Research: Popular Culture

 Popular Culture 

Popular culture is important to understand because it helps media institutions and artists to understand what is considered as popular and to increase the rate of sales and the success rate of the music they produce and put out as well as how it plays its part in what we will see in the music videos.

Popular culture

Popular culture is something that came to light during the 1980's and can be found in social aspects, more specific to media music video, radio and fashion as what is 'popular' controls what we see come from music videos, what we hear from the radio and what we see and wear in fashion. (Image below comparison of women in the 1970's and the change in fashion in present day) The term 'pop' (short for popular) came about during the 1980's and is used now to describe popular music. 

Ideas of popular culture are reinforced in the mainstream media as well as the more mainstream genres of music such as:

• Pop.
• R'NB.
• Dance.
• House.
• Hip-Hop

It is very evident in the mise en scene used in these music videos. An example would be Future ft. Pusha-T and Pharrell - Move That Dope (which is a more modern Hip-Hop music video) and Chris Brown's Loyal ft. Lil Wayne and TYGA. (which would go under the pop category.)  These two have very different soundtracks as they belong to two different genres. However the music video contains roughly the same Mise En Scene especially with the females as they wear items such as denim shorts and quite retro clothing.   

Theodor Adorno & Frankfurt School and the pop music theory

The Frankfurt school are a group of german theorists that where known for their critical music theories and influenced by Karl Marx (Marxist Theory). They are the creators of the popular music theory and the ones who created the diagram explaining that their is a division between 'pop culture' and 'true art'. 

The popular music theory is a graph created by Adorno and the Frankfurt school to explain the different taste within music and its relationship to class and status of the audience. It is a pyramid structure with the bourgeoisie at the head and pop culture at the bottom. This shows us that the bourgeoisie are the only people that accept and understand what 'true art' is such as composed musical pieces and art galleries/paintings, whilst the working class people are too uneducated to understand this so we listen to mainstream music which is an ongoing and repetitive cycle that all sounds and looks exactly the same. 

They are also saying that we are 'too dumb' as we are working class to realize that this is all the same music and fashion being recycled and given back to the people with a few changes, for example artist Justin Beiber is considered to be one of the most well known pop artists in modern times, however if you analyse his album the argument would be that the beat, lyrics and themes all stem from the same idea with no real variation for an audience to appreciate as they are too passive to challenge otherwise. 

Hegemony

Hegemony is the mid section of this table  that was created by the a man named antonio gramsci . Gramsci was the leading Marxist theorist and is the single owner of the theory of Hegemony. The theory shows us how the bourgeoisie look down on the working class. This theory is also suggesting that the higher class/ status is in control and a more dominant social class, as they feed the working class what they want to hear and see. 

"we can judge ideology to be effective if it is able to connect with the 'common sense' of the people."- Antonio Gramsci. 

This quote could suggest that, the upper class (bourgeoisie) are the ones behind the production of mainstream music for the masses of the lower class because they are the institutions that create the artists star image to go on to create the music that the institution want to hear. Which in affect plays its part on the influence over a large society such as the working class, as they copy what the artist do and see and they absorb the same kind of music covering the same topics in a different order all the time.

The Birmingham School
The Birmingham school was another collaboration of theorists one being Stuart Hall and the theory to challenge the original Frankfurt school theory. they saw issues with their theory of hegemony as well as their cultural study and they believed in:

• Encoding - The process by which a text is constructed by it's producers. 
• Decoding - The way the audience receives this.

This is important because its what separates the Frankfurt school from Birmingham, this is because Frankfurt claim that that the upper class table (bourgeoisie) give the working class whatever content that they want to expose them to in music. However the Birmingham school are saying that the producers (bourgeoisie) encode a message within their music, which is evident due to the repetition in the lyrics but the twist in the theory is that the way the audience (working class) interpret and take this message is varied.

Dick Hebdige

Hebdige is our last theorist that we will be looking into and talking about why his theory is relevant to the pop culture theory. He believed that subcultures are united groups that don't apply to the pop culture theory, the are different because they do not follow any of the mainstream beliefs or fashions. Hence the reason why they are seen as a moral panic for their difference although they can offer a new perspective on the music industry.