PopULAR

CULTURE
 Popular
Culture

“well liked by
many people”
 o1 02 03 04
High Mass Folk Working
Culture Culture Culture Class
Culture
 High CUlture
Ø pattern of cultural interactions and
behaviors found in a society's upper
classes
Ø associated with wealth, intellectualism,
power and prestige
What are considered as
part of High CUlture?
 POP
CULTURE HIGH
• mass produced
CULTURE
commercial • individual act of
culture creation
• difficult and
exclusive
• consumed by the
elites
 Popular culture as inferior culture

v Popular Press
v Popular v Quality
Cinema Press
v Popular Art Cinema
Entertainment
v

v Art
Popular Culture
as Mass Culture
§ mass produced for mass consumption
§ audience are non-discriminating
consumers
Popular Culture
as Mass Culture
§ American culture
§ standardized and superficial culture
§ promotes commercialism and
consumerism
FOLK CULTURE

v originates from the people

v authentic culture of the people
v produced by an integrated
community for a purpose
What are examples of
Filipino FOLK CULTURE?
 POPULAR
CULTURE FOLK
• originated in
CULTURE
more • local
developed • influenced by
countries for physical
recreation
envronment
• commercial
Popular Culture as
Working Class Culture
culture formed out of the working class’
protest against capitalism
Working Class Culture

Ø produced by the social class who

have low educational attainment,
low occupational status and low
income
What are examples of
Working Class Culture?
 REFERENCES
Instructor Manual for the Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography (n.d.). Folk and
popular culture. https://www.sps186.org/downloads/attachments/33832/Chapter%204%
20Reading%20Guide.pdf
LumenLearning. (n.d.). High culture and pop culture. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/fscj-intro-to-
sociology/chapter/reading-pop-culture-subculture-and-cultural-change/
LumenLearning (n.d.). The class culture in the U.S. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-
sociology/chapter/the-class-structure-in-the-u-s/
Storey, J. (2012). Cultural theory and popular culture: An introduction (6th ed.). Routledge.
 Thank YOU!
CREDITS: This presentation template was
created by Slidesgo, including icons by Flaticon,
and infographics & images by Freepik.
Nature and
Politics of
Popular Culture
Theories on the Nature and Politics
of Popular Culture

• Marxism
• Cultural Hegemony Theory
• Leavisism
Marxism
 Karl Heinrich Marx
(1818-1863)

Ø German Philosopher
Ø Works:
§ The Communist Manifesto
(with Freidrich Engels)
§ Das Kapital
 Marxism

o texts and practices must be analyzed

in relation to their historical
conditions of production

o each significant period in history is

constructed around a particular
“mode of production”
 Marxism

the society’s“mode of
production”determines the political,
social and cultural shape of that
society and its possible future
development
 Marxism

SUPERSTRUCTURE

Political, Legal, Educational, Cultural Institutions, etc.

BASE

Forces of production: raw materials, tools, workers

and skills

Relations of production (e.g., bourgeois-proletariat)

The superstructure legitimates and challenges the base.

The base determines the limits and form of superstructure.
Bourgeoisie VS Proletariat
 Marxism

“It is in the ‘ideological forms’

of the superstructure (which include
the texts and practices of popular
culture) that men and women ‘become
conscious of conflict and fight it
out.”
Cultural Hegemony
Theory
Antonio Gramsci
(1891-1937)

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonio-Gramsci

Founder of the Italian

Communist Party
 HEGEMONY
a political term developed by Gramsci
to understand the lack of socialist
revolutions in Western capitalist
democracies
 HEGEMONY

ruling class dominates through

"intellectual and moral leadership"
Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony Theory

Hegemony involves a
particular type of
consensus: a social
group attempts to portray
its own particular
interests as the general
interests of the society at
large.
 Hegemony

Ø the result of "negotiations" between

dominant and subordinate classes, a
mechanism characterized by both
"resistance" and "incorporation"
 Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony
Theory

