Hills, Matt (2002) Fan Cultures.London: Routledge.

In Matt Hill’s book on fan culture he emphasises the importance of moving away from fan studies that just take on the opinion of the fan, which would obviously take on their own bias and understanding and move toward an approach that incorporates ‘tastes, values, attachments and investments’.

From this we would be able to take a better understanding of everything that encompasses being a fan. Just because someone says they are a fan doesn’t mean they will be able to articulate exactly why.

Stuart Hall ‘Notes on Deconstructing the Popular’ in Storey (2007) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: a Reader. London: Pearson

When Hall tries to deconstruct ‘the popular’ he comes into difficulty. He tries to break the terms down and re-define them, starting with where the most drastic changes in popular culture – the industrial revolution. In this reading, Hall seems to be almost thinking out loud onto the page, he uses the word I a lot, which is unusual for such an academic text.

The three definitions of popular that I understood from the text were:

Defined by consumer – something is defined as popular through how much it is consumed and commercially popular. In this view, the audience is seen as passive and will simply consume anything that is given.

Defined by what people do – something is defined as popular through how much people have done or still do things.

Defined as a cultural struggle - this is Hall’s own definition, he believes that the popular is imbedded into everything people do within a culture and society. It is ever changing and can change instantly.

Berger, Arthur Asa (2010) The Objects of Affection: Semiotics and Consumer Culture. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp33-54.

Featherstone’s three components of consumer culture:

-First is the view that consumer culture is premised upon the expansion of capitalist commodity production, which has given rise to a vast accumulation of material culture in the form of consumer goods and sites for purchase and consumption. Has increased the capacity for ideological manipulation and ‘seductive’ containment of the population from some alternative set of ‘better’ social relations. 

-Secondly there is the more strictly sociological view that the satisfaction derived from the goods relates to their socially structured access in a zero sum game in which satisfaction and status depend upon displaying and sustaining differences within conditions of inflation. Focuses upon the different ways people use goods to create social bonds or distractions.

- Thirdly there is the question of the emotional pleasures of consumption, the dreams and desires which become celebrated in consumer cultural imagery and particular sites of consumption, which variously generate direct bodily excitement and aesthetic pleasure.

- Those who own the means of production in consumer cultures have to change people’s attitudes from ideas that focus on thrift and saving to ideas that focus on consumption.

-Bernay’s argument builds upon this. ‘If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it. Mass psychology is yet far from being an exact science and the mysteries of human motivations are by no means all revealed. But at least theory and practice have combined with sufficient success to permit us to know that in certain cases we can effect some change in public opinion… by operating a certain mechanism’- Does PR have the ability to shape a society’s collective consciousness without anyone in that society realising what has happened? Seems to be evidence that at least in certain areas, involving purchases of products and goods, something similar to what Bernays is writing about has taken place.

-Protestant ethic has lead to the development of consumer culture long before advertisers began to manipulate people, Protestant theology began to dissuade people from the value of asceticism and poverty and convince them that God wanted people to enjoy life and that consumption was divinely inspired. Calvin glorified hard work and using time profitably, so people could earn money and thus be able to consume, as God wanted them too. This theology led to providing a hardworking and diligent workforce, who believed that their place in society and in the scheme of things was determined by God and was a matter of divine providence.

-Psychoanalytic perspective on consumer culture is that the fundamental aim in life is to live and to live pleasurably. In order to achieve this, each of us tries to deal with and dispose of destructive forces in himself, venting, diverting and using them in such a way as to obtain the maximum security he can in life- and pleasures to boot- an aim which we achieve by infinitely various, subtle and complicated adaptations. Each of us has an unconscious need for material things and the financial and psychological benefits that lead to our getting and having things can never be satisfied. Having things is an instinctive need to feel alive and good.

