Mass culture Flashcards
1
Q
Chatterji
A
- National identity is dependent on the existence of a public sphere
- Other forms of mass culture, especially TV and cinema, were more effective than radio at contributing to the enrichment of this public sphere.
2
Q
Benedict Anderson; Imagined Communities
A
- Nationalism is an identity
- A nation is ‘an imagined political community’. Imagined because members do not know most of their fellow members.
- Emphasises the central role of the image of a nation in creating a national reality.
3
Q
Strange; ‘leisure’
A
- The inter-war period saw the expansion of a commercial leisure market that catered for the increased living standards, shortening work hours and falling birth rates.
- Gender remained a contested concept in terms of class, gender, politics and time. E.g. married women often had ‘household budget’ with little to spend on themselves.
- Concept of leisure emerged in the post-industrial period – e.g women’s pursuits of embroidery, music, painting, dinner parties.
- When leisure became apparent for the working classes; music hall, day trips to the seaside, pub and football clubs.
4
Q
LeMahieu
A
- Easy style employed by Daily Mirror and Daily Express made contemporary political debates more accessible than in newspapers like the Times, where long, heavy prose acted as a barrier to understanding.
- Does not wholly agree with the idea of popular sovereignty; producers were not simply ‘passive servants of the public’. (own; market also influenced by economics).
- In the inter-war period, the press was ‘a place where the self-esteem of women might be enhanced’.
- Popular press mirrored ideals of women as being ‘mother, mannequin and housekeeper’. (own; could go further than this – women’s pages were not only ‘non-revolutionary’, but actually helped to reinforce existing gender stereotypes).
- Luxurious cinemas ‘flattered a public concerned with the keeping up appearances’.
5
Q
McKibbin; Classes and Cultures
A
- Daily Mirror and Express more accessible
* Much social inequality was made acceptable through the glamourizing effects of film.
6
Q
Carey; the intellectuals and the masses
A
- The Daily Mail’s description as ‘the busy man’s paper’ was a pointed challenge at the leisured elite who had time to pursue scholarly articles.
- Advertisers corrupted editorial freedom (BUT – arguably it was the very commercial nature of the paper itself that motivated journalists to find most relevant topics??)
7
Q
Rose; the intellectual life of the British Working Class
A
- Aims to discover common readers’ perceptions. History of audiences
- Argues that ‘low-brow’ paperbacks did not have the same cultural (and cross-class) influence as traditionals e.g. the Illiad.
- Links between politics and the national press; e.g. the Daily News started discussing the issues of farm workers, who subsequently saw themselves as part of a wider struggle.
- Few proletarians managed to find foothold in London’s Bohemia. Bohemians separated by class. Leisurely, artistic way of life not for the poor.
- Idea that class is an economic and cultural phenomenon – and it is harder to be upwardly mobile in terms of culture! (own: in terms of who’s acceptance, though??)
8
Q
Hilliard; To Exercise our talents; The Democratization of Writing in Britain
A
- Pragmatic, commercial attitudes held sway in (mainly lower-middle-class) Writers’ Circles which copied established middlebrow styles.
- Changes in post-war publishing (e.g. growth of Penguin Books, demise of Strand meant a blurring of the lines between ‘highbrow’ and ‘populist’, ‘serious’ and ‘entertaining’ writing.
- 1960s offered more creative opportunities. Lessening of the singular prestige of literary publication.
- Impact of affluence on new writers in the late 50s and early 60s.
9
Q
Hampton; Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850-1950
A
- Over the twentieth century the press’s role changed from educator of the people to the voice/representer of the people to entertainer of the people.
- Focuses on press, cartoons, fictions, pamphlets.
- The idea of compulsory education – culminating in the Education Reform Bill of 1870 – became wedded to a larger concept of transmitting ‘beliefs and virtue from betters to inferiors’. Educating the popular classes. Early role of the press was to discuss political issues in a non political context. A myth that this was the golden age of journalism – focus on truth rather than mere profit.
- Press moved towards presenting news, rather than political ideas, towards the end of the 19C. New journalism replaced high journalism.
- What is the press? Accurate reflection of readers expectations, sinister manipulative force??
10
Q
Collini
A
- Radio initially gave prominence to ‘high-end pillow talk’
- What is an ‘intellectual’? socio-professional category within a classification of occupation. Exercise cultural authority. Better understanding than most people.
11
Q
Mandler; ‘Two Cultures – One – or Many?
A
- Radio later experienced diversification, becoming something like an ‘end-of-the-pier-show at a working-class seaside resort
- Swinging London not representative – inherently urban and youth driven. ‘whilst the hip parts of London swung, the rest of the British Isles didn’t necessarily swing with them’.
- Britain contained worst TV addicts in the world during the 1970s.
- Stereotypical working-class family tied to the TV.
12
Q
Beers
A
• Radio faced the issue of language for the Welsh, religion for the Northern Irish (Northern Irish Catholics resented Anglicanised broadcasts), differing [class] interests for industrial areas
13
Q
Nott; Music for the People
A
- Charts the rise of the ‘mechanised’ popular music industry.
- By making possible the dance culture of the inter-war years, popular music significantly increased the social and expressive possibilities of working-class life.
14
Q
Black; Whose Finger on the button?
A
- Television has been a key site, not just a mirror, of political change
- It is a key medium to display cultural content.
15
Q
Friedman; Fires were started; British Cinema and Thatcherism
A
- Many different types of films made throughout the 1980s.
- E.g. Leeds Animation Workshop, a grass-roots feminist documentary group based in social protest against Thatcher’s domestic and military policies. Also films with ethno-racial/homosexual/social themes. Often engage with political discussion. E.g. Terence Davivies’ Distant Voices, Still Lives undercuts Thatcher’s attack on the ‘permissive society’ of the 1960s.
- Films were popular because they spoke to people/played out relevant things about their lives e.g. Susan Barber: demonstrates how Stephen Frears’ major successes of the 1980s (e.g. ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’) spoke to social and economic realities of lower-class London existence.
