Research: Popular music theory by Jemar

What is popular culture?

Popular culture is the understanding of fashion ideas and attitudes of the mainstream culture in society which has an influence upon us the audience. These influences and ideas are produced through the mass media and able to the audience through cultural products. These cultural products vary from Music, art, film, fashion, television and radio.

Popular Culture:

Popular culture describes the lifestyle and taste of artist to young people in a mass media market as they are very easily influenced due to cultural products such as music. Music by people like Beyoncé and Brittany spears are examples of artist who are looked up to and followed by many. The pop culture overtime changes by the young of the world and at the same time the youth of the world change along with pop culture.

Arguments

• ·    Pop culture is controlled by the people who tend to control the mass media as they dull people’s minds, making them passive and easier to control.
• ·    Pop culture is rebelling against the culture of dominant groups. (Overthrow capitalist system)

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony:

The mass media control can influence things such as what shows get aired and to the degree to which a television news station may or may not cover certain news stories. This is because leadership/dominance changes what we get exposed to for example, we hear about all earthquakes and massacres in The US while the same things are happening in countries across the world which we don’t even hear nothing about or even acknowledge. Italian political theorist says the media shows us what they want to see as a means of maintaining the state of control by the capitalist system in society.

• ·         Society is dominated by the ruling class who manipulate our culture which results in the audience thinking the same and not challenging the cultural dominant ideologies.
• Technology & Hegemony
• ·         Music artist and actors around the world are all avoiding the mass media by self-publishing their music and videos on accessible sites to all audience rather than being under the control of mainstream corporations.

Modern day Hegemony

·         Power and dominance in society is sustained by constructing ideologies which are promoted by the mass media through the means of cultural products. This makes us moulded and made to believe what the media tells us.

• Once you control their minds, you then control what they like.
• Early leaders who are referred to great dominance and power over others are also viewed as hegemony’s. 

Frankfurt School:

Pop music is an end product of a production line, it’s from a cultured industry which exploits the mass population for profit and social control, in hope they accept the ideologies about the world they live in. The Attitudes, habits, intellectual and emotional reactions of the audience are put into consideration and used to manipulate them as a pattern of one-dimension thought and behaviour starts to develop due to the manipulating methods.

• ·         The music industry promotes absorption as everything about pop stars becomes commodity. E.g. Their Images, looks, dislikes etc…

Theodor Adorno:

Popular media and music products are characterised by standardisation which is when they are basically similar in a sense and pseudo-individualisation meaning minor differences put together to make them seem distinctive, but they're not.

•  Capitalism feed the audience with pop culture which is opposed to ‘true art’. They’re exposed to products created by the mass media which is easier to understand than true art forms.
• Distinguishes between popular music and serious music, serious music is seen as classical, it plays to create pleasure of imagination. Popular music on the other hand is viewed to make everyone think the same.

Serious music

·         Deep, meaningful and natural

Popular music

·         False, unnatural and manipulative

Birmingham School:

Modern day school of thought which challenged some of the ideas Theodor Adorno and The Frankfurt School claimed about the popular culture. The school as a whole believes after evaluation these claims that the audience are not as passive as made to believe.

• ·         Evaluated the representation of the effects the popular culture has left on the audience.
• ·         Indications of engagement by the consumers about what they like or don’t like is noticed.

Dick Hebdige:

Hebdige disagrees with Adorno to an extent and says he is being really dismissive of the mass audience when he calls them passive and easily manipulated. Instead he believes consumption is an active process and people don’t choose to follow the capitalist consumerism but instead the audience have different readings which then fall into the same cultural products.

• ·  Audience are free to resist the power/dominance of large companies by ignoring them or finding different/alternative products to consume. This often makes them distinct from the mainstream culture which then turns into a subculture.
• ·     Large companies will then produce and market new products in order to cater for this subculture in hope they’ll consume it. Therefore, this makes the audience more active in popular culture consumption.

Conclusion:

I believe the popular culture creates false needs which are formed by people by the different culture industries they are exposed to. These are needs can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and which replace people's 'true' needs. For example, the mass marketing, advertising and media industries change the way we think. I believe us as everyday audiences are manipulated into thinking the way the capitalist wants us to, this is all as result of the mass media which maintains the control of the capitalist. These features all are particularly true when placed into the context of in pop music industry. All music products are commodities to be sold to an audience who believe they are consuming ‘true’ emotion. I will represent my Artist/Band in true light in order to show the deal to my target audience instead of creating a unnatural and forced end product.