Seminar Notes - Popular Culture

Lecture 2:
important ------ unimportant
culture ------ popular cultures
upperclass ------ working class
classical ------ pop
Shakespear ------ Harry potter
poetry ------ advertising jingles
language ------ slang
art ------ design
power ------ politics
taste v class

Alot of people don't care for art and they don't understand, however, most people engage with graphic design in some way, yet graphic design is labelled insignificant.

Marxism:

Base-
-forces of production - worker, tools, skills, technologies, materials
-relations of productions
   -employer/employees
   -master/slave
   -ruling/exploited
   -upper class/ lower class

Superstructure-
-methods of control
-religion
-politics
-law
-police
-army
-education

Ideologies
-forms of consciousness
culture -art

The Base determines the Superstructure
The Superstructure re-inforces the Base, ligitimises it and makes it stronger

Materialism
-surround yourself with commodities
-let be judged by possessions rather than who you are as a person

Ideology
-system of beliefs/ideas that unite people
-selective system of ideas reinforces power relations
-presents the interests of a few disguised as the interests of all - false consciousness
E.g. - X Factor - Simon Cowell - contestants image is what he wants them to look like - to please the masses - gain publicity

Capitalism - pyramid of capitalist system

When you get the rise of the working class (1800's particularly) Matthew Arnold writes - 'Culture & Anarchy' - when says the 'diseased spirit' - means challenging the authority, threat to power
culture - serves the interest of few
          -civilise yourself to become like the few
          -behave like ruling class

F.R. Leavis - Leavism
-judgements directly from the base
-loosing authority

Popular

Frankfurt School - consumption of popular culture stops you from resisting against the upper class
the culture industry - homogeneity and predictability

Reference - popular music text
-standardisation - reduces effort of designers and consumers
-pre-digested
-shortcut - no effort
-summarises for you

Psuedo-individualism
e.g. Goths - think they are individual - yet they are the same as eachother - participate in standardised culture
appears new/individual - but is a sequel

Song covers - song that is already proved popular - appears new if it is done by another artist - bring their own style to it but is psuedo-individual

The more people watch X Factor, the more producers will keep making these programmes (mindless programmes)
The less you interact with the world, the more you retract from it

Punk - anti-capitalist merged from poverty
-London - 70's - Anarchy in the UK
-black/white/reggae/punk

''youth cultural styles begin by issuing symbolic challenges, but they must end by establishing new conventions, by creating new commodities, new industries,, or rejuvenating old ones'' - Hebidige, D 1979
-subculture
-not about rebelling anymore- as it becomes neutralised

50 cent looks dangerous and edgy - but his music is not - sales - popular

Lecture 4 - Communication Theory

Lasswell's Maxim - ''Who says what to whom in what channelw ith what effect''

Tradtions of Communication Theory:
-Cybernetic Theory:
Infor Source- Transmitter- Noise Source- Reciever- Destination   (Destination to Info Source)

3 leveles of potential communication problems:
-1- Technical - accuracy, systems of encoding/decoding, compatability of systems
-2- Sematic - language precision, how much of the message can be lost without meaning being lost - language used
-3- Effectiveness - does message effect behaviour the way we want it to what can be done if the required effect fails to happen

Systems Theory:
-can switch between mathematical biological, psychological
-BARB (Broadcaster's Audience research Board)
-audience categories - sub-categories/sub-demographic groups

Semiotics:
-Sematics - what does a sign stand for?
-dictionaries - semantics reference book - tell us what a sign means
-syntactics - relationships among signs
-programtics
-Semiotics and the Semiosphere -the whole semiotic space of the culture
-''Damien Hurst'' - designer
-Levi Strauss for ethnography
-Lacan for the unconcious
-Barthes
-trainer - footwear - culture, sends sign to others whilst you wear them - status
-ads use semiotics - objects create cultural value - 'buy them and you will achieve this social status'
-road signs - danger - stipulated - no language - even if it's a visual one it's self explanatory - language have to be learnt

The Phenomenological Tradition:
-is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the way in which humans come the understand the world.
-Phenomenon refers to the appearance of an object, event or condition in one's perception
-makes actual lived experience

The Embodied Mind:
-communication seen as an extension of the nervous sytem
-langauge is seen as part of that system existing as neuronal pathways that are linked within the brain
-the key is a psychological...

