The Naysayers

Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and the critique of pop culture.

By Alex Ross

My article on the power of audience perception in watching Struggle Street and The Kardashions special on Bruce Jenner

Russell Brand on the hypnosis, unreality and consumerism of celebrity:

7:13 onwards.

Answer these after reading the passages below:

-Is there a semiotic language to the reality TV genre? (words, images, gestures that signify events, situations and behaviours)

Signifiers might be: video diaries, (gesture and verbal) tweets, (words) votes/eliminations, prizes

sponsor’s logos and product placement, condensed drama as a teaser, presenter (narrator, chairperson, analyst), celebrities and endorsement…

-Do you take a structuralist or post structuralist approach to analysing reality Tv?

-According to the Frankfurt school view of popular culture

Who are the main stakeholders in reality TV?

What is the main driver of change over time in the genre?

-What other concepts drive change to reality TV over time?

Reading a text is a social act. We utilise what we know of our surrounds (environment) to interpret recognisable signs and symbols (see "semiotics"). Claude Bremond: a story is "neither words nor images nor gestures but the events, situations and behaviours signified by the words, images and gestures." (Bremond in Abbot) So we might consume popular culture as individuals but we make sense of it as members of society versed in cultural knowledge - customs, norms, beliefs, laws etc.

Frame Theory

Popular culture studies require content analysis.

We look at texts to see how they are treated (by producers) and how they are read (by consumers) and evaluate their impact on society. In his essay 'Frame Analysis' (1974) Erving Goffman says we need to consider how content is "framed" rather than the matter itself. For example, many people are offended by pornography but not by sex. The "framing" of sex as a mechanical or physical rather than complex human act makes pornography "obsene" and "distasteful". Critics of pornography might also object to the way reality soap drama demeans complex social relationships to sensational drama. The viewer of reality soap drama is being asked by the producer to consume the action in its demeaned (simplified) form and trust the producers techniques of "framing" as truthful and unimportant.

Key Theories for Popular Culture (PC):

Adorno and the Frankfurt school: PC is produced by the culture industry to secure the stability and continuity of capitalism. Concepts: “commodity fetishism” and the “culture industry”

(See “Mass Culture” p145 in Sociology: A Graphic Guide)

Structuralists: Suassere, Barthes, Levi Straus – concerned with “semiology” – culture as having systems of signs and symbols (spoken and written language)– that popular culture represents a semiotic war – public space is used as a battleground for meaning. (Eg advertising vs “Ad-busting”, satire, pastiche (cramming together aspects of well-known signs/symbols from culture) etc.

(See p 114-116 in Sociology: A Graphic Guide)

Baudrillard, Foucault and Post-modernists:PC brings radical changes in the role of the mass media which wears away the distinction between image and reality. (Eg, “does life reflect art or art reflect life?”) Baudrillard’s concept of “hyper-reality” See p126-128 in Sociology: A Graphic Guide)

To get you thinking...

"Taste" and its relationship with identity, class, status and power.

Dr. Seuss Meets Bourdieu in The Sneetches

This is an animated rendering of Dr. Seuss's 1961 book, The Sneetches. In the story, Star-bellied sneetches enjoy elite status, so when plain-bellied sneetches get stars imprinted on their bellies, the status system is thrown into disarray. In response, the sneetch-elite pay a heavy price to reestablish their distinction by having their stars removed. I like to use this video as an illustration of Bourdieu's idea of taste as it pertains to status, which he outlines in his book Distinction. In a chapter he names "The Aristocracy of Culture," Bourdieu describes tastes as "manifested preferences." They are "the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference”.... Groups put forth considerable effort to maintain and reinforce their differences, and as Bourdieu observes, groups work to naturalize their distinctive tastes.Valerie Chep, thesociologicalcinema.com

Disney Movies and the Culture Industry

Watch the short montage of scenes from different Disney movies by clicking on this link: "Disney Movies and the Culture Industry". The montage illustrates how cultural products can be seen as an imitation of one another, recycled formulas sold to cultural consumers as entertainment. You might think "so what" but when you consider the popularity, global influence and iconic nature of Disney, you might hope there was more originality, "magic" and "art" that went into its production.

Can you think of other examples of repeated formulas sold in popular culture through the mass media? E.g., formulaic (predicable) narratives, images, and characters sold through hip hop, action movies, soap operas, romance novels, etc. Can creativity and originality survive popular culture?

