What is considered to be Popular Culture?

What does Popular Culture reportedly

do?

soap operas, cartoons,” Trivialliteratur”, hollywood movies, stars, fast food, popular
music, tv-shows (game shows, quiz shows), tv-series, coca-cola, mcdonalds, ...

 appropriates things and changes them

 making people stupid, entertaining, simple/standardized, passive
 cooperates with capitalism
 popular culture is consumed by people (high culture is not)

What is associated with Popular Culture?

– the painting “Campbell’s Soup” by Andy Warhol represents Pop Art (most
recognizable artwork in America), Comic-Paintings by Roy Lichtenstein: Pop Art
is one example where Pop Culture seeped into High Culture
– first interracial kiss in Star Trek (most successful TV-series in the US) in the
third season episode “Plato’s stepchildren” (first broadcast on November 22,
1968)
– “Coca Cola” (most popular icon of America/popular culture)
• urban myths: Coca Cola dissolves meat, Coca Cola contains acid, Coca
Cola invented the modern image of Santa Claus
• critique: „Coca-Colonisation und Kalter Krieg: Die Kulturmission der USA
in Österreich nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg“ by Austrian History Professor
Reinhold Wagnleitner

Critique

– Popular Culture is considered to be trash, e.g. by Adorno and Horkheimer

(Frankfurter Schule) in “Die Kulturindustrie” (“Dialektik der Aufklärung”, 1944):
every culture becomes a product, the esthetic itself becomes the function of the
product
– mass media are harmful: the culture industry indoctrinates the masses,
they come to enjoy things that are against their better interest (creating of false
consciousness/false needs), consequence: profits for the capitalists; people
should have to suffer in order to be educated
– John G. Cawelti (important scholar of popular culture): “formula culture” -->
standardized fiction, e.g. adventure, mystery, romance, plots are predictable
and lack originality
– in Cultural Studies, Postmodernism states that there are three kinds of readings:
preferred reading, alternative reading, oppositional reading; popular culture:
only preferred reading

Frankfurter Schule (Formation 1931): Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Walter

Benjamin

What is considered to belong to the Canon? What does it allegedly do?

books by authors who are male, pale and Yale, binary oppositions: good/evil,
white/black, male/female, heterosexual/homosexual, rich/poor (Postmodernism tries to
undermine these dichotomies)

 enlightening, educating, sophisticated, active, oppositional to capitalism

 authority over the meanings of popular culture
 high culture can make us see beyond (false) consciousness
 in no regard about fixed forms; unique (vs. mass-produced)
 it’s all about power, race, sex, gender
change in the 1960’s: Black Power Movement, Women’s Movement, Hippies
Movement, Civil Rights Movement, Anti-Vietnam Movement (only possible through
media exposure)

 led to the Canon debate, that came along with the critique of the segregation of
blacks and whites, e.g. in trains or lunch counters (small restaurants, similar to
diners)

Wikipedia: Western canon is a term used to denote a canon of books, and, more
widely, music and art, that has been the most influential in Western culture. It
asserts a compendium of the “greatest works of artistic merit”. Such a canon is
important to the theory of educational perennialism (Beständigkeit) and the
development of “high culture”.

Bourdieu (important french critic/philosopher) – “Taste is not neutral, it’s an

instrument of power because it’s class-related; it’s a message. There are different
perceptions of taste in different countries.”

According to Pierre Bourdieu all our acts are led by social pressures. He shows in a
brilliant way, that what we consider today natural is definitely cultural. Our tastes in
food, drink, music, cinema... do not depend on us but on our social background.

When Pierre Bourdieu contends that taste always trickles downwards from the ruling
classes to the masses, he forgets about street fashion, which has trickled upwards in
the case of mod fashion, punk and hip hop, first attested in the streets of large
European cities and which have since influenced haute couture.

Folk Culture – Popular Culture – Mass Culture vs. High

Culture
Our culture has become a visual culture – we find representations everywhere, in
paintings, photographs, movies etc.

Folk Culture used to be the opposite of High Culture; today Mass Culture is the
opposite of High Culture, Folk Culture is still “better” than Mass Culture

Folk Culture expression of the inner self, no orientation on the masses,

e.g. quilting
accepted in theory, because it is “authentic”

Popular Culture comes already with a valued judgement; term is more neutral than
“Mass Culture”
identity is mostly constructed in Popular Culture (food, music, ...)

Mass Culture alienation, the human’s work structure is dictated by

machines
film: Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” (1936)

High Culture the audience has to prepare before a cultural event (if culture is
too accessible/entertaining, it is considered not no be good) –
typical for Modernism

Why do we need theory?