-Marxist perspective on advertising takes a different approach. Its not consciousness that determines society but society that determines consciousness. Consumer Cultures are the way the ruling classes divert the proletariat (the masses) and prevent them from developing a class consciousness and from thinking about political change and revolution. There is a connection between ‘alienation’ and consumer culture. Through ‘forced labour’ by the workers, leads on to alienation and self conscious and self acting commodities. Marx says everyone in capitalist socities is alienated, for those who are the members of the ruling classes are also alienated and always worried about political changes that might impinge on their domination. It is alienation that Marx argues leads people into consumer culture, for it is only when they purchase things that they find momentary gratification and escape from the alienation that plagues them. Advertising may sell products but at the same time it sells the capitalist social order that makes it possible for workers to participate in consumer cultures. Advertising works by generating dissatisfactions and anxieties in people and feeds on the alienation that pervades capitalist societies. It assuages these feelings by focusing attention on private consumption thus people are lead away rom paying attention and thinking about the way the ruling classes dominate capitalist societies and the grossly unequal distribution of wealth found in them. Advertising also promotes narcissism, leads people to focus on their own personal wants or desires and to neglect social and political matters and the needs of others. In consumer societies it is private consumption that dominates, not expenditures for the good of the community.

-Products can be hyper real in that signs now take on a life of their own and tend to be the primary determinants of social experience. Signs and codes replace reality and the world is experienced through images to the point where the real as something different from the image disappears. A world of ‘hyper-reality’ is created in which everything in the world is simulated in the sense that models created by images replace the real.

Paul Long and David Parker (2004) ‘The Mistakes of the Past’? Visual Narratives of Urban Decline and Regeneration’ in Visual Culture in Britain,Vol.5, No.1, pp. 37-58

Birmingham has changed as post-war architecture is woven into personal memories and belatedly accorded recognition through the aestheticization of a landscape normally viewed with contempt.  A series of ‘twentieth century’ visions of what a good city should look like and how it should function were buried. Notable is the ease with which familiar images are deployed in visual narratives to both promote and make sense of change. Unappealing urban vistas eg concrete car parks, ring rounds and underpasses conjure up reflex feelings of shame and embarrassment among the local population.

A skyline has major relevance in that it traces the visual signature of a cities identity, it offers an immediate reading of its ambition, modernity and novelty through which economic, social and aesthetic meanings are signified. Urban imaginaries are constituted by visual narratives- summary readings of history and futurity encoded in the skyline, both as it is and how it may be.

The methodology behind the redevelopment employed is the dynamic change in market-driven redevelopment. Force observed, ‘successful urban regeneration is design-led??

The four landmarks identified are The Rotunda, Post Office Tower (BT Tower), Birmingham Central Library and The Bullring. However these posed problems such as failure to sustain the original planning and intervention, maintain the new structures and support the innovations they were built to create. The Bullring failed in an unworkable new concept in car parking and shopping was plagued by their internal complexity (five levels). The Rotunda proved notoriously difficult to let, heat and ventilate, symbolised Birmingham’s half hearted architectural ambition when the digital clock built to illuminate the summit went out after illumination in the 80’s never to be relit again. The post office tower was designed with the idea of public access to the top but dismissed out of hand, there was no demand to go and look at the panorama of Birmingham. Birmingham Central Library design of a building finished in marble was never carried through and the area around the library was left underdeveloped due to recession. 

Storey (2007) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. London: Pearson, pp181-211.

Hebdige describes Postmodernism as difficult to construct as it has been used in so many different debates and discourses, he describes postmodernism as a ‘Buzzword’.

New Sensibility is the idea that the distinction between high and low culture is less meaning full.

Lyotard believes that the postmodern condition is marked by a crisis in status of knowledge in western society e.g. collapse and rejection of all framework, Marxism, Christianity for example. The Postmodern condition is an ‘anything goes’ culture, a culture of slackening where taste is irrelevant and money the only sign of value. Postmodernism is that which breaks with one modernism to form a new modernism.

Baudrillard claims that we have reached a stage in social and economic development in which ‘it is no longer possible to separate the aconomic or productive realm from the realms of ideology or culture since culture artefacts, images and representations have become part of the world of economic. Shift in society from the production of things to the production of information.

Jameson argues that Postmodernism is a culture of pastiche.

Post Structuralism- response to structuralism, objection of grand narrative.

