BUDAYA MEDIA Pertemuan 10 Matakuliah: Sosiologi Komunikasi Massa Tahun: 2009/2010

BUDAYA MEDIAPertemuan 10

Matakuliah : Sosiologi Komunikasi MassaTahun : 2009/2010

Characteristics of popular culture

• Constantly changing• Based in large,

heterogeneous groups of people

• Based mainly in urban areas

• Material goods mass-produced 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


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



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



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


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.”


Popular Cultures

• Recreation and Clothing• Leisure• Food and Drink• Music• Sports• Beauty Pageants• Vernacular• Advertising


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 diff usion ever perfected


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


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.”


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?


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 people3. 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.


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


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


‘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 pop- cultural 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)


Documents

BUDAYA MEDIA Pertemuan 10 Matakuliah: Sosiologi Komunikasi Massa Tahun: 2009/2010