Lesson 12: Popular Culture

Robert Wonser
Introduction to Sociology
Lesson Outline
What is popular culture? Popular? Culture?
Interpretive Communities
Theoretical views: Functionalist
Theoretical views: Critical
Theoretical views: interaction
Class distinction and social reproduction
Authenticity
Subculture
Hegemony

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Some notes about pop culture
Pop culture is never the product of a
solitary artist but always emerges
from a collective activity generated
by interlocking networks of cultural
creators.
Popular culture is produced,
consumed, and experienced within a
context of overlapping sets of social
relationships.

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What is Popular Culture?
Popular culture refers to the
aesthetic products created and sold
by profit-seeking firms operating in
the global entertainment market.
Popular culture = popular + culture
So, what does popular mean?
So, what does culture mean?

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Popular
1) culture that is well-liked (demonstrated
through sales)
2) icons or media products that are globally
ubiquitous and easily recognized the world
over
3) commercial media that is thought to be
trivial, tacky or lowest common
denominator; mass culture
4) belonging to the people; folk culture

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Culture
Culture is richly symbolic, invested
with meaning and significance.
The meanings attributed to culture are
never simply given but are the product
of human invention, socially
constructed and agreed upon among a
demonstrably large number of societys
members.
Finally, for culture to be sensibly
understood it must be embodied in
some kind of recognizable form.
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So, which opinion is correct?
Meaning, interpretation and value are
not ultimately decided by the creators
of media and popular culture (though
they do have some input), but by its
consumers.
Cultural objects are multivocal
because they say different things to
different people.

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Interpretation
Audiences draw on their own social
circumstances when attributing meaning
and value to popular culture.
These meanings are patterned according to
persistent systems of social organization
structured by differences in socioeconomic
status, nationality, race, ethnicity, gender,
sexuality, religion, or age.
These are called interpretive
communities
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Interpretive Communities
Interpretive communities
Consumers whose common social
identities and cultural backgrounds
(whether organized on the basis of
nationality, race, ethnicity, gender,
sexuality, religion, or age) inform
their shared understandings of
culture in patterned and predictable
ways.
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Theoretical takes on Popular
Culture
Functionalist: culture functions as the
social glue that generates solidarity and
cohesion within human groups and
societies.
Contemporary collective ritualshs football
games, parades, pep ralliesserve to forge
emotional bonds of recognition, identity,
and trust within communities and social
groups
Allows strangers to communicate with each
other in public
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Emotional Energy
A strong benefit of group membership
(society, a cultural group, or
subcultural group) is the emotional
energy one receives from taking part
in social gatherings
Durkheim called this collective
effervescence

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Rituals can vary from:
Conversations Religion

Concerts Graduation

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The Importance of Rituals
If people share the same sacred emblems
and holy names, the same doctrines, they
know they belong to the same ritual
community.
They can identify with one another as
members of a group that has feelings of
collective solidarity and strength.
Even short conversations are mini rituals
that affirm ones identity in a select group
and boost our emotional energy.
Sacred symbols also tell us who is not a
part of our group.

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Theoretical takes on Popular
Culture
Critical: the ascendance of certain
kinds of pop culture can be explained
primarily in terms of their ability to
reflect and reinforce the enormous
economic and cultural power of the
mass media industry.
Top down model with pop culture as a
form of domination.
Culture industry
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Whos responsible for your
favorite programming?

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Popularity of the Name Kim

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Theoretical takes on Popular
Culture
Interactionist approach:
emphasizes the power that informal
processes like word of mouth and
peer influence enjoy in the cultural
marketplace.
Our consumer tastes are deeply
affected by those around us.
Which names are common?

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Highbrow and Lowbrow
highbrow and lowbrow
Phrenological throwback when it was presumed
brow size (height of forehead) was thought to
be a marker of intelligence
Pejorative labellow cultureactivites and
amusements lacking in virtue and
associated with sexuality and the lower half
of the body as opposed to highbrow (being
more intellectual of course!).

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Taste and Consumption
Taste ones preference for
particular styles of fashion, music,
cinema or other kinds of culture
Consumption the reception,
interpretation and experience of
culture
Do you live in a food desert?
Does social class play a role in
determining these?
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The Invention of class cultures
150 years ago Americans enjoyed the same national
popular culture consumed and experienced
collectively by the masses, by people from all social
classes.
What happened? Industrial Revolution
Created a new upper-classes American elite of
successful entrepreneurs, bankers and
businesspeople.
The nouveau riche descended from common
backgrounds, not aristocracy like in Europe.
So initially they drew on trappings of European
nobility (family crests, French cuisine, classical art
and music)

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The Invention of Class Cultures
Conscious efforts at boundary
maintenance and social exclusion.

