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Lecture 2:

Studying Culture: Popular, Mass and High

OrThe modern world is rubbish and media

studies is a waste of time

Key Concepts in Media Studies

University of Winchester

Dr Marcus Leaning


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Introduction This week we are going to look at a theory.

It is a very powerful theory and is very influential.

In fact this is the theory for media studies, it is partlyresponsible for the emergence of media studies and key tothe demonisation of media studies.

This argument underpins a lot of political commentary andyou will see it all around you.

The aim of this lecture is to enable you to: recognise it as a theory or ideological position and see it in its

different forms

to understand it discern its constituent parts such as the ideas of

popular culture and high culture.


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Hello Mass Society Theory! The theory is called Mass

Society orMass Culturetheory.

While it has its origins inthe late 18th and early 19thcentury it is really in the20th century that it gainedstrength and is still goingstrong.

Indeed, it is regarded asone of the big framingarguments we use to live byin the 21st century western

world.


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Theory is interpretation Identikit description of the theory lots of versions but

with a core set of beliefs.

Important to understand that this is a theory, it is anideological position to explain how the world works.

We may agree or disagree with it but it is only aninterpretation of the world, however for many it has a highdegree ofverisimilitude or the appearance of truth.

One of the tasks of the social sciences is to take what wethink are certainties and to critically examine them, to pullthem to pieces and to identify underlying beliefs.


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Modern life is (not) rubbish The modern world is very different from the pre-modern world. Our lives are structured in very different ways to those of our ancestors. For the most part this has lead to a better standard of living, we live

longer, are less sick and have a much higher standard of living.

This is possible because of a number of features of the modern world: Rationality and scientific advances; Bureaucratisation; Capitalism; Urbanisation;

Mass media; Democratisiation; Education.

The modern world is very different from the world of our ancestors!


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Downside However this progress has a downside.

Mass society theory proposes that as well as benefits

the changes brought about also have downsides.With the transition we have lost the old bonds that

bound communities together.

The modern world has destabilised the previous social

and moral structures.We have lost the immediate social bonds to family

and community that gave us our place in the world.


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Cut adrift The decline of religion, of other forms of bonds (trade

guilds, clans, tribes etc) and the shift from smallcommunities to large urban conurbations has resultedin us living in a mass society a universal, equal bututterly atomised environment.

We are all individuals now but we do not live in

communities.


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Community vs Society This split between Community(good, traditional

real) versus Society(bad, modern and artificial) hasbeen an argument used by nearly every major politicalideology from both the left and the right in the C20th.

Everybodyloves and misses traditional community.

Nobodylikes contemporarysociety.

The past was a golden age


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Cultural codes and values Furthermore it is argued that

in pre-modern times we gotour codes / values from our

community and the art of ourcommunity.

If we were poor our codescame from folk crafts.

If we were rich we got them

from fine arts.

The two were separate andserved their populations well.
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Atomised world However in the modern, atomised world we have lost this.

We live in a place where there is little local culture unlesswe can sell it to a mass market, it does not get made.

But what is worse is that the moral orderthat iscommunicated and maintained by culture is alsodestroyed.

And when we have no local moral order, no codes of valueor culture then a new code will emerge, or be imported, tofill its place.

This will lead to afake or surrogate culture and morality.


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New culture There are a mass of people without a local, authentic,

culture or moral code.

They have no access to their realculture as it has beenlost, washed away by modernity, education anddemocracy.

They are ripe for a new culture that fulfils their needs

and matches the universal but atomised nature oftheir reality.


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Step forward pop culture! The mass markets and mass

media of the modern world needfilling.

We develop apopular culturethat can be sold to the masses.

Pop culture is manufactured, it isproduced by an industry and istherefore regarded by this theory

as less authentic, less valuable,and in some wayfalse.

It should be criticised andrejected.


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Criticism However the masses are not critically endowed they

are the mass, the stupid, the unchallenging.

Criticism has always been the job of the elite, theylooked at theirart and judged it.

But now there is only one culture, mass culture, thatrole is problematic.


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Criticising culture The manner in which culture had historically been examined has

been to differentiate good from bad, to sort the wheat from thechaff.

Criticism from this semi classical perspective is about making

value judgements. Education was about learning what is good culture, the great

works. Culture was considered differentiated, high culture and folk

culture.

Only high culture is really worth considering as that is the best asociety has produced. Culture is a measure of a societys civilization. The more sophisticatedthe culture the more advancedthe

society.


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High Culture From this point of view in

contemporary Western society wetend to regard the following asculture: Classical art the old masters -

stuff in traditional museums. High literature canonical texts

(things you should have read to beregarded as well read)

Classical music the moredifficult the better.

Certain films - Art house. The master pieces of western

civilisation. A way of saying what is good and

bad practice.


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Bad pop culture! Bad! For the elite cultural commentator

popular culture is doubly bad:

It is of the masses and therefore notworthy of consideration.

It is a false culture, produced by theculture industry or imported (or both).

Pop culture has bad effects upon poor,less educated people, it might causeviolence in the untutored mind.

A long standing fear that pop culturewill cause social disharmony, no suchfears for high culture though (see Don

Jose stabbing his ex girl friend to deathin Carmen)


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Old news This is of course all old news, these

ideas have been around since the20-30s.

They were particularly strong justafter the war.

But they resurface all the time andhave a safe home in much

contemporary Conservative partypolicy: community solutions, antibureaucracy.

They are also voiced strongly on the

left as well.


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The real villains Our mass culture is partly to blame for our

contemporary problems.

Particular disdain is held for people who dare to studymass or pop culture.

What possible worth can there be in studying it?

And as its popular culture and not high or difficult it

must be easy. The purpose of criticism is to determine good from

bad, so why study the obviously bad?


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Media studies a different

emphasisMedia studies is not about deciding what is

good and bad in popular culture.

We are not interested in such aestheticjudgements.

Media studies is interested in how culture

functions, the industries behind them, themechanics of texts and the politics of media.


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Our interest Our interest lies not in whether a piece of popular

culture is good or bad, but how it works, how

meaning is made and the ideological function ofmedia in maintaining the social order.

Next week we will turn to one of the major analytictools of media studies for examining media texts,

semiotics.


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Conclusion Mass society theory is a very popular interpretation of history.

Implicit within it is a strong moral agenda:

Things today are not as good as they used to be, there has been a moral

breakdown, our popular culture is artificial and are partly to blame for theweak moral agenda.

There is a distinction between mass culture which is bad and high culturewhich is good.

Consequently if you study the mass media you are studying somethingreally stupid.

Seminar reading: Dominic Strinati, (2003) An introduction to theories of popular

culture, London: Routledge. Chapter 1 pages 1-43, but especially pages 1-19.

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