Lecture_ Critical Positions on Popular Culture Lecture

Critical Positions on Popular Culture Lecture - Richard Miles

 

 

critical positions on popular culture Aims•Critically define ‘popular culture’ •Contrast ideas of ‘culture’ with ‘popular culture’ and ‘mass culture’ •Introduce Cultural Studies & Critical Theory •Discuss culture as ideology •Interrogate the social function of popular culture 

 

A installation exhibited in galleries which would not usually be featured. But why? throw away cultures.

 

A Banksy taken from the street literally and displayed in a gallery which could potentially be sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

 

Hyper development of capitalism. Clear class divides that started to appear. Rich and poor. This was notable in Manchester with different stratus of society.

In reality cultures has and always been produced by the aristocracy, by the rich. Culture being seen as a shared working class culture but actually wasn't.

 

•The culture & civilization tradition emerges from, and represents, anxieties about social and cultural extension. They attack mass culture because it threatens cultural standards and social authority. •The Frankfurt School emerges from a Marxist tradition. They attack mass culture because itthreatens cultural standards and depoliticises the working class, thus maintaining social authority. •Pronouncements on popular culture usually rely on normative or elitist value judgements •Ideology masks cultural or class differences and naturalises the interests of the few as the interests of all. •Popular culture as ideology •The analysis of popular culture and popular media is deeply political, and deeply contested, and all those who practice or engage with it need to be aware of this.