Exam 1 Flashcards

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1
Q

Theory that examines the way popular culture reflects the social world

A

Reflection theory

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2
Q

According to Stuart Hall’s communication theory, messages are created by media producers through a process of

A

encoding

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3
Q

What are the three modes of decoding a communication message?

A
  1. dominant/hegemonic
  2. Negotiation
  3. Oppositional
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4
Q

According to semiotics, what is the second order of signification?

A

Connotation

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5
Q

Name 2 out of the major 5 media conglomerates which own and control popular culture today.

A

Comcast, Walt Disney, National Amusements, News corporation, time warner

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6
Q

As part of the “cultural diamond” it refers to the totality of the community in which the cultural objects acts (America, Ventura, biker culture, high school, etc)

A

Social World

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7
Q

A group of two or more people receiving/consuming the same message or cultural object

A

Interpretative Community

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8
Q

The approach which analyzes America’s obsession with hamburgers as indication of bad taste and degraded cultural knowledge.

A

High culture approach

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9
Q

When individuals or groups appropriate an existing sign and create new meaning from the signifier

A

resignification

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10
Q

When the cultural industry is controlled by a small handful of corporations that are functionally no longer competing with each other

A

Oligopoly

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11
Q

What were the two major social forces behind the creation of popular culture by and for the masses during the mid-19th century?

A

industrialization and urbanization

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12
Q

What consist of the cultural diamond

A

social world (top) receiver (right) cultural object (down) creator (left)

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13
Q

What are the two main strategies for controlling and disciplining the popular pleasures of subordinate social groups?

A

repressive legislation, respectable appropriation

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14
Q

____ is powerful because it takes very simple ideas seriously, earnestly, and energetically

A

vulgarity

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15
Q

What are the three perspectives in Douglas Kellner’s multi-perspectival approach to media culture?

A
  1. political economy/production
  2. textual analysis
  3. audience reception/use of culture
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16
Q

The approach that sees popular culture as a”compromised equilibrium” between dominant and subordinate social groups over the major influential ideas in society

A

hegemony

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17
Q

which author/theorists argued that popular culture can only made by various social groups who are disempowered from the stratified social system

A

John Fiske

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18
Q

Which famous circus entertainment company that is still in existence was once known for exploiting non-normative people in their traveling ‘freak show’

A

Barnum and Bailey

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19
Q

The film Rocky (1976) was about a working class white male in the South Philadelphia. According to Kidd, what was this films overall “class theme”

A

The American Dream

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20
Q

__ referes to the structure of dispositions/tastes that we acquire from life, especially from our families, schools, and communities.

A

Habitus

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21
Q

Max Horkhiemer and Theodore Adorno argued that ____ is a capitalist system which produces art as a market commodity for profit and to mentally manipulate populations

A

Cultural industry

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22
Q

The approach that refers to the overlapping effects of race, gender, class and other identities that shape human experience within a system of stratification

A

intersectionality

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23
Q

Analysis which records key observations about how social issues are represented and discussed in cultural objects

A

Qualitative Content Analysis

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24
Q

According to the PBS documentary, The Merchants of Cool, which unique cultural figure was invented by Viacom corporation to engage young male audiences in the mid 1990s?

A

The Mook

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25
Q

According to Laura Grindstaff, TV shows like Jerry Springer and the Jersey show are what type of minstrelsy

A

White trash face minstrelsy

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26
Q

When a group of homeless people were observed watching the film Die Hard, they cheered as the villains destroyed police property. What form of decoding is this?

A

Oppositional

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27
Q

What is popular culture?

A
  1. is widely favored or well liked by many people. This approach is most dominant and obvious.
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28
Q

What is the second way popular culture is defined?

A
  • is what is after ‘high” culture is defined
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29
Q

By what measure do you mark cultural ‘distinction’?

A

Cultural distinctions function to legitimate social differences an social classes (polo vs soccer, filet mignon vs burger, opera vs rap)

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30
Q

Who consumes this elevated culture and who doesn’t?

A

mass produced vs individual act of creation

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31
Q

How are cultural divisions defined?

A

they are transhistorical or temporally fixed

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32
Q

Is true or false– the borders of culture between high and low are always shifting/changing

A

true

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33
Q

What is the 3rd definition of popular culture

A
  • popular culture is “mass culture”

- establish pop culture as helplessly commercial culture

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34
Q

What is culture?

