned about mass culture because it represented them a threat to the working class - working class could over throw them? 
• Frankfurt school - they think that mass culture is bad because they think it cements you, and codes you into a way of thinking in the world eg. if all the tv shows are about dancing rather than politics, race, society - you don't think about them, and denys you the opportunity to fight back. It de-politicalises the working class. 

• You have a sense that there was such a thing as REAL culture that have some how been lost
• Makes you active when you consume it, makes you think
• Individual rather than mass produces and independent, it writes it own rules. 

• HOLLYOAKS - the women are presented as objects - depoliticies women and makes them think that this is ok. It becomes a symbol - it has been marketed, re-branded and repackaged (CHE) - loses the sense of revolutionary. 
• Big Brother / X factor - instead of being an activists you can sing a cover of a song - then judged. It de politicises you that you can succeed in world just by singing. (and the Lottery)

• People are identifying themselves by the things they buy and own rather than what they produce. Mindless culture. 

• Essay on PoP music (hates it) - thinks that it all the same, works around the same beats, instruments. 
• The less you think about the world, the more you are locked into the social position
• Pop music producers - much of a muchness, listening to such music makes you passive and makes you adjust your behaviour in various ways. Eg. Modern Dance music - kin to the rhythm of the factory, you are a slave to the beat, people mindlessly dance to a rhythm of their own oppression. 
• Also - emotion adjustment, you listen to music as an emotional escape of the horrors of the world. You don't do anything about changing that world. Material girl - every girls fantasy, in dreaming about it you do nothing to change it. 
• Causes you to be counter revolutionary

• Slightly different take - look at essay quote below. 

• The way in which the techniques of mass production change the tequniques of culture. 
• What happesn when you have a painting (MONA LISA) when you can reproduce images of it over and again...what happens to its status and culture. We dont know what the painting is about but we know that it is imporant part of culture
• Now we are in an ache where mechanical reproduction so that we can see examples of this painting everywhere. Perviously we would have to go to the Lourve. Now you can meet the work on your terms. 
• Reactivates the object produced - tremendous challenge to tradition. Threatens to liquidate the culture. 

1. The birmingham school where the first to seriously look at working class cultures. 
2. First people to take popular culture seriously.
3. INCORPORATION - grafitti may have been revelious but now it has been turned into a work of art. PUNK - spoke for the working class and changing the world but now it has become neutralised and incorporated. Lead the an analysis of popular culture 

• Emerges from anxieties about social extensions, the growth of the working class, they attack this new culture as they fear it will threaten them.
• Popular culture is a debased form of a perfect / idealised culture - it is never describe but this is what people think
• POP culture - site of idoeology, masked a popular entertainment, but people need to understand that when they engadge in pop entertainment then are also being involved in masked politics, hidden class interest