Summary of the book Pop culture freaks by Kidd. Used in the course Media, Entertainment and Culture of Communication Science on the RU.
Summary of the book Pop culture freaks by Kidd. Used in the course Media, Entertainment and Culture of Communication Science on the RU.
Inhoudsopgave
Hoofdstuk 1 The Matrix is Everywhere........................................................................................................... 2
An introduction to the sociology of popular culture............................................................................................2
Hoofdstuk 2................................................................................................................................................... 5
The revolution will not be available on iTunes: racial perspectives.....................................................................5
Hoofdstuk 3................................................................................................................................................... 8
Movin’ on up: Class perspectives.........................................................................................................................8
Hoofdstuk 4................................................................................................................................................. 10
Men are from Marlboro Country, Women are from Wisteria Lane: Gender perspectives................................10
Hoofdstuk 5................................................................................................................................................. 12
Not that there’s anythign wrong with that: Sexuality perspectives..................................................................12
Hoofdstuk 7................................................................................................................................................. 16
Translating Harry Potter: Global perspectives...................................................................................................16
Hoofdstuk 8................................................................................................................................................. 18
Freaks in the matrix: A conclusion and an invitation.........................................................................................18
,Hoofdstuk 1 The Matrix is Everywhere
An introduction to the sociology of popular culture
Chapter and topic Classical Contemporary Methodological
Perspectives Perspectives Approaches
Chapter 1, Georg Simmel’s “The Theodor Adorno and /
Introduction Stranger” Max Hockheimer’s
analysis of the
culture industry,
along with recent
similar work by
Robert McChesney.
Patricia Hill Collins’s
discussion of
intersectionality
from Black Feminist
Thought.
This book explores how the popular culture we produce and consume creates a sense of
closeness and remoteness for all of us, living in a world in which we are pressured to
conform, in ways that few of us can fully achieve. The very same traits that make us unique
individuals also prevent us from realizing the popular ideals of our time, which we affirm and
produce through the music we dance to, the television shows and films we turn to for
entertainment, the books we read, and even the website we access for diversion of
information.
The word “freak” is a mechanism for undermining the social power of a person at whom it is
targeted. It implies that the recipient had been poorly socialized to be a member of the
community.
Popular culture has a variety of meanings. In Roman times, the people (from which popular
is derived) meant the mass of poor and working people. It excluded a tiny group of ruling
elites, who were associated with high culture (a privileged set of cultural goods like
paintings, classical music, etc.). everyone else had what we now call folk culture – local
music, crafts, oral traditions, etc. Popular culture can be associated with this folk culture.
These cultures are still relevant, but they do not apply to a lot of the culture that is now
produced and consumed. This is attributable in part to the growth of the middle class. This is
both an economic and cultural category. As a cultural category, middle class refers to a set of
lifestyles that are characterized largely by consumption, the purchase of goods on the
market. They don’t have to sow their own dresses, nor do they hire dressmakers; instead,
they purchase mass-produced clothing. This book focuses on the culture associated with this
middle class, which has become so broad as to functionally include all Americans, even those
who are desperately poor or fantastically rich.
, Culture is a shared meaning. Meanings range from our highest beliefs about god and the
sacred to our everyday tastes about food and fashion. Some meanings are relatively fixed
and hard to change, others are constantly being debated and negotiated. Theodor Adorna
and Max Horkheimer referred to the mass media as the culture industry, because it is
capitalism’s mechanism for producing art as a market commodity, and in turn capitalism’s
primary mechanism for the production and distribution of meaning. The culture in this book
is that of the culture industry: commercially produced meanings embedded in expressive
works that include text, audio and video. We are looking at the commercial culture that is
produced in a society driven by middle-class identification, even for those who are very rich
and those who are very poor. Commercial culture separates the production and reception
processes in very clear ways. Reception refers to the ways that audiences receive a cultural
good, such as a television show, and make use of it. It refers to both consumption (how we
access and select a cultural good) and interpretation (how we determine what the cultural
good means and how we act on those meanings).
Wendy Grisworld provides a visual
representation of the relationship
between producer and audience in her
concept of the cultural diamond. Social
world refers to the totality of the
community in which the cultural object
acts. Cultural objects are connected to
the larger social world through both
production and reception. Glee is a
cultural object. It depicts a social world
that centres on a high school in Lima.
But it is meant to represent the social
world of high schools in general. The
interests of the creators and the desires
of the audience probably disrupt the
show’s capacity to offer an accurate
reflection of the social world of
American high schools. Reflection
theory examines the ways that cultre
reflexts the social world. The high
school in Glee is built with elements
from the social world. For the most part
is the high school a reflection of the
creator’s experiences and interests and
of the intended audience’s desire. As
audiences watch the show, they may
internalize the meanings they make
from it. The meaning is made by the audience itself. Cultures provide a tool kit of resources
from which people can construct diverse strategies of action. We draw on past cultural
experiences to construct meaning and make choices in new situations.
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