Pop culture

CMNS 1221 - Lecture Notes for ‘the Age of Staying Home’ MASS CULTURE ASSIGNMENT: There are FOUR questions in this document. For EACH question, I want you to type an answer (approx. 250 words MINIMUM for each). Email me your four answers Before APRIL 12th, please. The Frankfurt School and Popular Culture In this ‘lecture’ we’re going to look at a few important theories and theorists in the study of popular culture. To begin, we must understand what is meant by ‘popular culture’. When most people use this term today, they are referring to the cultural texts of mainstream American culture. TV shows like the Big Bang Theory, musicians like Beyonce and Kanye West, movies like the Avengers. These are all cultural texts that are available to large audiences, and that enjoy widespread popularity. Not all popular culture is well received by critics, but it is still ‘popular’ because many people like it, or talk about it, or even know about it (the Kardashians). No matter how stupid popular culture may seem at times, it’s important to realize that there is no such thing as ‘pure’ entertainment. No TV show is simply mindless entertainment – there are always messages and meanings to be found. Popular culture – from TV shows to music videos – represents the culture it comes from. It communicates the values and ideas of a culture, and in this respect it is extremely useful to study popular culture. Now, before the days of broadcast media (film, radio, TV, Internet) it was generally assumed that the values and ideas of a society came from the top - from the powerful people in society. As Marx wrote, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas”. The institutions of power employed art critics and authors and intellectuals, who told people what was good art, what was bad art, and what culture was trying to communicate. Think about the remaining forms of ‘high culture’ today. When you go to an art gallery, you can look at the paintings and sculptures, but you usually end up reading the signs next to the art, where someone else tells you what the art is ‘about’. There are still cultural experts who know which opera singers are ‘best’, and which classical music is most ‘important’.

If you ever want to see this kind of cultural elitism in action, go downtown to the SFU Harbour Centre campus. Across Hastings Street from the university, there is a store called Sikora Music. They sell classical music. Everything about the store is designed to make you feel stupid. THEY know classical music, and they know what is worth listening to, and what is not. They even have a sign in their window, written in detailed calligraphy, that says they have a “beginners bin” inside. Because (as we have all been taught), Classical Music is very complex and only smart people can ‘get’ it, and you would need to spend years LEARNING to appreciate it. Right? …. right? What else does the Ruling Class like? What do they eat? Have you ever eaten CAVIAR, or TRUFFLES? Are these really the best foods in the world? Or are they just expensive, fancy things that rich people like. The thing is… if powerful people like something, that thing starts to have value for the rest of us, too. “Caviar looks like salty fish eggs, but it MUST be a delicacy because it’s so expensive and served in fancy restaurants!” QUESTION 1: ​Think about how the ruling classes shape our tastes and desires. I want you to pick a LUXURY ITEM to write about: an expensive thing (clothing, car, etc.) that you WANT, but can’t afford. WHY do you want this thing? Where did you learn about it? Who told you it was a good thing? Can you think of a movie, or an advertisement that really convinced you that you want this thing someday? Now, early in the semester, we briefly talked about the idea of Hegemony. That is, the process of maintaining power without the use of force – invisible consent. The institutions of power in a society can preserve order and stability through everyday, boring activities – School, Church, TV, etc. We learn about laws, and moral codes, and normal behaviours, not through military lectures, but through everyday life. This is why Popular Culture is so interesting – it helps us see hegemony in action. Why do we believe the things we do, and how do everyday things help to maintain order? Scholars who look at culture tend to use a variety of terms to describe what they see, but for our purposes there are three main types of culture for discussion.

