popular culture notes

CRITICAL POSITIONS ON THE MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE

- contrasting ideas of culture with popular culture and mass culture
- "one of the two or three most complicated words in the english language", raymond williams
- creating a way of living with a certain set of values
- culture emerges from the base and then it almost legitimises
- once you start to understand that you can see that culture can be insight of political conflict
- popular culture can be described as anything thats liked by a large amount of people, inferior kinds of work, culture actually made by the people themselves
- work that seems to be obscure is somehow more important in culture
- work that easy is somehow less important.
- there's an elitism
- looking at inferior or residential culture. you get popular press vs quality press, popular cinema vs art cinema, popular entertainment vs art culture
- we're coded into a certain way of thinking whats correct and whats not with aesthetics
- looking at the dynamics between popular culture and culture. e.g., banksy in a gallery
- prior to urbanisation society had a common culture which on top of the shared common culture there was a tiny elite super culture. this changes with industrialisation.  people are condensed together and yet physically separated, from the bourgeoisie.
- you get a physical distinction with this ghettoisation, it creates a culture separation swell.
- the working class begin to alter their own cultural forms & activities
- you start to see the growth of a working class culture
- matthew arnold, study of perfection, attained through disinterested reading, writing thinking, the pursuit of culture. he wants to define what culture is. 'culture polices 'the raw and uncultivated masses'
- f.R Leavis, mass civilisation & minority culture. still forms a kind of repressed, common sense attitude to popular culture in this country
- 'culture has always been in minority keeping'
- popular culture offers addictive forms of detraction and compensation
- frankfurt school, critical theory:
- fordism (1910 onwards)
- mass popular is culture that is mass produced
- movies and radio no longer need to pretend to be art. the truth that they are just business, is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish that they deliberately produce
- the way in which ideology start to code us to start thinking in one way
- looking at how the x factor, big brother etc is judged & payed for by the upper class for the lower
- Adorno "on popular music"
- because everything is standardised it means if you like one thing you'll like the other thats similar
- it reduces your capacity for independence and free thought
- the amount of engagement you have with that is also limited
- produces passivity through rhythmic and emotional adjustment
- causes you to be counterrevolutionary
- authentic culture, real, european, individual creation, imagination, individuality
- the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain if tradition
- mass production allow us to re-define culture
- in a way we're allowed the possibility of challenging high culture
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task 2

Read the Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. Write a 300 word analysis of one work of Graphic Design.

The Marxist Theory describes the process of mechanical reproduction which results in the detachment of the original. With rapid improvements in technology, original designs are duplicated and viewed in different medias meaning that they're received differently which is what Walter Benjamin describes as 'Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be' (Walter Benjamin, 1936)

I've chosen to look at 

task 3

Post a proposal for your Level 5 essay on to your CTS blogs. This proposal should clearly outline what you are intending to study and include  

Title - Do brands have control over our society?  

I want to look into the relationship of power between our society and brands with reference to changing world of fashion. In the essay I will discuss individuality, advertisements, manipulation, power, control, vulnerabilty and the possibilty of change.    

Kalle Lasn (2000). culture jam. US: Eagle Brook. 
Really interesting book on branding. It'll help with creating a better understanding of the power of brands & will hopefully open my eyes to the change that could potentially happen if we stood up against branding.

Naomi Klein (2010). no logo. london: fourth estate
An insight into mass marketing and the anti-corporate activism.

Wally Olins (2005). on brand. london: thames and Hudson
This book will help me understand how brands are so successful.

Kidd, W, (2002) 'Culture and Identity', Warren Kid
I'm expecting this to aid me with looking at our society and the effect branding has on it.

Foucault, M, (2005) 'Materialism and education'
Really interesting theories that will aid my argument and open points of discussion.

Adbusters. campaigns: http://www.adbusters.org/blogs. 
Really respect what Adbusters stand for and the campaigns they create, such as 'Buy Nothing Day'. There will definitely be some interesting points of consumerism.

task 1

Choose an example of one aspect of contemporary culture that is, in your opinion, panoptic. Write an explanation of this, in approximately 200-300 words

 



I've chosen to discuss speed cameras as an aspect of our culture that works in a panoptic nature to enforce authority. Speed cameras were set up in order to regulate the speed of which you're traveling and to improve general road safety. The reason this has been successful in creating this control derives from the idea that 'visibilty is a trap' (Foucault, 1977)

Speed cameras are placed adjacent to the road on which you're traveling and point into the direction of the car that's approaching. The intention of this is to create 'a society of self-regulating, docile bodies in fear of exposure- of themselves or of their deviant actions.' (Foucault, 1977) In other words, to acheive a form of obedience within society, people must feel that there's a sense of high-ranking power that has a watchful eye on their behavior. Speed cameras do this effectively. When approaching a camera, a driver tends to get 3 visual warnings that a camera is coming up. This means that a driver uses this time to adjust their speed in order to meet the standards of the requested speed limit. Although there is a large percentage of the worlds populations that exceed the speed limit, most of these people will slow down when approaching a camera as it becomes apparent that their action are being observed.

