1. According to the text by John Fiske the concept of popular culture is defined as the combination between both resistance and containment alone with the consumer’s ability to attach their own meanings, interpretations, and modifications to the text they are consuming. Thus meaning they change or alter the original meaning of the text that is provided by the dominant producer and make it into their own interpretation. Fiske claims “that incorporation robs subordinate groups of any oppositional language they may produce: it deprives them of the means to speak their opposition and thus, ultimately, of their opposition itself” (Fiske 13).
Fiske also claims that popular culture does not exist because the dominant producer can be too authoritative which makes the subordinate culture passive and ineffective ultimately turning them into a uniform mass culture when he states, “the forces of domination as to make it appear impossible for a genuine popular culture to exist at all. What replaced it was a mass culture imposed upon a powerless and passive people by a culture industry whose interests were in direct opposition to theirs” (Fiske 17).
Fiske also states, in his text, that the subordinate consumer will never be able to escape the dominant producer because even if they resist they are still engaging in the product or text whether they know it or not. Especially when the consumer believes they are resisting the text by changing the original meaning into their own. Furthermore, when Fiske discusses the many meanings that are attached to the product of jeans he maintains the idea that by attaching new meaning to the product the consumer is being subordinate, but not passive. Thus, meaning that popular culture is made by the consumers. He goes further to say that subordinate consumers do solely use the products the way that they are meant to be use and the dominant producers know that. Also, that the consumers are actively participating, resisting, and creating their own subcultures by changing the meaning of the text when Fiske says, “Excorporation is the process by which the subordinate make their own culture out of the resources and commodities provided by the dominant system, and this is central to popular culture, for in an industrial society the only resources from which the subordinate can make their own subcultures are those provided by the system that subordinates them” (Fiske 13).
The Research paper on Society and Culture 3
CHAPTER II NATURE AND SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY OBJECTIVES: • Define sociology. • Discuss the development of sociology. • Identify different methods of sociology. • Give the importance of sociology. Lesson 1. Sociology as Science Sociology • What is Sociology? Sociology is the scientific study of society, including patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture. The term sociology was ...
Therefore this is ultimately supporting his concept that popular culture is both resistance and containment. An example of the subordinate and dominant culture that is present in popular culture at the same time is the cast member Snooki from the reality television show called The Jersey Shore. At first the dominant culture is the distributor and producers whom are the ones to cast Snooki onto the show and the subordinate culture is the audience watching her on the show and then mimicking her attitude, personality, and style. However, as the show has progressed and gotten more and more popular the cast member Snooki began to change her look and style and the producers began to add in parts of her personal life and put her in situations meant to show a different side of her character in order to manipulate the subordinate culture to their liking. This is a way for the dominant culture to control the consumer’s resistance to the text and alter it to the way the dominant culture wants. This is done in order to keep the interest and character fresh so they can keep the show going more and make more money off the characters and text.
2. According to John Fiske the difference between a Financial Economy and the cultural economy is that the financial economy is when the studios produce a commodity and sell it to the distributors for a product who then in turn sell it to the consumers. On the other hand, the cultural economy is the participation of the consumers and interaction with the commodities and ultimately producing their own meanings and pleasures from the text. John Fiske confirms this when he gives the example of television and says, “Let us take television as the paradigm example of a culture industry, and trace the production and distribution of its commodities (or texts) within two parallel, semiautonomous economies, which we may call the financial (which circulates wealth in two subsystems) and the cultural (which circulates meanings and pleasures)” (Fiske 21).
The Essay on Culture Adaptation And Cultural Change
Culture refers to the lifestyle or rather a system of tradition that dictates the thought and even action of a given group of people in a society. It gets its expression in the language, beliefs, customs and even food thus offering a direction for effective successful living. Culture gives one identity of the everyday symbols, customs, body language; food and social cues which becomes very ...
Popular texts are constantly moving through the circuit of both these economies every day because the producers see what types of commodities the consumers like and then recreate texts to put back into the consumers hands. Along with the idea that commodities serve a functional purpose along with cultural values meaning that there are certain things consumers need on an everyday basis, however, they are recreated to provide different styles and meanings. Fiske supports this claim by saying, “In a consumer society, all commodities have cultural as well as functional values. To model this we need to extend the idea of an economy to include a cultural economy where the circulation is not one of money, but of meanings and pleasures. Here the audience, from being a commodity, now becomes a producer, a producer of meanings and pleasures” (Fiske 22).
