Our opening discussion will also give the reader a sense of current debates and issues within cultural and media theory, emphasizing which issues and controversies are of crucial importance in the contemporary era. Our narrative will track salient develop- ments in the study of culture and media, supplying a mapping of the prevailing fields of theories and methods which have proliferated especially since the 1960s. Indeed, to pursue our KeyWorks metaphor, each perspective provides an opening into the complex terrain of contemporary media and culture, furnishing access to understanding the world in which we live. Each “key” will open doors to new domains, such as ideology, the politics of representations, and cultural …show more content…
In fact, there are many forms of media that saturate our everyday lives and the cultural change of the current technological revolution is so turbulent that it is becoming increasingly difficult to map the transformations and to keep up with the cultural discourses and theories that attempt to make sense of it all. Culture today is both ordinary and complex, encompassing multiple realms of everyday life. We – and many of the theorists assembled in this volume – employ the term “cul- ture” broadly to signify types of cultural artifacts (i.e. TV, CDs, newspapers, paint- ings, opera, journalism, cyberculture, DVDs, and so on), as well as discourses about these phenomena. Since culture is bound up with both forms, like film or sports, and discourses, it is both a space of interpretation and debate as well as a subject matter and domain of inquiry. Theories and writings like this introduction are themselves modes of culture, spaces that attempt to make sense of particular phe- nomena and subject matter, and a part of a contemporary cultural …show more content…
We conceive of KeyWorks as a toolkit that enables individuals to produce their own understandings, meanings, and critiques of contemporary culture, media, and society. We will try to make these often complex perspectives on media and culture accessible and to make our text “user-friendly” by, first, explaining in the sections that follow the key concepts and methods deployed in the leading competing approaches to the study of media and culture, and by introducing the theorists presented in our reader. And then, before each section, we provide more detailed contextualizing of both the particular topics through which we have organized the collection and the theorists and texts chosen. While the book was designed to be employed in classroom situations, we also hope that enterprising readers will use it on their own to become more competent cultural consumers and critics; hence, we also hope that it will prove valuable to people who wish to educate themselves in the theories and methods of cultural and media criticism. Consequently, we begin with discussion of the origins and meanings of some key concepts, to start the trek toward
Film critic, Michael Medved is aware that by publishing his book, "Hollywood verses America," he will not only enrage mostly everyone in the show business industry, but he will also loose some of his friends because of what he wrote. His strongly opinionated critique of popular culture examines the recent shift in the content of today's television, films, music and art. He has gathered statistics and opinions as well as shared personal experiences, all to illustrate one major point; popular culture has taken a turn for the worst.
Media plays a large role in creating communal measures including news, publishing, radio, computer, television, and film, at this moment is almost everywhere in modern culture. Gender aspects, as an example, survive solely because civilization as a whole chooses to accept them, but they are maintained by the media. Noteworthy viewers must be conscious of what the media is presenting to them, and make sure they are not operatively partaking in a culture of unjust impositions or restraints. Even on young children, gender roles are being pushed through cartoons.
The media is by far the most influential mean in millions of Americans lives today and can be used to impact behaviors, especially in the vulnerable minds of children and young adults. The media is responsible for the increasing amount of violent crimes and desensitizing society with explicit imagery and the importance of our culture and contributing to negative behavior, society should pay careful attention to the kinds of role models we provide to the youth. Possibly, the most powerful source of role models can be found in every home: the computer or television. Television is a source that has given more knowledge in the past several years than any other kind of knowledge distributor, including books and newspapers. Television is the most dominant invention of the twentieth century and has created more public figures than radio, books, and magazines combined. However, the role models that are created through the television are not always upstanding citizens like Barrack Obama or Steve Jobs, but instead psychopathic murderers such as Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. Not only is society fascinated by the media attention that certain types of citizens receive but they are also mesmorized by films that make these people look like tough fighters who can kill people with the snap of a finger. Actors such as Steven Segall, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis have have capitalized in violent films because of the media exposure as killers and murderers.
The use of media and popular culture is a sociological phenomenon wherein the structural changes to society, which accompany the emergence of new forms of communication and accessing information, can be examined. There are many differing views regarding whether media and popular culture are necessary to the functioning of a democratic and egalitarian society or whether they actually further social inequality and inhibit political discussion or involvement. Although both interpretations are arguably valid, it can be seen that it is not popular culture and the media in and of themselves but rather how they are consumed by the public that determine how these mediums influence individuals and by extension the wider society.
Far too often, we are influenced mentally and socially by Media. The new millennium has accepted all sources of media has almost more prudent source of information. As defined by The Merriam Webster Dictionary , Media is “a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression (Smiler).” For the purposes of this essay, I will condense the broad spectrum of media and focus specifically on these forms : print media, television , movies, and the internet. Within the Written composition, A trifling media written by Shakira Smiler, she carefully examines piece by piece why she believes not only men are trifling but as well how media has influenced why it's acceptable. Within her exposition, she speaks to infidelity , immaturity, and specifically, seeing
Mental illness can be defined as a variety of disorders within the brain that can affect an individual’s mood, way of thinking and behaviour. These illnesses are caused by biological, psychological and sociological influences. Mental illnesses have become more prominent throughout communities while the seeking for help or a cure has appeared to become less evident. In today’s society, mental illnesses are portrayed through various media platforms in a way that causes such a stigma around the illness that it affects those who suffer almost as much as the illness itself.
