Research:Popular Culture

Popular Culture

Introduction:

It is important to understand the theories as the theories give you a good understanding of where the music industry is an how it has developed.

What is popular culture:

Popular culture is the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century.Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society. Popular culture is often viewed as being trivial and it is a less intellectual or dumb down in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. As a result, it comes under heavy criticism from various source.

Antonio Gramsci and Hegemony:

What is Hegemony- is an indirect form of government and of imperial dominance in which the hegemony rules subordinate states by means of its implied power - by the threat of force, rather than by direct military force.

Antonio Gramsci is an Italian theorist he was a Marxist theorist and politician.

This theory is challenged in modern day music videos as it is not for the dumb or the dumb down culture as there are a variety of different levels of intelligent who listen to and watch music videos. Also many music video top intelligent would not understand where as a less intellectual person would understand.





Theodore Adorno:

Due to control of capitalist production music has become merely standardized, formulaic and repetitive. It has no value whatsoever and leads to a very specific type of consumption that is passive, obedient and easily manipulated for the purpose of propaganda and advertising.







Frankfurt school: 

The Frankfurt school was a school in Germany and they are a group of the older theorist who believed that the audience was passive in the music industry as they did not have a choice in what music video they listened to rather music video where just given to the audience.




Birmingham school:

The Birmingham school is a group of theorists from Birmingham England who are more of a modern group of theorist who challenged the Frankfurt school of theory as they had said that the audience is more active than passive. It says the Frankfurt school is making the audience seem more passive than it really is the audience are more active as they choose the type of music they want to listen to and their demand leads to the production of music videos and without the audience the music industry would not exist and the artist would not be who they are today if it was not for the audience as the audience are active in buying the music albums and creating a demand for new music video and songs which the artist and record companies respond to.

Dick Hebdige: 

Hebdige challenges Adorno where ardono says that the audience is passive and easily manipulated but Hebdige clearly differs as he says that the audience are more active than they are made out to be. Hebdige believes and says that the audience have more control and choice in what they want o listen to and which artist to follow.

He also says and believes that audience have the power and the control to reject and resist the dominance of large companies by not consuming their products but consuming other products. With this resistance it takes the audience away from mainstream culture and make it into a subculture.

Hebdige says that with the subculture being created the big companies will look to the subculture and make products that they will consume which shows that ultimately the audience are in control and they are active.

Conclusion:

I have learnt from this post that popular culture is more challenged today and the audience are very active and they are more intellectually involved in the music industry today and not how they are made made out to be that they are passive which is not true and i have a good understanding in this to show that the audience is active and they are the most important market for music to be successful.