Culture And Classes Flashcards
Although everyone reads in society, what can people do differently?
Read for different things/purposes
Why do we care about what we consume?
Because what we consume says something about who we are
What are the three distinctions in society in culture?
High brow culture, Middle brow culture, low brow culture
Why is it not the content that is often concerning but the person reading it in relation to the content?
To an educated woman may man nothing, to a poorer woman the ideas may seem seductive
What were the lower classes seen as more susceptible to?
Brainwashing, upper classes more educated to judge
Why were press barons of big concern in the 1930s?
They had a lot of power and influence, ie because Bennet mentioned a book in a review it sold out
What were the country as a whole seeking?
Escapism, living in a fantasy world
Why are fears about women’s reading so much more pronounced?
Women felt to be less intelligent and easier to convince
What did fears about women’s reading play into?
Fears about independent women and suffrage movements
What do women become in the 1920s and 30s that gives them more power to choose and think for themselves?
Consumers because get political social and economic rights
For those in work in the 20s 30s what happened to real wages?
Rising, unemployment high but if in work were earning more money
What happened to mass consumer culture as a result of rising wages and more demand?
Massive expansion of mass consumer culture, mass produced for everyone
What did sport become in the 20s 30s?
Commercialised
Whose influence on Britain’s culture often caused unease?
America
How did fears about socialism affect consumer culture?
Were trying to make the world more for everyone, than just for the rich
For the first time who can the domestic servant look as good as?
Her mistress - think Preistley’s Jack and Jill image
What has happened by 1921 in terms of voting?
Millions of people get the vote who have never had it before, Britain becomes a true mass democracy
What does the mass enfranchisement of Britain mean to politicians? What happens to culture?
Suddenly need to appeal to everyone, culture becomes more democratised
What did “The public” become for the first time?
Become a social group that needs to be appealed to, their concerns taken on board
What fears arose though about the new voting public, and why did culture in some ways become stricter?
Fears about how people will use their vote and what they read that may affect how they do so
Where does George Orwell in ‘Boys’ Weeklies’ argue is the best available indication of what the mass of the English people really feels and thinks?
Newsagent’s shops
Who were bestselling novels aimed at?
Lower middle classes
Why were the reading habits of the working class genuinely foreign to most critical readers?
The differences in genres and publication formats aimed at working class and middle class and upper class readers
What did early twentieth century social researchers think a study of reading might illuminate?
The general patterns of life of the working classes and lower middle classes
Who were accounts of popular reading generally written by?
Men and women who were professionally curious about unfamiliar reaches of working class fiction
How does Christopher Hilliard argue social researchers look at text differently from literary critics?
Researchers tend to focus on reading as a practice whereas critics looking at matters of taste, tone and ideology
What kind of establishments were beginning to spread and becoming very popular in the period?
Libraries
How was fiction often published in 20s 30s?
Serial form and not bound - penny weeklies for example
Where did urban workers get their reading matter?
Bookstalls, newsagents and tobacconists who ran libraries as a way of extra income
Who did publishing companies particularly launch new fiction for after world war one due to the groups new consumer status?
Young female workers
Why was Penny Fictions use of titled characters often the subject of mirthful and scornful comment?
They were criticised for writing and wanting to read about the upper classes when they knew so little about them
What did Helen Bonsaquet, contemporary, say fiction provided?
mental distraction form weariness and boredom
What did George R Humphrey who had involvement with a library in Wigan, say that penny dreadful “trash” filled working class peoples heads with?
Unattainable ideas and hopes that can never be realised
What did Thomas Wright, a skilled metalworker and autodidact say about the working class literary taste? Where did he say they got books from?
He said there was no working class literary taste, men and women just got whatever they could from friends, lending libraries and sellers of second hand books
Why was escapism often condemned as a perversive modern ill?
Anti social qualities of escapism and daydreaming, allowing them to leave society
What does Matt Houlbrook argue women engrossed by romantic films were depicted as?
“lacking reason, self-control and maturity”
What does Queenie Leavis in Fiction and the Reading Public written in 1932 sought to account for?
The cultural decline of literary standards
What kind of habit does Queenie Leavis compare a habit of reading to for the poorer classes?
A drug habit
What does Queenie Leavis in Fiction and the Reading Public written in 1932 argue poorer people don’t have when reading?
Critical intelligence
What role does Queenie Leavis in Fiction and the Reading Public written in 1932 suggest journalists play in the marketing of fiction?
The Middle Man deciding the public’s taste for them
What does Charlotte Haldane in Motherhood and its Enemies written in 1928 argue unsophisticated girls can fall pray to? And what does it do to her?
Fiction and “her adventures leave her no time for such routine duties”
What did James Douglas in the Ilford Murder say Edith Thompson had been nourished on before she “organised” the death of her husband?
“melodramatic novels and melodramatic plays”
What does James Douglas in the Ilford Murder argue London is “sodden and saturated with the dregs of”?
Vulgar melodrama
What was everyone who did the Mass Observation in June 1939 about class able to do?
Think in the language of class, assess what class they were in and what relation they were to their peers
What did the fact that everyone could think in the language of class confirm Ross McKibbin’s observation of for James Hinton in The Class Complex?
Inter-war England was a country of social classes into which the English freely categorized themselves
What percentage used the conventional labels of class despite the fact Mass Observation did not give them any specifics?
87 per cent
What were even those who showed a distaste for thinking of themselves in terms of class able to do in the Mass Observation trials of 1939?
Well able to place themselves within categories
What was class a measure of for many of the respondents to the MO into class carried out in 1939?
A measure of personal worth and shame and guilt were never far from its articulation
Why was there a tension and unease around class in the 1920s 1930s?
