© Roger M Tagg 2012
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
The author is a professor at the University of Toronto. But this isn't an academic book, although he wrote it partly for students taking 'beginning' courses. After mentioning a number of 'theories' about pop culture, it becomes clear that his favourite is Mikhail Bakhtin's 'Carnival' theory - the idea that pop culture is an inevitable and necessary 'profane' counterweight to the 'sacred' or 'serious' aspects of life, such as were the Romans' Saturnalia and the Italians' Commedia dell'arte.
However Danesi is uncertain whether popular culture as we know it can survive indefinitely. One reason, he maintains, is that at present we have an 'imbalance' between the sacred and the profane, due to the high degree to which business (including capitalism and consumerism) has commandeered the bandwagon of popular culture. Business needs a fast turnover of trends to maximize profits. This may have already led to 'nostalgia' for older popular trends outranking newer, lower-quality fads. He also talks about an imbalance between 'engagement' with a cultural product and simple 'entertainment'.
Another reason, he suggests, is the ever-increasing number of parallel styles of 'counter-culture' - resulting in no single style having enough power to change society for the better - unlike in the days of Rock and Roll. Related to this is the growth of Indie productions, including stuff posted on the web through YouTube, Blogs etc.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Intro | viii | "I love pop culture, no matter how crass it can sometimes be." ... "I also feel that there must be a balance between entertainment and serious artistic engagement, between distraction and philosophical reflection." |
| 1 - | 4 | "Pop culture ... is culture by the people and for the people ... it rejects both the supremacy of tradition ... as well as the pretensions of intellectualist tendencies ..." |
| What is | "(It) is beset by a constant turnover of artifacts ..." - Gilbert & Sullivan was pop culture in its day. | |
| Pop | Barthes, however, slammed it as being "beset by humiliated repetition ... new (artifacts), but always the same meaning". | |
| Culture? | 22-26 | Pop culture would not have happened without a lot of technical innovations, e.g. printing presses, photography, gramophones, cars, radio, television, videos, e-games etc |
| 27-31 | It also involves spectacular entertainment, nostalgia and bricolage (combining many different existing styles into a whole). | |
| 2 - | 38- | A number of 'models' of pop culture are considered. |
| Explaining | 40 | Marshall McLuhan's model was that a lot of it is about the communications channel - "The medium is the message". |
| Pop Culture | 42-44 | The Frankfurt School (e.g. Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse etc) took the Marxist view that pop culture was a form of surreptitious capitalist propaganda. "The School's main contention was that typical pop culture fare was crass and functioned primarily to placate ordinary people", and they blamed the Enlightenment and "materialistic scientism". Other people thought this was an elitist view; Walter Benjamin thought that pop culture might have some 'cathartic' value "to release pent-up energies". |
| 44 | Danesi asks "Why has pop culture brought about more favorable changes to the social status of common folk than any other cultural experiment in history, including (and especially) Marxism?" | |
| 44-45 | Danesi separates a more general "Propaganda Theory" which he blames largely on Chomsky - this sees "pop culture as an industry serving those in power" | |
| 45 | "Like the Frankfurt scholars, propaganda theorists do not seem to believe that common people can tell the difference between truth and manipulation." [RT: I'd say, the ability to tell the difference is still patchy, although it's improving.] In any case, with the internet, there's plenty of opportunity for people to dissent. | |
| 45-46 | "Early feminists" saw pop culture "as a construct that was subservient to the desires of the male psyche". Danesi feels that's changed since the days of, e.g., I Love Lucy and Madonna, and that post-feminism takes a different (though not un-critical) view. | |
| 47-48 | Selective Perception theory suggests that we only see or hear the things that accord with what we think already - we conveniently miss those things that don't. This implies that what we think about things (including pop culture) depends mainly on our particular prior viewpoint | |
| 48 | The Two Step Flow model says that we are highly susceptible to a 'follow my leader' approach - we rely on intermediary opinion-formers to say what we should like or not. | |
| 49 | Cultivation theory claims that the media "cultivate the status quo" in order to enforce existing norms. | |
| Uses and gratifications theory suggests "that the media do nothing to people"; "they are opportunistic users", just taking what they want "for their own purposes and gratification". | ||
| 51 | An "opposition" theory looks for elements in pop culture that act as symbols for highlighting opposition to something. | |
