Popular culture

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 2:57 PM -0500 1/10/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>>Good point Yoshie. The name "popular culture" obscures the difference
>>between the work of artists ...(and).. culture produced by mass
>>marketing...
>>
>>...Likewise, if someone is critical of the culture
>>created by mass marketing, it would not be accurate to accuse them of
>>elitism.... Joanna
>>
>>-----------
>>
>>I prefer to look upon mass culture as `official' culture, that
>>produced by the establishment for the masses. It has essentially
>>nothing to do with traditional arts primarily because the media are
>>different. So, whatever opinions or critiques of it are not critiques
>>of the masses, but of officialdom.
>
>Who do you think produces the stuff that Sony et al market? They 
>still need real artists to write songs and books and movie scripts. 
>Of course big capital appropriates the product, and the artists at 
>the top of the heap even get a cut of the profit flow, but they 
>can't industrialize the process entirely. Case in point: the 
>absolute failure of MBAs to rationalize book publishing.
>
>Doug

Production of MBAs is probably even less rationalized than book 
publishing that MBAs sought to rationalize, but that doesn't make 
either part of "popular culture," in the sense that the word 
"popular" still signifies in Spanish.

We got Pop, instead of "popular culture."

At 2:16 PM -0600 1/10/03, Carrol Cox wrote:
>  > I prefer to look upon mass culture as `official' culture, that
>>  produced by the establishment for the masses. It has essentially
>>  nothing to do with traditional arts primarily because the media are
>>  different. So, whatever opinions or critiques of it are not critiques
>  > of the masses, but of officialdom.
>
>I don't think you can ever regard any group of humans as wholly 
>passive. Also this ascribes more unity and forethought to "the 
>establishment" than it has. For one thing, one cannot assume that 
>the actual reader of a text or listener to a song, etc. is the same 
>as the implied reader/listener which one might derive from an 
>analysis of the text or song.
>
>Carrol

Workers as consumers individually or cliquishly reinterpreting 
meanings of mass-marketed cultural goods and services created by 
workers who specialize in their production are different from slaves, 
artisans, peasants, and workers acting as collective producers of 
their own culture (work songs, folk tales, etc. -- Cf. Sterling 
Brown, "Negro Folk Expression: Spirituals, Seculars, Ballads and Work 
Songs," 
<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brown/folkexpression.htm>), 
though.
-- 
Yoshie

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