-Death of the Author

-Discourse

-Postmodernism

Postmodernism= after modernity

Modernity= an period

Modernism= an attitude

- A Philosophy

- A time-period

-An aesthetic

What is Postmodernism?

Death of History

Death of Meaning

Intertexuality

Collapse of Cultural Boundaries

Death of the Subject

Spectacle

Adorno, Theodor (2007) ‘On Popular Music’ in Storey, John (ed) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: a Reader. London: Pearson.

Within this text Adorno outlines ‘two spheres of music’  as ‘serious’ (non standardised) and ‘popular’ (standardised) music. Along with FR Leavis (1933), Adorno sees the standardisation as the structure of this type of media that is fed to the masses. The standardisation is not simply in the way music is produced but also in the way that it is received by the masses. The best known rule according to Adorno, is that a chorus consists of 32 bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note.

The reasons for the standardization, according to Adorno, come not from the methods of production like ‘cars and breakfast foods’, but from the demands of the listener. The masses want relief from boredom and effort simultaneously and popular music works for this reason because it is ‘patterned and pre-digested’ – as mentioned before, we know the frameworks of a song before hearing it.

Adorno also looks at the ‘emotional’ listener who identifies with the celebrities formed through popular music. When you look at the celebrities around today who make ‘music’, it is often the construction of the singer/celebrity that catches the emotion of the listener, rather than the music itself. For example Justin Biever and One Direction could be a good example of this.

Frankfurt School Critique Popular Music

Though we studied The Music Industry to some extent in class I have chosen to focus on this for my Frankfurt School Critique again as this is where my interest lies. The particular text I have chosen to focus on is The X Factor. The reason I have chosen this particular media text is due to its control and commercialisation within my chosen industry.

Within The X Factor there are many notions of standardisation from the structure of the show, the contestants and the output and marketing of the 'winners'. The outset of the show starts with the 'auditions' leading on to a stage at the judges houses, before the infamous live shows. I think in terms of the Music Industry the final product of the 'talent' competition is the most interesting particularly in the last three years or so.

Pseudo Individualisation refers to Adorno's critique of mass culture, and is the means by which standardisation of mass produced media is disguised.

Week One. Williams, R - An Analysis of Culture - Reading Response.

Williams begins by structuring Culture into three categories, the 'ideal', the 'documentary' and the 'social'. To begin, the 'ideal' is the idea that culture is the state of human perfection in terms of values and is essentially the discovery and description in our lives of values which have a connection and reference to the permanent universal human condition. Secondly the 'documentary' is the idea that culture is the foundation of intellectual and human work. Finally the 'social' defines culture as a particular way of life and traditions within an individuals life which expresses certain meanings.

Culture is defined as a clarification and analysis of values implicit and explicit in a particular way of life and culture. Such analysis includes and is influenced by historical criticism in which intellectual and imaginary works are analysed in relation to traditions and behaviours and analysis of other ways of life which wouldn't necessarily be classed as culture such as family life and relationship structures.

Culture is a form of development and a key part of society and in individual circumstances. Williams suggests culture can be structured on two different levels, lived and recorded culture. A mid point between the two can be labeled as period culture which can be determined to conclude culture comes from either living a certain lifestyle or a pre determined culture.


He describes the theory of culture as ‘the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life’. This definition combines the idea of three elements ideal, documentary and social together.

Williams then looks into the ‘structure of feeling’. He mentions how culture evolves and develops with the time meaning that experts at a particular time in a specific field may not be able to take in everything and pass on the information. Therefore the accounts of previous cultures are often misconstrued through biased records and do not have a structure of feeling within a culture. E.g Elements of our grandparents culture that we have read about may not be the same or have the same nostalgic view that people of that era have and may not convey the exact truth about their culture.

Arnold, Matthew (1869) ‘Culture and Anarchy’ and Leavis, F.R. (1930) ‘Mass Civilization and Minority Culture’ in Storey (2007)

Matthew Arnold

Why should sweetness and light prevail? 