Jeremy Bentham developed the Panopticon in which cells are arranged around a central tower containing guards. Each cell would be exposed to the rest of the building populace ensuring that not only do the prisoners feel a sense of vulnerability but they're completely exposed. It's this exposure that creates a certain insecurity leading people to act in a way in which they think will acceptable in society. As Foucault states, 'Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility thats assures the automatic functioning of power.' (Foucault, 1977)

Personally what I find most interesting about Panopticism is that no-one actually forces this control. By simply having a watchful eye over someone you can control and regulate their actions in a way that creates dominance. People become so aware of how they 'should' act and in a sense lose that autonomy or that freedom. 'He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power,' (Foucault, 1977) touches on the idea that in order for someone to have supremacy, you must allow them of this.

Speed cameras are one of many ways in which disciplinary mechanisms  are applied in our society, in order to achieve the ostensible 'utopia of a perfectly governed city.' (Foucault, 1977)

panopticism notes

- the transaction from physical to mental control

- turning you into a productive person of society

- to conform and control

- PANOPTICON, Jeremy Beniham, 1791.

-designing a building to make people more productive, fro schools, hospitals etc.

-cannot see anyone else, productivity through isolation. constantly visible. power. constantly illuminated.

- power is a relationship. for someone to gain power, there must be someone allowing them to have the control.

-e.g. feminism, women in the past have allowed men to have that hierarchy of power

- CCTV, Facebook, twitter, gym, 5 a day, alcohol units, speed cameras.

-you don't know if there are actually a camera inside.

- self regulation.

-no need to be directed/controlled.

-acting in a way that others would approve of e.g. politicians

- educational institution, teaching people to be a certain way

- turning you into a docile body

TASK
write a 300 word analysis of something panoptic in our world
take 5 quotes from the text.

mass production notes

TECHNOLOGY - REPRODUCTION

- there's an argument that the copy challenges the status of the original &/OR there's a theory that it validates the original
- looking at the idea of the original and the copy
- Walter Benjamin, 'the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction'
- looking at how technology effects traditional art. more of a discussion of humanity and social philosophy
- although copies of art have always occurred, technology allows faster and more accurate copies of art
- access to information got spread
- taking art out of tradition

 aura, associated with painting: tradition, original, creativity, genius, value, mystery, authority

analysis of part XII:
- mechanical reproduction has a large influence on how a painting should be viewed. you lose that direct visual contact
- by taking away the specificity of an audience, you're effecting the social reaction. it becomes less exclusive and this could have an effect on the way someone views the art
- it changes how you interprate it. are you there to enjoy it or criticise it
- the way other people see it is going to effect the way you see it. they end up controlling eachother
- people are trying to cater to the masses but in actual fact they are taking away that exclusiveness of a painting and that personal perception of it therefore decreasing the value of the painting itself
- rather then looking at the social effect producing art for the masses has, it becomes more interesting when a painting becomes exclusive as it then changes it's social reaction
- although paintings began to be publicly exhibited, they weren't produced for the masses to organise themselves but some of the public to simply visit the gallery or salon they were put into
- with art being produced in the masses, it allows people to respond in the same manor to that they would of a film. it's less personal and less direct

Ideology notes

Ideology

- "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it", Marx k
- marxism, a political manifesto, leading to socialism, communism and the twentieth century conflicts between capital and labour
- a philosophical approach to the social sciences, which focusses on the role of society in determining human behaviour.
- capitalism. the society that we live in (west) control if the means of production in private hands, a market where labour power is bought and sold, production of commodities for sale, use of money as means of exchange, competition.
- primitive communism; as seen in cooperative tribal societies.
- salve society; develops when the tribe becomes a city-state. birth of aristocracy.
- feudalism; aristocracy becomes the ruling class. merchants develop into capitalists.
- capitalism; capitalists are the ruling class
- socialism; workers gain class
- communism; classless/stateless society
- Marx argues that society can be broken down into two categories, base & superstructure. you got the forces of production/relations of production & then you have the social institutions, forms of consciousness.
- everything can be traced back to class/gender/race. it supposedly merges from a certain social attitude. art, science, lawyer etc
- "The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general", marx, 1857
- religion could be thought to be the ultimate sort of trap for the worker, like a mental control.it gives people a motivation/hope
- distort, masking, selection of ideas to reinforce power relations through creation of false consciousness
- "religion is the opiate of the masses", marx, 1843
- art as ideology. art was always the rich class as they had to be educated, women were never allowed to be artists (white rich men) wealthy people were the ones buying the art. it's how the higher class thinks. art is used in an ideological way. art being used to make people think in a certain way.
- Althusser, ideology becomes a mechanism by which we live our lives
- it seems to offer reasons for why we are in our situation.
- media creates a false consciousness
- the working class are being fed what the upper class assume they are interested in, meaning that they know what they are fed.
- thus instead of being intensified by what they produce, people are made to identify themselves by what they consume, Williemson, 1978
- Sao Paulo has supposedly banned advertising due to the fact thats its a visual pollution