1. Folk Culture. This is literally the culture of the people (Folk comes from the German word ‘volk’, which means people. Ever seen a Volkswagen? That means “the people’s car”) Folk Culture is not the culture that the people enjoy – it is culture OF the people. People make it themselves. Generally, folk culture refers to the past, when people lived in small villages and communities, with only limited contact to other cultures. Think about the songs and dances associated with traditional cultures. Folk Dances and Folk Songs can’t be attributed to a single writer or creator – they are the songs and dances that a culture has known for generations. Many countries around the world celebrate their folk songs, stories, dances, etc. They are a connection to the past, to what is often seen as a ‘simpler’ time. In this way, most writing about Folk Culture becomes bogged down in myth and nostalgia – romantically remembering a past that may or may not have actually existed. 2. Mass Culture. This is the subject that most interested the Frankfurt School, as we’ll see later in the lecture. Mass Culture only comes into being when there is a mass audience, and when culture can be produced for this mass audience. Much of what we know as mass culture therefore comes into being when modern communication technologies are introduced. You can sing a song on a stage, to a large audience, but the radio allows you to sing that same song to millions of listeners. As we have seen in the history of radio and TV, however, the technology required to broadcast that song over the radio is expensive, and regulated by governments. Therefore, the difference between singing a song to a small group and singing over the radio is very significant. The reasons for singing change. The listening experience changes. The control over who gets to listen changes. Mass culture is interested in both the mass production of culture and in the implications of a society defined by mass media. We become part of a mass audience, undefined by geography, personality, or taste. It doesn’t matter if you love the Simpsons or hate the Simpsons – you are part of the mass audience that watches the Simpsons. If you watch, it stays on the air. If you don’t, it can go off the air. The mob rules. 3. Popular Culture. As I said, this is simply the range of cultural products popular in the mainstream. On the surface, Popular Culture and Mass Culture seem to be the same thing. What is important, however, is that Mass Culture is made by large producers, for a mass audience. Pop Culture can

come from a variety of sources, but is consumed by many people. The significance will become clearer as we look at the Frankfurt School’s concerns with Mass Culture, and as we explore the various critiques of their work. QUESTION 2: ​Give me an example of each of these three types of culture, using either MUSIC or FOOD. For example, you might discuss three restaurants in Vancouver: one that you feel is producing Folk Culture (for a small community, because they love making food), one that is Mass Culture, and one that is Popular Culture (but NOT necessarily Mass Culture… that is, the example is POPULAR, but it wasn’t designed for a mass audience.) Briefly describe your three examples. Feel free to look up the terms Folk, Mass, and Popular Culture on Wikipedia and YouTube for a better understanding. The Frankfurt School As you saw in your readings, the Frankfurt School is a term that refers to several important scholars in the 20​th​ Century. They started work in Frankfurt, Germany, but were forced to flee for their own safety. The Frankfurt School (Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in particular) were interested in what they referred to as the Culture Industries. They looked at the history and development of economic production (coming from Marxism) in order to understand the changes in culture around them. The term Culture Industries is meant to suggest a very real connection between economics (factories, assembly lines, mass production, planned obsolescence, the need for marketing, etc.) and the world of culture (art, entertainment, etc). In studies of economics and the Industrial Revolution, it has been noted that the development of Mass Production came fairly easily – once the technology was invented, it was an easy step for industries to mass produce their products. The trick for capitalism was, and always has been, the development of a Mass Market: we can make millions of cars/TVs/sweaters, but now we need millions of people to buy them. Capitalism solves this problem in two key ways. First, despite the growth of technology, mass production must continue to employ the majority of citizens in a country. Wages at the Ford Factory, for example, (where the first assembly line was built), were kept very high. This

