In an earlier section we talked about the principle of cultural relativism.
In other words, the idea that different cultures exist at the same time.
Even though all of these cultural realities are equally valid,
some are more popular than others.
Popular cultures are communicated on a large scale and both through personal
and mediated communication.
The umbrella term for these types of cultures is pop culture.
Scientists are, for very different reasons, interested in the study of pop culture.
They study carriers of pop culture,
like songs, movies, literature, game shows, video games
basically everything that is deemed popular and communicates
mainstream values, ideas and ‘truths’.
Interest in the field of popculture has increased since the sixties.
I want to briefly discuss this research theme with you.
Why are we actually interested in pop culture?
Well, for many different reasons.
I’ll name a few without any particular order:
Pop culture is often seen as a reflection of mainstream society.
The idea is, if we study pop culture we learn how society works,
which rules and truths are in place and where power resides.
Do you recognize the influence of social constructionism here?
To continue this line of thought,
pop culture is considered a building block of a shared social reality.
Some scholars oppose to the reflection thesis.
They argue that pop culture is actually artificially created.
It is in fact a fake culture, or a fake consciousness.
It is not a reflection of mass society but in fact
something created by powerful members of the elite,
who control the media landscape.
These powerful few created pop culture to keep themselves in power.
that’s – according to this theory - the main function of pop culture,
to maintain the current power structures.
So pop culture is designed to keep the masses ignorant.
To distract the audience
and keep their thoughts away from the unfair distribution of wealth and power in the world.
Pop culture is used to teach people to obey the law and obey powerful institutions.
It is used to screen us from reality, to keep some knowledge from the public agenda
and keep people’s mind on other inconsequential things
like scandals involving actors or rock stars,
or what’s going to happen on tomorrow’s soap opera.
This also explains why pop culture according to many scholars
does not provoke thought, is unoriginal and of low quality.
This theory was first developed by members of the Frankfurter School.
A group of loosely affiliated scientists
that were particularly active in the nineteen twenties, forties and sixties.
They were not only scientists but also very politically active.
Their theories and findings were often used to show the need
for social change and emancipation.
Frankfurter scholars were often accused of being Marxist.
And not without reason.
Indeed, the Frankfurter School tried to explain why the revolution that Marx had predicted,
where labourers of the world would revolt, hadn’t happened.
Their answer in a nutshell:
because pop culture, communicated through mass media, is specifically created to prevent it.
To keep us docile.
In a way, the media serve as ‘opium for the people’,
creating a passive audience that’s is unlikely to start a revolution.
If you want to connect theories, this Frankfurter approach actually fitted nicely
with the old mass audience paradigm that we covered in week 3.
This traditional audience paradigm saw the masses as
passive and unable to select and block messages.
Even though the Frankfurter School does not have many supporters today,
their negative views on popular culture are often seen as somewhat elitist.
It is historically important because
they were the first to focus their questions on how pop culture was created
and how it related to a larger societal context.
We’ll talk about several more modern approaches to pop culture in our next section.