An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture is widely recognized as an immensely useful textbook for students taking courses in the major theories of popular culture. Strinati provides a critical ...assessment of the ways in which these theories have tried to understand and evaluate popular culture in modern societies.
Among the theories and ideas the book introduces are: mann culture, the Frankfurt School and the culture industry, semiology and structuralism, Marxism, feminism, postmodernism and cultural populism.
This new edition provides fresh material on Marxism and feminism, while a new final chapter assesses the significance of the theories explained in the book.
1. Mass Culture and Popular Culture 2. The Frankfurt School and the Culture Industry 3. Structralism, Semiology and Popular Culture 4. Marxism, Political Economy and Ideology 5. Feminism and Popular Culture 6. Postmodernism and Popular Culture
Dominic Strinati is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leicester. He is the author of An Introduction to Studying Popular Culture (Routledge 2000).
Come On Down? Strinati, Dominic; Wagg, Stephen
1992, 20040224, 1992-12-03, 2004-02-24
eBook
Come on Down represents an introduction to popular media culture in Britain since 1945. It discusses the ways in which popular culture can be studied, understood and appreciated, and covers its key ...analytical issues and some of its most important forms and processes. The contributors analyse some of popular culture's leading and most representative expressions such as TV soaps, quizzes and game shows, TV for children, media treatment of the monarchy, Pop Music, Comedy, Advertising, Consumerism and Americanization. The diversity of both subject matter and argument is the most distinctive feature of the collection, making it a much-needed and extremely accessible, interdisciplinary introduction to the study of popular media culture. The contributors, many of them leading figures in their respective areas of study, represent a number of different approaches which themselves reflect the diversity and promise of contemporary theoretical debates. Their studies encompass issues such as the economics of popular culture, its textual complexity and its interpretations by audiences, as well as concepts such as ideology, material culture and postmodernism.
This paper is concerned with a critical assessment of postmodernism as an empirical phenomenon. It strives to examine the claims of postmodern theory by investigating whether it is possible to claim ...that postmodernism is emerging in contemporary industrial, capitalist societies and, in particular, whether it can be found in the sphere of popular media culture. To do so, it will first be apposite to give an outline of the basic features which define postmodernism, illustrate them with reference to examples from architecture, cinema, advertising, television and popular music, and give an outline of some of the reasons that have been proposed to account for the emergence of postmodernism. Some trends towards postmodernism are claimed to be apparent in the examples of popular media culture that have been selected for discussion. However, the paper should finally demonstrate why-if a specific example, i.e. cinema, is assessed more critically and studied in depth-the arguments of postmodern theory appear less novel and original and are open up to doubt and contention. It is suggested that postmodernism cannot be taken for granted nor considered in a purely conceptual manner, but rather needs to be subject to both theoretical and empirical criticism.
Marx and ideology 120Marxism and political economy 125The limits of political economy 130Althusser’s theory of ideology and structuralist
MarxismAlthusser’s Marxism: economic determinism and
...ideologyGramsci, Marxism and popular culture 148Gramsci’s concept of hegemony 153Conclusions: Marxism, Gramscian Marxism and
popular cultureTHIS CHAPTER WILL critically assess contemporary
Marxism’s analysis of popular culture.1 It will consider, in
particular, approaches to the study of popular culture which
have emerged from within the Marxist tradition in the last
thirty years or so. These involve the Marxist theory of political
economy, the Marxist structuralist theory of ideology
associated with the work of Althusser, and the concept of
hegemony derived from the writings of Gramsci.
What is postmodernism? 211Culture and society 211An emphasis on style at the expense of substance 212Art and popular culture 213Confusions over time and space 214The decline of metanarratives ...215Contemporary popular culture and postmodernism 216Architecture 216Cinema 217Television 219Advertising 220Pop music 221The emergence of postmodernism 223Consumerism and media-saturation 223New middle-class occupations 225The erosion of identity 226The limits of postmodernism 227Some recent theoretical developments 233Discourse and popular culture 233The ‘dialogical’ approach to popular culture 237Cultural populism 240THIS CHAPTER WILL consider the postmodernist analysis of
contemporary popular culture. Like the preceding chapters, it
will assess critically the claims it makes. However, unlike them
it will be even more concerned with the empirical arguments
of postmodernism. One reason for this is that postmodern
theory and post-structuralism, its theoretical and
philosophical foundation, are relatively recent developments,
and still less familiar than the other theories discussed: for
example, there are few sources which present clear and
readable accounts of postmodern theory. Compounding this
problem, much of the debate about postmodernism has been
too vague, abstract and difficult to understand. Compared
with this theoretical output, relatively little has been said
about postmodernism as an empirical or historical
phenomenon.
The origins of the Frankfurt School 47The theory of commodity fetishism 50The Frankfurt School’s theory of modern capitalism 53The culture industry 55The culture industry and popular music 59Adorno’s ...theory of popular music, Cadillacs and doowopThe Frankfurt School: a critical assessment 68Benjamin and the critique of the Frankfurt School 75THOSE FAMILIAR WITH THE study of popular culture
might well ask if it is worth bothering any longer with the
Frankfurt School. Even if it still has something relevant to say,
there are now better ways of saying it. The School’s
perspective, it is often argued, has become both narrow and
outmoded. This view is not quite so prevalent as it would
have been a few years ago.1 But it is not unusual for critiques
of elitist views of popular culture to use the work of Theodor
Adorno, one of the School’s key figures, as a prime example of
the target at which their criticisms are directed. This stance is
even less surprising when it is realised how much common
ground the School shares with mass culture theory.
Mass culture and mass society 5The mass culture debate 10Mass culture and Americanisation 19Americanisation and the critique of mass culture
theoryA critique of mass culture theory 34THE SOCIAL ...SIGNIFICANCE OF popular culture in the
modern era can be charted by the way it has been identified
with mass culture. The coming of the mass media and the
increasing commercialisation of culture and leisure gave rise
to issues, interests and debates which are still with us today.
The growth of the idea of mass culture, very evident from the
1920s and 1930s onwards, is one of the historical sources of
the themes and perspectives on popular culture which this
book discusses.
