Popular Culture Debates
Popular culture integrates communication studies and culture to be defined as the combination of ideas, images, attitudes and other phenomena within the conventional line of a given culture. This culture is greatly influenced by mass media and affects our everyday lives. Music, art, literature, film, fashion, dance, literature, radio and television are the main components of popular culture. By analyzing the audiences of popular culture, the ideologies which explain popular culture, and the theoretical assumptions of popular culture, this paper is aimed at explaining popular culture debates in cultural studies and expanding on this paper opinion that popular culture is the way through which ideas of the dominant class are spread to the rest of the society and a way of allowing the production of social norms. Thus, popular culture is whatever that is broadly popular, has a mass commercial culture and is created by the people in the community as a whole.
Popular culture audiences
The audience of popular culture mainly constitutes of television and radio audience as these are the common mediums for transmitting popular culture. Popular culture audiences consume the same information but understand it differently since the audience is diverse and spread over wide geographical areas (Turner 111). Popular culture can be analyzed and classified into different groups according to the manner of their consumption, time of consumption and the reasons for consumption. The audience also ranges from children to the youth and the elderly people in a society.
This audience consumes popular culture for different reasons. Some audience can use popular culture as a tool of information whereas others use it to entertain themselves through video games and other forms of entertainment (Turner 115). Popular culture audience can also vary according to their viewing choices and how they express these views. The time of consumption also differs as some prefer daytime whereas others consume popular culture at night. Responses to programming types are also another aspect which is used to classify popular culture audience (Turner 121).
In popular culture, a singular intrinsic interpretation of a program does not exist (Turner 121). Thus, there are as many interpretations as there are consumers of popular culture. It has changed from the broadcasting system to the narrowcasting system where different forms of popular culture are narrowly aimed to a specific audience (Turner 123).
Ideology
To date, ideology still remains one of the famous and important conceptual categories in cultural studies and has since been employed in popular culture. Althusser, Gramsci and Marx all formulated ideologies which were aimed at explaining the idea of popular culture (Turner 168). Althusser was the first to formulate a theory ahead of Gramsci in resolving the split in culture.
Stuart Hall came up with an idea that media was not the creator of popular culture but acted as a reinforcement. A reflective and expressive consensus of the media in popular culture is upheld as the values and norms of culture are integrated into popular culture by media (Turner 173). A media research revealed the cultural functions of ideological processes. First, popular culture focuses on the elaboration of ideologies in languages. Secondly, popular culture articulates ideologies into social formations which are the territories of cultural productions (Turner 171).
Gramsci’s theory of hegemony highlights that the dominance of popular culture formations is secured by cultural leadership and not ideological compulsion. Dominant ideologies, as noted by Bennett in his work ‘Popular Culture and Social Relations’, may have differed in cultural and structural traditions. Gramsci further detailed popular culture to be both ‘dominated and oppositional, and determined and spontaneous’ (Turner 179).
Popular culture which is composed of film, magazines and radio impresses the same stamp in everything. This means that under monopoly capitalism, popular culture is identical to everyone in the society (Rivkin & Ryan 1243). This notion of popular culture drives its audience to believe everything about it and wins their obedience in the social hierarchy. Popular culture occupies the minds of its audience all through.
Popular culture is common with capitalism. It contains a set of social relations that require meanings and frameworks to hold the set of social relations in place (Rivkin& Ryan 1270). The meanings do not only constitute social experience meanings but also self-meanings. Self-meanings are constructs of self social identities which enable one to realize sense in their social relations. Ideology, as described in popular culture is not a static set of ideas through which the world is viewed (Rivkin& Ryan 1269). Rather, it is a dynamic social practice that is constantly reproducing and is in process.
Theoretical assumptions
According to Marxism, the media and popular culture are important in establishing central dominance ideas and the ways in which consumers of popular culture look at the world (Rivkin& Ryan 1277). These dominant ideas are subject to contention in popular culture; central ideas are seen to be powerful when they are accepted as common sense. Hegemony explained this idea that force and consent in popular culture rest on a particular set of beliefs and ideas which in the wider view have a broader appeal (Barker 18).
Marx expressed the idea in his material analysis of change by claiming that the ideas of the ruling class are in every age of popular culture (Barker 12). For example, Marx meant to say that a class which is dominant intellectually is the same class which enjoys dominance of materials force in society. Marxism also created a belief that media content integrates itself into popular culture and takes over the existing political and economic elites thus reflecting their interests.
This approach by Marx further detailed popular culture to be based on strong liberal democracies. Gramsci further strengthened this theory by adding some content to it concerning popular culture. He claimed that the effectiveness of popular culture can be judged by its ability to connect with the people’s common sense (Barker 13). The contestation which was described in this theory is possible through linguistic codes. Media content is stressed in this popular culture theory approach.
The Frankfurt School also came up with a critical theory which differed slightly from the view of Marxism (Barker 23). According to the theory, popular culture and mass media are the abilities created for political consciousness. The theory also stressed the interaction between base and superstructure. Popular culture was seen as a seedbed of totalitarianism. The evidence of popular culture in modern times threatened to degenerate into a reproduction of the economic base. One of the scholars, Ardono, argued that a monopoly over the distribution and production of culture was in a decline critically (Barker 22).
The school further argued that popular culture represented the social and cultural authority of the elites in society. Since in this theory culture is associated to commodities, it is able to manipulate consumers through the pre-digested formulas and calculated effects. The central argument of this Frankfurt School theory is that the working class in the society has been made to accept capitalism which has been born from popular culture (Barker, 16). It sees durability in capitalism although other opinion formers of popular culture do not support this view.
Conclusion
The theory by Marx seems to outweigh the theory by the scholars of the Frankfurt School because they sought to extend Marxism theory and not their original ideas. This theory based a firm foundation on the law, family, religion and culture on their entirety (Barker 18). The theory contains truth in it as it claims that popular culture greatly shapes what to think of and how to think of it. The theory was also supported by Gramsci and it has few criticisms, if at all they exist.
Media research supported this theory as they indicated that political and cultural institutions to have a great influence in support of popular culture. Marx’s works have stood the test of time and are still recognized in the modernized world. It can be noted that Marx being a philosopher did a good job in helping the world understand popular culture and its components. Murdock and Golding in their ‘German Ideology’ seem to relate well with Marxism as their ideas engage in a smooth manner in their explanation of Marx’s theory (Barker 24).
Works Cited
Barker, Chris. Cultural studies: Theory and practice. Sage, 2003. Print.
Julie, Rivkin, and Michael Ryan. “Literary Theory: An Anthology.” (2004). Print.
Turner, Graeme. British cultural studies: An introduction. Psychology Press, 2003. Print.
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