Market Structure, the Creative Process, and Popular Culture: Toward an Organizational Reinterpretation of Mass-Culture Theory

1977 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 436-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul DiMaggio
Author(s):  
Greg Marquis

This article examines part of the reaction to the 1969 cancellation of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (cbc) television’s Don Messer’s Jubilee, one of the most popular Canadian-produced programs of the era. In addition to an exploration of television history and popular culture, it is also a look at the neglected topic of “square” Canada in the 1960s. Messer began fiddling at dances in rural New Brunswick in the 1920s and moved to radio and recording prior to becoming an unlikely national television star by 1961. After exploring possible classifications of the show’s music, the article explores themes in protest letters and petitions sent to the cbc. These included Canadian nationalism in opposition to American mass culture, Canadian folk culture, cbc elitism, Maritime regionalism, nostalgia, and the related themes of the generation gap and permissive society. The article concludes that fans viewed Messer as a custodian of Canadian folk culture that was being erased by the national broadcaster at a time of heightened nationalism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Citra Kemala Putri

Mass culture and popular culture is one of the important phenomena that was born after the postmodern era. In a society that lives in the midst of mass culture and popular culture, will grow consumer communities that produce new cultural symbols and activities. This discourse then influenced various aspects, for example, the emergence of popular music and popular art movements which soon became a commodities that was consumed by many youth people. This study discusses the influence of popular culture on the visuals of music album covers which take several album covers of international musicians from different time periods as samples to compare the similarities or friction caused by various art developments as their response toward happening trends. This study uses qualitative method. This study of various visual images was considering the aesthetic idioms of postmodernism, including Pastiche, Parody, Kitsch, Camp and Schizophrenia, as well as the concepts of several art movements, such as Pop Art and Lowbrow Art. The final result of this study reveal that several music albums using the Pop Art and Lowbrow Art style contained postmodern aesthetic idioms. Each album cover can contain one or several aesthetic idioms simultaneously.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Ferry Fauzi Hermawan

This study aimed to identify the forms of masculinity in the Indonesian popular culture in the beginning of New Order regime. This study was based on the two novels: Cross Mama and Kekasih-Kekasih Gelap, written by Motinggo Busye. The analysis used new historicism theory proposed by Stephen Greenblatt. The analysis also considered various cultural contexts emerged in 1970s. The results show three shared trends in the novels. The first trend shows that the masculinity tends to be represented by both men worshiping patriarchal values such as the myth of woman’s virginity and men perceiving woman as a sexual object. The second trend shows that masculinity is stereotyped based on masculinity, power, and male dominance. The third trend shows that masculinity relates to various products of mass culture at the time. This last trend shows that in that era,the ideal male figure is represented as the one who: (1) is sexually active with many women, (2) has a muscular body, (3) has a handsome look, and (4) has a financial capability. Besides the shared three trends, the result also shows that the texts in the novels do not only reflect the cultural situations in the 60’s and 70’s but also contribute in shaping the social values of the cultural situations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (8) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Ma Weihong ◽  

The article deals with identifying Russian rock culture as elitist or mass culture. The author characterizes the concepts of elitist and mass culture, explaining the difference between them, and examines the characteristics of Russian rock culture on the basis of this analysis. The author concludes that Russian rock culture is a kind of reconciliation of elite and mass culture: in the second half of the XX century the complexity of the Soviet political system and ideology determined the destiny and cultural attributes of Russian rock, making it a complex, multifaceted and eclectic phenomenon. Forced to survive, rock bands had to incorporate elements of popular music into their works and use mass media to attract the public. Having joined the ranks of commercial performances, rock 'n' roll gained more popularity, and gradually there appeared some signs of the rock culture decline. In the end, however, rock culture did not transform into mass culture, and Russian rock musicians and rock poets continued to play their music in search of a new cultural niche for themselves to express their critical attitude to reality, their denial and opposition to the processes of industrialization and urbanization, returning to the history and culture of the nation, paying attention to philosophical and religious issues and to the depth and completeness of poetic content, reconstructing Russian cultural memory, reflecting on the environmental situation in the modern world. Rock culture is still a culture of resistance, but as society continues to change, the form and content of resistance is also constantly changing, and it is because of this that rock culture has acquired a kind of humanistic foundation that is much deeper than that of popular culture, so ignoring the difference between rock culture and popular culture destroys the innate spirit and the essence of rock culture itself.