In the social imagination strong images of class coexisted with democratic, egalitarian notions, causing unease and tension, embodied in the notion of snobbery
What may have affected the prevalence of middle class guilt in the 1939 MO?
Most participants had left wing views
What percentage of the observers chose to define their social identities primarily by reference to their taste for high culture?
About a quarter
Which historian analysed the Mass Observation results of the 1939 investigation into class?
James Hinton
What does Pierre Bourdieu argue allows people to position themselves in the social hierarchy?
Taste
How have cultural historians described the social attitudes associated with high culture during the first half of the twentieth century?
Anti democratic and reactionary
What do cultural historians think drove the social attitudes associated with high culture during the first half of the twentieth century?
Fear that the alliance between popular tastes and commercial mass media would undermine cultural standards
What do some particularly pessimistic theorists of modernity say the use of culture to define selfhood produces?
Unhealthy individualism, a chronic condition of meaninglessness, a collapse into narcissism
What did many men use cricket for the advancement of?
Their careers
What class were most of the professional cricketers made up of?
Working class
What did lots of employment providers have a team of?
Cricketers, work teams
What was village cricket an important element of?
Traditions of Englishness
Which way was the demographic bias of cricket?
South, but there were big teams in Yorkshire and Lancashire
What did England spin bowler Fred Root say league cricket had?
No social distinction - one common effort for one common weal
What did league clubs have that country associations didn’t in terms of class?
Considerable cross-class comaraderie
What were professionals in cricket subjected to?
A number of odious social discriminations
What did amateurs and pros have separate?
Changing rooms and entrances into the ground
What were pros obliged to call amateurs?
Mr and Sir
What were professionals obliged to do any time a club member wanted to bat or bowel?
Go with them, go to the nets
What were you really unlikely to ever be if you were a professional?
A captain of a county side
Who thought the cricket system was vicious and why did they think so?
Fred Root and Harold Larwood - the amateurs were also being paid and often more than the progessionals
What did Root claim all professionals would do if they could start again?
Stay as amateurs
Why was Neville Cardus different in his approach to cricket commentary than other commentators?
Innovative, turning what had been largely a factual form into vivid description
What does Neville Cardus’ prelude describe?
A reflection after a cricket season - a last match
What is Cardus’ big statement about Englishness in relation to cricket? What does he say England would be able to do if everything was lost but cricket?
“If everything in this nation of ours were lost but cricket, it would be possible to reconstruct from the theory and practice of cricket all the eternal Englishness, which has gone to the establishment of that constitution and the laws aforesaid.”
What was the bodyline controversy in 1933?
Larwood had a different way of bowling which he used as a cricketing tactic, but an Australian batsmen somebody got seriously injured because of it and Larwood’s career never recovered
What did people say the bodyline tactic breached?
The spirit of cricket
What do photos of cricketing teams show?
Lack of racial difference, players all white males
What values does cricket suggest about Englishness?
Quiet, rural, selective, medieval chivalric Britain, valour and strength, masculinity
What sport had Americans not grasped? And what did this allow the British to do?
Cricket, and allowed them to identify an English national culture outside of America
How did cricket contrast to football in the 20s 30s?
Football now become professionalized, all about money and also whereas cricket is gentlemanly, ordered and slow, football is fast and rowdy
What fields did people say Englishness was made in?
The fields of Eton, old fashioned gentlemanly training
What was cricket articulated as?
A shared English culture
But why was cricket not unifying?
There were many levels to the game
What does Cardus’ view not take into account and only focus on?
Fails to take into account city playing and suburbs, focus is on the southern rural countryside
Why are some cricket players labelled on the scorecard with the surname and some without?
Ones with were amateurs or gentleman
What does Larwood’s biography put emphasis on at the start of his career?
That he worked down the mine, sense of a journey, hard work and determination
What did the Mecca Organisation control?
Britain’s largest chain of dancehalls
What did Mecca promote in the 20s 30s as explicitly British?
Five novelty dances
What did the novelty dances celebrate that links to Baldwin’s speech?
The ideal of old, traditional Britain linked to democratic spirit and natural beauty
Why is it important that the Lambert Walk was performed in Mayfair ballrooms and village hops?
It crossed class divisions
What is different about previous dances that caused great excitement, such as the Charleston and Foxtrot, versus the Lambeth Walk?
Both were dances that came to Britain from United States whereas Lambeth Walk was British in origin and this was unprecendented
What did Mecca do in the hope of replicating the success of the Lambeth Walk?
Introduced four more novelty dances
How did the novelty dances Mecca introduced try to portray class differences?
Portrayed class harmony and celebrated the ordinary Briton
What does Alison Abra argue in ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’ the pubic were focused on more than the Britishness of the new dances created after the Lambeth Walk?
The level of enjoyment they provided
What dance were the King and Queen reported to have performed?
The Lambeth Walk
What does Alison Abra in ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’ argue inspired the dancing boom of the 20s?
The euphoria at the end of WW1
When dancing, what did people become quickly bored of in the 20s?
Bored of the four standard dances and the fact they had to have dancing lessons
What did Heimann, managing director of the Mecca organisation, tell the Star Newspaper?
“Practically everything popular here came from America. The Lambeth Walk has changed all that.”
What did multiple newspapers try to link The Lambeth Walk to?
A longer history of the song and cockney movements within dance, Manchester Guardian suggested it was danced 60 years ago
What did the Lambeth Walk’s London theme mean it fell short of?
A truly national cultural form
Why did the steps to the Lambeth Walk vary?
People adapted them to their regional preferences
What was done to ensure all the new novelty dances Mecca created were as English as the Lambeth Walk?
They were all created by English musicians and dancers