The idea of sweetness and light is a term used to describe culture and it’s use, however, through Arnold’s work it seems to work as a late Nineteenth century view on the world and associated cultures.

Arnold discusses how ‘people will try to give the masses an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think proper for the actual condition of the masses,’ however he thinks this and other techniques of religious and political conditioning as completely dissimilar to how culture works.

e.g BBC

‘Social Idea’

Sweetness and Light ‘works to do away with classes, to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere.’ This is seen as a social idea to engage everyone in knowledge and to humanise it by making it easily accessible and not just reserved for the highly educated and therefore ‘of sweetness and light’.

Barbarians, Philistines, Populace

Barbarians, Philistines and Populace are the idea of Arnolds contemporary society as compromising of groups.

High Class-Barbarians, seen as lacking courage for resistance, believe in personal individualism, liberty and doing as they like. Exercise strength and money. Their manners, accomplishments and powers are inherited from the Barbarians.

Middle Class-Philistines, known for wisdom and expertise in industry and commerce, they are the creaters/builders within society.

Low Class (Working Class)- Populace, this class is most effected by poverty and disease and exploited by the barbarians and philistines.

Culture and Anarchy

Arnold was concerned about the threat of anachary in particular the threat of revolution from the past, he looked at the idea of making culture available to all helps prevent this.

-Solution was to offer and make culture more accessible to all to prevent anarchy and create ‘Sweetness and Light’ to work away with classes and rulings to humanise culture.

FR Leavis

Canon

Leavis perspective on culture introduced the idea of the ‘canon’, is an elitist view on culture. Within which minorities are the lower class, culture is reserved only for the higher classes; the rich and educated. The Canon is a list created by Leavis which (in his opinion) is a selection of the best works of literature that people should read in order to be cultured. Ruling Class, Government etc decide what is canorial as these people have the most power and are the most influential in society.

Americanisation

Leavis discusses Americanisation as the ultimate standardization of culture as a result of advances in industry and in the production of culture in America through the market place. Reliance on America has helped the world in terms of technology, medical advances and cultural standardisation.

‘For those who are most defiant to America do not propose to reverse the processes consequent upon the machine.’

e.g Hollywood films according to Leavis have become standardised to point so that audiences are passive, they act as diversion and make active recreation more difficult ( dumbing down)

Culture is at a crisis, ‘the lines have blurred, the boundaries are gone and the arts and literatures of different countries or periods have flowed together’

Globalisation

Leavis states that the future of culture with globalisation playing a key factor in the ‘triumph of the machine’ as a standardised civilisation is rapidly enveloping the world.

My Culture

It’s hard to define one meaning of culture, particularly my own personal culture. I have never really defined myself within a specific subculture, not to say that many haven’t influenced me. If I had to choose one media text that I feel expresses and belongs to ‘my culture’ no doubt It would involve Music. I feel personally this is a major part of my life, I listen to my favourite artists daily, follow music news regularly and attend gigs almost weekly.

One band in particular that I like and would say have defined myself to explore a certain culture more are pop-punk band Blink 182. The band’s music in particular appeals to me because I can relate to a lot of it; the common themes within their tracks are friendship, having a good time and are just generally upbeat mostly. Lyrics such as ‘And it's happened once again I'll turn to a friend, Someone that understands, Sees through the master plan’ and ‘My friends say I should act my age, What’s my Age Again?’ again emphasise the theme of friends within their music and my friends are a major importance within my life I like these lyrics in particular.

I’d say Blink 182 were part of my own personal identity as from listening to their material I have discovered other bands who have influenced by them and the genre of Pop-Punk which the band almost helped to develop into the mainstream. I’d also say they sum up basically myself in terms of how I like to define my personal identity such as places I like to go, music I listen to etc.

The particular characteristics the text has like previously mentioned are the themes of friends, not just in the music but the three members themselves and the story behind the reunion. They have the punk element to there music and the sense of rebellion and youth, for example Blink 182 originally started in 1992 and are as old as myself yet the band still continue to tour there early material and the majority of there tracks are timeless in that they are still played within the media today and are as popular as ever.