– to know what we have to look for

– to have a background for analyzing
Consumer Culture
history:

– civilization in the Western areas of the US since 1776: nothing to consume,

isolated life, no roads, no communication, no newspapers
 life was about work/no way of delegating work
– then, new thing in the cities: Department Stores (end of 19th century
beginning in Philadelphia, then New York)
• created for the increasing middle class that becomes more and more
influential
(plus: because of machines people had more leisure time)
• fixed prices (before: shop owners could state the price by looking at the
customer)
• salespeople treated all customers equal
• products on displays
• perpetual improvements: artificial light, second floor, restrooms etc.
• streets were made attractive for shopping
 instant success in the cities – centers of community

features:

a) shift of emphasis from production to consumption

b) standardization, mass production & mass consumption
c) technological development & the expansion of leisure time
d) the investment of products with symbolic “meaning”
e) the critique of consumerism as an inherent feature of consumer societies

Consumerism – blurring the line between “necessity” (which can be satisfied) and
“desire” (which can never be satisfied)

– US = first consumer culture that emerged (in the early 20th century)
– rural areas were cut off from consumerism: emergence of the Mail Order
Catalogue (first one Montgomery Wards, 1872, not as successfully as Sears,
Roebuck & Company, huge success between 1900-40)
• houses came by railroad in numbered boxes
 reliable railroad & postal sytem needed --> important reforms:
 rural free delivery: packages delivered to the farms for free (US postal
service)
 Parcel post act: packages become less expensive
 CoD: Cash/Collect on Delivery – giving the money directly to the
postman
• ordering instructions printed in 19 different languages
• blacks were not discriminated

Mail Order Catalogues – raceblind, free of purchase, used to learn English, wider
spread than the bible

 brought about according literature, e.g.

• short story “The Man Who Was Almost A Man” by Richard Wright (about a
little boy who bought a gun via catalogue)
• short story “Umney’s Last Case” by Stephen King (Sears & Roebuck
mentioned)
 important role on binding effect (effort?) of cultures
– consumerism builds the identity
– defined to consumption --> men are associated with producing stuff, women
with consuming
 production & maleness = active vs. consumerism &
femininity = passive

Consumerism became a triumph – all European cultures are also consumer cultures
(while consumerism is identified with Americanization in Europe)

Criticism is an inherent feature of Consumer Cultures. Consumerism is a flexible

system and can manage criticism, e.g. Whole Foods (organic food), which is called
“Supermarket Pastoral” by Michael Pollan.

Consumerism --> not without mass production --> not without Standardization, e.g.
in clothing

example: Sears asked customers to send in their measurements

 it became a database; out of this they made sizes (it took about 2 decades)
 function of clothing was found (form identity)
 after Standardization clothes no longer demonstrated status
(ca. in the 1920’s, everyone could afford the clothes)
 democracising through Standardization; integration through dresses
(immigrants)
 but: Standardization in clothing = cultural Homogenization (pejorative term)

Marketing/Technology

– special names for certain products from the 1920’s, e.g. washing machine “The
Nymph”
 women began to be the purchasers in the household
– transition from fact-orientated to emotional-orientated Marketing
– in Mail Order Catalogues: one thing on one page, not everything cramped
– development of the Bonanza farm which implied commercial farming
 new technology needed; farmers make money and turn into customers
 household technology changed the look of the US
– shift in attitudes towards animals
– Fordization = new form of work, assembly line work, life rhythm changed (New
Marxism – alienation...)
– transition from traditional to industrial farming
– transition from attention to the individual animal to generic breedings
 animals are no natural beings, but machines under modern conditions
(attitudes changed profoundly with the help of technology in the 1900’s)
– technology is used to save strength and time
 farmers have more leisure time, but are cut off from urban entertainment
 Catalogues came up with slide machines
– rural areas: 1910 – 2% of farms electricified, 1935 – already 11%
 change after 1935: rural electrification (Roosevelt administration)

Brands

– increasingly brands played a role, consumers took notice

– in consumerism people inquire literacy
– people are willing to pay more to get a brand = phenomenon
 brands convey security and are used to build an identity
– feeling of community/feeling special
– film: “American Psycho” – protagonists characterized by brand names, e.g.
Walkman, Armani
– today: Energizer Bunny, Bud Light Dog
Shopping Malls