1970 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-36
Author(s):  
Min Bahadur Pun

This paper discusses the emergence of popular culture as an interdisciplinary subject of research. The simplest way to define the term 'popular culture's is a culture widely favored by many people. It refers to beliefs, practices and objects widely shared among people. Some of the examples of popular culture are romance novels, science fiction, photography, pop music, journalism, advertising, television, video, computers, Internet, etc. The study of popular culture entered a new phase in the cultural and intellectual history with the establishment of the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) led by Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall. Two things happened to the study of popular culture as an interdisciplinary subject: (1) the study of popular culture has included wide range of issues (2) scholars have intellectual freedom in this field, and they show no interest in establishing clear boundaries around it. Popular culture is always defined in contrast to other conceptual categories such as folk culture, mass culture, dominant culture, and working class culture. Thus, popular culture becomes the 'Other' for them, which largely depends on the context of use. Lastly, the paper discusses the role of popular culture in history, anthropology, sociology and literary theories. In theory, the study of popular culture is always around the debate on postmodernism. It assumes that postmodern culture no longer recognizes the distinction between high culture and popular culture.Key Words: Popular culture; Romance novels; Science fiction; Photography; Pop musicTribhuvan University Journal Vol. XXVI, No. 1, 2009 Page: 27-36


2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Ellen Fair

Abstract:Media privatization, commercial growth, and new concern in the popular culture about changing patterns of marriage, love, and sexuality led to a sudden embrace during the 1990s by upwardly mobile urban Ghanaians of a previously minor element of globally circulating mass culture, Valentine's Day. Far from a story of cultural imperialism, the rise of Valentine's Day in present-day Accra shows that local adoption of global consumerist preferences is best understood as a local process imbued with local meanings and values, deliberately and rationally pursued.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 91-108
Author(s):  
Zhou Lixia

The increasing interest of people around the world towards the popular cultures of China, Korea and Japan leads researchers to question how these countries influence the socio-cultural spaces of other countries through the export of their mass culture products. This study focuses on the analysis of Chinese doramas in the Russian sociocultural space. The increasing number of online fan communities, the activity of translators and dubbers of Chinese TV series, and the widespread use of the Internet in Russia make Chinese dramas easily accessible to a wide audience. Using quantitative methods, the author of the study came to the conclusion that people in Russia are very interested in Asian cultures, and audiences of Asian TV series are growing at a tremendous rate every year. While Korean dramas remain the most popular in Russia, Chinese serials have great competitive potential against their Korean and Japanese counterparts. This article may be useful to all researchers of mass and popular culture and television series.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Kyrchanoff Maksym W. ◽  

War is one of the most popular topics in modern mass culture. The author analyzes the features of the perception of war in modern science fiction cinema. The purpose of this article is to analyze the representation of war in American science fiction as a form of historical memory in mass culture. The author uses inventionism methods to analyze the images of war in the film production of mass culture as “invented traditions” of the consumer society. The range of perception of war and military experience in popular culture is analyzed. Modern global film industry and national film industries regularly address military themes in the world or national contexts, producing films that actualize military experience of nations and states. The film industry segments that specialize in the production of science fiction and fantasy films also do not ignore the military theme. It is supposed that popular culture offers a variety of images of war, including militarism, violence, military collective trauma, and military political psychosis. The author believes that military theme in popular culture arose as a result of reflection on real military conflicts, and the creators of the pop-cultural project could reject the war or idealize it. The author believes that military science fiction in modern American mass culture actualizes the values of pacifism or militarism as reflections of the left or right preferences of the creators of such cultural product for the consumer society. Science fiction films actualize various forms of war, including global military clashes, civil conflicts, aggression, intervention and genocide. Popular culture is becoming the main sphere of existence of the memory of war because military conflicts of science fiction series can be perceived in the consumer society as more real than the historical wars of the past. Military images of mass culture are supposed to actualize various forms of war memory, including memory as trauma, memory as marginalization, and memory as nostalgia which idealize war.


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