CULTURAL MEDIA STUDIES
What is popular culture? (chapter 1)
INTRODUCTION
Can you think about what popular culture means to you?
• Think about examples, memories about consuming popular culture, what emotions do
memories about consuming popular culture evoke, …
Would everyone agree with what you consider as ‘popular’?
• Notice people might have different opinions about what is ‘popular’ culture
POPULAR CULTURE AS A CONCEPT
Popular culture is always defined in relation to what it is not
• ‘An empty conceptual category’: one that can be filled in a wide variety of often conflicting
ways, depending on the context of use.
The study of popular culture in media and communication studies
• Thinking about popular culture has a history
• The study of popular culture is about relationships of power and ideology
• Popular culture gives meaning to the everyday lives of people, as well as structures people’s
everyday lives
• Varied study objects; film, television, gaming, social media, newspapers, data, …
‘CULTURE’ (P1-2)
Raymond Williams (cultural theorist, writer, see lecture 3)
“Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” (Williams, 1983;
p. 87)
Raymond Williams suggests 3 definitions of culture:
1. A general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development vb: poëzie
a. E.g. Western European culture (represented by intellectuals, philosophers)
2. A certain way of life (connected to place, time and communities)
a. E.g. Western European culture -> The way we live, religion, sport, holiday celebrations
(Christmas)
3. Products and practices of intellectual and artistic activity -> productions with a meaning -> it’s
what poststructuralists call ‘signifying practices’
a. By examining these ‘texts’ we learn about our society
b. E.g. -> Philosophers, writers, painters, film directors -> theatre, opera, dance, soap
opera, music, …
When talking about popular culture the 2nd and 3rd definition is usually used.
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,IDEOLOGY (P2-5)
Ideology = crucial concept in the study of popular (media) culture -> culture (and therefore also
media) is always a bit ideological
Ideology:
• = particular ideas and justification of ideas of any social group (e.g. socialist ideology, capitalist
ideology)
o Een geheel aan ideeën geuit door een specifieke groep mensen, dit kan een
verzameling van politieke, economische en sociale ideeën zijn
• = it is usually argued ideology supports the powerful to maintain their worldviews
o The aim is to defend/maintain the visions of the dominant groups that benefit
economically, politically and socially from the economic organisation of society.
o Ideology can be used to present distorted images of reality + conceals (verbergt) the
domination from those in power
o Brings us for example to Marxism -> what Marx is suggesting is that the way a society
organizes the means of its material production will have a determining effect on the
type of culture that society produces or makes possible
• = Often, ideology is presented as a ‘common sense’, ‘universal truth’
• Another definition uses the term ideology to refer to "ideological forms", "texts" (such as film,
pop songs, novels,...) and how they always reflect a specific image of reality
• Althusser: ideology is not only as a set of ideas but also as a "material practice" which is part
of everyday life, e.g. celebrating Christmas…
• Roland Barthes: argues that ideology operates mainly at the level of connotations (secondary,
more unconscious meanings) that texts can carry or can be made to carry
o For example: liberals who present socialism as a socio-economic and political prison.
§ This brings popular culture far from a simple discussion about the meaning
Ideology and popular culture -> cover much the same landscape, but difference is that ideology brings
a political dimension to this shared terrain
1. Ideology suggests that relations of power and politics inescapably mark the culture/ideology
landscape
POPULAR CULTURE
HOW DOES (POPULAR) CULTURE SHAPE WHO WE ARE? (STOREY, P 5-13)
6 ways of thinking about popular culture:
1. There's the idea of quantity. Popular culture is culture that is widely favoured and well liked
by people.
o This can be reflected in sales figures (vb: print media) or audience preferences (vb:
TV programs).
2. Second way of defining popular culture is to suggest that it is the culture that is left over after
we have decided what is high culture -> texts and practices that fail to meet the required
standards to qualify as high culture
o In other words -> definition of popular culture as inferior culture
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, o To be culturally valuable something has to be 'difficult', that makes it exclusive
because not everyone understands it.
§ Pierre Bourdieu argues that these distinctions are often used to support
class distinctions -> Our cultural ‘taste’ communicates our social positions,
supporting class distinctions
• "Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects,
classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the
distinctions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the
distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective
classifications is expressed or betrayed." (Bourdieu, 1979)
3. Popular culture is mass-produced commercial culture, while high culture is the result of an
individual act of creation
o Mass-produced for mass-consumption + the audience is a mass of non-discriminating
consumers
o However, an initiative can evolve over time in terms of appreciation from low culture
to high culture or vice versa.
§ For example: Shakespeare was in his time 'high culture' but later evolved into
popular theatre or Pavarotti started with his classical music as high culture,
but due to his enormous popularity he was later considered as low culture
o Popular culture as ‘mass culture’
§ The culture itself is also a bit manipulative: a sweetener for the people who
want to flee to an artificial dream world
o Mass culture not just an imposed culture, but it is (in a clear identifiable sense) an
imported American culture
§ “if popular culture in its modern form was invented in any one place, it was in
the great cities of the US, and above all in New York” -> goes under the term
Americanization
4. Popular culture is a culture of the people for the people
o Takes issue with any approach that suggests that it is something imposed ‘on the
people’ from above
5. A 5th definition is built on Gramsci's political analysis and more specifically on his concept of
hegemony
o Cultural hegemony is a theory that assumes that the cultural aspects of the dominant
actor become leading
o As a result, under the cultural hegemony, others take over the prevailing cultural
norms and values of culture.
§ (A contemporary example of cultural hegemony could be the
'McDonaldization' of the world)
o Antonio Gramsci refers to the mechanism by which dominant groups (which set the
norms) have sought to marginalize opponents throughout history.