Emotions:
-what faces mean (smile means happy - frown means sad)
-interpretation - the process of interpretations is central

Rhetoric:
-Socrates
-Aristotle
-personification as rhetoric is mostly used to humanze inanimate objects of ideas, such a rhetoric itself. It is a type of 'rhetoric trope' such as hyperbole - irony - personification
-hyperboel - take things to extreme - push to limit
-how you are going to achieve certain effects from the audience
-persuades us to see things differently
-pictures without context are meaningless - they need to be anchored
-The use of 'pathos' a means of persuasion in classical rhetoric that appeals to the audience's emotions

Metaphor:
-meaning transfer, is langauge that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects or activities
-enables us to grasp new concepts and remember things by creating associations, and links to something like it - memory

-Christoph Niemann

The Sociopsychological Tradition:
-the study of the individual as a social being
-expression/interaction/influence
-the act of sending a message to a reciever and assessing the feelings and thoughts to the reciever upon interpreting the message and how these will effect an understanding of the message
-useful for deep analysis of the memories of communication

Gestat Psychology:
-a type of cognitive theory
-cognitive theory
-changes in behaviour
-biological

The Sociocultural Tradition:
-in defining yourself in terms of your identity with terms such as father, Catholic, student,...
-identity as part of a group and this group frames your cultural identity
-the socioculture tradition looks at how these cultural understandings, roles, and rules are worked out ineractively in communication
-context is seen as being crucial to forms and meanings of communication

Critical Communication Theory:
-synthesis of philosophy and social science
-Foucalt - how power affects how we communicate
-feminist studies - influential area within the critical tradition
-postcolonian

Portfolio Task 1 - Panopticism

Task 1: Choose an example of one aspect of contemporary culture that is, in your opinion, panoptic. Write an explanation of this, in approximately 200-300 words, employing key Foucauldian language, such as 'Docile Bodies' or 'self-regulation, and using not less than 5 quotes from the text 'Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading Images', NY, Palgrave McMillan.



A work office could be an example of a 'panoptic environment'. Each employee is situated at their own desk or cubicle to 'ensure that control over people is easily maintained,' and this total individualisation creates 'docile bodies' when 'he is the object of information, never a subject in communication', were workers are expected to automatically get on with their work with no distractions from others.

Surveillance cameras within the office enforces 'self regualtion' in the workers, as they think they are always being watched by the boss. This automatic function of power is visible by defiable as 'one is totally seen, without ever seeing' and 'must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so', therefore induced in the workers is a 'state of conscious and permant visibility', for them to then adopt their behaviour to how they think they should act. This 'panoptic mechanism' gives the boss automatic power, as it is 'unverifiable', and removes power from the individual.

Self regulation and discipline can also be seen within the office enviroment, when colleagues compete with eachother to gain the approval of the boss, who is seen to have 'omnipresent and omniscient power', therefore guaranteeing order within the office environment.

Lecture 3 - Film Theory 'The Gaze' and Pscychoanalysis

Ganes (Call of Duty)
-can play in 1st of 3rd person
-1st feels liek you are there - more life like
-3rd is cinematic
-pscyhoanalysis - choices/options

Lecture aims:
-theories about power of looking through a different theoretical frame
-psychoanalysis

Psychology - behaviour
Psychiatry - mental illness

Laura Mulvey
-visual pleasures and narrative cinema (1975)
-hollywood film - sexist - represents the gaze as powerful and male
-heroes - males - drive plot
-women - sex objects

Freudian
-scopophilia - the pleasure of looking at others as objects (emerges in childhood)
-(Mulvey 162) quote
-perversion/obsession
-'Freaudian Theories of Psychoanalysis 2'
-Narcisstic Identification
-mirror stage - Jacques Lacan
-'ideal image' reflected 'ideal ego's'
-child own body less perfect than reflection
-film and art prey-
-contradiction in these 2 pleasurable structures of looking
-scopophilia - sexual stimulation by sight
-objectifying actors on screen
-narcissistic identification with the image seen
-active male, passive female
-the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification
-males are the bearer of the look of the spectator