| 51-52 | Mythology theory, such as Lévi-Strauss's, sees pop culture as "recycling unconscious mythic meanings, symbols, narratives and spectacles", such as the hero who helps ordinary folks. This might account for phenomena like Superman (as Robin Hood [or even Prometheus?] revived?). | |
| 53-55 | Here Danesi talks about 'Representation', meaning the presentation of vision, words, action and even music as representation of things we can talk to each other about, according to some implicit code [RT: or 'ideology?]. His examples are sitcoms, heroes like Superman, even Princess Diana's death. Plato, however, thought that such things are "illusions that lead us away from contemplating life as it really is". | |
| 55-56 | "Transgression" is another theme in pop culture, where the idea is to deliberately shock us. He mentions tattoos, body piercing, 'accidental on purpose' breast exposure, and deliberate language mis-spellings, like replacing 's' with 'z', [RT: or heavy metal umlauts]. | |
| 57-58 | Transgression leads on to Moral Panic theory - the game of young people to "keep them differentiated from adults". Danesi's view is that this only works for a short time, until the mainstream culture adopts those trends - as many evangelical churches do by introducing rock and rap bands into their services. | |
| 59-63 | Here Danesi explains Bakhtin's Carnival theory, which "asserts that transgression is instinctual ...(it) actually validates social norms". He mentions Goth subculture and Gangsta Rap as today's examples, but also pre-Lent carnivals (e.g. Fasching or Mardi Gras) in Catholic regions. | |
| 63-65 | The coverage of theories finishes with more on post-feminism. Heavily based on Madonna's style, he says that "post-feminists see the display of feminine sexuality in public places and in media not as exploitation but rather as a transgressive form of dialogue. Danesi quotes Madonna as having argued that "the notion that women's fantasy worlds are limited to the type portrayed in romantic novels, movies and songs is a distortion". | |
| 3 - | 73 | Propp "argued that a relatively small number of innate and, thus, largely unconscious plots, characters and settings went into the makeup of narratives of all kinds". [RT: as in "it's the same old story?] |
| 75-77 | Pulp Fiction is the pop culture side of the novel. | |
| 82-83 | The same goes for Tabloids as a side of newspapers. "Tabloids entertain audiences by adorning their narrations with sensationalism and exaggeration." But the distinction seems to be becoming blurred. | |
| 88-89 | Under magazines, Danesi highlights 'Lifestyle' magazines. | |
| 90-96 | Comics are specifically part of pop culture. Many follow the 'mythology' line. | |
| 4 - Radio | 97 | Danesi recounts with glee the story of when Orson Welles' version of HG Wells' 'War of the Worlds' was broadcast on American radio, many people thought the threatening situations in the plot announced by a 'news reader' were for real, and panicked. |
| 103-6 | Two very 'pop' radio genres are sitcoms and soap operas (now largely moved to TV). | |
| 110-5 | Radio really kicked off the 'celebrity' aspect of pop culture. | |
| 116-7 | Danesi emphasizes the 'engagement' versus 'entertainment' contrast between different uses of radio. | |
| [RT: It's not specifically mentioned, but I would classify 'talk-back radio' as very much part of pop culture, although it's not 'entertainment'.] | ||
| 5 - | 121 | The contrast is no a simple one between 'art' and 'pop' - much popular music does in fact contain some genuine art, although a lot doesn't. |
| Music | 122 | Pop music does sometimes have an explicit call to action or protest. |
| Pop music has depended very much on recording and replay technologies. | ||
| 127-8 | "The commercialization of such (pop music) forms dictates that they have a short life span." Quoting Greil Marcus, Danesi says that in the end most rock music will likely fade away because it "is a combination of good ideas dried up by fads, terrible junk, hideous failings in taste and judgment, gullibility and manipulation, moments of unbelievable clarity and invention, pleasure, fun, vulgarity, excess, novelty and utter enervation". Unless they have that "Beethoven standard", they will evanesce into obscurity when the nostalgia factor disappears with the loss of specific generations of music afficionados". | |
| 129 | "When all is said and done, however, it is the profane nature of pop music that gives it such emotional power." | |
| 136 | The advent of videos to go with pop music recordings revived the level of sales, which were flagging in the late 1970s. | |
| 147 | "It is also true today that there just may be too many actors on the pop culture stage for any specific type of performance to catch on broadly." | |
| 148 | "One sign [RT: that things are maxing out] is the current lack of moral panic with regard to the new trends. Another sign is the constant glorification of musicians from the past. The stars of yesteryear are as much in the limelight as are the current ones. For example, in the past few years, no new artists have been hired to star at the halftime Superbowl show. ... A third sure sign is the constant recycling of previous trends." | |
| 148-9 | The effect of the appearance of Indie music, especially online, is an unknown factor for the future of pop music. So is the fragmentation into (too?) many genres. | |
