Friday, December 20, 2013

Week #12: Blogging MEDIA@SOCIETY, Chapter 8


This post is due by Tuesday, March 25 @ midnight for full credit. 
Email late posts to rob.williamsATmadriver.com for partial credit.


Read our MEDIA@SOCIETY book, assigned chapter above.

In a SINGLE blog post below, provide for the chapter:

1. A single sentence, IYOW, that captures the chapter's THESIS (main argument).

2. THREE specific pieces of supporting documentation - ideas, concepts, stats, data - to bolster your thesis for the chapter. (Use 2 - 3 sentences for each.)

3. A single PERSONAL story of 3-4 sentences that connects the chapter directly with your own personal media experiences.

4. A SINGLE specific question you have after reading and blogging on the chapter.

Game on,

Dr. W

11 comments:

  1. 1. Popular Culture is perpetuated through the media and is an essential way for how citizens gain their information about cultural values and what we see as popular or important.

    2.
    1. There is definitely a dangerous side to popular culture. “Questions about whether the media can turn civilized culture in a propaganda-vulnerable mass society, as theorized by Adorno and Horkheimer; about whether turning culture into entertainment really ruins it” (Media in Society, 205). This is not something we should take lightly, this is our culture, and perhaps the reason we have so many stereotypes is because the media perpetuates them.
    2. The danger of pop culture is that sometimes it’s not an accurate representation. “what they find is that cultural forms that seem (to outsiders) to be formulaic and simplistic and a waste of time are experienced by insiders as interesting and meaningful and worthwhile” (Media in Society, 208). This distinction between forms is what trips us up and lends itself to creating a society overcome with the images of popular culture, unable to separate and analyze it.
    3. “This kind of transparency helps us realize that issues of “good” and “bad” are within generic constraints- maybe there are not, as the mass culture debaters believed, essentially different levels of culture” (Media in Society, 214). The internet allows us to really expose ourselves to different forms of popular culture and to some extent we have a kind of “self-curating” ability where we can pick what we want to see.


    3. I took a popular culture course last year and we discussed how pop culture has existed since the Buffalo Bill age. I thought it was interesting to see how pop culture has transformed and has developed certain things like “pink flamingos” into objects associated with types of economic classes, racial groups, etc.

    4. How is pop culture so fast changing and does this confuse our brains trying to keep up with the ever changing trends?

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  2. Popular culture is consumed at a rapid pace though the media and challenges the traditional forms of television while creating a ranking system of culture.

    Media is separated into two categories, “sacred art and profane entertainment” (199) These categories are socially constructed, depending on the time period of the public. Yet through mass media technologies a blurring of the cultures occur. This creates the possibility that “through cultural blending, mass media both ruin art and drown us in mediocre.” (207) Subcultures of popular culture differentiate high art from low art. The development of the Internet has allowed various classes to explore all kinds of culture, “this kind of transparency helps us realize that issues of “good” and “bad” are within generic constraints,” (214) maybe after all there isn’t different levels of culture. People don’t have to belong to a class to enjoy a form of art. Like culture humans are complicated.

    I think it’s interesting that because of the type of programming, shows like The Real Housewives is likened to trash television. I think television can be categorized but the viewer is far more complex than the media. A person can enjoy high and low areas of television if it satisfies their tastes.

    Will pop culture and consumerism become more and more blended in the future?

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  3. 1.) Chapter eight focuses on the greater idea of separation between art and popular culture.

    2.) The internet has done many things since being accessible to just about everyone in the world but one thing that has been made simple is for scholars to study fans. The World Wide Web made it socially acceptable to be a fan of a TV show. “As scholars began to take fans more seriously, this characterization of fandom as kind of pathology was challenged.” (210) From mass media to sub culture there will forever be a crowd of people that do not directly connect with mainstream media. “Content usually involved vast expense, and if you were someone with odd or eccentric taste, you were out of lick in the mass media marketplace.” (212) Sub culture has had a huge support lately in the real world. It has become cool to be so called, “different.” Nowadays, people are more inclined to be unique and preserve a more personal identity. With the ever shifting culture that we live in it also affects a certain person where they were raised. “At least part of the problem is that we are often unable to understand or appreciate the forms we don’t like.” (208) When dealing with this side of media having knowledge for how people react to certain things can be useful skill.

    3.) In the book they talk about how it was a little odd to dress up and go to a star trek convention. Personally now I think it would be considered pretty awesome if someone decided to make this a reality. It is honestly funny to watch what goes in and out of being “cool” in our society. I had a friend in high school that would attach onto pretty much any person he would meet. If you liked the Cincinnati Reds he was their second biggest fan. Whatever CD was in the car he also loved the band that was playing. It made me laugh watching him jump from personality to personality but it made me realize that our society makes certain people act this way to fit in. It seemed backwards to me.

    4.) Why are people affected by what the media says?

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  4. 1. Social norms and expectations are constructed and redefined through media and popular culture.