A

is formulaic and manipulative, consumed with brain numbed and brain numbing passivity

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35
Q

What is the 4th definition of pop culture?

A
  • popular culture originates from ‘the people’

- authentic culture of the people

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36
Q

What is the 5th definition of pop culture?

A

-Pop culture is the terrain of hegemony

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37
Q

what is hegemony? (Antonio Gramaci)

A

is the way in which dominant groups in society, through a process of ‘intellectual and moral leadership’ seek to win the consent of subordinate groups in society.

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38
Q

How is pop culture not an imposition of power or organically emerging from the people?

A

Rather an exchange and negotiation between the two: a terrain marked by resistance and incorporation

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39
Q

What is the 6th definition of pop culture?

A
  • is postmodern

- no distinction between high and popular

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40
Q

How is culture commercial?

A

culture is commercial, commercial is cultural= no difference

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41
Q

What is popular culture?

A

the culture of the people that can refer either to folk culture or to commercial culture

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42
Q

What is commercial culture?

A

expressive styles and objects that are mass produced and sold for a profit. Often contrasted with folk and high culture

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43
Q

What is folk culture?

A

expressive styles and objects associated with local cultures and lower income groups. Often contrasted with high and commercial culture

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44
Q

What is culture?

A

a system of shared meanings embodied in social practices, social relations, and socially meaningful objects.

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45
Q

What is cultural object?

A

works of arts, pop culture, furniture, food, films, magazines, albums.

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46
Q

What is a receiver?

A

audiences and consumers of high, folk, commercial and pop culture

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47
Q

What is reception?

A

the process of consuming a cultural object

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48
Q

What is consumption?

A

the process of buying and making use of good and services

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49
Q

What is interpretation?

A

the process of determining the meaning of a cultural object like a book, film, tv show, or art work

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50
Q

What is tool kit?

A

Ann Swidler’s theory of how individuals make use of cultural experiences as resources and strategies that they utilize when making decisions about social action.

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51
Q

Who is the creator?

A

producers, writers, directors, artists, performers, technicians

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52
Q

What is cultural industry?

A

the web of corporations that produce commercial culture and the meanings that are embedded in commercial culture objects

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53
Q

what is production?

A

the process of creating and distributing good and services

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54
Q

What is political economy?

A

the complex relations of profit making and decisions making in the marketplace where goods and services are produced, distributed, sold, and bought

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55
Q

What is horizontal integration?

A

a cost-saving method for a business that involves controlling ever higher proportions of market production within a field.

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56
Q

What is vertical integration?

A

a cost saving method for business that involves controlling every aspect of the creation and distribution process

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57
Q

What is interlocks?

A

When a board member of a major media organization is also a board member of another corporation, it creates corporate interlock that may make the media organization more favorable to the interlocking corporation

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58
Q

What is culture industry?

A

cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. Promissory note with its plot and staging, draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged. Promise is actually all the spectacle consists of illusory .. all it confirms is that the real point will never be reached.

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59
Q

What is the social world?

A

norms, demographics, historical arrangements, dominant ideologies, and institutions of the world

60
Q

What is social stratification?

A

a social system that produces and reproduces social differences, and subordinates different social groups into unequal social structures

61
Q

What is privilege?

A

the benefit of being situated at the top of a social hierarchy. Is often taken for granted and not noticed by those who have it

62
Q

What is intersectionality?

A

sociological theory that examines inequality and privilege with a focus on the connections between systems of hierarchy, particularly race, class, and gender

63
Q

What are the two main social forces behind the ‘cultural crisis’?

A

industrialization and urbanization

64
Q

What were the two main sources where the alternative cultural space of the subordinate classes came from?

A
  • culture supplied for profit by the new cultural entrepreneurs
  • culture made by & for the political agitation of radical artisans, the new urban working class and middle class reformers
65
Q

What were Benjamin Disraeli’s ‘Two Nations’?

A

the elite nation and working class nation

66
Q

According to Mathew Arnold, culture is? (4 WAYS)

A
  1. body of knowledge- the best that has been thought and said in the world
  2. concerned to make reason & the will of God prevail
  3. mental and spiritual application of what is best
  4. the pursuit of what is best
67
Q

Culture is… (Mathew Arnold)

A

the endeavor to know the best and to make knowledge prevail for the good of all humankind

68
Q

What were the different social classes in relationship to culture? (Mathew Arnold)

A
  1. aristocrats (lazy, old elites that did not want to innovate)
  2. Barbarians (Middle class people who were swayed by aristocrats or philistines)
  3. Philistines (the masses of poor people who have no taste or culture)
69
Q

What did the terms “high brow” and lowbrow” represent?

A

-a racist pseudoscience of the 19th century that determined racial identity and intelligence by measuring cranial shapes

70
Q

What did “highbrow” represent?

A

higher more intelligent

71
Q

What did “lowbrow” represent

A

lower less intelligent

72
Q

What are the two main strategies for the control/discipline of the pleasures of the subordinate classes?

A
  • repressive legislation, ban or eliminate the cultures

- appropriation, by which “vulgar” uncontrolled leisure pursuits could be respectable and disciplined

73
Q

What is vulgar?

A

is powerful because it takes very simple ideas seriously, earnestly, and energetically.
predictability, derivative, repetitive, tolerant of all, inclusive, adaptive, easy, and cheap

74
Q

According to John Fiske, culture is…

A

the constant process of producing meanings of and from our social experience, and these meanings produce a social identity.

75
Q

How is our social system stratified?

A

it is dominated by certain groups who have relatively more power: whites, males, wealthy capitalists

76
Q

What is dominant ideologies?

A

affect the preferred or dominant-culture readings of media texts

77
Q

What is oppositional ideologies?

A

are more likely to emanate from social categories that are ranked near the bottom of our social stratification system: racial minorities, women, the poor

78
Q

What are alternative or oppositional readings of media texts?

A

are more likely to emanate from these groups- the subordinated

79
Q

According to Fiske, “pop culture” is….

A

made by various social categories who are subordinated or disempowered in some way by the social system

80
Q

What is the “betty crocker” norm?

A

norms of everyday life are sufficient for most people, particularly those who do not feel disempowered by the social system

81
Q

How is popular culture made?

A

it’s made by people who lack some of these societal resources. it is made by subordinates within the stratification system who do feel somewhat disempowered

82
Q

What resources do the dominant social system provide?

A

provides a lot of resources in our culture: cars, clothes, TVs, games, language, shopping malls, music, sports

83
Q

What is excorporation?

A

when an item of the dominant culture is modified to ‘fit’ the interests of subordinate groups in the social system. This liberates an alternative meaning of that item.

84
Q

What is incorporation?

A

when members of society accept the preferred meaning of an item– the Betty Crocker or mainstream definition that carries the interests of the dominant groups.

85
Q

What’s the example of Dirty Dutch excorporation?

A

Dirty Dutch– excorporation produced by a small subordinate group of techno music

86
Q

What’s the example of Dirty Dutch incorporation?

A

Dirty Dutch sound was incorporated into mainstream Top 40 pop music.

87
Q

What is ‘cultural change’?

A

the process by which some cultural forms and practices are driven out of the center of popular life.

88
Q

What are “the people” ?

A

are the source of this popular life, but also the object of ‘reform’ from the perspective of the powerful

89
Q

Study of pop culture oscillates between two poles are…

A

Containment (control, appropriation, incorporation)

Resistance (autonomy,reappropriation, excorporation)

90
Q

What is culture struggle?

A

incorporation, distortion, resistance, negotiation, recuperation

91
Q

True or false… are class struggle and the cultural struggled interlinked?

A

True

92
Q

What are “popular” and “the people” ?

A

alliance of classes and forces which constitute the ‘popular classes’. The culture of the oppressed, the excluded classes.

93
Q

What is “the power bloc”?

A

side w/ the cultural power to decide what belongs and what does not. Alliance of classes and social forces which constitute what is not ‘the people’= culture of the power bloc.

94
Q

What is cultural text?

A

sound ,message, image or narrative that creates meaning for its ‘readers’

95
Q

What is intertextuality?

A

a field of implied chain of associated meanings, usually across genres, institutionsm contexts, history etc.

96
Q

What is critical deconstruction?

A

Analysis of images, narratives, and ideologies that reveals the way meaning is produced and thus debunks the “naturalness” of a cultural text

97
Q

What are semiotics?

A

is the study of signs, signification or meaning-making

98
Q

What is a sign?

A

image, object, or action that stands for something else, including objects and concepts

99
Q

What are signs made up of?

A

they are made up of a signifier (Sr) and signified (Sd)

100
Q

What is a signifier?

