Research- Popular Culture

The Frankfurt School

A collection of Marxist Philosophers, based in Germany in the mid 20^th century. Among their many writings, they were concerned with the role of popular culture in exploiting the masses and maintaining the power of the bourgeoisie.

The masses weren’t educated enough to criticise the popular culture while the bourgeoisie were.

Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) represent the first to write about popular music. He argued that capitalism (making money companies) fed people with the products of a ‘culture industry’- the opposite of ‘true art’- to keep them passively (unintentionally) satisfied and politically apathetic. This applies to modern popular music culture as Adorno believes we passively listen to popular culture genre such as ‘pop’, for example JLS.

Example of true art and popular culture:

Replaces true needs are things such as education, freedom, creativity etc. Adorno believes that popular music takes these needs away and creates new false needs. These false needs are made in people by the culture industries; examples include wanting a flash car/house etc. As the capitalist satisfies these needs, the consumer feels better. An example of this could be if a teenager just broken up with his girlfriend, he will replace true need such as education and create false needs; like listening to love songs thinking this makes him feel better. These false needs are satisfied and the teenager feels better and feels like he can move on.

Popular music is a commodity to be sold to an audience who believe that they are consuming ‘true’ emotion.

Popular music products are characterised by standardisation (they are basically formulaic and similar)

Pseudo-individualisation identical differences make them seem distinctive, but they’re not.

Culture Industry

Products of the culture industry may be emotional or apparently moving, but Adorno sees this as cathartic (purifying) - we might seek some comfort in a sad film or song, maybe cry and then feel restored again.

Dick Hebdige is a more modern view of Adorno. Hebdige thinks Adorno’s idea is pessimistic and dismissive of mass audiences as passive and easily manipulated.

He argues that consumption is an active process in which differences in audiences’ social and ideological construction lead to different readings of the same cultural products.