    2. “In the post-WWI era, mass society was imagined as an unprecedented form of social organization. The cultural, political, and moral values of small-town life and agrarian societies were disappearing, replaced by the cultural, political, and moral values of urbanism and industrialization.” (201)

    As the culture of urban centers spread to the corners of the US, more people came to have similar beliefs. Though they did not all share the same experiences, they could witness the effects and gain the same knowledge of goings-on, even if they happened across the country. Smaller cultures would die out if there was no representation in the larger media.

    “…at least one way that cultural levels get assigned is based on…the educational and economic level of the audiences and producers.” (205)

    “Those who have the gold control the rules.” In other words, those with money and power have control who sees what, and can give or take as much from media as they wish. Conglomerates do not allow bad press regarding their own company to leak because it is detrimental, but this is hurting the public who has the right to this information.

    “At this point in our cultural pluralism, marketers have found that – at least so far – we are remarkably predictable in our tastes, our buying habits, and our political preferences.” (215)

    Because we all are watching the same channels controlled by the same companies, we all see and want the same things. Everyone in the US knows what an iPhone is because we see the advertisements literally everywhere. How can one stray from the culture, like Violet from Feed attempted to, when we don’t see any alternatives in the mainstream culture?

    3. As I was writing my research paper, I came across dozens of articles that discussed the representation of various body types and skin colors in the media. One notable African author revealed how her early novels were set in Europe, with young white protagonists who talked about the rain and foreign fruits despite that the author herself was black, lived in a dry, hot climate, and had never eaten the fruit she described. As was stated in Miss Representation, “you cannot be what you cannot see.”

    4. How can we convince media producers to include a variety of types of people?

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  5. Chapter 8 discusses how the public dictates popular culture and what we consumer, when we consume it.

    The chapter begins with the idea that art really isn’t that different from entertainment, that statues and painting we think of as art were once a fixture in every day life. “Both are forms of our shared cultural heritage, yet we have traditionally taught art in school and put it in museums, and kept media entertainment separate, in the media” (197). The author explores the idea of “cultural bifurcation- the separation of culture into two distinct categories” (199). This idea, he says, must be examined and determine whether it is intrinsically that way, and why we continue to categorize it in two separate ways. Some believe that media and entertainment can “ruin art and drown us in mediocre, distracting junk” (203) makes people believe that consuming media is something you should not do, and instead visit more museums and do sophisticated things.

    Last March I went to Paris for spring break. Of course one of the things I did was go to the Musee de Louvre to see the incredible works of art there. I walked around for quite some time, and saw things like the Mona Lisa and Winged Victory, truly incredible works of art. But those things, while culturally important, were also entertaining to me. They provided amusement as well as something to view.

    What separates art from entertainment if art entertains you?

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  6. In the 21st century, popular culture is the basis of what we consider popular culture and how it can often be considered a double edge sword.


    The Internet and popular art is a double edge sword in some ways. Yes through the Internet we can learn more about art. But it also can also create mass understandings, which makes society less likely to make their own opinions on what they consider art.
    “If we seek to understand entertainment as popular art, we can let ourselves learn from fans about what they love and why… That kind of cultural cosmopolitanism is what the Internet makes possible, and it has refigured at least two hundred years of hopes and fears of cultural democracy” (p. 217).

    To say that popular culture is not art is in some ways ignorant. It is an art, just not the “art” we usually think of when we think of art class; paintings, sculptures, etc. In this new era of technology we have to evolve our understandings of concepts.
    “Far from being mindless entertainment, popular culture, just like high art, can be analyzed, dissected, criticized, compared and evaluated—by fans and by scholars” (p.208).

    This quote is the negative edge of the double edge sword. It is so easy to post things on the Internet and I feel as though we do not appreciate art and culture as much as we should due to the fast, endless possibilities of the Internet.
    “But now the Internet has become that subcultural programming mechanism. If you can create it, you can post it; if it can be posted, it can be found through a search engine; if it can be found, it can develop audiences and fans; and if it finds fans, it can be monetized by you or someone as (at least in theory)—and more importantly, its out there as a narrative, and interpretive world, a mediated cultural form” (p. 213).



    The process, skills and talent it takes for someone to create, edit and finalize a TV show, movie, advertisement takes a lot of energy. Being in a TV production class, we see the steps that go into it. However, in my personal experience I feel as though the negative connotations connected with movie stars often sheds a negative light on the entertainment industry, which I feel is wrong.


    How can we make non-digitalized art more appreciated, and have it be ‘popular culture’?

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  7. (1) This chapter discusses the ambiguous distinction between art and entertainment in society and how, as we evolve, our categorization of media changes.

    (2) The distinction between sacred art and profane entertainment is explained by, "cultural bifurcation," or the separation of culture into two distinct categories. One prime example of this change in categorization comes with William Shakespeare, "In his own time: His work was considered entertainment, not high culture...[his plays] were more like a circus than a museum" (199). However, the blending of cultures has become a problem in today's society. Randall Jarrell points out in his 1961 essay "A Sad Heart at the Supermarket" that American society is "going back to the media supermarket yearning for the genuine nourishment of art, but ends up stuffing themselves with the junk food of entertainment" (203). The chapter calls for citizens to stop worrying so much about the categorization of art and entertainment but rather inspect the personal and symbolic meaning those cultures had on people who experienced it, "that kind of cosmopolitanism is what the Internet makes possible, and it has refigured at least two hundred years of hopes and fears of cultural democracy" (217).