Men and women create popular culture by

actively consuming the texts and activities
of the culture industries.
Leavisism
Frank Raymond Leavis
(1895-1978)

https://literariness.org/2016/03/18/moral-formalism-f-r-leavis/
 Leavisism

CULTURAL CRISIS

19th century as “ standardization

and levelling down” of culture
 Leavisism

“Upon the minority depends our

power of profiting by the finest human
experience of the past ; standards that
order the finer living of an age...”
 Leavisism

https://www.marketing-interactive.com/hong-kong-advertisers-face-difficult-2019-with-
online-to-offline-split-50-50

Advertising and how it is consumed

is the main symptom of cultural
decline.
 Leavisism

“‘The people with power no

longer represent intellectual
authority and culture.”
 Leavisism

Popular fiction offers

‘compensation’ and ‘distraction’

https://blog.bham.ac.uk/poplit/
 Leavisism

Discrimination and resistance of mass

culture through education
 Leavisism

Cultural missionaries to remedy cultural

decline, to maintain cultural/literary
tradition
 References
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2021, January 19). Antonio Gramsci.
Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
biography/Antonio-Gramsci
Feuer, L. S. and McLellan, . David T. (2021, January 19). Karl Marx.
Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-
Marx
Storey, J. (2012). Cultural theory and popular culture: An introduction (6th ed.).
Routledge.
THE
COMMODIFICATION
OF CULTURE
Kultura o dilhensya?
Pumili ka!
http://www.bayanmall.org/blog/hugot-lines-from-heneral-luna
2
Theories on Popular Culture

A. Mass Society Theory

B. Cultural Industry
C. Theory of Commodity Fetishism

3
“ Who determines
popular culture?

4
1.
Mass Society
Theory
William Kornhauser (1959)
Mass Society Theory
▸ “broken down theory”
▸ industrialization and urbanization as the
disruptive causes of the societies’ values,
religion, sense of community

6
Mass Society Theory
Industrialization “Atomization”

7
 Atomization

people lack meaningful

and coherent
relationships

8
Mass Society Theory

▸ No moral order = people are

vulnerable to manipulations (of the
mass media)

9
Mass Society Theory: Mass Culture
Standardized, Lacks Homogenous
repetitive and intellectual culture
challenge and
superficial
stimulation,
providing
escapism and
fantasy

10
2.
Culture Industry
Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer
 Culture Industry
▸ goal is the production of
goods that are profitable
and consumable

12
Culture Industry
▸ limiting the development of a critical
awareness of the social conditions
▸ promotes domination by corrupting the
psychological development of the mass
of people

13
Culture Industry
▸ “cultural commodities are subject
to the same instrumentally
rationalized mechanical forces
which serve to dominate
individuals’ working lives”

14
Culture Industry

▸ no distinction between work and

leisure, production and
consumption
▸ amusement is prolongation of work

15
 Culture Industry
“escape from the
mechanized work process,
and to recruit strength in
order to be able to cope
with it again”
16
Commodities in culture
industry
“standardized (mechanized
production, distribution and
consumption), formulaic
(uniform, using identical
“mould”), and repetitive in
character”
17
Standardization of music
18
 vlost freedom
of choice

vregression of
listening
https://www.emergingedtech.com/2017/04/app-ed-round-up-making-music-
memorable/

19
“ The culture industry prevents
the development of autonomy
through the mediatory role that
its different industries play in
the formation of individuals'
consciousness of social reality . 20
3.
Theory of
Commodity
Fetishism
Karl Marx
Marx:

▸ use-value of a ▸ commodity
commodity value - money
Marx:

X commodity = labor that produced it

23
Commodity Fetishism

ü commodity worth much more

24
Fetishism

▸ refers to the primitive belief that

godly powers can dwell in
inanimate objects (e.g., in totems)

25
http://factmyth.com/commodity-fetishism-consumerism-the-society-of-the-spectacle-alienation-and-more/
26
Commodity Fetishism
q People identify themselves with the
things they own.
q The things that people produce end up
defining them as persons.
q The things that people own end up
owning them.

