Assignment 205: Cultural Studies

 Popular Culture

Name – Jheel Barad

Roll No.: 12

Enrollment No.: 4069206420210003

Paper no: 205 (A)

Paper code: 22410

Paper name: Cultural Studies

Sem.: 3 (Batch 2021- 2023)

Submitted to: Smt S.B. Gardi Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University

E-mail- jheelbarad@gmail.com

There was a time before the 1960s when popular culture was  not studied by academics- when it was, well, just popular culture. But within American Studies programs at first and then later in many disciplines, including semiotics, rhetoric, literary criticism, film studies, anthropology, history, women's studies, ethnic studies, and psychoanalytic approaches, critics examine such cultural media as pulp fiction, comic books, television, film, advertising, popular music, and computer cyberculture. They assess how such factors as ethnicity, race, gender, class, age, region, and sexuality are shaped by and reshaped in popular culture.

Popular culture accounts for the taste of the common people. Often called low culture, the popular culture defines itself through the blatant disregard of the Elite class. popular culture is commonly associated with television, internet and comic books. In addition to the elite culture, popular culture is generally considered the antithesis of folk culture and working- class culture. The centerpiece of popular culture is the middle class which constitutes the maturity of society. popular culture is considered the mainstream culture of a society at any given point of time. it is amalgamation of the trends of that particular time period. Movies, music, and video games play a vital role in creating and propagating popular culture. It is generally considered more accessible for common people and suit their taste

The popular culture has origins in 19th Century England when it was considered the inferior culture of the common folk as opposed to the official culture of the common folk of the educated elite. After the rise of industrialization, the common people became more educated and spent more money on entertainment. This resulted in the emergence of entertainment that satisfied the needs of these newly formed middle class. With the education afford to the middle class being markedly different from that of the elite, the forms of entertainment of the middle class was also different. instead of complex plays and poems the educated middle class were much more interested in the newly emerged entertainment mode cinema. through popular music, cinema and comic books the popular culture became a platform of mass consumption.

We can take an example of Fitzgerald's Novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ to understand the difference between the elite class and new working class and their growing culture. Jay Gatsby in the novel is a new rich person and so everything for him is new and he follows a popular culture like he throws parties and follows Jazz music which is not liked by the elite class society.

The advent of popular culture has paved the way to the rise of popular culture studies. At the core of what we know as popular culture studies today is the work of Scholars associated with or influenced by the Birmingham Center of Contemporary Cultural Studies. popular culture itself and intellectual interest in its risks and possibilities, however, long predate this moment. Earlier in the 20th century, members of the Frankfurt School took an active interest in what was then referred to as ‘mass culture’ or the culture industry.

Semiotics, emerging in the latter half of twentieth century as an exciting new methodology of cultural analysis, turned to popular culture for many of its objects as it redefined textuality, reading, and meaning. The works of Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco are exemplary in this regard. 

There have been many subsequent approaches to popular culture studies. important among these are feminist approaches to popular culture exemplified by work on Hollywood cinema and women's melodrama in particular, the study of images and representations through a Mass Communication approach , and ethnographic studies of readers of popular romances and television audiences. a minor, theoretically weak tradition of popular cultural studies initiated by Ray Browne parallelly in the United States may also be mentioned. More recently Slavojzizek has introduced new ways of drawing popular cultural text into philosophical debates. If all these can be taken together as constituting what is generally referred to as popular cultural studies today, it is still limited to the 20th century.

Popular culture has always faced fierce criticism from supporters of traditional, upper-class culture. in Britain Matthew Arnold and in his wake F.R. Leavis Ada undertook this task as they sought to insulate ‘the best of what was thought and said’ - essentially the upper class culture from the debasing influence of the commercial press and mass culture in general. but the history of popular culture as an object of Investigation and social concern goes further back still to the 19th and 18th centuries, the period of the rise and spread of mass literature, boosted by the rise of working class readership.

 Aside from precursors such as Umberto Eco and R. Barthes, popular culture studies as we know them today were developed in the late 70s and 80s. The first influential works were generally politically left wing and rejected the aristocratic view. However, they also criticized the pessimism of the Frankfurt School: contemporary studies on mass culture accept that popular culture forms do respond to widespread needs of the public. They also emphasize the capacity of the consumers to resist indoctrination and passive reception. Finally, they avoid any monolithic concept of mass culture. Instead they tried to describe culture as whole as a complex formation of discourses which correspond to particular interests, and which can be dominated by specific groups, but which also always are dialectically related to the producers and consumers.