    (3)I thought the Shakespeare example was really interesting, because I've really only viewed Shakespeare as a brilliant, historical figure with a ton of talent. Never before have I thought about how the people of his time viewed the plays, that for them, his plays were more crude entertainment than they were an elegant masterpiece. That was a really cool perspective to take on.

    (4) Has there ever been an instance where entertainment was later viewed as art, but then returned as entertainment again? In other words, has any medium ever experience a cultural cycle?

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  8. A separation between art and entertainment aroused after World War II which created several different cultural forms.

    In chapter seven, many examples are given to show that there is a line between art and entertainment. “Art is something elite, special, maybe even sacred, and entertainment is something popular, run of the mill, and sometimes, at least, profane” (199). This is showing art as a more personal or unique thing to the people as opposed to a more common and simple thing, like entertainment.

    Chapter seven explored the different types of categories that most people naturally fall under. Sociologist Herbert Gans, believes that with more of a wide-spread selection of cultural forms, people are able to find what they like and what makes them feel comfortable. “People choose what works best for them and respects the possibility that ordinary people have good reasons to enjoy whatever cultural forms they like the best” (206). There are many different groups people adjust to where some are more focused on art rather than entertainment; or entertainment rather than art. However, some groups cross over the line between entertainment and art and both ideas together.

    “Gans uses the term ‘taste publics’ to describe the ways people group themselves around particular kinds of cultural forms” (209). People naturally find their likes and dislikes but are also influenced by other peoples’ likes. Technology has helped people find the cultural forms they fit into the best because it allows us to share ideas, values, beliefs, language, and meaning (209).

    While reading chapter seven, I was surprised to see the common idea that there is a separation between art and entertainment. I am in the process of switching to an art major so I find myself using art throughout my everyday life. As I reflect on what I have done, I realize that I use my art for entertainment, something that keeps me going throughout the day. Therefore, I see art and entertainment as one in the same.

    Besides the World War II, what other major events have caused there to be an outbreak of different cultural groups?

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  9. A line has been drawn between high culture and popular culture and there is always discussion about cultural blending and what culture is best for America’s democracy, as well as about the different ways people have organized themselves into “taste” cultures.

    For example, “entertainment is understood by many people to be crucially different from art” (199). This categorization is always changing however, especially when culture from the past is examined. In Shakespeare’s time, “his work was considered entertainment, not high culture,” which is drastically different from today, proving that our categorization does change with the times (199). The great debates about cultural blending were actually sparked by “post- World War II media,” which had people questioning what was best for the US, especially with major mass media like the television. As for organizing themselves, people have created fandoms to connect with their favorite celebrities, shows, and books, and all of this was made easier/possible by the Internet. Because of online fandoms, “what was once private has become public” (211).

    I have friends who look down at pop music and completely disregard it, which I don’t think is fair because it’s a part of our culture/society. They have a right to dislike the songs that are always playing on the radio, but I wonder if they dismiss it because it’s a typical form of “low” culture or because they actually don’t like to listen to it.

    Who decides what goes into the categories of high, middle, and low culture?

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  10. Fine blogging, colleagues - Sophie, I like your last question.

    Who are the arbiters of taste?

    Dr. Rob

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  11. 1) This chapter discusses the distinction between art and popular culture and questions whether or not they are really that different.
    2) “We use categories when we tell stories about the world. These categories seem real and immutable until something happens to disrupt them” (198). We take the art and culture that comes out of modern day society for granted and tend not to realize that one day it will become history just like ancient Greek statues have become a part of Greek history. Once an era has passed, then we realize the importance of the art and culture that came out of it.
    3) “So much of art’s revered place in many societies has come from its supposed difference from everyday popular culture” (197). I think our society puts such an emphasis on the history of art and not actually the art itself. Obviously we see the physical beauty that comes out of ancient masterpieces, but I think what we really care about is are the timeless stories that they have to tell. I think that’s why people don’t appreciate modern entertainment as much, but once we have moved on, they’ll reminisce on what it used to be and see the story behind that as well. Once we take a step back from our current culture we will be able to see the beauty behind it, too.
    4) “[Shakespeare’s] work was considered entertainment, not high culture. His plays were performed for groundlings and aristocracy, drawing from and contributing to the popular culture of his era” (199). Great artists/writers like Shakespeare were once considered the Britney Spears (maybe an exaggeration) of their time. The people in that era didn’t realize what a historical, cultural figure he’d be in the future; they just saw it as entertainment the way in which we see entertainment now.
    5) I feel like the entertainers we see today are going to be seen as cultural inspirations and figures one day. People today see our culture as disrespectful, bad, chaotic, but in 100 years they’ll look back on 2014 and realize what these artists gave to us.
    6) What will people say about our generation’s entertainers in 100 years?

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