way, the employees of a factory can afford to buy the products they spend the day making. (It is interesting to see this rule coming apart in various developing countries today.) The second solution to the problem of mass production is much more important – advertising. You can make millions of sweaters at a factory, and you can pay your employees enough to afford these sweaters. But you need to make them WANT to buy your sweaters. This is why the Industrial period is also when we see the rise of modern advertising. Capitalism must create desire – it must manufacture demand for products that most of us don’t actually need. How many people in this room want a Mercedes, or a Rolex, or designer sunglasses? Why on earth do we want these things? They’re expensive, unnecessary, and rarely well built. But we do want them. This is because advertising has become one of the most powerful forces on the planet. So the central theme in Horkheimer and Adorno’s work is that in the age of mass media, the Culture Industries are the most powerful hegemonic force on the planet. The movies we watch, the songs we hear on the radio, and the stories we read in daily newspapers, taken together, have an incredibly powerful influence on us. We don’t need governments and the upper classes to tell us how to act and what to like, because the mass media does it instead. A handful of companies make billions of dollars selling us ideas and lifestyles that keep us ignorant, powerless, and poor. We willingly spend all of our time and money trying to buy products and services we don’t need. Advertising has convinced us that the good life is what we see on TV, and that we can buy it at the mall. Obviously, the Frankfurt School is generally seen as extremely pessimistic. It’s a depressing thought – TV and movies tell us what to think, and we are powerless. The Culture Industries – those companies that make TV shows and CDs and commercials – control us. They trick us into doing what they want us to do. Most people don’t want to believe this, and that’s a major reason so many people have criticized the Frankfurt School. That doesn’t mean they were wrong – in the 1940s, a handful of scholars were warning us that TV and movies and music are too important to ignore. We need to understand the culture around us if we want to understand what makes us who we are.

The readings this week present a number of criticisms of the Frankfurt School, but I want to focus on two in particular. The first is the work of Walter Benjamin. Benjamin was connected with the Frankfurt School, but wasn’t a key member, the way Horkheimer and Adorno were. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”​ (1936) In the age of mechanical reproduction, Benjamin argues, something has gone missing from art. Reproduction, however, is hardly new. From stamps, to foundries (metal working), to simple transcription, art has always been reproducible. Mechanical reproduction, on the other hand, changes the rules greatly. Now we have machines that can make millions of copies of something. That means we can mass produce cars and clothing and furniture… but also music and painting and books. MORE people have access to these things, which is good. But we ONLY have access to copies, not Originals. “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (Benjamin). This is what Benjamin calls the ‘Aura’ connected to an original work of art. No matter how good a copy you make, the copy is never as meaningful as the original. Have you ever seen a picture of the Mona Lisa? Have you been to Paris to see THE Mona Lisa? What’s the difference? Well, the original painting is special. It is the ONLY original. It exists in ONE place. And when you stand in front of it, and you think about this fact, you realize that you are experiencing something special. Something unique. The Original work of art has an AURA - a magical quality that cannot be found in any copy. Benjamin argues that a work of art can be received and valued on two different levels: Cult Value, and Exhibition Value. Cult value is based solely on the existence of the object. Certain statues, for example, remain hidden in churches for all but one day of the year. If a work of art has Cult Value, it means that the art is valuable to you because you have BEEN TOLD that it is valuable. You might never actually see or hear

the art yourself. But because others (experts, scholars, elders) TELL you that the thing is valuable, it has value to you. Exhibition Value, on the other hand, means that a work of art is valuable to you because you EXPERIENCED IT YOURSELF. You saw it, you heard it, you touched it. You didn’t need experts to tell you this thing is valuable - you actually experienced the thing firsthand. In an age of reproduction (of copies), MOST art relies on Exhibition Value. Why? Because you and I don’t NEED experts anymore! If I ask you: ‘Who is better: Mozart, or Beethoven?’ Do you need to study classical music for several years, and listen to professors tell you their thoughts? No. Just download both onto your phone, listen to them, and make up your OWN mind. Before it was easy to copy things like music, ordinary people didn’t have access to most art. So they had to trust authorities and experts. Today, you can make a copy of a film, a song, a book, a painting… on your phone. And you consume that copy, and come to your own conclusions. So MOST art you and I consume will only be valuable to us through its EXHIBITION. NOT its ‘cult’ status. QUESTION 3: ​Discuss a work of art that you think is valuable because of its CULT VALUE. Preferably, a piece of art you’ve never experienced yourself. Why is this thing valuable to you? Who told you that it has value, and why do you believe them? Then, discuss a work of art that you find valuable because of it EXHIBITION VALUE. Preferably, a piece of art that most critics and experts tell you has NO value. Why don’t you care what the experts say about this piece of art? Why is it still valuable to you? Benjamin concludes his essay with the warning that within the logic of market capitalism, there is the danger in false prophets and solutions. Fascism, he warned in 1936, seeks to aestheticize destruction, creating original, wondrous works of art out of human death and decay. The potential combination of political will, intellectual justification, and cultural creation could be devastating. [Mankind’s] “self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.” (Benjamin)

