Popular Culture and Theories

Question 1

True or False: In cultural studies the concept of culture has no meaning.

Answer 1

False (the concept of culture has a range of meanings which includes both high art and everyday life)

Question 2

advocate an interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture

Answer 2

Cultural studies

Question 3

True or False: While cultural studies is eclectic in its use of theory, using both structuralist and more flexible approaches, it critics those that stress the overlapping, hybrid nature of cultures, seeing cultures as networks rather patchworks.

Answer 3

False (it doesn’t critic, it advocates)

Question 4

is a combination of two German ideas: Masse and Kultur

Answer 4

Mass Culture

Question 5

the non-aristocratic, uneducated portion of society, especially the people who today might be described as lower-middle class, working class, and poor

Answer 5

Mass

Question 6

translates as high culture

Answer 6

Kultur

Question 7

it refers not only to the art, music, literature, and other symbolic products that were (and are) preferred by well-educated elite of the society but also to the styles of thoughts and feelings of those who choose these products - those who are “cultured”

Answer 7

Kultur

Question 8

refers to the symbolic products used by the “uncultured” majority

Answer 8

Mass Culture

Question 9

True or False: The negative judgement on mass culture can be counteracted by the use of a more negative term like popular culture.

Answer 9

False (positive term)

Question 10

refers to popular culture which is produced by the industrial techniques of mass production and marketed for profit to a mass public of consumers

Answer 10

Mass Culture

Question 11

It is a commercial culture in which mass produced for a mass market.

Answer 11

Mass Culture

Question 12

It’s growth means there is less room for any culture which cannot make money, and which cannot be mass produced for a mass market.

Answer 12

Mass Culture

Question 13

refers to the disruptive consequences of industrialization and urbanization

Answer 13

Mass Culture and Mass Society

Question 14

True or False: In mass culture and mass society, the rise of large-scale and mechanized industrial production, and the growth of massive and densely populated cities, are argued to have destabilized and then eroded the societies and values which previously held together.

Answer 14

True

Question 15

create atomization

Answer 15

Industrialization and urbanization

Question 16

consists of people who can only relate to each other like atoms in a physical or chemical compound

Answer 16

Mass society

Question 17

consists of atomized people, people who lack any meaningful or morally coherent relationships with each other

Answer 17

Mass society

Question 18

True or False: In a mass society, the individual is left more and more to his or her own devices, has fewer and fewer communities or institutions in which to find identity or values by which to live, and has less and less idea of the morally appropriate ways to live. … if people do not have a secure sense of moral value, then a spurious and ineffectual order will emerge instead, and people will turn to surrogate and fake moralities.

Answer 18

True

Question 19

Authentic culture

Answer 19

Authentic culture

Question 20

In popular culture originates from the people, who are the people being referred?

Answer 20

the masses

Question 21

True or False: In popular culture originates from the people, raw materials themselves are commercially provided by the people.

Answer 21

True

Question 22

True or False: In popular culture originates from the people, raw materials are not commercial items in turn confirming ‘people for people’ approach.

Answer 22

False (raw materials are always commercial items in turn, rebutting ‘people for people’ approach)

Question 23

True or False: In Popular Culture Originates from the People, in an example, ‘dance’ the raw material is essentially individualistic, it is produced by many.

Answer 23

False (it is essentially not individualistic)

Question 24

cultural hegemony

Answer 24

Antonio Gramsci

Question 25

dominant groups in society seek to win the consent of subordinate groups in society

Answer 25

Cultural Hegemony

Question 26

Resistance and incorporation

Answer 26

Popular Culture Struggles between Subordinate and Dominant Group

Question 27

Subordinate/dominant/negotiated

Answer 27

Popular Culture Struggles between Subordinate and Dominant Group

Question 28

used by Antonio Gramsci to refer to a condition or process in which a dominant class (in alliance with other classes or class fractions) does not merely rule a society but leads it through the exercise of 'intellectual and moral leadership'

Answer 28

Hegemony

Question 29

involves a specific kind of consensus (general agreement): a social group seeks to present its own particular interests as the general interests of the society as a whole

Answer 29

Hegemony

Question 30

the concept is used to suggest a society in which, despite oppression and exploitation, there is a high degree of consensus, a large measure of social stability

Answer 30

Hegemony

Question 31

the concept used to suggest a society in which subordinate groups and classes appear to actively support and subscribe to values, ideals, objectives, cultural and political meanings, which bind them to, and 'incorporate' them into, the prevailing structures of power

Answer 31

Hegemony

Question 32

True or False: Although hegemony implies a soceity with a high degree of consensus, it should not be understood to refer to a society in which all conflict has been removed.