An example of this tendency is Andrew Ross’s ‘No respect: Intellectual and Popular Culture (1989).  His chapter on the history of Jazz, Blues and rock does not present a linear narrative opposing the authentic popular music to the commercial record industry, but shows how popular music in the US from the twenties until today, evolved out of complexity.

There are four main types of popular culture analyses: 

1. production analysis, 

2. textual analysis, 

3. audience analysis, and 

4. historical analysis. 

These analyses seek to get beneath the surface (denotative) meanings and examine more implicit (connotative) social meanings. These approaches view culture as a narrative or story-telling process in which particular texts or cultural artifacts (i.e., a hit song or a television program) consciously or unconsciously link themselves to larger stories at play in the society. A key here is how texts create subject positions or identities for those who use them. 

Postmodernists tend to speak more of subject positions rather than the humanist notion of independent individuals. 

Production analysis asks the following kinds of questions: Who owns the media? Who creates texts and why? Under what constraints? How democratic or elitist is the production of popular culture? What about works written only for money? 

Textual analysis examines how specific works of popular culture create meanings. 

Audience analysis asks how different groups of popular culture consumers, or users, make similar or different sense of the same texts. 

Historical analysis investigates how these other three dimensions change over time.

Chetan Bhagat (born 22 April 1974) is an Indian author, columnist and youtuber. He was included in Time magazine's list of World’s 100 Most Influential People in 2010. Chetan Bhagat writes in very Indian language, it has no great quality like the professional writer who wins the booker prize etc. but he is read a lot by many people and loved too. But he is trolled for writing in the local language by many readers. He plays a great role in Popular culture and its reading. 

Popular culture is the totality of distinct memes, ideas, perspectives, and attitudes that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture. heavily influenced by mass media and perpetuated by that culture’s vernacular language, this collection of Ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society. Popular culture is often viewed as being trivial  and dumped down in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. as a result of this perception, it comes under heavy criticism from various scientific and non main- stream sources which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist and corrupted

 It is manifested in preference and acceptance or rejection by features in such various subjects as cooking, clothing, consumption, and the many facets of entertainment such as sports, film, music and literature.

Popular culture is what we have made out of products and practices of mass produced culture. popular culture is an expensive content that is produced and consumed. It is light entertainment that is delivered through the channels of mass media and finally absorbed voluntarily, to be observed by the individual who receives it. Popular culture consists of the many facets of music, fashion, slang, and entertainment and the newer forms of media like the internet.

Advertising promotes more than a product in our popular culture. images used in advertising are often idolized; they eventually set the standard which we in turn feel we must live up to. Advertisements serve to show us that the ideal image is, and further  tell us how to obtain it. Advertisers essentially have the power to promote positive images or negative messages. This in turn affects our culture.

For example the cosmetics and fashion Industries keep telling people that they will improve their self image with their cosmetics for fashion.

Works Cited

What Is Pop Culture? | Mr. Pop Culture, https://mrpopculture.com/what-is-pop-culture/. Accessed 5 November 2022.

gowda, sukesh, and Nadeem Siddiqui. “Advertising and culture.” SlideShare, 27 April 2011, https://www.slideshare.net/sukeshgowda/advertising-and-culture. Accessed 5 November 2022.

Hayes, E. Bruce. Rabelais's Radical Farce: Late Medieval Comic Theater and Its Function in Rabelais. Taylor & Francis, 2016. Accessed 5 November 2022.

Kaushal, Sweta. “Chetan Bhagat, please stop writing books, concentrate on Bollywood instead.” Hindustan Times, 2014, https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/chetan-bhagat-please-stop-writing-books-concentrate-on-bollywood-instead/story-WQG3VzHs9oFjSXwLVQ5X8H.html.

“Popular Culture & Globalization: Teacher Candidates' Attitudes & Perceptions of Cultural & Ethnic Stereotypes.” ERIC, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1090398.pdf. Accessed 5 November 2022.

Venugopal, Rajitha, et al. What about theory? Bodhi Tree Books, 2019.

