Globalisation And Popular Culture

Question 1

Who created the term ‘global village’?

Answer 1

McLuhan

Question 2

What did McLuhan say about globalisation?

Answer 2

We now have a ‘global village’ in which rapid technology change has lead to space and time barriers in human communication to collapse. People can now communicate instantaneously on a global scale.

Question 3

What is popular culture?

Answer 3

Popular culture is everyday culture - simple, undemanding, easy-to-understand entertainment and is sometimes called mass culture and sometimes low culture. It is largely linked to passive and unchallenging number of people possible. Highly commercialised.

Question 4

What is high culture?

Answer 4

High culture is seen as something ‘special’ to be treated with respect and reverence, involving things of lasting value and part of a heritage which is worth preserving - for example, ballet, opera and fine art. Aimed at mainly upper-class and professional middle-class audiences with what might be viewed as ‘good taste’. ‘Serious news’ programmes and documentaries. Different language films like Roma.

Question 5

What is the changing distinction between high culture and popular culture?

Answer 5

Postmodernists, particularly, argue that the distinction between high and popular culture is weakening because the global reach of contemporary media, the mass production of goods on a world scale, and easier international transportation make a huge range of media and cultural products available to everyone.

Question 6

What do these changes allow people to do?

Answer 6

These changes allow original music and art and other cultural products to be consumed by the mass of people in their own home without visiting specialised institutions like theatres or art galleries. High culture is no longer the preserve of cultural elites. People can pick ‘n’ mix from either popular or high culture.

Question 7

Who says that parts of high culture have now become a part of popular culture and vice versa?

Answer 7

Strinati (1995).

Question 8

Who points out that forms of high culture are now often used to produce products for the mass popular culture market?

Answer 8

Giddings (2010). Video games, for example - which are considered to be part of popular culture - often bring together art, architecture, classical music, actors and writers which separately might be classified as ‘high culture’.

Question 9

What has technology done for people?

Answer 9

Technology has made it possible for mass audiences to see and study high-culture products. People can build their own private high culture virtual museums and art galleries. Copies are available to everyone. High culture images like the Mona Lisa are now reproduced on everything from socks and T-shirts to chocolates and mugs, doormats, tablemats, jigsaws and posters. Classical music is used as a marketing tune by advertisers, and literature is turned into TV series and major mass movies.

Question 10

Evaluation of popular/mass culture

Answer 10

• often attacked for diverting people away from more useful activities, for driving down cultural standards
• Marxists see mass culture as simply-mass produced manufactured products imposed on the masses by global media businesses for financial profit. It maintains the ideological hegemony and the power of the dominant social class in society. Consumers are lulled into an uncritical, undemanding passivity and mindless social conformity, making them less likely to challenge the the dominant ideas, groups and interests in society.
• Marcuse (2004) suggested the consumption of media-generated mass culture undermined people’s ability to think critically about the world. Saw this as a form of social repression - locking people into the present system, promoting conformity and a passive acceptance of the way things are, and undermining the potential for revolutionary action to change society.

Question 11

Evaluation of criticisms

Answer 11

• Strinati (1995) rejects Marcuse’s views, and doesn’t accept the suggestion that there is a single mass culture and mass audience, which people passively and uncritically consume, and points to diversity and choice within popular culture, which people select from and critically respond to.
• Livingstone (1988) found that the writers and producers of TV soap operas saw them as educating and informing the public about important or controversial issues, presenting a range of political opinions, generating public controversies and discussion, and giving insights into the sometimes tough and grim lives of others.

Question 12

What did Flew say?

Answer 12

Flew said that the evolution of the new media has played an important role in the development of global popular culture. Global culture primarily American in origin. Globalisation has undermined national and local cultured, making different cultures more and more alike. Cultural homogenisation.

Question 13

What did Sklair say?

Answer 13

The media blue differences between entertainment, information, and promotion of products. It then sells across the world ideas, values, and products associated with what is presented as an idealised Western lifestyle.

Question 14

What did Ritzer say?

Answer 14

Companies and brands now operate on a global scale promoting a global culture along with the consumerist lifestyle associated with it. Companies use the transnational media to promote products on a global scale, making their logos known to everyone.

Question 15

What is cultural imperialisation?

Answer 15

Cultural imperialisation is the idea that western culture is taking over and damaging local culture.

Question 16

What is media imperialism?

Answer 16

Media imperialism is the idea that western media is becoming popular around the world, and it is becoming more important than local media. So media imperialism is a cause of cultural imperialism.