“According to, Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms” from Media, Culture and Society, Raymond Williams and E.P Thompson summarize about the way they saw culture, they refer it to the way of life and saw mainstream media as the main role in capitalist society. “Williams says that, his perspective and ideas are referred to culture as to social practice, he saw “culture as a whole way of life” and as to structuralism that makes the concept of
Quoting Victor Turner, Newcomb and Hirsch explain that liminality is, “the ‘inbetween’ stage, when one is neither totally in, nor out of a society” (505), as well as that the arts are inherently liminal, and as such, contemporary cultures use arts to through ritual reflexivity, or examining themselves through art. Thus, they argue that in American that television is the central medium for this “bardic function” of art, which presents a “multiplicity of meanings” (506) and “often focuses on our most prevalent concerns, our deepest dilemmas” (506), in a way that emphasizes process, contradiction, and confusion rather than coherence. So, as an art, television metalanguage through which we understand who and what we are and how values and attitudes are adjusted and meanings are shifted. Furthermore, in the liminal stage, they argue that, rules can be broken, bent, roles reversed, that there are no normal constraints.
Today, American film is among the most internationally supported commodities. Financially, its contributions are enormous: the industry is responsible for the circulation of billions of dollars each year. Since its explosion into the new media markets during the mid-twentieth century, film has produced consistently growing numbers of viewers and critics alike. Sparking debate over the nature of its viewing, film is now being questioned in social, political, and moral arenas for its potential impact on an audience. Critics claim that watching films is a passive activity in which the viewer becomes subconsciously absorbed, and creates a reliance or "addiction" to the medium, and thus can be influenced by any perpetual concepts or images. Advocates, however, argue that viewing such programs is an active process in which audience members are able to choose to what they are exposed, and interpret messages based on their individual needs and background. Perhaps both views are too extreme. Film from the 1950s to present, as will be explored in this essay, is an extremely useful medium, often underestimated within the label of "entertainment"; unfortunately, it may be partially responsible for current socio-cultural problems, too. The critical question, then, is whether film has fostered the progress of a more open-minded America, or rather hindered its development through the perpetuation of antiquated concepts of stereotypes, densensitized violence and breeding of normalcy.
As far as 2000 years ago, one of the most famous philosophers, Plato, paid close attention to this growing problem of mass media conquering our reality. He firmly asserts that rhetoric in the form of arts and performance is a threat to the moral order, and should therefore be censored. In his book the "Republic," he metaphors “sounds, sights, tones and colors that shapes arts” to an object or nature that mass media aims to depict in their media world. He also symbolizes “their incapability to apprehend the nature itself” to our inability to take in for questioning the imaginary reality that mass media presents (Plato, 40). From his postmodern point of view, he sees the art...
One of the greatest exports of American culture is American media. American media is one of the most widely distributed and consumed cultural forms from the United States. This means that not only do Americans consume large quantities of their own media, but many other countries in the world consume American media, too. People in other countries will not interpret or understand the media in precisely the same ways that Americans will and do, nonetheless, many aspects of American culture and American reality are communicated to numerous viewers as part of the content in the media. The media is an important tool in the discussion of race, class, and gender in America. It takes a savvy viewer to discriminate between and understand what media accurately represents reality, what media does not, or which aspects of experience are fictionalized, and which elements ...
Hartley, John (2002), Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts, London, Routledge, pp. 19-21.
“A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory” argues that the application of film and literary genre theory do not fully translate when analyzing television, because of “the specific industry and audience practices unique to television, or for the mixture of fictional and nonfictional programming that constitutes the lineup on nearly every TV channel. 2” The goal of media genre studies, Mittell asserts, is to understand how media is arranged within the contexts of production and reception, and how media work to create our vision of the world.
Stereotypes is a big issue within the media industry. Representation within the media is to show someone or something, using a process of depicting, descripting and symbolization. Stereotypes, as described by Stuart Hall, is the “production of the meaning of the concepts in our minds through language which enables us to refer to either the ‘real’ world of objects, people or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people and events”. In his research Hall has suggested that there is two systems of representation, the first system regarding direct associations of events, people and objects that have certain mental representations and concepts that people have in their minds. Meaning is therefore
If one asked “What is media literacy?” a majority of people would be puzzled. Some would say that it is the ‘written’ part of media that is not usually seen or a written layout of how media should be produced. The bulk of people would say they have no idea what media literacy is. People in today’s society should be informed about media literacy. Society should be informed of what media literacy exactly is and how it applies to the field of communications.