Types of Gaze:

Suture-
-when spectators look through eyes of actors in the film
-follow their gaze - with feeling guilty
-suture broken when actor speaks out to us
-when broken - audience aware of own gaze
-'Peep' show - point of view gaze - shot entirely in suture
-spectator's gaze

Intra-diagetic Gaze-
-a gaze of one depicted person at another within image
-Degas - Le viol (The Rape) - shows the power of the male gaze

-D&G ad

Extra Diagetic Gaze
-direct address to the viewer - looking out at us
-more affective than the intra-diagetic gaze (women's aid act)
-Edouard Monet - invented to be viewed as artist
-Marcel Duchamp - Etant Donres (1946-1966) means being given

 -what is being given? - the power of gaze?
-permission to look
-power of gaze - reminds us of our own role of looking

Conclusion:
-different forms of gaze evoke different structures of power
-we can objectify (scopophilia) and identify - narcissistic identification
-visual culture emplys different forms of the gaze to evoke structures of patriarchy
-psychoanalysis seeks to evaluate and ientify the architecture and symptons of the gaze

-'Peeping Tom'

Seminar Notes - Foucalt and Panopticism

Lecture 1:
-Foucalt
-Panopticon -1791
-Panopticism - a form of discpline
   -permanently visible - self regulation of their behaviour
   -isolated - individualised

Foucaldian Terminolgy:
-docile bodies - modern discipline -aims to make us productive
-takes instruction
-e.g. soldier  -does what he is told without askign questions
-power and the body

Power is a relationship - A to B / B to A
-knowledge
-where there is power there is  possibility for resistance
-sometimes not - conforming to others ideas
-knowledge - what is classed as abnormal/normal

Task 1:
Example of panopticism
Iner-weave 5 references to 'Foucalt' text quotes
-method of discipline

Bakhtin Fete

Reference: Foucalt, Thomas, 2000, pg..)

Lecture 2 - Critical Positions on the Media and Popular Culture

Lecture aims:
-define popular culture
-contrast ideas of 'culture' with 'popular culture' and mass culture
-introduce cultural studies and critical theory
-define ideology
-interrogate the social function of the mass media

What is culture
-1 of the most complicated words in society
-process of intellectual spiritual and aesthetic development of a particular society, at a particular time
-a particular way of life
-works of intellectual and especially artistic significance

Marx's concept of Base/Superstructure
-from a base merges a superstructure
-culture emerges from the base were the initial struggle between slave/ruler, rich/poor

(Quote 1)
-culture is determined by the ideas of individuals
-their ideas are determined by the society they are brought into
-see the world through the lens of your society
(e.g. communism, capitalism)

Ideology
-system of ideas/beliefs produced by the dominant people in society, which disguises itself as the interest of us all - fasle consiousness (Quote 2)

Pyramid of Capitalist System

Yamond Williams (1983)
-4 definitions of 'popular'
   -well liked by many - defined by quantity
   -inferior kinds of work - mass production kitsh - high culture e.g. traditions
   -work deliberately setting out to win favour with the people
   -culture actually made by the people for people - traditions

Inferior of Residual Culture
2 images - one is seen as superior and one inferior, but toeh representative

Graffiti - Banksy piece exhibited in Covent Garden gallery

E.P Thompson (1963) 'The Making of The English Working Class'
-working class (excluded from high culture, so have their own culture - popular culture)
-Bourgeois

Matthew Arnold (1867) (Quote 3) 'Culture and Anarchy' Book
-cultue is the best that has been and said in the world
-study of perfection
-attained through disinterested reading, writing, thinking
-the pursuit of culture
-seeks to minister the disease
-Anarchy - is what he means as popular culture
-they shouldn't set their own culture, they should strive to be like us