Furthermore, in this type of circuit the consumer then becomes the producer and takes on the dominant role. Additionally, Fiske states, “The more consumers any one product can reach, and the more any one product can be reproduced by the existing processes within the cultural factory, the greater the economic return on it” (Fiske 23).
Fiske is ultimately stating that the popular texts are produced then distributed and then consumed by consumers who in turn reproduce it which gives it greater economic value and completes the financial and cultural circuit.
3. Bakhtin’s Carnival as explained by John Fiske is a theory accounting, “for the differences between the life proposed by the disciplined social order and the repressed pleasures of the subordinate . . . concerned with bodily pleasure in opposition to morality, discipline, and social control” (Fiske 66).
The Essay on Class Rigidity and Social Mobility
In late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England there was a sort of moral ‘code’ of behavior and standards that are to be maintained by the middle and upper classes of society. Austen realistically mirrors this ‘code’ through the characters and plots of her novels while showing that social flexibility was narrow and class boundaries were strict. The topics of class stringency and social ...
Further meaning defining it as excessive and grotesque texts characterized by laughter, bad taste, and degradation along with the mixing and flattening of social classes as their shared humanity and body politics become the subject of crude humor. Furthermore, Bakhtin’s Carnival examines the three social classes of the middle, working, and upper and how they impact the participation and recreation of popular texts. For instance, Fiske explains it in this example, “The association of music hall with working-class pleasures, with drunkenness, rowdiness, and prostitution, made it an inevitable target for social control. Social control strategies varied from attempts to supplant it with the respectable “palace of varieties” to attempts to ban, censor, and control it by law. Though it was essentially a form of working-class culture and thus contained elements threatening to the middle classes, it nonetheless held a fascination for some members of those apparently threatened classes . . . when classes and genders mixed in the music hall it was a place of work for the lower-class women (either as performers or as prostitutes) but of leisure for the upper-class men” (Fiske 63).
Fiske is trying to convey the message that the working-class keeps the upper and middle-class participating in the popular text. There are also three main cultural forms, in Bakhtin’s Carnival, which are: ritual spectacles, comic (verbal) compositions- inversions, parodies, travesties, humiliations, and profanations, comic crowning’s and uncrowning’s, along with various genres of billingsgate- curses, oaths, and popular blazons. An example of the role the Carnival plays in popular text I chose to examine the reality television show The Jersey Shore by breaking it down into the categories and rules of the Carnival and individually explaining each one. Social classes: The television show depicts multiple cast members who are from the Italian culture and live in or near the state of New Jersey. They are very loud and obnoxious and have been widely criticized by both middle and upper classes alike. However, despite the criticism both classes still actively participate, in this working-class set of reality spectacles, either by resisting or reproducing the text for their own pleasure or by creating their own meaning. Rituals: The Jersey Shore cast members go out drinking multiple nights a week and each night their ultimate goal for the night is to find someone to bring back home so they can sleep with them. However, when they do not achieve their goal there is a sense of defeat in their minds and the creation of humiliation. Fiske supports this when he states, “The humiliation and degradation of defeat exists only in the body . . . not in the structure of moral and social values that gives them meaning” (Fiske 67).
The Term Paper on The Effects of Social Networking on Our Society
The use of electronic and social media has become a staple in our society. No matter where one travels one can have access to this great resource. But has this accessibility and dependence upon electronic and social media gone too far? Is this passion for instant gratification affecting our ability to communicate with those around us on a personal level? Another question to ask is whether or not ...
Comic compositions: Jersey Shore maintains many of these characteristics from the vulgar language as well as the profane scenes where the cast members are shown having sex underneath blankets and dancing while flashing body parts. Billingsgate: The Jersey Shore holds personal interviews, throughout the show, where the cast members are directly talking to the camera and audience at home which is normally not allowed during filming since they are supposed to be going about their daily lives as if the cameras are not there. Overall, The Jersey Shore is an example of how the Carnival plays into the popular culture text.