| 6 - | 151-2 | Cinema (at least in feature films and cartoons) has never been anything but pop culture, although art has shown through in occasional places. |
| Cinema | 153 | Going to a cinema was (and still is to a lesser extent) a pop culture activity. |
| and | 158-75 | Among interesting genres mentioned are "chick flicks" (post-feminist, e.g. Bridget Jones), thrillers, horror and 'future worlds'. |
| Video | 168-70 | Danesi claims that many movies display 'postmodernism'. His definition seems to be "irony and parody of the modernist belief in scientific certainty". [RT: I am not sure I see that as the same as the postmodernism of Derrida et al.] Danesi quotes Zygmunt Bauman who says that it is "a state of mind marked above all by its all-deriding, all-eroding, all-dissolving destructiveness". [RT: Sure, some movies are zany and imaginative, but most still tend to stick to familiar plot structures and 'narratives'.] |
| 180-3 | Not much is said here about video recordings of movies. But video games are clearly a very important aspect of pop culture. Most of the scenarios have a high 'fantasy' element. Many allow two (or more) players in the same game. [RT: so did board games, such as Monopoly or Diplomacy]. There are also sports games like Wii that capture players' physical movements. | |
| 183 | "Video games improve abstract problem-solving skills. ... Will our next great scientific minds and artistic geniuses be addicted video game players?" [RT: No - not if they are addicts.] | |
| 7 - | 185 | Frederic Glezer: Television is a "four- to five-hour experience with nothingness". [RT: He actually said "a three- to four- to five- ..."] |
| Television | 199 | "When and why did reality television become so popular? Does this popularity result from television's blurring of the lines between the imaginary and the real? I would answer in the affirmative." |
| 201-4 | Television has replaced religion as a 'social text' - our lives revolve around it. | |
| 203 | Breakfast TV says "Wake up people, here's what you need to know". Afternoon talk shows [RT: Oprah, Dr Phil?] have "replaced the pulpit". | |
| 207 | "The total deconstruction of the 1950s mythology of patriarchal fatherhood took place in sitcoms from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s." | |
| 209 | Marshall McLuhan said that "television had an impact far greater than that of the material it communicated". | |
| "The effects produced by television are the same as those produced by pop culture generally." | ||
| 210 | But TV is a major cause of the "celebrity effect" - celebs become "mythic figures, larger than life" ... and "infused with godlike qualities". "Television celebrities are the contemporary equivalents of the graven images of the Bible." | |
| 211 | The "history fabrication effect" refers "to the fact that television ... has often been the maker of history. Events that are showcased on television are felt as being more significant and historically meaningful to society than those that are not". The example quoted is the two planes crashing into the WTO towers in New York in September 2001. | |
| 213 | 'Pseudoevents' "are not spontaneous but rather planned for the sole purpose of playing to television's huge audiences". | |
| 215 | Lech Walesa said of the collapse of communism in the late 1980s that "it all came from the TV set". | |
| 8 - | 217 | "Pop culture could not have become a default form of culture in a non-capitalist society." |
| Advert- | "People continue to perceive shopping as a form of recreation and buy things that they may not need, finding the act pleasurable in itself." | |
| ising, | 219 | "As early as 3000 BCE, the Babylonians used such signs to advertise what was in the stores." |
| Branding, | 222 | "Creating an image for a product inheres in fashioning a 'personality' for it so that it can be positioned for specific market populations." |
| and Fads | "Product image is further entrenched by the use of myth." Danesi instances the many "unreal, almost deified" models, and the implied "mythic effects" of transforming ourselves. | |
| 223 | "Advertising is, fundamentally, a form of theater." | |
| 230 | "Today, the branding of society entails placing products into pop culture spectacles as props within them." | |
| 240-1 | Sudoku was a US invention - the Japanese popularized and re-named it. A retired NZ judge saw this and passed it on to The Times. | |
| 9 - Language | 244 | Words like cool, groovy, hippy, hip-hop etc "have crystallized continuously throughout pop culture's history, as have certain phrases and various mannerisms that became popular through hit songs, movies, jingles and the like". [RT: as, too, are the words hit, movie, jingle etc.] Pop language is "colorful", and uses "exaggeration and deception" [RT: and irony]. |
| 246 | Typical phrases include "Get a life", "Tell me about it". | |
| 248 | More examples: psycho, DJ, Sexploitation, man, guys, yeah, dude, uh-huh, duh, ... like, etc. | |
| 254-5 | Character substitution, e.g: x-wife, salt-n-pepa, k for c, -z for -s, x for -cks, da for the, ph for f, 4u. | |
| 259-62 | Net lingo, e.g. IMHO, BTW, OMG, LOL, smileys, :-) etc | |
| 10 - Forever | 265 | "Emphasis on all things young" goes along with pop culture [RT: are young people an easier target?] which leads "to a radical reevaluation of traditional notions of the role of older people in society. |