A

material or physical form of a sign takes, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted

101
Q

What is signified?

A

object, concept or ideas to which the signifier refers

102
Q

What is signification?

A

the signifier and the signified are “articulated” or linked together through the process of signification

103
Q

What is denotation?

A

(literal meaning) first order signification

- a sign consisting of a signifier and a signified

104
Q

What is connotation?

A

(implied meaning) second order signification

- uses the denotative signifies as its sign and attaches an additional signified

105
Q

What is the triangle (semiotics)

A

interpretant (top), object (right) sign vehicle (left)

106
Q

What is interpretant?

A

possible meanings

107
Q

What is object?

A

something other there

108
Q

What is sign vehicle?

A

signifier

109
Q

What are the three sign modes?

A

iconic, indexical, and symbolic

110
Q

What is iconic?

A

Signifies by: Resemblance

Process: Recognize it

111
Q

What is indexical?

A

Signifies by: Physical or causal connection (event occurred)

Process: Figure it out

112
Q

What is symbolic?

A

Signifies by: Convention

Process: Must learn it

113
Q

What are iconic signifiers?

A

are motivated, whereas symbolic signifiers are not motivated; we can recognize (received) signs or must learn them (perceived)

114
Q

What is re-signification?

A

when new meaning is created from existing signifiers, a cultural producer is engaging

115
Q

What is code?

A

a system of signs, a framework within which signs make sense

116
Q

What is encoding?

A

the practice of assembling signs with intent to create meaning

117
Q

What is decoding?

A

the practice of receiving and consuming meaning

118
Q

What is dominant/preferred meaning decoding?

A

Take producers

119
Q

What is negotiation decoding?

A

take own meanings and mix it

120
Q

What is oppositional decoding?

A

going against it

121
Q

What are the 2 ways the 3 modes of decoding can occur?

A
  1. individually

2. collectively (interpretative community)

122
Q

What is individually?

A

just watch it with yourself

123
Q

What is collectively?

A

within a group

124
Q

What is the multi-perspectival approach?

A

textual– audience reception– use of culture– production/political economy

125
Q

What did The Jeffersons and “All in the family” represent?

A
they were about the working class people lives
focused more on the traditional american dream story
126
Q

What does “Modern Family” represent?

A

features people who live affluent lifestyles without seeming to work for them

127
Q

What were the 2 major classes from Karl Marx?

A
  1. Proletariat

2. Bourgeoisie

128
Q

Who are the Proletariat?

A

the working class, which provides the labor necessary for production within the capitalist economic system

129
Q

Who are the Bourgeoisie?

A

the wealthy class that own the means of production (the land, the resources, factories, machines)

130
Q

According to Karl Marx, popular culture is?

A

is a form of capitalist production

131
Q

KM popular culture is

A

a system of commodities (can be described both as art transformed into commodity and as commodities that sell commodities)

132
Q

KM popular culture provides..

A

a symbol system that teach audiences how to think about the economic world in which they live

133
Q

How does class implies categorical differences?

A

It implies clear categorical difference between groups within a hierarchy

134
Q

How are lower-class roles portrayed in the media?

A

They are shown as criminals, victims, and medical patients

135
Q

How are class concepts shaped?

A

Is a shaper of life experience and as a point of conflict in human and social life is absent from the big screen

136
Q

How have films become more middle class?

A

they are more commercial and more centrally controlled images of class conflict largely disappeared.

137
Q

What are the themes found in film?

A

True Love Conquers All
American Dream
Ethnic Division Trumps Class Unity

138
Q

What are examples of film in “True Love Conquers All” ?

A
Gone with the wind
My Fair lady
Funny Girl
Pretty Woman
Aladdin
Titanic
139
Q

What are examples of film in “American Dream”

A

Funny Girl

Rocky

140
Q

What are examples of film in “Ethnic division trumps class unity”?

A

West Side Story

141
Q

How do working class women view television?

A

They view television through class based lens and how realistic it seems

142
Q

What are the critical responses by journalists to reality tv?

A

They characterized reality tv as low and vulgar

143
Q

How does reality tv genre blur the tv lines?

A

It blurs the lines of class-as-culture.

144
Q

What does reality tv re-presents?

A

It re-presents social relations in predictable ways

145
Q

What do reality programs glorify?

A

they glorify the lower class for entertainment purposes, but also reiterate their “place” in the social sphere by portraying people that belong to these class in a certain light