Theoretical discussion:

(Adapted from Valerie Chepp, thesociologicalcinema.com)

In their chapter entitled "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" from their book Dialectic of Enlightenment, critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer conceptualize power as an absolute, all-encompassing force, driven at unrelenting speed by the engine of capitalism..

Check understanding:

1. How can "culture" be defined as an "industry"? (You may need to check your understanding of both of these terms.)

2. The "engine of capitalism" is described here as a driving force. Where is power located in capitalist societies and how is that power directed and maintained?

...Adorno and Horkheimer argue that culture is an important site where power in contemporary society is demonstrated; here, cultural productions have transformed from pure art forms to gimmicky imitations in which the aesthetic appeal is now simply a response to consumers' "tastes" and the goal is no longer to evoke truth but rather to merely “entertain.” Horkheimer and Adorno refer to this routinized and commodified feature of contemporary culture as the culture industry.

Check understanding:

3. Culture includes laws, beliefs, values and arts of a society. For each of these aspects, think of examples of how power is demonstrated.

Eg - laws: Laws are made and enforced by individuals, groups and institutions with authority. E.g, politicians, judges, police and military.

4. Do you agree that cultural productions have changed over time from being "pure arts forms" which aimed to "evoke truth" to superficial "gimmicks" which do nothing for society but "entertain" us? Why has this change occurred? Can you give examples of traditional or classic art-forms and contemporary "gimmicks"?

5. Can you think of contemporary or post-modern television shows that aim to both "entertain" and also to "evoke truth"? How do these television shows (cultural productions) challenge Adorno and Horkheimer's concept of "the culture industry"?

Horkheimer and Adorno... essentially argue that there is no escape; even when we believe we are freely making choices in the cultural marketplace or, worse yet, even if we recognize the culture industry’s suffocating strength and intentionally try to resist it, our actions and cultural creations have already “been noted by the industry” and become part of the system. Since present-day art is only a vehicle for entertainment and amusement, it is stripped of emotion, tragedy, and truth, and merely exists to appease and distract us. In this state, we are defenseless and unable to resist. As such, the cultural actor “creating” under capitalism’s oppressive rules is (often unknowingly) fated for unoriginal imitation. According to this theory, none of us are actually behaving as individuals and our creations, which are in essence predictable simulations of other commodities circulating in the culture industry, ultimately fuel the engine of capitalism’s absolute power and the monopoly of mass culture.

Do you agree that audiences today are "powerless" to resist culture that reinforces Capitalist values?

And what does cultural creation and consumption have to do with "resistance" and "distraction"? Distraction from what? Finally, can students think of examples of popular cultural creations that serve to challenge capitalistic power and the status quo? How would Horkheimer and Adorno respond to these examples?

Reality TV

This topic is about understanding the defining characteristics of popular culture. Popular Cultures are cultures that

Have commercial products (like toys, magazines, fashion products)

Example: Reality TV show has a jeans and perfume fashion line

Start at a local level(in a town or city) then grow to a national level (to be famous in the whole country) then finally grow to a global level (to be famous all around the world) Technology helps spread popular culture.

Example: started as a prank radio show in Ohio, then became a national hit TV show, and was taken world-wide. In Australia today we still have which is based on .

Consumers (audiences) have widespread access to this culture – this means it’s easy for people to see or hear this culture. Reality TV can be watched on the internet anywhere in the world. Also, most commercial TV networks broadcast (show) reality TV because audiences like it and it is cheap to make.
Popular Culture is constantly changing and evolving – depending on audience tastes and values.

Example: Australians are interested in cooking and home renovation so shows like and are successful. Americans are worried about their jobs because of the financial crisis so job shows are successful.

Film maker Brian De Palma: "People don't see the world before their eyes until its put in a narrative mode" (De Palma in Potter Abbot)

Jean Paul Satre said there was no such thing as reality because we merely percieve what we see according to how it has made sense to us previously, that is in constructed ways - stories - shared across society. What do you think? Is there such a thing as "truth" or "reality"?

"Television has utterly changed the way politics is conducted, and has changed our leisure culture from being a public, communal culture into a home-based private culture"

(Sociology: A Graphic Guide, p 167)

Reality and Dystopia in The Hunger Games…

Themes: surveillance and the spectacle as a means of social control… (Frankfurt school perspective?)

A future direction could be that society becomes more sceptical of the “reality” (or hyper-reality if you asked Baudrillard!) being portrayed in RT.

Given the popularity of Hunger Games, we can expect more PC texts in future that explore the anxieties of our globalised, warring, highly stratified society?

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