1. What is the book about?
Popular culture surrounds us, as this book mentioned. Culture includes material culture and non-material culture (Myridis, 2015). Among these two, this book mainly focuses on material culture on the aspect of entertainment, like the movies we watch and the book we read. Culture is everywhere, today in a modern urban society, together with the advancement of mass media, culture has become an important role on changing lifestyle trends and create fads. This is popular culture. The writer of this book, Marcel Danesi, discovered that with the rise and ascendency of digital global village, delivery of popular culture has changed. And afterwards, he delves into the social structures that have led to the emergence
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As the commercial part of pop culture intersects with pop culture imagination, the first three chapters will introduce the key theoretical and historical facts and ideas while the pop culture phenomenon will be presented onwards. This book expresses its ideas with historical example to show the changing trends of popular culture. Among all the chapters discovered in the book, this essay will focus on the topic of business of pop culture. This topic is worth discussing because this acts as a main cause which create pop culture from culture and change its characteristics. Pop culture is special as it is different from folk culture, where the same performances were repeated ritualistically at a regular pattern (Dansei, 2015). While popular allows itself to have the process of reinvention, it will never be fixed in a single form. In the modern urban nowadays, with the popularization of mass media, such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, changed the forms of delivery and how people receiving it. Pop culture is now a part of quick-turnover industry and its variegation makes the topic interesting and worth discussing. But at the same time, even pop culture showing itself with a variety trends, no many of them are not likely lasting for …show more content…
Business of pop culture - the reasons behind
It can be seen that nowadays there is a fierce competition for consumer's entertainment dollar, which created a variety of business opportunities of pop culture. The ease of accessing pop culture are the main reason behind. Firstly, the writer observed that there is a rising number on free-of-charge access and illegal downloads. Second, the portability and the ability to download a file on multiple platforms also changing the form of business and ways of delivery. The last one is the delayed viewing and listening is also available today.
In the book, there is an important view point that the growth of mass media culture had a powerful and direct effect in people's minds and behavior. Mass media accomplish and help spread pop culture. From another perspective, mass media controls people in society. The icon-making power of media cannot be neglected. Celebrity culture, fads and craze are the things that shown under the contemporary urban society. The writer suggests a model on the process of creating fads and celebrities. As the pop culture is based on popular imagination and on ancient common themes, they will acknowledge as a performance that have broad appeal after they acquired a stage to showcase, which is known as mediation. The end of the process, they will step to the promotion stage through financial
Pop art emerged in the 1950’s and was a representation of the newly found identity of the nation. During this time there was a period of optimism and this allowed artists to engage with their social surroundings, to create art which reflected popular culture of the time. Pop art was able to show consumer products, brands, food, celebrities, comics, advertising and
The issue of the relationship between the mass media and the popular culture has always been a controversial issue in social sciences. The political economists insist on the role of the media industry in the creation of this phenomenon of the twentieth century. Though, advocates such as John Fiske, argue that popular culture is actually the creation of the populous itself, and is independent of the capitalist production process of the communication sector. Basing his argument on the immense interpretive power of the people, Fiske believes that the audience is able to break all the indented meanings within a media message. He also believes- by giving new meanings to that specific message they can oppose the power block that is trying to impose its ideology to the public. Consequently, this anarchistic activity of the audience creates the popular culture as a defence mechanism. Even when we accept Fiske’s ideas, we can not disregard the manipulative power of the media and its effects on cultural and social life.
The article Hop on Pop (2002) explains how culture is influenced especially by the tactics of mass media and popular culture. This aspect is one that Walt Disney and his company used and did so very well. This article opened me up to think about how the media is trying to influence
1) I agree that pop culture is always changing and that the young generation are the ones who are mainly in control of it. The reason I believe this is because there are new videos and memes that become popular that younger people are always coming up with. Something that I had a question about was the concept that pop culture was a part of capitalism because that didn’t make much sense to me seeing as though pop culture is just what’s popular at the time and not controlled by higher status people.
“Culture” is a term that over the years, has taken many forms, served many purposes and has been defined in a variety of contexts. At the rise of the industrial era, inhabitants of rural areas began to migrate to cities, thus starting urbanization. As this new era began to unfold, urbanization, mass production, and modernization became key ingredients in the transformation of culture. As more people became literate and the production of mass media such as magazines, pamphlets, newspapers etc. increased, many had the option and desire to identify collectively – popular culture began to rise. Popular or “mass” culture can be described as a “dynamic, revolutionary force, breaking down the old barriers of class, tradition, taste, and dissolving
Matusitz, J., and P. Payano. "Globalisation Of Popular Culture: From Hollywood To Bollywood." South Asia Research 32.2 (2012): 123-138. Print.
