Lecture 9- Newspapers and Magazines

In our lecture on Newspapers and magazines we discussed how they have changed from the 19^th century, with no pictures, being very formal and mostly text. To the newspapers we have today which are described to be like ‘tv screens’, shrunk down in size, full of imagery and considered to some a commodity to everyday life.

An example of a newspaper that we looked at in the lecture was The Sun. Tabloid newspapers became very popular by making jokes, showing pictures and personalising their stories. However you can not believe everything that is printed in these papers. This is mainly because it has become their aim to entertain rather than just there to inform us of the news. For example, in 1833 the papers were known to be printing stories about how you could see aliens on the moon from a new telescope. However this was during the time where slavery was abolished in England and did not get covered by the papers. This form of entertainment meant that many stories involve a lot of celebrity gossips and mis-fortunes. They can also be very persuasive in telling us what is right and what is wrong, they do this by adapting a chatty tone and taking sides.

We also talked about how aware/unaware people can be to the papers misleading stories. People can be very cautious when reading papers or magazines of these sorts, sometimes people read the stories with ‘sceptical laughter, knowing the stories are over the top and laughing at how over exaggerated they are. 

You could say we have a type of commodity that creates a sense of identity, running stories on immigration and local events encourage people to understand a sense of belonging.  Due to the media Nationalism was created, as it was not around 200 years ago. This shows how important these papers are in showing us the world we live in. Now in modern times, there are other ways of checking the news and much faster ways of finding a story, and that is buy computer or mobile devices. This has lead in the drop of sales of papers and is slowly being replaced by technology. However the main question is do these text contain any meaning to them, do they make us think or are they just another everyday commodity we buy into?

-Rebecca Walters

TV as a Cultural Phenomenon

TV is a 20th Century phenomenon. Yet, in 1940 2/3 of the UK had never even set eyes on a television set. TV became increasing popular as years past, people enjoyed the idea of home entertainment rather than having to go off to the theatre. As TV became more popular, it also became more affordable. By the 1960's 72% of people had access to a TV. There were two main channels that dominated the screens during this period, BBC and ITV, unlike the plethora of channels available to us today. In the 60's, TV was seen as a dominant cultural force which had the power to affect people's lives. Left wing politics was hostile to this idea. They argued that TV was Dope and that people were being brainwashed. Despite this, people saw television as a real sense of nationality and togetherness. It was a ritual to sit in front of the television. It was an opportunity for families to get together and watch key events, such as the coronation of the queen and the world cup final. Even if you didn't have a TV yourself, you would go over to your neighbours and watch it on theirs.

We see today the rivalry today between the BBC and ITV and this has been going on for many years. People trusted and accepted the BBC. It was factual and represented high culture. ITV on the other hand, began to show American quiz shows such as 'Opportunity knocks'. This created a watching culture of Americanism and Commercialism. The BBC would teach and ITV would entertain.

There was a competition between populism and elitism starting to develop. ITV became so popular that the BBC had to act. The BBC decided to compete with ITV and put on 'Social Realist Plays' that paved the way for soap operas like Eastenders. Soap operas like Eastenders and Coronation Street became the most popular genre on TV. People could identify with soaps, thus TV was beginning to move from a luxury item to a necessity. Coronation Street started on the 9th September 1960 and is still going strong. Within a year, 20 million people tuned in to see Ken Barlow and co strutting their stuff! We can see the first example of Fandom developing. It became a regional identity. Even the then prime minister Harold Wilson stated that he loved the show in order to keep the voters happy!

One key idea I took from the lecture is that TV is thought provoking. I disagree with R. Hoggart's point that TV is anti-culture and hostile to intellectual activity. TV can be liberating. It can be argued that it is the main source of how people understand the world beyond their own experience. Meanings and messages are encoded and decoded whilst watching TV. Meaning just doesn't happen, it's an ongoing process. It all comes down to the creativity of the audience. The Cultural industry wants us to be commodity consumers and TV does show growth of a commodity culture. e.g. "TV dinners" and the "Tea-V-Tray." Stereotypes are created by TV.

In conclusion, TV is key in how people view the world. The original message may be portrayed as something else. We don't know how the audience will respond. For example, Fandom is evident when we see Star Trek and Dr Who conventions. People respond to things they enjoy. Fan's of TV create more than the text.

Lecture 6- Consumption

In our sixth lecture of our course we studied about consumption and the influence it had in British culture. Consumption is important in cultural studies for two main reasons. First is for the theoretical purposes and the second is for the political reasons. Subculture defines themselves against consumption orientated groups. Similarly, Marx analysed consumption negatively because it led to alienation among people (Marx 1973/1844). However, some theorists who emphasis consumption as being more important than production relations are clearly critical of Marxist and neo-Marxist theories of class and class structure, preferring instead to consider the way in which lifestyles are much more diverse than the categories that the class structure suggest (Saunders 1987). Featherstone(1991) points out that consumer capitalism produces more and more of exclusive goods , thus lowering the price and thereby making them more widely available, to make profit. The mass media have eroded many of the old distinctions between high and popular culture. The increase of style magazines and television programmes also allows a wide range of social groups to acquire knowledge of fashion and taste. By 1950, five millions of teenagers spent 10% on lottery and 40% on market records. Furthermore, popular culture and popular music encouraged young people to cause violence.

In the seminar we watched a clip from the movie Quadrophenia, which explained the alienation of 1960s British working-class youth and the influence of pop culture among young people in Britain.

Review of Lecture six

In lecture six, we looked at the cultural functions of consumption. Cultural studies is interested with the study of consumption for two reasons. First is a theoretical reason which extends beyond the usual ‘semiotics emphasis on the symbolic meanings of products by also considering the way in which products are linked to specific actions and outcomes in a cultural narrative or text’ (John Storey: 2003).The second reason cultural studies is concerned with consumption is political. Adorno used the phrase ‘the cultural industry’ to put forward that culture is now totally linked with political economy.
In the lecture we looked at how the popular culture in 1956 changed the way of life in England. The cultural landscape of England began to change and was been replaced by a ‘affluence’ society like America.
During this time shopping was reinvented, especially among the middle class families and the working class young people in Britain. During 1956 middle class families largely consumed electrical goods while the working class youths were breaking away from traditional working class culture and forming new subcultures like ‘mods’ and ‘rockers’. With the growth of the entertainment industry, increased the market of consumers. Phil Cohen looked at the subcultures and pointed out that young people were taking on paid work and spending large amounts of money on fashion, clothes, music records and magazines. We watched an extract from the movie Quadrophenia which showed the influence of the pop culture and how it affected the young people in Britain. It was important for the Mods to look neat and stylish in Italian suits for example. Consumerism became an obsession during this time and also this was the beginning of Americanization. Hebdige pointed out that youth subcultures are ‘concerned first and foremost with consumption’ (Hebdige 1979). In 1960 popular culture was taken more seriously and started to have impact upon everyday life of the people. Even television and newspapers supported the pop culture.

Annalee Neighbour: Review of Lecture 5

Is popular music a mass produced commodity or a true art form?
Our fifth lecture was all about popular music and the concept of mass consumption. We looked at the movie ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and discussed how ‘The Beatles’ changed the face of modern music. We discussed how from the 1960’s onwards, music became very repetitive and it didn’t matter what genre of music you listened to they all carried a lyrical/rhythmical pattern. John Storey describes this process as ‘commercial exhaustion’; once a certain pattern is proven successful it is used again and again until its popularity fades.
Such repetitive popular music is seen as creating passive listening, mass produced for easy consumption. One example from the lecture was that Motown was actually created from a play on the words Motor city, which was a city in Detroit famous for its mass production car line and then later for its production of some of the greats music of its time (quickly labeled however as a mass produced production line.)
We then went on to discuss the modern view of Consumption as an active process that we take part in everyday and that we are a post-modern culture created by productive consumers. We are as important as the text we are interpreting; people change the commodities to suit their lives. For me Simran’s conclusion summed up the lecture perfectly; consumption is an active, creative and productive process, concerned with pleasure, identity and the production of meaning. We are not just passive consumers but instigators of change.

Lecture 5: The Beatles: A Hard Day’s Night (1964) Examining Popular Music as Cultural Phenomenon

In lecture 5, we examined the cultural effect The Beatles had on British Society. The context related to the two themes, ‘consumption’ and the ‘culture industry’.
Popular music is ‘standardised’. Adorno in Storey (2003) points out that ‘standardisation’ extends from the most general features to the most specific ones.
Once a musical or lyrical pattern has proven successful, it is exploited to commercial exhaustion. Popular music promotes passive listening. The consumption of popular music is always passive, endless, repetitive and confirming the world ‘as it is’. Passive consumers buy DVDs, novels, CDs and videos. However, non-passive consumers create their own meanings of popular music.
Storey (2003) suggests that popular music operates as ‘social cement’. Its ‘psychological function is to achieve that the consumers of popular music adjust to the mechanisms of present-day life. Consumption is an active process of day-to-day life.
The music industry is a capitalist industry therefore; industrial societies produce pop music, creating a technological phenomenon. The popular music industry is an all-consuming production line that creates mass produced and inferior commodities. The cultural industry compels consumers to buy commodities produced by the media industry; (buying CDs and DVDs of popular music for example, The Beatles).
Youth culture is seen as ‘structured irresponsibility’. In The Beatles, the opening scene of the train is an example of ‘structured irresponsibility’. In this film, we saw an authentic subculture colliding with an inauthentic, mass-produced mainstream or dominant culture.
Youth culture is a hybrid within mass-mediated consumer capitalism. Youth culture is a global phenomenon, a post-modern culture created by productive consumers.
Overall, consumption is an active, creative and productive process, concerned with pleasure, identity and the production of meaning.