– cult of true womanhood: women can go in public without male company (in
malls & churches)
– development through increasing middle class, suburbian spread
– popular component of American daily life, setting of cult movie “Dawn of the
Dead” (1978)
 in the US: more shopping centers than theaters, school districts, ...
– biggest mall “Mall of America”: not only stores and retail, but restaurants, clinic,
bars, clubs, college, amusement park

Gothic
– was part of Romanticism
– Grant Wood “American Gothic” (1930) – new interpretations

characteristics:

– not far away, no supernatural forces (like in the European Gothic), but:
transformation, e.g. first American gothic novel: “Wieland, or the
Transformation” by Charles Brockden Brown (1798): family as the site of horror
– playing with identity (normally sth. stable), e.g. werewolves, vampires
– instability of boundaries: sanity/madness, inside/outside
– difficulties in understanding science (becoming more influential at the beginning
of the 19th century) --> it could be demonic
– miscegenation as a source of the uncanny (“The Uncanny” by Sigmund Freud)
– fair lady (white, blond hair, blue eyes) vs. dark lady (dark skin, dark hair,
dark eyes, different)

symbolizes purity seductive

literature:

– first vampire story “The Vampire” (1816) by Polidori (friend of Mary Shelley)
– “Frankenstein” (1818) by Mary Shelley: people feared that science could
fail/experiments could get out of control (figure of Frankenstein is compared to
the literary Faust and Prometheus)
– “Berenice” (1835) by Edgar Allan Poe: obsession with the lips and especially
teeth of the femme fatale; “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839): narrator of
distorted imagination
– “Dracula” by Bram Stoker (1879): anxiety of colonization, sexually active
women, power of the unconsciousness, old world vs. new world, new technology
used
– “Axolotl” by Julio Cortázar (1956): man imagining to be inside a horrible fish
(Magic Realism/Surrealism)
– “The Breast” by Philip Roth (1972): loss of identity, reminding of Franz Kafka’s
“Die Verwandlung”
– “The Gilda Stories” by Jewelle Gomez (1991), set in 1850: the black slave Gilda
is voluntarily becoming a vampire to gain more freedom

Contemporary Horror
– “The Turn of the Screw” (1898) by Henry James: most commented on American
literary work
– “Interview with the Vampire” (1976) by Anne Rice: about otherness,
homesexuality
– “The Silence of the Lambs” (1989) by Thomas Harris
 – concept of the other: monsters, dangerous and threatening
– Edith Wharton, Alfred Hitchcock, film: “The Blob” (thing without a name)
– today: Stephen King – stories of terror, horror, revulsion (“The Shining”, “Pet
Sematary”)

Detective/Crime Fiction
– most successful genre
– detective fiction has two elements: gothic/irrational – commiting the crime,
science/intellect – solving the crime
– Poe = inventor of detective fiction: Detective Dupin, ”The Murders in the Rue
Morgue” (1841)
 locked room mystery
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Agatha Christie
– crime fiction: detective is not the narrator, only sitting in the armchair and
thinking
– pulp & hard-boiled fiction: detectives tell their stories, they smoke, drink, they
often fall in love and the women turn out to be bad/the murderers, no
restoration of order
 critical of society
– ethnic detectives (Himes, Hillerman): intimate connection between crime fiction
and Realism
– modern detective fiction: “The City of Glass” (1985) by Paul Auster:
postmodern, takes the genre apart, plays with names and identitites and
questions their existence in the end
– Sara Paretsky: is credited with transforming the role and image of women in the
crime novel (first female investigator) – reflection of political issues
– Doppelgänger-motif

Science Fiction, Fantasy

 fantastic mode: the author can write about things that don’t really exist, story
violates reality of time and place (the consensus reality), but: also realist
elements are necessary
 realist mode: is about what could have happened in the time and place, but is
not more authentic than fantastic mode

– science fiction comes into being with pulp fiction (1940/50) --> had no good
reputation, was first rejected and labeled as “escapist”
– science fiction is about thingless names and nameless things
– “soft sciences”-fiction in the 1960’s – How will social relationships be in the
future?
– speculative science fiction (subgenre) – writing about worlds that are different
from our world/ alternative world histories
– dissatisfaction with limitations of science fiction per se: Utopia, Distopian
literature:
– Ursula K. Leguin: ”The Left Hand of Darkness” (1969): idea of androgyny, lack of
gender, “the king is pregnant”– causes defamiliarization, cognitive
estrangement, displacement
– “1984” (1949) by George Orwell, “Brave New World” (1931) by Aldous Huxley
 the authors project negatives of their time into the future
– Kurt Vonnegut: “Slaughterhouse Five” (1969): real memories with science
fiction elements
– fantasy: fairies, witches – not pretending that it could happen
– increasing gap between science and humanities: science fiction is interested in
bridging the gap
 – “Invasion of the Bodysnatchers” first in the Galaxy Magazine
– TV-Series Star Trek: pioneers for multiethnic society, first black captain Ohura at
the starship Enterprise, communication with other species, important: Cyborg –
half human and half machine, increasing medecine technology, today people
have artificial hips
 Cyborgs are discussed to be the representation of the modern human being in
contemporary criticism

