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Matakuliah
Tahun
: Sosiologi Komunikasi Massa
: 2009/2010
BUDAYA MEDIA
Pertemuan 10
Characteristics of popular culture
• Constantly changing
• Based in large,
heterogeneous groups of
people
• Based mainly in urban
areas
• Material goods massproduced by machines in
factories
• Prevailing money
economy
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Characteristics of popular culture
• More numerous individual relationships, but less
personal
• Weaker family structure
• Distinct division of labor with highly specialized
professions and jobs
• Considerable leisure time available to most people
• Police, army, and courts take the place of family and
church in maintaining order
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Popular culture
• If a single hallmark of popular culture exists, it is change
– Words such as growth, progress, fad, and trend crop
up frequently in newspapers and conversations
– Some people unable to cope with fast change
– Change can lead to insecurity expressed in the term
future shock
– Vast majority of people in developed countries belong
to the popular culture
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Popular culture
• If a single hallmark of popular culture exists, it is change
– Contributions to the spread of popular culture
• Industrialization
• Urbanization
• Rise of formal education
• Resultant increase in leisure time
– All the reasons popular culture spread caused folk
culture to retreat
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Popular culture
• If a single hallmark of popular culture exists, it is change
– We and our recent ancestors embraced the free,
open, dynamic life-style offered by popular culture
– Science challenged religion for dominance in our daily
lives
– We profited greatly in material terms through this
transition
– In reality, all culture presents a continuum on which
popular and folk represent extreme forms
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Popular culture
• If a single hallmark of popular culture exists, it is change
– Many graduations between the two are possible
– Disadvantages become apparent as one moves
toward the popular end of the continuum
• We forfeited much in discarding folkways
• Popular culture is not superior
• We weaken both family structure and interpersonal
relationships
• The prominent cultural geographer has said of
popular culture “only two (things) would I dislike to
give up: inside plumbing and medical advances.”
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Popular Cultures
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Recreation and Clothing
Leisure
Food and Drink
Music
Sports
Beauty Pageants
Vernacular
Advertising
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Advertising
• Most effective device for popular culture diffusion
• Commercial advertising of retail products bombards us
visually and orally
• Using psychology, we are sold products we do not need
• Popular culture is equipped with the most potent devices
and techniques of diffusion ever perfected
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Advertising
• Modern advertising is very place-conscious
– Products and services are linked to popular, admired
places
– Example of the “Marboro Man” and the romanticized
American West
– Remarkably such techniques work in countries as far
away as Egypt
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Advertising and Diffusion:
Asia
• Advertising plays a key role
in the diffusion of popular
culture.
• Symbols are important
marketing tools and
companies aim to get instant
recognition for their products.
• Here a row of former
Chinese shophouses has
been renovated as a “strip
mall.”
• The signs are international
status symbols meaning
“American.”
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Advertising and Diffusion:
Asia
• American pop culture is
becoming increasingly
popular in Asia to the dismay
of many traditional parents.
• How do you think these
young Asians learn about
American products and why
are they so much in
demand?
• Where do you think they are
manufactured?
• What signs do you
recognize?
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Mass Culture Theory
• Concepts of Mass Culture and Mass Society based on
divisions into:
1. High Art –not for commercial gain (supposedly).
Beethoven, etc.
2. Folk Art-from below as an expression of the people
3. Mass Media/Mass Culture Mass culture theory holds that
through `atomization’ individuals can only relate to each
other like atoms in a chemical compound. Individuals
are vulnerable to exploitation by core institutions of mass
media and pop culture. (example of rise of Nazism in
1930s and Orwell’s 1984)
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1. Mass culture is popular culture produced by mass production
industrial techniques and is marketed for a profit to a mass
public of consumers.
2. The main determinant of mass culture is the profit that
production and marketing can make from the potential mass
market.
3. Standardized and repetitive products of mass culture are then
sold to a passive audience, prone to manipulation by mass
media
4. To sell the product must be bland and standardized to a
formula.
5. Both folk and high art at risk from mass culture.
6. However an artist can play a defensive role, as by definition, it is
outside the market place, and can maintain standards.
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Defining ‘Fans’
Abbreviation of ‘fanatic’ (noun)
‘extremist; a holder of extreme or irrational
enthusiasms or beliefs, especially in religion or politics’
Latin ‘fanaticus’ – ‘Of or belonging to a temple, a temple
servant or devotee’ and ‘of persons inspired by
orgiastic rites and enthusiastic frenzy’
‘Fan’ appears in the late 19th century in reference to
followers of sports teams in the US
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Fans in the cultural imaginary
• Exemplify the ‘brainless
consumerism of mass
culture
• Devote their lives to
trivia/devalued cultural
material
• Socially awkward,
feminised, de-sexualised,
even psychotic.
• Immature, emotionally
and intellectually
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‘Participatory Culture’ – the audience as
creator
• Dispersal of cultural authority –
the rise of the fan as artist,
notions of ‘cult’ and ‘cool’
• Intertextuality, pillaging of popcultural history
• Fan culture about subversion,
the fun and empowerment of
play.
• The concerns of fans taken
into the production process
(Lord of the Rings v. Star
Wars, Shefrin (2004)
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