Question 17

What are the criticisms of global media?

Answer 17

Fenton argues that most media conglomerates are based in the US, and dominate media communications. He refers to this as cocacolonisation. The media led global culture ideology of consumerism has led to Western media products and culture values being forced on non-Western cultures.

Question 18

What is the pluralist view of there being a mass culture?

Answer 18

Pluralists argue that there is no such thing as popular or mass culture. The internet, cable, satellite and digital television, and the global reach of modern media technology all offer a huge range of media products.

Question 19

What do the Pluralists Compaine (2005) and Tomlinson (1999) say about mass culture?

Answer 19

Compaine (2005) argues that global competition is expanding sources of information and entertainment, rather than restricting them or dumbing them down. Tomlinson (1999) argues that globalisation does not involve direct cultural imposition from the Western world, but that there is a hybridisation or mixing of cultures.

Question 20

How is there more, not less, cultural diversity in the world according to pluralists?

Answer 20

People pick ‘n’ mix and draw on both Western global cultures and their own local cultures. Increased choice promotes different cultural styles. For example, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, like other shows, is ‘glocalised’ - merging the global and the local - as they are adapted to suit the tastes of local culture, as was shown in the film Slumdog Millionaire. This means there is more, not less, cultural diversity in the world.

Question 21

What part do consumers play in creating this hybridisation?

Answer 21

Consumers create and distribute their own media products, and enables people to generate their own popular culture.

Even if media conglomerates are spreading Western ideas, values and culture, this does not mean that all cultures will react in the same way or necessarily adopt the Western culture and consumer lifestyles the global media promote.

Consumers and audiences now have more choices and knowledge available to them than ever before in history. Makes it even more difficult for any one set of ideas or culture to dominate in the world, leading to a promotion of democracy, growing cultural diversity through hybridisation, and the blossoming of ideas that were never before possible.

Question 22

What is the postmodern view of the media?

Answer 22

More similar to the pluralist view than the Marxist view. They regard diversity of the global media as offering the world’s population more choices, bringing them more opportunities to form their identities unconstrained by the limited horizons of local cultures.

Question 23

What did Baudillard (1988, 2001) argue?

Answer 23

Baudillard (1988, 2001) argues that we now live in a media - saturated society, in which media images dominate and distort the way we see the world.

TV news presents a sanitised version of war. Baudillard calls this distorted view of the world hyperreality, in which appearances are everything, with the media presenting what he calls simulacra - artificial make-believe images or reproductions/copies of real events which bear little or no relationship to the real world and which are viewed simultaneously across the globe.

Question 24

What did Garrod say about this hyperreality?

Answer 24

The media no longer reflect reality but actively create it. Garrod (2004) suggests that reality TV shows like I’m a Celebrity… Get me out of here, Wifeswap, FearFactor and Big Brother blur the distinction between reality and hyperreality, leaving audiences confused about what is real and what is media created.

Question 25

What did Strinati (1995) say about this hyperreality?

Answer 25

Strinati (1995) emphasises the importance and power of the media in shaping consumer choices. The media create desires and pressures to consume and many of us actually define our identities - how we see and define ourselves and how we want others to see us - in terms of media imagery.

Question 26

What does Baudillard suggest about our own daily lives?

Answer 26

Baudillard suggests we identify more with media images than we do with our own daily experiences. We are more likely to get involved with the lives of soap characters than we are to get involved with our next door neighbours and the communities we actually live in.

Question 27

Evaluation of postmodernism

Answer 27

• Assumes that people approach the media without any prior experiences of their own, and that they do not discuss, interpret, ignore or reject media imagery and messages. Media images and representations of gender, age, ethnicity, disability and so on simply present and reinforce stereotypes.
• Many people simply do not have access to new media, and cannot afford to make free choices between media-promoted lifestyles and identities, and buy the consumer goods associated with them.
• Marxists emphasise that the choice alleged by postmodernists is a myth, as transnational media conglomerates control the major media and formed of communication and influence.
• The media are only one element in shaping our lives. For many of us, our gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, social class, whether we are able-bodied or disabled, our experiences of school, college, work, friends and family, our political or religious beliefs all are likely to influence how we select, interpret and respond to the media.
• Popular culture is a tool to brainwash the proletariat because they distract them and they form their own identity. Celebrities with stories of success giving the illusion of meritocracy.
• Popular culture is so diverse that capitalism is no longer a factor. People watch what they want.
• Popular culture does not exist because everyone has it, it is just culture. So ingrained in everyone’s brain.