Answer 32

True

Question 33

the concept is meant to suggest a society in which conflict is contained and chenneled into ideologically safe harbors

Answer 33

Hegemony

Question 34

is maintained (and must be continually maintained: it is an ongoing process) by dominant groups and classes 'negotiating' with and making concessions to subordinate groups and classes

Answer 34

Hegemony

Question 35

For the student of popular culture perhaps the most important consequences of the new sensibility that 'the distinction between "high" and "low" culture seems less and less meaningful'.

Answer 35

Postmodernism

Question 36

Does not recognize the distinction between high and popular culture.

Answer 36

Postmodernism

Question 37

can be said to have been at least partly born out of a generational refusal of the categorical certainties of high modernism

Answer 37

Postmodernism

Question 38

True or False: The insistence on an absolute distinction between high and popular culture came to be regarded as the 'in-hip' assumption of an older generation.

Answer 38

False ('un-hip')

Question 39

One sign of this collapse was the merging of pop art and pop music.

Answer 39

Postmodernism

Question 40

A classical approach to popular culture insist that to understand and explain a text or practice it must always be situated in its historical moment of production, analyzed in terms of the historical conditions that produced it.

Answer 40

Marxism

Question 41

argues that each significant period in history is constructed around a particular 'mode of production': that is, the way in which a society is organized (i.e. slave, feaudal, capitalist) to produce the necessaries of life - food, shelter, etc.

Answer 41

Karl Marx

Question 42

True or False: In Marxism, first mode of production produces specific ways of obtaining the necessaries of life.

Answer 42

True

Question 43

True or False: In Marxism, the second mode of production produces specific soocial relationships between workers and those who control the mode of production.

Answer 43

True

Question 44

True or False: In Marxism, the third mode of production produces specific social institutions (including cultural ones).

Answer 44

True

Question 45

True or False: In Marxism, at the heart of the analysis is the claim that how a society produces its means of existence (its particular 'mode of production') ultimately determines the political social and cultural shape of that society and its possible future development.

Answer 45

True

Question 46

As Marx explains, it conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general.

Answer 46

The mode of production of material life

Question 47

claim that, 'The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force in society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force'.

Answer 47

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Question 48

the dominant class, on the basis of its ownership of and control over the means of material production, is virtually guaranteed to have control over the means of intellectual production

Answer 48

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Question 49

refer to the raw materials, the tools, the technology, the workers and their skills

Answer 49

forces of production by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Question 50

refer to the class relations of those engaged in production

Answer 50

relations of production by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Question 51

True or False: In Karl Marx and Frederick Engel's claim, each mode of production, besides being different, say, in terms of its basis is agrarian or industrial production, is also different in that it produces particular relations of production: slave mode, feudal mode, and capitalist mode.

Answer 51

True

Question 52

produces lord/peasant relations

Answer 52

feudal mode

Question 53

produces master/slave relations

Answer 53

slave mode

Question 54

produces bourgeois/proletariat relations

Answer 54

capitalist mode

Question 55

True or False: By Karl Marx and Frederick Engels claim in terms of the relations of production, it is in this sense that one's class position is determined by one's relationship to the mode of production.

Answer 55

True

Question 56

makes another distinction that has proved essential to the development of structuralism

Answer 56

Ferdinand de Saussure

Question 57

This is the division of language into langue and parole.

Answer 57

Structuralism

Question 58

refers to the system of language, the rules and conventions that organize it

Answer 58

Langue

Question 59

Roland Barthes points out, 'it is essentially a collective contract which one must accept in its entirely if one wishies to communicate'.

Answer 59

language as a social institution

Question 60

refers to the individual utterance, the individual use of language

Answer 60

Parole

Question 61

True or False: Sassure in Structuralism compares language to the game of football.

Answer 61

False (game of chess)

Question 62

Here we can distinguish between the rules of the game and an actual game of chess.

Answer 62

comparison of language to the game of chess

Question 63

True or False: In structuralism, in comparison of language to the game of chess, without the body of rules there can be actual game.

Answer 63

False (without the body of rules there could be no actual game, but it is only in an actual game that these rules are made manifest)

Question 64

True or False: In structuralism, there is langue and parole, but no structure and performance.