| Pop | 265-6 | "Like carnivals, pop culture is all about spectacle, pastiche, and a polyphonic dialogue among common people." |
| 270 | Habermas claimed that "if there is to be progress, then it must come from the people, not from intellectuals". | |
| But ... "The basic assumption of the Marxist hegemonic model of Antonio Gramsci ... is that the people in power are able to rule by cultural influence, rather than by force, indoctrinating and manipulating the powerless dupes, generating in them a false consciousness that is immune against its own falsehood. Such ideological discourse completely misses the whole point of pop culture. ... Frankfurt theory is completely incapable of explaining such phenomena [Dansei instances Goths], because they are generated by common people themselves in defiance of the mainstream culture, and often in resistance to hegemonic powers (such as radical right-wing governments). | ||
| 271 | "Especially troubling to both intellectuals and religious fanatics is the role of sexuality in pop culture. However as argued in this book, sex is nothing more than part of the show." | |
| 275-6 | "In some ways, however, the Marxist view is correct. There would be no pop culture without American capitalism to promote it." | |
| 276 | "But the (Matthew) Arnold-Frankfurt view is ultimately simplistic. It assumes that all participants in pop culture are passive and that economics motivates everything within human life. ... Such an argument is highly elitist, assuming that only intellectuals know what is appropriate culture and what is not. Pop culture existed before the capitalist industries realized its power and helped to make it lucrative. Arnold and Marx put the cart before the horse. The horse is the appeal of pop culture itself. It provides the fun, the thrills, the nostalgic memories, and all the other things that make life bearable: capitalism is a cart (among others) that provides the means to deliver it." [RT: Arnold wrote the High Victorian critique 'Culture and Anarchy'] | |
| 280 | "The view that mass culture ... is detrimental to human beings ignores not only history but also the fact that people can discriminate between levels of culture. The negative understanding of mass culture has a hidden interventionist agenda behind it. But intervention, history also teaches us, has never worked. Prohibition didn't work. Censorship doesn't work and can even backfire." | |
| 281 | "More and more right-wing groups in America have started to suggest censorship as a means of gaining control over the levers of the media and cultural content. However, the answer to the dilemma of the media is not to be found in censorship or any form of state control ... (it) would invariably prove counterproductive. In my view, the answer is to become aware of the meanings that are generated by pop culture representations." | |
| Adbusters advocates 'culture jamming' - e.g. for McDonalds, to "I'm lovin' it" adding "as my arteries clog up with cholesterol". [RT: in Adelaide, Australia, on a series of signs announcing "Police targeting ...", instead of things like speeding, seat belts, mobile phones, alcohol etc, someone substituted 'ur money' .] | ||
| 282 | "There seems ... to be an imbalance between the sacred and the profane in contemporary society - an imbalance probably brought about by the partnership between business and pop culture. It is in the obvious interest of business to ensure that trends come and go quickly ... the balance will have to reestablish itself. Without the restoration of this balance, there is a serious danger that pop culture will not survive but will be replaced by a more authoritarian form of culture, controlled by extremists (to the left or right of the political spectrum)." | |
| 283 | "The new pattern of countless individuals posting art on the Internet is creating cultural mayhem and may even be damaging the integrity of the 150-year old pop culture experiment itself." | |
| "The signs of the demise of the experiment are on the Internet for all to see. Subversiveness and transgression, for example, are now merely fashionable Internet styles, not effective modes of carnival." | ||
| 285 | "There is little doubt in my mind that, with a few touches to restore the balance between the sacred and the profane here and there, the pop culture experiment will continue. In fact, it is probably more accurate to say that is no more an experiment but ... the default form of culture today - a form of culture that has become largely unconscious. The invisibility of its ubiquity is due in large part to its democratic nature - it is culture by the people and for the people." |
I think he is a little optimistic in the last chapter to think that pop culture only needs "a few touches" to survive. I'd say there may come a point when a majority feels that it needs some 'reining in'. But overall, the book is most enjoyable to read - he has taken his own medicine and avoided the horrible academic curse of making the references to what other people have said or written loom larger than what the author him- or herself is saying.
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 8th October 2012
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .