ECLI 05

Prévia do material em texto

ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
Conteúdo Programático desta aula
• understand the differences 
between the key concepts of 
mass culture, mass society, high 
culture, low culture and popular 
culture. 
• understand Marxist and neo-
Marxist discussions of popular 
culture in modern society. 
• evaluate Marxist ideas on popular 
culture using the perspectives of 
interactionism, pluralism and 
postmodernism.
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
Introduction
Consider the amount and type of media that you
encounter in na average day. Perhaps as you wake
up you turn on the radio, or you may even wake up
to the radio alarm clock. Do you watch breakfast
television before leving home? In the evening, is the
TV playing ‘to itself’ in a corner of the room while
you eat your evening meal, is it switched off, or is
yor meal eaten in front of the TV?
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
The Role and Influence of Mass Media
Mass media is communication—whether written,
broadcast, or spoken—that reaches a large audience.
This includes television, radio, advertising, movies, the
Internet, newspapers, magazines, and so forth.
Mass media is a significant force in modern culture,
particularly in America. Sociologists refer to this as
a mediated culture where media reflects and creates
the culture. Communities and individuals are
bombarded constantly with messages from a multitude
of sources including TV, billboards, and magazines, to
name a few. These messages promote not only
products, but moods, attitudes, and a sense of what is
and is not important. Mass media makes possible the
concept of celebrity: without the ability of movies,
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
magazines, and news media to reach across thousands
of miles, people could not become famous. In fact, only
political and business leaders, as well as the few
notorious outlaws, were famous in the past. Only in
recent times have actors, singers, and other social
elites become celebrities or “stars.”
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
Today, one can find a television in the poorest of homes,
and multiple TVs in most middle-class homes. Not only
has availability increased, but programming is increasingly
diverse with shows aimed to please all ages, incomes,
backgrounds, and attitudes. This widespread availability
and exposure makes television the primary focus of most
mass-media discussions. More recently, the Internet has
increased its role Today, one can find a television in the
poorest of homes, and multiple TVs in most middle-class
homes. Not only has availability increased, but
programming is increasingly diverse with shows aimed to
please all ages, incomes, backgrounds, and attitudes. This
widespread availability and exposure makes television the
primary focus of most mass-media discussions.
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
More recently, the Internet has increased its role
exponentially as more businesses and households “sign
on.” Although TV and the Internet have dominated the
mass media, movies and magazines—particularly those
lining the aisles at grocery checkout stands—also play a
powerful role in culture, as do other forms of media.
Watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6zC3q1lbB8
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
Popular cultural products
Pessimistic view- see the products of popular culture as a
problem to society. They are cheap, unintellectual and
have no ‘artistic’ value.
Optimistic view- There is nothing wrong with it and
sometimes there is a great value to be had from the
consumption of popular culture. In this view the media
audience can use popular culture in highly creative
ways.
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
High and low context cultures
Is there a fundamental gap between high and low
culture? Who decides which works, practices, activities,
technologies, etc., are high and which are low? Is
today's low destined to become tomorrow's high? Low
culture is characterized as the "popular" or unofficial
culture-that which society's arbiters of taste despise,
cultural pages of newspapers ignore and senators deign
to debate. However, this culture overwhelms
quantitatively the high culture, the "serious" culture
which textbooks and historical presentations uphold as
our "cultural heritage." High culture receives money
from
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
national departments of cultural affairs; its originators sit in
academies and societies and are awarded with stipends and
Nobel Prizes. Although a minority, high culture is important,
as it is associated with the group that by its cultural position
wields power over official taste. The guardians of the
spiritual and moral high ground seek to protect youth from
what is perceived to be the threat from the low. When
debates arise, the line between high and low is shifted, but
nonetheless continues to exist even though there are signs
that it is becoming less entrenched because of the rapidity of
cultural changes taking place within our postmodern, media
frantic society.
Video about low and high culture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MURoMIqt2d8
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
How does Adorno and Horkheimer describe the media?
Adorno and Horkheimer described the media as a
‘culture industry’ since it does not attempt to create
great pieces of art, but is simply a business – an
industry – and like any other business it is only
concerned with making a profit. When making this
claim they had in mind the early Hollywood film
industry. The Frankfurt Scholl proposed a ‘hypodermic
syringe’ model of the effects of popular culture: the
masses, living in a mass society, are passive victims of
capitalist ideology – injected with false needs by the
media and unable to fight, resist or think for
themselves.
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
What does Willis suggest about the culture of ‘ordinary
people’?
He suggests that the culture of ‘ordinary people’ is by
no means a reflection of passive acceptance of an
uncritical low culture, but is highly creative. Willis
writes of the ‘symbolic creativity’ of subcultures –
especially of youth subcultures – whereby popular
cultural products, images and signs are actively
manipulated. Willis notes that a massive amount of
‘cultural work’ is undertaken by young people in their
everyday lives.
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
Willis dismisses the notion that high culture is somehow
better than low culture. He argues that the merit of
cultural products lies not in what they are, but in how
they are used. Since the use to which cultural products
are put is not necessarily that what was originally
intended, in order to understand the true nature of
cultural consumption we need to look at what people
actually do. Willis suggests that consumption cannot
take place without a massive amount of symbolic
action, creativity and interpretation by consumers.
Consumption is not passive – it is based on decoding
and reading the signs and symbols of cultural products.
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
Even cultural products that might be deemed ’throw-
away’ or ‘profane’ (unartistic) may still offer consumers
pleasure, new interpretations and possibilities for free
thought. In this view there is no such thing as high or low
culture – only degrees of creativityto which cultural
products can be put, be they popular or not.
Image of women. Watch this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTlmho_RovY
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
• How does postmodernity and popular culture link?
• Postmodernity and popular culture can be seen as
fundamentally interlinked. Jameson locates the
emergence of postmodernity in a change in the
organization of the economy. Whereas modernity was
characterized by the manufacture of products and the
use of raw materials, postmodernity – seen as the ‘late
industrial era’ – is based on consumption rather than
production. Given this, postmodernity is characterized
by an unprecedentely rapid expansion in the
consumption of popular culture
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
• Popular culture is therefore seen as a vast and
complex, postmodern playground where we re free to
play whatever games of meaning and identity we wish.
• But in a pessimistic tone, Baudrillard (1983) warns
against the rise of the ‘silent majority’. He paints a
picture of a postmodern future where populations
return to the sort of mass society written by the
Frankfurt School. The masses become unable to be
interested in, or represented by political ideas,
religion, science or any modernist view of a single
absolute truth. Instead, all there is let is popular
culture, which is
Lesson 5 : Mass culture and popular culture
ESTUDOS CULTURAIS EM LÍNGUA INGLESA
• consumed in an attempt to try to put some sort of
order back into the world, but which in time becomes
‘hyper-real’- more real than real. Popular culture alone
remains for this silent majority to use/enjoy/think
through. They turn to the flickering images on TV
screens, unable to divorce the media from their ‘real’
world of sensation.