One of the greatest fears of the Mass Culture critics is that a massified society, entertained by the products of mass production and mass distribution, is an easy target for the worst instincts of human beings. Their fears were, at various times, fuelled by, reacting to, and predicting, the Nazi regime in Germany. Leni Riefenstahl, 1935: Triumph of the Will. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl2iIHRE1ng Think about the role of media and communication in Nazi Germany. LOTS of angry little men have tried to conquer the world. That’s not new in history. But Hitler had his own personal filmmaker, and a weekly radio show. If Napoleon had these things, we would all be speaking French right now… Movies take up our attention (think McLuhan here: HOT media…) They entertain us, they distract us… and they are an incredible tool for propaganda and manipulation. If a government decided to use movies to manipulate a public, what might happen…? So the fear is that Mass Culture uses powerful weapons such as Film and Radio and Television to brainwash us, and we’re too busy being entertained to notice. The opening scene in Triumph of the Will was shot from an airplane. In 1936. Most Germans who saw this movie had never been in a place. They had literally never seen anything like this before. It’s a special effects showcase that blew people away. Also, it was teaching them that Adolf Hitler is a glorious leader sent from Heaven… So yeah, critics need to pay close attention to this stuff. It matters. Are the Mass Culture critics right? Are mass-produced cultural products inherently dangerous? The argument of mass culture critics is that, in the age of mechanization and massification, we have become ‘atomised’. That is, we are all individuals in a mass society, without the small, community-based identities that have helped to build social cohesion for thousands of years. Without the central role of the Family, the Neighbourhood, or the Church to keep us together, we rely on the cultural industries to provide our social, intellectual, and even moral direction.

Ultimately, however, this is a critique of democracy too: If it appeals to the masses, it must be good. How can we trust masses of individuals to make their own decisions? Don’t they need leaders to inspire them? Don’t they need intellectuals to guide them? This is where Mass Culture theory begins to stumble over its own contradictions: Do we blame the rise of Nazism on the elite (who gave direction to the masses), on the mass-produced cultural products that helped to sway a population (Triumph), on the failure of democracy (voting for the wrong party is worse than Not voting for a good king…), or on all of the above? Would the preservation of German Folk Culture have prevented Hitler’s rise? Would the existence of a thriving alternative media have prevented it? Would Television have made it worse, or would it have pacified the masses to the point where war would be impossible to sustain? Ultimately, Benjamin was much more optimistic than Horkheimer and Adorno. The Frankfurt School, in its critique of the culture industries, ends up being a bit too elitist – they don’t trust the Mass audience, even though the Mass Audience is us. Benjamin argues that the meaning of Art has changed in the 20​th​ Century, but he doesn’t see this as an entirely bad thing. We have access to more art – art is fundamentally more available and accessible. QUESTION 4: ​Spend a little time looking up the term ‘atomisation’, and learning more about how Mass Media actually leaves us isolated and lonely. We live in the most connected society ever imagined, and yet we are often very lonely: how can that be? Atomisation is the result of mass media - millions of us can watch the same show or the same movie at the same time, and yet we form no actual connections to one another. We don’t talk to strangers in a movie theatre. We barely know our neighbours. In this particular moment where we’re all stuck indoors, literally being told to ISOLATE from one another… do you think The Internet has the potential to bring people together in a meaningful way? If Radio and Film and TV caused Atomisation and isolation and loneliness… could the internet help to fix this problem?