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Class Status and Conspicuous
Consumption
Conspicuous consumption status
displays that show off ones wealth
through the flagrant consumption of
goods and services, particularly those
considered wasteful or otherwise
lacking in obvious utility
Upper classes distinctly avoid
associations with working class; this
reverse is not true.

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Class Distinctions: Conspicuous
Consumption

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Cultural Capital and Class
Reproduction
Cultural tastes have value and can be
transferred to others, converted into
financial wealth, and ultimately help to
reproduce the class structure of our
society. This is called
Cultural capital ones store of knowledge
and proficiency with artistic and cultural
styles that are valued by society, and
confer prestige and honor upon those
associated with them.
Unevenly distributed and usually inherited

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Popular Culture and the Search for
Authenticity
Perhaps the biggest motivator to consume
popular culture authenticity
Authenticity can refer to a variety of desirable
traits: credibility, originality, sincerity,
naturalness, genuineness, innateness, purity, or
realness.
Can never be truly authentic, instead must always
be performed, staged, fabricated, crafted or
otherwise imagined.
The performance of authenticity always requires
a close conformity to the expectations set by the
cultural context in which it is situated.
Why is authenticity so important? Is it lacking in
our culture?
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Subcultures (Only in Context)
Formation
They could only emerge under the specific
conditions and context in which they did
The dominate, mass culture had to exist to
rebel against
This dominate culture was a product of
middle class post-war affluence and many
subcultures are products of the declining
middle class and the identity crisis that
ensues afterward
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LARP, Straight Edge and
Occupy

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Consumerism
Consumerism propels the insatiable
belief that we need what we do not
have
A fundamental frame of reference for
relating to oneself, to others, to the
environment as a whole
Lagom: Swedish word meaning the
right amount is best
Do we have a similar word or idea
in America?
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Consumerism
The dominate culture is linked with
the consumerist society. Eventually it
is exposed as vapid and unable to
fulfill individual desires for identity
fulfillment.

How unique are you when you like

what everyone else likes?

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Cultural Hegemony and
Consumerism
Ideas propelled by the culture
industry:
Last seasons fashions are so last
season
planned obsolescence
Shopping completes us
Average adult 48 new pieces of
clothing a year, child 70 new toys

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Cultural Hegemony and
Consumerism
We can all live like celebrities
We evaluate our consumption in reference
to groups that live financially beyond our
own means (rather than our neighbors)
In 2011 consumer debt was $2.43 trillion
Average household credit card debt is
$15,799
Ironically, this doesnt make us any happier
by only highlighting existing disparities
between the middle and upper classes.

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Cultural Hegemony and
Consumerism
Our self-worth is
determined by our
looks and cultural
norms of sexual
attractiveness
Airbrushed images of
Are your armpits
perfected bodies unattractive?
normalize an
unattainable
expectation of beauty.

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Cultural Hegemony and
Consumerism
Brands matter
Connote status
McDonalds coffee beats Starbuck in
unbiased Consumer Reports taste
tests.
Ramones t-shirts have outsold their
cds and records 10 to 1
Cool hunters
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The Sleeper Curve
The Sleeper Curve applies to pop
culture: the most apparently debasing
forms of mass diversion turn out to be
nutritional after all.
As Steven Johnson claims, video games
provide a locus for the same kind of
rigorous mental workout required for
mathematical theorems and puzzles.
Improve abstract problem-solving skills
Video games are actually making us
sharper and smarter than any other point
in the history of civilization.
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Sleeper Curve
Storyline complexity has increased
dramatically and even the best shows
from 20 years ago would be regarded
as quite primitive were they to air
today (compare Dragnet to The
Sopranos).
Evidence:
Increase in multiple threading
Decline in flashing arrows
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Demographics
of U.S. Internet
Users, 2010

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Take Away Points:
Popular culture isnt good or bad;
at least not until it is interpreted.
Pop culture has no inherent meaning.
Popular culture is another vehicle for
class reproduction.

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For Next Time
Final Exam!
Be sure to study!
And, Read! (just kidding, only study!)

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