Hip Hop
There are four main pillars of hip hop: b-boying/dancing, writing/graffiti,
djing/mixing, rapping.
Moving within the dynamics of the African-American culture, hip hop engages the
politics and aesthetics of music, dance, poetry and visual art.

characteristics:

– 1973-79/80 confined to the Bronx

– mixing of already published material is a postmodernist feature
– hip hop as continuation of struggle between industrialized culture and African-
American culture (hip hop has its roots in slavery)
 ambivalence between mainstream culture and political message
– ambivalent dynamics of commodifying hip hop: commercialization, stereotyping
and exploitation vs. widespread availability, global social movement,
intercultural communication
 hip hop tries to create social change (people whose voice isn’t heard rise up)
– expressing one’s authentic self
– to see hip hop in an academic context is new

important works:

– “Rapper’s Delight” by Sugar Hill Gang (1979) (lyrics originally by Grandmaster

Caz)
– “Rappers Deutsch” by pseudo rap crew including Thomas Gottschalk (1980)
– “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash, The Furious Five & Mc Melle Mel (1982)
– Martha Cooper took photographs of Graffitis, book: “Subway Art” (1984)
– film: “Beat Street” (1984) by Harry Belafonte & Stan Lathan

Facts that didn’t fit in but are important as well:

Robert Silverberg: women write utterly different

Ig Nobel Prize: researches that cannot or should not be reproduced, took place in the
MIT, now Harvard

Darwin Award: for people who die of their own stupidity

Konvergenztheorie: people who wish to act in a certain way come together and from a
crowd (therefore mass culture is so popular)

Alice Bradley Sheldon, pseudonym James Tiptree “Warm Worlds and Otherwise”, only
10 years before her death it was publicly known that she was in fact a woman

“The Invisible Man” by black author Ralph Ellison won the National Book Award
Emily Dickinson’s books were only published after her death, today: major poet in
America

Alice Walker “The Color Purple” (1982)

Food
– food represents countries to the outside
– popular thinking (e.g. in Germany): American food = Fast Food (Anti-
Americanism is often Anti-Modernism in Germany/Europe, e.g. anti convenience
food)
 the hamburger as the “epidemy” of American culture
– food = shaped by culture, place and time, e.g. French and Chinese Food (frogs
and rotten eggs)
– the amount of money that people invest in buying food has diminished, e.g. in
GB from the beginning of the 20th century – 40% of income, today 19%
– US culture ist multicultural = different kinds of food, e.g. Italian, Chinese,
Mexican, ...
– the development of nutrition was also influenced by the things that grew on
American soil
 American Cuisine: 1) Native American food (e.g. turkey)
2) Multicultural food
3) Regional food
– giving food to/preparing food for others = giving love
– “comfort food” = chocolate, sweets, ...
– religious food rules, e.g. no cows in India, no pork for muslims, kosher food for
jews, no meat on friday for christians
– food has an important social/communal function
– Lévi-Strauss (French anthropologist): food is a basic image to talk about what
culture is

Clothing
– clothing in the north differs from clothing in the south (according to climate)
– clothing has always protected people from things (cold, heat, looks from others)
– textile industry was the first industry to be mechanized and industrialized
– invention of the zipper at the beginning of the 20th century (design of the
modern zipper 1913)
– some materials are better than others/associated with certain meanings, e.g.
silk, which counts as luxury and is always seen to be seductive/have a sexual
connotation
– clothes have been used to signal difference/saneness or to express rebellion
– corsets represented the higher class: women could not (and had not to) work,
corsets stood for discipline and established the specific outline of a woman
which is still known today
– clothing for men was much more practical at the time, e.g. with pockets
– old clothes were used for quilting (folk culture) = little parts of cloth are sewed
to form a blanket
 today quilts are exhibited in museums to represent folk art, e.g. in the
Smithsonian in Washington
– clothing = art, there is a cultural significance of dresses
– today: “casual friday” where even bank employees can wear casual clothes (no
suit)

 We like to present ourselves through food and dresses.