27
 REFERENCES
Fagan, A. (n.d.). The culture industry. Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/adorno/#H5
Felluga, D. (2002, July 17). Modules on Marx: On
Fetishism. Introductory Guide to Critical Theory.
http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/marxism/
modules/marxfetishism.html
Strinati,D. (2004). An Introduction to Theories of Popular
Culture. Routledge.

28
POSTMODERNISM,
GLOBALIZATION
AND
POPULAR CULTURE
1.
POSTMODERNISM
 HISTORICAL TIMELINE

PRE- POST-
MODERNISM
MODERNISM MODERNISM

3
 “ We live in a
postmodern world
where everything is
possible and almost
nothing is certain.
- Vaclav Havel

4
 POSTMODERNISM

▪ no absolute truth and authority

▪ no absolute norms and values
▪ emphasizes feelings and experience

5
 POSTMODERNISM
Ø collapse of
metanarratives
Ø increase of plurality,
diversity and
heterogeneity https://egs.edu/biography/jean-francois-
lyotard%E2%80%A0/

Ø pop culture as “anything Jean-Francois Lyotard

goes” culture (1979, The Postmodern Condition)

6
 POSTMODERNISM
Ø ‘new sensibility’ - the
distinction between  high”
and “low” culture
becomes less
meaningful
Ø modern culture as
bourgeois culture, elitist
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Susan-Sontag

Susan Sontag (1966)

7
 POSTMODERNISM
▪ gave rise to new body of
intellectuals
‘the coming into being of those
whose voices were historically
drowned out by the (modernist)
metanarratives of mastery,
which were in turn both
patriarchal and imperialist’ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20181
25.Postmodernism_and_Popular_Culture

8
 How does
postmodernism
impact popular
culture?
9
 Hyperrealism

https://www.pinterest.ph/pin/505177283177377911/
10
Hyperrealism
Ø people can no
longer tell the
difference
between fiction
https://www.famousphilosophers.org
/jean-baudrillard/

and reality Jean Baudrillard

Culture of the “ Simulacrum”

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/blog/livestreaming-concerts-ds0c/
Culture of the “Simulacrum”
Ø an identical copy without an original
Ø undergoes a process of simulation
https://www.nimcj.org/blog-detail/how-mass-media-influence-our-society.html
Media and Reality
“media no longer provide secondary
representations of reality; they affect
and produce the reality that they
mediate” - John Fiske
16
Culture of Pastiche (Frederic Jameson)
Ø culture of depthlessness,
superficiality
Ø imitate dead styles
Ø less creativity and innovation
Culture of Pastiche - e.g. Nostalgia Films
2.
GLOBALIZATION
Globalization as cultural Americanization

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/are-american-brands-losing-their-aura-in-asia/
Globalization is reducing the world to an
American global village
“a global village in which everyone
speaks English with an American
accent, wears Levi jeans and
Wrangler shirts, drinks Coca-Cola,
eats at McDonald’s, surfs the net on
a computer overflowing with
Microsoft software, listens to rock
or country music, watches a mixture
of MTV and CNN, Hollywood movies
and reruns of Dallas...” https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/mars
hall-mcluhans-vision-of-the-global-village-1960/
-Storey, 2016
Globalization
1. Are commodities the same as culture?
2. Are we passive consumers?
 REFERENCES
Cornelis, P. (2006, December 8 ). Postmodernism’s impact on
popular culture. Banner of truth. https://banneroftruth.
org/ us/resources/articles/2006/postmodernisms-
impact-on-popular-culture/
Storey, J. (2012). Cultural theory and popular culture. An
introduction (6th ed.). Routledge.

24
 THANK YOU!

25