Theories: Marxist, Ecocritical, Feminist and Queer Criticism

Hello! This blog is assigned by Dr. Dilip barad sir. It deals with the various literary theories like Feminism, queer study, eco- criticism, and Marxism. This blog deals with Marxism, other blogs which deals with other theories are hyperlinked in the end.

Marxism

Karl Marx is the one to bring this theory and it is named after him only. Marxism is a philosophy developed in the second half of the 19th century that unifies social, political, and economic theory. It is mainly concerned with the battle between the working class and the ownership class and favors communism and socialism over capitalism.

Key Concerns of Marxism

1. In the Marxist literary analysis, the evolving history of humankind, of its social groupings and interrelations, of its institutions, and of its ways of thinking are largely determined by the changing mode of its “material production”— that is, of its overall economic organization for producing and distributing material goods.

2. Changes in the fundamental mode of material production effect changes in the class structure of a society, establishing in each era dominant and subordinate classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political, and social advantage.

3. Human consciousness is constituted by an ideology—that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings perceive, and by recourse to which they explain, what they take to be reality. An ideology is, in complex ways, the product of the position and interests of a particular class. In any historical era, the dominant ideology embodies, and serves to legitimize and perpetuate, the interests of the dominant economic and social class.

Seminal Writers and their works-

• Marx and Engels -The German Ideology,
• The Hungarian thinker Georg Lukács,
• Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheime-.
• Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (1982),
• Walter Benjamin,
• French Marxist Louis AlthusserPierre Macherey, in A Theory of Literary Production (1966, trans. 1978)
• Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci
• Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe-Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985)
• Raymond Williams
• Terry Eagleton-A leading theorist of Marxist criticism in England
• Fredric Jameson- The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981),

Marxist political theory views history as a constant struggle between these two classes. The bourgeoisie is the capitalist class that owns the wealth and the means of production. While the lower class who struggles and are depended on the bourgeoisie for income. Mostly this type of Bollywood movies are old movies where we see this struggle. The upper class is not ready to accept the lower class. They don't let their children marry the lower class and the struggles used to happen.

The recent movie of struggle between two classes is 2018 film Kedarnath. Here the struggle is between Hindu- Brahmin and Muslim couple which is perhaps the hot topic in India. But looking from the Marxist canon we see the same struggle the upper class not wishing their chlid to marry lower class who was local Muslim porter.

Ishq, 1997 movie also deals with the same theme of class issues. Children of two friends who belonged to the upper class wanted their children to marry so that their wealth remained with them but their children loved each other's friend who belonged to lower class. Parents tried to create problems among them but later they got married. Here also for the sake of wealth decide to go for same class marriage.

Looking at the literature, we find such themes are covered as a minor theme or can be read in various books. The Great Gatsby novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The Great Gatsby is a story which begins with a narrator Nick Carraway talking about the market and his introduction which clarifies that he belongs to upper class society along with Tom Buchanan and her wife. The main Character is Jay Gatsby, his only aim is to win Daisy (upper class) to whom he couldn't marry. So he gets rich in order to win her, she is also in love with her. But he is judged on his dressing and living a fake life. When he died no one visited his funeral from the Buchanan family which shows that however a person struggles to be in the upper class, aristocratic society will never accept them and women like Daisy might fall in love but will never get ready to marry living their respectable way of life.

Marxism says that society involves a struggle between the upper and lower class, which is in essence what Gatsby is struggling against, as he fights to be accepted as upper class for once and all, ridding himself of his more humble origins. The Marxist idea that life is a continuous struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat

Read the Great Gatsby from the Marxist canon in detail. CLICK HERE.

Richardson’s Pamela is also about a relation between two different classes. Panama is a proletarian. In the novel, Mr. B, upper class, falls in love with Pamela and being rich he feels his right on Pamela. He kidnaps her, tries to abuse her. In the end they get married as it was to Mr. B . We feel as if Pamela has lost her individuality.

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children contains all the aspects of India. We also have a character Joseph D'Costa, Mary Pereira's sweetheart and he is a Marxist. His love Mary Pereira is a nurse, he influences Pereira to change the children in the hospital, poor child to rich family so that that the imbalance of capital, wealth in the society can be balanced.

I hope this blog is useful. Thanks for visiting.

READ MY BLOG ON ANOTHER THEORY- FEMINISTIC THEORY

READ MY BLOG ON ANOTHER THEORY- ECOCRITICISM

READ MY BLOG ON ANOTHER THEORY- QUEER THEORY