6. A sixth definition is one informed by recent thinking around the debate of postmodernism
o The postmodern culture is a culture that no longer recognizes the distinction between
high and popular culture
o Seen as a victory of commerce over culture -> for example the integration of popsongs
in tv-commercials
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,Popular culture shapes our identities
• People attach to popular culture’s meanings, finding subject positions with which they can
identify with (or resist)
SOCIAL MEDIA
• Social media profiles allow people to show of cultural interests and aesthetic styles
• Tinder is a primary example: Would you swipe right to someone having radically
different cultural tastes?
• Liu, 2007 -> “lists of cultural interests contained in social network profiles and presented
evidence to suggest that these lists of interests can function as taste performances”
• Rich and complex performances in social media: irony, alienation, utopia, and satire
• Communicating different things such as prestige, differentation, authenticity
ARE WE VICTIMS OF A HOPELSLEY MANIPULATIVE COMMERCIAL CULTURE?
Popular culture as a mass culture: ‘it has taken our dreams and packaged them and sold them back
to us’ (Maltby, 1989)
John Fiske (1989/2010) Understanding Popular Culture
• ‘The art of the people is the art of “making do”. The culture of everyday life lies in the
creative discriminating use of the recourses that capitalism provides’
o Popular culture is what ppl make from the products of the culture industries
E.g. Fan practices
• Fiske argues people need not to be seen as passive dupes of a commercial popular culture, he
argues we need to distinguish between a financial and cultural economy
• = In a cultural economy, the circulation is not money, but meanings and pleasures (Fiske,
1989/2010, p. 21)
• Example: ‘Negotiated’ and ‘oppositional’ readings of texts (Hall, see lecture 3)
CONCLUSION POPULAR CULTURE
Popular culture is not a historically fixed set of popular texts and practices, nor is it a historically fixed
category. Culture is plural (cultures) and should be situated contextually.
(Popular) culture is about power and ideology: social conflict!
o Popular culture is about taste, values, norms and morals
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,We can study popular culture by looking at texts (television, music, …) or cultural practices (going on a
holiday, the role of Facebook in our everyday life)
WHERE SHOULD WE SITUATE MEDIA?
• The mass media have been the vehicle for communicating the many texts of (popular) culture
• Media have also become increasingly interwoven into our ways of life
• Some thinkers argue our cultural life cannot be seperated from media anymore, we live a life
‘in’ media (Deuze, 2012 – see lecture 8 on postmodernism)
-> Therfore, asking questions about power, ideology and media are becoming increasingly important,
but also complex
ROGER SILVERSTONE (1999) TOWARDS A NEW MEDIA POLITICS
• Silverstone was a major voice in the study of media culture, in particular on thinking about
media, morality and ethics.
How does media culture contribute to the exercise of power in society?
• Within politics?
• Within society?
• Within our everyday life?
What is the responsibility, according to Silverstone, of those studying media culture?
Taking a position!
• ‘Understanding cannot be morally neutral because understanding is based in identification of
common humanity and the rights of others’
The ‘culture and civilization’ tradition (chapter 2)
This tradition started in the 19th century until the 1950s
Cultural studies are a global way to understand media
INTRODUCTION
Temptation Island and RuPaul’s Drag Race
• Where do ideas of popular culture as a ‘moral decline’ come from?
o There are all kinds of commercial strategies going on to make it more popular
o Sexualization, women are often objectified
o It’s focused on good looks, hedonism, only caring about how you look to the world
o Conservative arguments would be that it is very negative, this organization of society
(where high art is very important) is threatened, and all of this is widely consumed by
the masses
• What histories do these ideas have? Where is this coming from and why is it important?
• Why are they important when we want to understand popular culture?
What is popular culture according to the students?
Looking at all the definitions of popular culture by the students, we can summarize it in:
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, “It is for the masses, it is consumed by many people, it is usually not that good, I don’t consume it”
Today’s question
• Is Web 2.0 destroying cultural production?
• Does amateur cultural production - on which the Web 2.0 is based - has any value for culture?
THE ‘CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION’ TRADITION (19 T H CENTURY TILL 1950S)
represents a ‘school’ of thought with common characteristics:
• Situated mainly in Britain, but some ideas expanded to U.S., Western Europe
• Started around the 19TH CENTURY UNTIL 1950’S – but ideas of course still persist today
• Cultural critics/intellectuals -> people (as Keen or McDonald) we are going to see cannot be
seen as scholars or academics, they are not doing actual research
CENTRAL IDEAS
• The civilization is characterized by binary thinking about culture:
o High vs low culture
o Minority vs majority: Small elite versus big mass
o Culture vs anarchy: anarchy of the popular culture
• Conservative: want to go back to the past
• Nostalgic: Pre-industrial society -> the past was beautiful, the old days were so much better
• Top down: social order -> belief that popular culture breaks down the social order in society
o It breaks down the power of the elite
19TH CENTURY = A PERIOD OF IMPORTANT SOCIAL CHANGE:
1. Industrialization
a. The way their everyday life was structured, changed completely -> people need to go
to factories to work on goods
b. Agriculture changed to factory
c. Organizing themselves around the production and consumption of popular culture
2. Urbanization
3. A loose grip on the subordinate classes
a. After the industrial revolution there is a fundamental change in the relationship of the
elite with the lower classes -> they lost control over the norms crucial for a
homogenous culture + emergence of high versus low culture
b. ‘The masses’ are organising themselves; a meaningful popular culture of the working
class comes into being, which functions not only as a means for cohesion and pleasure,
but also to express political agitation (beweging).
-> A political ‘study’ of popular culture emerges
POLITICS AND POPULAR CULTURE
A first attempt to look at the politics of popular culture: the culture of the people
Popular culture was seen as an ‘uncontrolled’ form of leisure (vrije tijd), which was dangerous to
society:
• Threatens religion
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