Answer 64

False (there is langue and parole, structure and performance)

Question 65

True or False: In structuralism, it is the homogeneity of the structure that makes the heterogeneity of the performance possible.

Answer 65

True

Question 66

takes two basic ideas from Saussure's work

Answer 66

Structuralism

Question 67

a concern with the underlying relations of texts and practices, the 'grammar' that makes meaning possible

Answer 67

First basic idea from Saussure's work in structuralism

Question 68

the view that meaning is always the result of the interplay of relationsgips of selection and combination made possible by the underlying structure

Answer 68

Second basic idea from Saussure's work in structuralism

Question 69

True or False: Based on the basic ideas from Saussure's work, texts and practices are studies as analogous to language.

Answer 69

True

Question 70

outlines a semiological model for reading popular culture

Answer 70

Roland Barthes

Question 71

He takes Saussure's schema of signifier/signified = sign and adds to it a second level of signification.

Answer 71

Roland Barthes

Question 72

the signifier 'dog' produces the signified 'dog': a four-legged canine creature

Answer 72

Saussure's schema

Question 73

argues that Saussure's schema of the signifier 'dog' indicates only primary signification

Answer 73

True

Question 74

He claims that it is at the level of secondary signification or connotation that myth is produced for consumption.

Answer 74

Roland Barthes

Question 75

True or False: In Roland Barthes' claim of level of secondary signification or myth, he means ideology is understood as a body of ideas only, which by actively promoting the values and interests of dominant groups in society, defend the prevailing structures of power.

Answer 75

False (he means ideology is understood as a body of ideas and practices)

Question 76

reject the idea of an underlying structure upon which meaning can rest secure and guaranteed

Answer 76

Post-structuralists

Question 77

is always in the process in post-structuralism

Answer 77

Meaning

Question 78

is only ever a momentary stop in a continuing flow of interpretations following interpretations in post-structuralism

Answer 78

Meaning

Question 79

posited language as consisting of the relationship between the signifier, signified and the sign

Answer 79

Saussure

Question 80

suggest that the situatuon is more complex than this: signifiers do not produce signifieds, they produce more signifiers.

Answer 80

theorists of post- structuralism

Question 81

is a very unstable thing in post-structuralism

Answer 81

Meaning

Question 82

insists that a text is 'a multi dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash in post-structuralism

Answer 82

Barthes

Question 83

True or False: In post-structuralism, the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture.

Answer 83

True

Question 84

True or False: In post-structuralism, only a listener can bring a temporary unity to a text.

Answer 84

False (reader)

Question 85

An image containing references to pop music culrure might be seen by a young audience as an index of freedom and heterogeneity, while to an older audience it might signal manipulation and homogeneity is an example of?

Answer 85

Post-structuralism

Question 86

True or False: In the example of post-structuralism, codes are not mobilized and it does not largely depend on the triple context of the location of the text, the historical moment and the cultural formation of the reader.

Answer 86

False (codes are mobilized and largely depend on the triple context of the location of the text)

Question 87

is always more than a body of academic texts and practices

Answer 87

Feminism

Question 88

a political movement concerned with women's oppression and the ways and means to empower women - as 'finding a voice'.

Answer 88

Feminism

Question 89

has brought into being many things, but one that some feminists have already disowned is men's studies

Answer 89

Feminism

Question 90

focus is on what we calls dominant masculinity (the myth of heterosexual masculinity as something essential and self-evident which is tought, masterful, self-possessed, knowing, always in control, etx.

Answer 90

Anthony Easthope

Question 91

He begins from the proposition that masculinity is a cultural construct; that is, it is not 'natural', 'normal' or 'universal'.

Answer 91

Anthony Easthope

Question 92

He argues that dominant masculinity operates as a gender norm, and that it is against this norm that the many other different types of 'lived masculinities' (including gay masculinities) are invited to measure themselves.

Answer 92

Anthony Easthope

Question 93

as Paul Burston and Colin Richardson explain, 'provides a discpline for exploring the relationships between lesbians, gay men and the culture which surrounds and (for the large part) continues to seek to exclude us'

Answer 93

Queer theory

Question 94

seeks to locate Queerness in places that had previously been thought of as strictly for the straights

Answer 94

Queer Theory

Question 95

is no more "about" lesbians and gay men than women's studies is "about" women

Answer 95

Queer Theory

Question 96

is to attack ... the very "naturalness" of gender and, by extension, the fictions supporting compulsory heterosexuality

Answer 96

part of the project of Queer