Lecture 2

Question 1

Different approaches to popular culture?

Answer 1

1. ) as part of our political economy, an industry.
2. ) as part of our social history.
3. ) as art/representations of society.
4. ) as producers and negotiators of cultural meaning and identity.
5. ) as cultural products.

Question 2

individual

Answer 2

self-determined, self-aware, outside the influence of social and psychological forces.

Question 3

subject

Answer 3

determined and controlled by social and psychological forces without full self-awareness.

Question 4

agent

Answer 4

social roles determined and controlled by social forces to some degree but can act creatively within those roles.

Question 5

Marxism

Answer 5

theory of history, economics, and politics initially developed by Marx and Frederick Engels.

Question 6

Base

Answer 6

comprised of means and productions and class relations.

Question 7

Superstructure

Answer 7

comprised of social institutions, cultural practices, and ideological thought.

Question 8

How do the base and superstructure interact?

Answer 8

economic base of society determines its cultural superstructure, which in turn maintains and sometimes changes the base.

Question 9

Class conflict

Answer 9

tension between economic groups organized around division of labour.

Question 10

Historical materialism

Answer 10

theory of social change which assumes history develops through a dialectical clash of opposing economic forces related primarily to changes in means of production.

Question 11

Historical materialism assumes a _________ view of history. Ex: _____

Answer 11

deterministic.

• tribal –> slave –> feudal –> capitalist –> socialist –> communist society –> unorganized society and division of labour.

Question 12

Dialectical materialism

Answer 12

conflict of opposing forces and their resolution caused by material needs.

Question 13

Bourgeoisie

Answer 13

economically powerful class of people.

Question 14

The Thesis

Answer 14

represents the currently accepted rules and morals of the ruling class (status quo).

Question 15

Antithesis

Answer 15

represents the “opposition” by the working class.

Question 16

Synthesis

Answer 16

represents the “new reality” after these ideas to ideas clash.

Question 17

Proletariat

Answer 17

working class of people.

Question 18

Commodity fetishism

Answer 18

object divorced from labour that produced it and placed within system of exchange.

Question 19

Commodity

Answer 19

a product, made by human hands, that gains a certain value through its social relationships.

Question 20

Where does value reside from based on commodity fetishism

Answer 20

exchange value –> value resides in relations between it and other objects independent of use or labour.

Question 21

Hegemony

Answer 21

process by which dominant ideology is accepted as natural by those it governs.

• use of consent rather than force.
• pop culture operates this way.

Question 22

Interpellation

Answer 22

The way that cultural products address their consumers and recruit them into a particular ideological position.

• Althusser

Question 23

Repressive state apparatuses

Answer 23

When necessary to protect capitalist interests, the state uses force to repress the working class via the police, courts and army.

Question 24

Ideological state apparatuses

Answer 24

Controls peoples ideas, values and belief.

ex: family, school, church, media.

Question 25

Freud

Answer 25

• founder of psychoanalysis

Question 26

The unconscious mind

Answer 26

• things we’re unaware of and cannot become are of.
• interpretations of cultural texts that dig beneath the surface to reveal hidden, symbolic meaning are based on this model.

Question 27

Conscious mind

Answer 27

small amount of mental acitivty we know about.

Question 28

subconscious mind

Answer 28

things we could be aware of it we wanted or tried.

Question 29

id

Answer 29

composed of our instinctual drives.

Question 30

superego

Answer 30

works to suppress the urges of the id and tries to make the ego behave morally.

Question 31

ego

Answer 31

the repression of our instincts & the knowledge of social norms.

Question 32

The uncanny

Answer 32

offers an analysis of a specific psychological state and the ways in which cultural objects can affect us.

• a sense of intense creepiness & familiarity.

Question 33

repression

Answer 33

when your conscious mind suppresses urges, refusing to give them any outlet at all.

Question 34

Lacan’s mirror stage

Answer 34

• formation of the function of “I”.
• infant sees themselves in a mirror and misrecognizes the image as their ideal self.
• bases of all future identifications.