Leavism - F.R Leavis & Q.D Leavis (Quote 4)
-sees mass culture as a threat to culture
-says 20th century - culture hasn't developed it has declined (cultural decline)
-standardised and levelling down
-culture has always been in minority keeping

Collapse of traditional authority comes at the same time as mass media

Frankfurt School - Critical Theory
-Institute of Social Research, uni of Frankfurt 1923-33
-Uni of Collumbia New York 1933-47
-Uni of Frankfurt - 1949

Theodore Adorno
-reinterpreted Marx, for the 20th century - era of capitalism
-defined 'The Culture Industry' - 2 main products - homogeneity and predictability
-all mass culture is identical
-films - predictable (Quote 5)
   -pretend to be art - but is just a business made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce.
(Quote 6)
Product of the contemproary culture industry
-buying a product - rather than striving to develop own culture - buying in capitalism
(e.g. X Factor, Big Brother)

Authentic Culture vs Mass Culture
-Adorno on popular music
   -standardisation
   -social cement
   -produces passivity through rhythmic and emotional adjustment
   -pre-digested - enjoyment of music - if you like one song as that style, you will like other songs with that style - decision already made for us
   -rhythmic
   -repetitiveness (days, dancing)
   -emotional adjustment
   -music is an escape from reality

Walter Benjamin (1936) 'The Work of Art in the Age of mechanical Reproduction' (Quote 7)
-Aura - qualities of works of high culture
-e.g. Mona Lisa - we know its improtant because society tells us it is, in the Louvre behind bullet proof glass, like a religious pilgrimage, peopel go to the Louvre to see it, and that makes it more important than what it is. The reproduction of the Mona Lisa in text books, t-shirts, democratic/revolutionary, making our own meanings of the Mona Lisa - doesn't have the same Aura
-mass culture allows for revolutionary possibilities

The Centre fro Contemprary Culture Studies - CCA (1963-2002)
=Birmingham School

Conclusion
-Culture and civilisation tradition emerges from and represents anxieties about social and cultural extension
-They outcast mass culture because it threatens cultural standard and social authority

Lecture 1 - Panopticism - Surveillance & Society

Michael Foucalt (1926-1984)

Madness and Civilisation 
   -''The Great Confinement'' (late 1600's), houses of correstion, to curb unemplyoment and idleness
   -those considered useless were confined in these and made to work
   -as a way of improvement, morals
   -ciminals, mad, tramps, single and pregnant, lazy
   -repressed deviants from society
   -didn't improve because they all corrupted eachother
   -physical/mental control - subtle

Guy Fawkes
Discipline and Punishment
-Panopticism
   -discipline - is a technology, a way of controlling conduct - surveillance
-Panoptic Prison - round prison with institutional gaze
   -Panopticon internalises in the individual the conscious state that he is always being watched
      -self regulation of their behaviour
      -automatic function of power
   -laboratory to meaure behaviour - allows scrutinise
   -allows supervisors to experiment on subjects
   -places like office's have 'panotic' layouts - make workers think they are always being watched by the boss
      -adopt their behaviour to how they think they should be behaving
-Panoptisicm is everywhere
   -google maps - cameras
   -constant surveillance causes us to change how we act
   -Pentonville Prison
   -Files, registers

Relationship between power, knowledge and the body
-Disciplinary society produces what foucalt calls 'docile bodies'
   -Nazi Sport event - cult of health
   -TV causes docility - being controlled/passive
Foucalt and Power
-his definition is not a top-down model as with Marxism
-Power is not a thing or a capacity people have, it is a relation between different individual and groups, and it only exists when it is being exercised.
-the exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted
   -where there is power there is resistance
-Facebook - surveillance

Bruce Nauman - video corridor pieces
Chris Burden - Samson (1985)

Summary:
-Michael Foucalt
-Panopticism as a form of discipline
-Techniques of the body
-Docile bodies

Critical & Theoretical Studies Briefing

Referencing:
-Creative review
-Adbuster
-Journal Jstor
-Internet

Books (Theoretical):
-Graphic design as Communication
-Design - Writing - Research
-An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design

General Theory:
-Cultural Theory and Popular Culture
-Critical and Culture Theories