Week 1/2, Introduction Flashcards
Egg V.S. Jenner
Value in the attention economy
Likes do not represent the true worth of something
Chaos Muppets
Rejection of curated and commodified “viral” content, which Jenner exemplifies
Egg represents older form of virality and intervenes in process of content creation.
Defining Pop Culture: Mass Culture
Entertainment produced by commercial media; reaches large, diverse, and geographically dispersed audiences.
What masses CONSUME.
Defining Pop Culture: Folk Culture
What ‘the people’ make or do for themselves; the culture of ‘the people’.
What the people PRODUCE.
Mass Culture
Produced for an unknown, disparate audience.
Relies on electronic media to convey its message to the largest audience possible.
Interested in securing maximum profit.
Folk Culture
Cultural products and practices that develop over time with particular group.
Passed down from generation to generation to people who know each other.
Technologically simple.
How does mass culture threaten folk culture?
Mass culture can commodify folk culture.
Example: Jazz music used to be about black resistance. Now that it has been commodified has it lost its purpose or reason?
The form that pop culture takes depends on
the society that produces it.
Aspects of Pre-Industrial Society
Prior to invention of machines and tools to produce goods en masse.
Focused on Europe.
Agricultural based society.
Aspects of Industrial Revolution
1750-1850
Invention of mechanization –changing modes of production.
Emerging Middle Class.
Changing ideas about leisure and recreation.
Parochial
Decisions for community are based on the local community.
Before the industrial revolution recreation was tied to the
agricultural calendar.
Fordism
Assembly line production of goods.
Mechanization
A form of social organization that prioritizes discipline, uniformity, and atomization.
Individuals over community.
Society as a machine –efficiency.
Cash Nexus
Money and profit rises in importance.
Shift in priorities from community to money.
Urbanization
Need to develop industrial infrastructure and cities around the factories. Poor planning in development around factories.
Common land taken over for factories.
Working conditions and living conditions are very poor and promote disease.
Working Class
Physical labour, paid daily or weekly wages.
Middle Class
“Clean work”, paid monthly or annual wages.
Eg. business men, shop owners.
Upper Class
No work, inherited money.
Matthew Arnold Culture
Middle Class
Good values
The best that has been thought and said in the world
Matthew Arnold Anarchy
Working Class
Corrosive to good values
Decline in social and cultural authority
Enclosure Acts
The privatization of “common” land that had been under collective control.
Popular Recreation
- Lower class
- Seasonal
- Few rules
- Participation
- Violence/force
- Local groups
- Homemade equipment if any
Rational Recreation
- Middle class
- Regular/scheduled participation
- Rules
- Spectator based
- Refined skill, not force
- Regional/national (can afford travel
- Sophisticated equipment
Rational recreation was about
learning etiquette and following rules. There were “valuable lessons” to be learned about living in an orderly way and adhering to authority.
The middle class wanted to teach the working class how to be better, how did the working class resist this?
The working class resisted the hegemony of the middle class’s recreation by taking their money but appropriating their activities.
Pre-industrial times may seem rosey and nostalgic but
still had restrictions and problems.
Industrialization changed
recreation and politics.
Class describes ____ to ___ __ _____ and shapes _______.
Class describes relationship to mode of production and shapes identity.
