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Recommended: Mass media influences on society

World War II brought a new era of American existence. The immerging middle class, the GI bill, and the lack of consumer during the war all played a huge role in forming the new consumer based society that into continues today. The migration from the rural south into America’s industrial cities gave way for many to ascend into a new social class, and with that to they were able to participate in trying to keep up with the Jones. Mass Media was the guide to what it meant to be middle class in the 1950’s, with shows like Leave it to Beaver, TV pushed technology and appliances down America’s collective pie hole. But the same can not be said about how music is both perceived and communicated via radio. Diane Pecknold shows in her book The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry, that the newly formed “fans” controlled the content and the marketing of the industry.

Pecknold shows how the high brow culture of the 1950’s try to sue the country music industry for losses, due to country being played more on the radio. There argument centers on the concept that the listener would enjoy whatever music is channeled via the radio and that country music was the ultimate downfall in American taste and culture. But the listeners and performers of country music fire back stating that it may not be high class but it speaks to them and it speaks there language. The theory of cultural hierarchy is the main problem stated. The people at the top (elites) feel that America is falling off the wayside culturally, that the music is polluting the masses, and the music is inherently bad in substance. The people at the bottom (hillbillies) think that the elites are full of it. The fans of country music mobilize and begin to from fan clubs to s...

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...ce. She talks about how fandom can sometimes be apart of the “fallacy of meaningfulness”. She states that, “media use is perceived to be more significant and meaningful than it perhaps should be,” As if to remove the actual use of the music and make it into something of greater importance. But in actuality music is part of everyday life and not a physiological investment.

Works Cited

Pecknold, Diane. The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Print. Pg. 95-132

Lewis, Lisa A. The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge, 1992. Print. Pg 9-29

Barker, Mike. "My Morning Straitjacket." American Dad. FOX. WZTV, Nashville, TN, 22 Nov. 2009. Television.

Williams, Christina. "Does It Really Matther? Young People and Popular Music." Popular Music20.2 (2001): 223-42. JSTOR. Web. 22 Mar. 2010.

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