INVENTING POPULAR CULTUREStorey Intro and the Frankfurt School

CULTURE

“To share a culture is to interpret the world– to make it meaningful in recognizably similar ways . . . [however] cultures are both shared and conflicting networks of meaning. Cultures are arenas in which different ways of articulating the world come into conflict and alliance.”

Storey (preface x)

CULTURE

“Meaning is always a social production, a human practice; different meanings can be ascribed to the same thing, meaning is always the site and result of struggle . . . What should be examined is not the distinction at the level of textuality or mode of production, but how that distinction is maintained in strategies of power.”

Storey (preface xi)

INVENTION

“Popular culture is a category [at least at first] invented by intellectuals.” (xi)

PASTORAL/PRIMITIVISM

Industrialization began to split the currently well defined lines between social classes (and their presumed dominant and subordinate statuses)

Middle and upper class people began to demand stories and songs from “the people from whom they had previously demanded only labor and respect” (1).

PASTORAL/PRIMITIVISM

Folk culture was seen as a quasi-mythical place where people were still connecting with and producing something that related to a more organic, pre-industrial pastoralness that was closer in relation to nature.

“The collectors of folk culture idealized the past in order to condemn the present” (10).

“It was a fantasy intended to heal the wounds of the present and safeguard the future my promoting a memory of a past which had little existence outside intellectual debates” (13).

MATTHEW ARNOLD

“The highly instructed few, and not the scantily clad many, will ever be the organ to the human race of knowledge and truth. Knowledge and truth . . . are not attainable by the great mass of the human race at all.”

Education would never bring knowledge to the working class but it may discipline them, keep them in line, head off unioninzation, and keep them subdued.

POWER

“When everyone can read it no matter matters who can read, rather what one reads.” –Terry Eagleton

In short, this was all about social power and cultural capital.

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

Founded in 1923 out of political turmoil Bolshevik revolution supplanting the

previous dominance of German thinkers Parted with key Marxist positions to

maintain their relevance and push theory forward Revolutionary potential of working class Economics as the center of social analysis Fetishization of labor– saw this as

propaganda

ADORNO AND HORKHEIMER TAKE OVER Hitler (how does it always come back to

Hitler?) Turned school’s emphasis to:

Domination of the masses by politics, dictators, and of course, mass media

Moved away from Matthew Arnold style of culture as being created only by “great,” “special” men

Coined the term “culture industry” to demonstrate their sympathies for the masses

BASIC PRINCIPLES

Pop culture is the mindless consumption of mass produced commodities (entertainment) for the sole purpose of entrenching capitalism

Pop culture deals in sameness, repetition, homogeneity, and no imagination These texts are not art; rather, nothing but product

This sameness keeps people in-line, structures their leisure time, and keeps them happy to go back to work with the illusion of being free

BASIC PRINCIPLES

People do not interact or resist these texts; they simply absorb the values of the men in suits who create them

False needs are created through advertising and keep people buying

IMPORTANT NUANCE

Matthew Arnold found people themselves deficient. The Frankfurts had hopes for people; the people were just in a losing battle

This was the dawn of media. There really wasn’t a lot of diversity and intellectual depth.

Frankfurts witnessed Hitler take power through propaganda that resembled pop culture

Right or wrong, they were the first to acknowledge cultural texts may have deeper ideological effects