In this essay I intend to explore what is meant by the terms popular culture and high culture. I will also look at how the relationship between these two terms has become distorted and blurred over time. In order to reinforce what I am saying about popular and high culture I will be using a range of examples from the music industry to show how the line between high culture and popular culture has become ambiguous. I will also call upon the work of John Storey to give my work an academic foundation. Although Storey is the main academic I will be looking at, I will also include references to a number of other academics who have written about popular culture and high culture.
Strinati, D. (2004). An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (pp. 52-79). New York, NY USA: Taylor & Francis.
Popular culture is often dismissed as frivolous, unimportant or simply mindless entertainment, both by media critics and by academics. However, it is important to examine and think critically about popular culture and what it can tell us about the society that we live in. In the specific case of the relationship between gender and popular culture, popular culture is informed by the way gender is structured and the structure of gender is, in part, reinforced by popular culture.
Popular culture, or pop culture, is defined as cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people. Its aim it to provide the masses with something that contains qualities of mass appeal that therefore provides consumerism. Popular culture isn’t a stranger to any topic including, music videos, advertisements, art, television programs, movies, performances, fashion statements, forms of leisure, toys, and other endless possibilities. Though pop culture entertains the masses, it is also very influential within our society. It provides us with both positive influences, such as economic effect in pop music and other cultural forms, a unifying effect for a global audience, freedom of speech and its cultural transmissions to the rest of the world helps represent diversity, racial equality and tolerance and negative influences, such as glamorizing violence and sex, it cheapens the value of education, emphasizes the importance of material things versus hard work, education, and well-made relationships with family and friends, and most importantly, it contributes to the stereotypes of ourselves and others, including women. Popular culture portrays a fantasy life and that is what seems to appeal to all of us, but instead of trying to stop the influence of pop culture, we need to learn how to think for ourselves, stop believing everything we see in the media and demand to stop portraying certain groups in a negative way. The type of popular culture that I will be speaking about is women in the music world and how certain artists exploit women, making them look more like objects than actual human beings.
The Effects of Popular Culture on Society Popular Culture is music, dance, theatre, film,T.V., poetry and Art which is enjoyed by a wide group of people. Some people would argue that popular culture in the 1960's cause harm. Other people however argued that other factors brought harm and change to society. Some people would argue that music would cause harm because of the lyrics in pop songs. Lyrics like 'Lets spend the night together' by The Rolling Stones, influenced young people to have casual sex.
There are many ways to define popular culture. Many individuals have grappled with the question what is popular culture? And how to critically analyze and deconstruct the meanings. Looking at the root words of popular culture is where to begin. Raymond Williams states ‘popular’ means: “well liked by many people" or “culture actually made for the people themselves (Storey, p.5). This is part with the word ‘culture’ combine to look at how the two words have been connect by theoretical work within social and historical context. John Storey approaches popular culture in six categories, they are as followed: “Popular culture is simply culture that is widely favoured or well liked by many people”, Popular culture is “the culture that is left over after we have decided what is high culture”, Popular culture is “mass culture”, “Popular culture is the culture that originates from ‘the people.” and “Popular culture as a site of struggle
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 mass media as the main role in capitalist society. Williams’s perspective, his ideas was 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 the “structure of feeling“(Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms” 1980). William was influenced in the seventy by Gramsci’s but, Williams became familiarly with Gramsci dominate and at the end of the 1970’s hegemony became the central concept of cultural studies. Thompson main idea was cultural focus, but mostly on social
In the beginning, the relationship between everyday culture and mass media culture are closed but there are some difference between popular culture and traditional culture. The traditional culture is known as ‘high culture’ which refer to literature, art, music etc. However, popular culture is the produced by mass media, may know it as low culture. People used to entertainment or relaxation. It shared and spread rapidly in groups, communities, societies and so on. Some people may say popular culture help us to understand more about the world because of the globalization factor.
Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change” (John Podhoretz). It encompasses the advertisements we see on T.V, the clothes we wear, the music we listen too, and it’s the reason Leonardo DiCaprio has not won an Oscar yet. It defines and dictates the desires and fears of the mainstream members of society; and it is so ingrained into our lives that it has become as natural as breathing. Moreover, adults never even bat an eyelash at all the pop culture and advertising that surrounds them since it has become just another part of everyday life. Pop culture is still somewhat seen as entertainment enjoyed by the lower class members of society; but pop culture standards change over time. A notable example of this is the sixteenth century author, William Shakespeare, since his works were considered pop culture, entertainment that could be enjoyed by everyone, but now they are considered literary classics. While pop culture encompasses most aspects of our lives, its influence is most obvious through each generations reaction to media,