Summary Schema Cultural Media Studies

Autor Concept uitleg
Otherness Pop culture always defined in relation to what it’s not
Raymond Williams Culture: 3 def 1. General process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic
 Marked by relation of power and development
politics ~ Canon, best what have been said
2. Particular way of living connected to time, place and
communities
~ food, holidays, traditions (postmodern vision)
3. Works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity
~ films, books, opera
Graeme Turner Ideology: 5 def 1. Body of ideas expressed by group of ppl

 Ideology usually supports the 2. Masking, concealing, distortion
powerful and maintains their ~ Marxist interpretation, false consciousness, fake reality,
worldviews ideology formed by power relations
 Often represented as common
sense, universal truth
3. Ideological forms
~ Marxist interpretation: each text is political, presents a
particular image of the world, society as conflictual
4. Ideology operated at the level of connotation, texts carry
unconscious meanings
~ Barthes interpretation: culturalism
5. Ideology not only body of ideas, also material practice
~Althusser: practices of everyday life, reproduced through ISA
Popular culture: 6 persp 1. Liked by many (quantitative)
Not historically fixed 2. What is over after decided what high culture is
Social conflict: taste, values, norms &  Culture & civilisation
morals
3. Mass culture
 Culture & civilization: Leavisism
4. Originated from the people
 Culturalism
5. Site of struggle
 Culturalism: Hall & Whannel
6. Postmodern culture no longer recognizes the distinction
 Sontag
Context - Set of presuppositions, which provide a framework for our
analysis
- Other texts, historical or geographical frame

, - No text in itself, meaning is created in a particular context


Situating Main ideas Author
Industrialization & urbanization Culture as a binary category Arnold (1822, England)
 More communities, lived - High culture = elite culture, - Culture = body of knowledge + study of perfection
& consumed together culture  Becoming smthng, knowing whats best, whats best and
 Changing relation - Low culture = mass culture, the pursuit of whats best
employee and employer anarchy - Workingclass lived culture = political danger, anarchy
 Fear of a revolution  Culture as political (nostalgia for past)
 Emergence of pop - Nostalgic for pre-industrial  Use culture in its social function & policing the mass
culture, cultural space society - Division of society
outside influence of - Top-down: ppl are passive & 1. Barbarians
dominant class absorb anything that comes to 2. Philistines
Ideas mainly in England, later them 3. Populace
US & West-Europe Policing culture  Working class is less evolutioned
19th century – 1950 - Pop culture  social disorder  Uneducated for power given (voting) & no respect
Cultural critics, intellectuals (not - So suppressing class identity  Culture to guide 1 & 2 from working culture & create
working class ppl!) through culture (education) respect for authority from 3
- Only support for culture that  By education
supports dominant ideology - Not abt culture, but fear of social disorder, working class
Pop culture as uncontrolled form of as evidence of decline
leisure - Goal to police unruly forces of mass society
- Threatens social order, morals - Rejection of protest
& religion
- Threatening culture and
civilization
- Homogenous, not original
Response to cultural crisis of Changed status minority: no longer Leavis (1930)
1930 culture authority for elites Problem
Fascisism: Mass culture more threatening to - Addiction to entertainment: fiction, cinema
Cinema, mass production create chaos - Popular press as de-educator of public mind
Increasing mobility Collapse of traditional authority & - End of critical thought, does not contribute to ppl
threat of rise of mass democracy - Passive consumers
Training in schools to resistance to - Main symptom of cultural decline = advertisements
mass culture (studied this)
Popular fiction  addictive form of Consequences
compensation - Nostalgia golden age
 Shakespeare: community who discussed books
- Worsening of quality of work: distraction of leisure time,

, addiction to substitute living (entert)  now work to live
outside of work (not live in work)
- Control expansion mass culture in education



Fear
- Commercialization
1. Americanization: pop culture from US invades Europe
2. Massification: technology makes possible to distribute
pop culture to masses
Importance
- Empirical, but weak & seek for decline
- Action in education
- Critical towards import America
US mass culture Mass culture threatens folk culture Ross: 3 positions in debate abt mass culture
Post WWII and art 1. Aesthetic-liberal: mass chooses 2nd and 3rd rate texts
Debates on culture, political and Europe concerned abt 2. Corporate liberal: pop culture functions as socialization of
moral authority, intellectuals as Americanization, but Am argues that consumption
guards mass culture is not American (more 3. Socialist: mass culture as form of social control
Influence of Arnold and Leavis US) Rosenberg & White
- Dehumanizing effects of mass culture  undermining
wealth and well-being of Am society
- Not American: more spread in SU, not door capitalism or
democracy but door technology
Mcdonald
- Mass culture undermines the vitality of high culture
- Deny that Am is land of mass culture (US more)
- Not folk culture (expression ppl) or high culture
(expression indiv artist)  mass culture = expression of
audience maximalization
- Exploits instead of satisfies cultural needs
- Pessimistic: bad ill drive out the good: Am into infantile
masses, homogenized culture
Overall evaluation:
C& C created space to study pop culture
= Example of cultural decline & potential political disorder
Only seeking confirmation of decline, no detailed analysis of
texts or practices
Demanded difference and deference