Chapter 2: A Functionalist
Approach to Popular Culture
Robert Wonser
Fall 2011
Theoretical takes on Popular
Culture
• Functionalist: culture “functions” as the social
glue that generates solidarity and cohesion
within human groups and societies.
• Contemporary collective rituals—hs football
games, parades, pep rallies—serve to forge
emotional bonds of recognition, identity, and
trust within communities and social groups
• Allows strangers to communicate with each
other in public
• Describes the uses of mass entertainment (their
functions) in generating solidarity in large
anonymous communities
Emile Durkheim
• Following Durkheim, ALL culture (including popular) is
founded on non-rational foundations and is upheld through
the rituals and the distinction between the sacred and the
profane
• The scared is dangerous and extremely important; it must be
approached seriously, respectfully and with due preparation
• The profane are the rest of the world, all other things you can
deal with matter-of-factly, with whatever mood you wish and
for whatever purpose
• Rituals are procedures by which people must conduct
themselves in the presence of things that they believe to be
scared.
• Ordinary non-ritualized behavior is how you behave in the
presence of the profane
• All of these are inherently collective; they need other people,
other members of your group
Culture as Religion
• Durkheim argued that religious
symbols or images represented not
merely gods or beliefs, but the
religious group members
themselves and their collective
conscious just as national flags
represent not only the idea of a
nation but the actual citizens.
• Religious rituals and practices
create symbolic boundaries
demarcating the separation of the
sacred and the profane elements
of the universe
What does this
mean?
How do
Americans react
when it is
burned?
The Importance of Rituals
• If people share the same sacred emblems and
holy names, the same doctrines, they know they
belong to the same ritual community.
• They can identify with one another as members
of a group that has feelings of collective
solidarity and strength.
• Even short conversations are mini rituals that
affirm one’s identity in a select group and boost
our emotional energy.
• Sacred symbols also tell us who is not a part of
our group.
Emotional Energy
• A strong benefit of group membership (society,
a cultural group, or subcultural group) is the
emotional energy one receives from taking part
in social gatherings
• Durkheim called this “collective effervescence”
or a shared feeling of identity in which the
individual members of the group (whether tribe
or congregation, or in our case music fans or
sports fans) experience waves of emotion, a
sense of unity and togetherness
How does it feel to be in
either situation?
• The basic elements of religious life—
shared symbols and images, imagined
boundaries separating the sacred from the
profane, and rituals that help participants
generate collective effervescence—that
provide the social glue that binds societies
through thick and thin.
Rituals of Solidarity and Social
Cohesion in Popular Culture
• Symbols, rituals and practices surrounding pop
culture’s production and consumption can bring
people together by generating a shared sense of
solidarity
• Like Native American and Aboriginal tribes, sports
teams are often signified by animalistic totems. Ex:
Chicago Bears, Atlanta Falcons, Miami Dolphins, etc.
What brings these people
together?
Imagined Community
• Imagined community Live
televised events have the potential
to generate similarly effervescent
experiences among viewers who,
despite their lack of physical
proximity to one another, still feel as
if they are members of a collective
audience sharing the simultaneity of
a moment
• Can offer greater feelings of
solidarity among audiences while
the actual events are chaotic
Popular Culture as a Resource for
Public Reflection
• Pop culture’s movies, tv shows, music, etc are
the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves
• Celebrities, regardless of how little we care for
them as individual people, we obsess over their
reported comedic highs and tragic lows because
their stories provide resources for reflecting on
the social world and the human experience.
• Modern day morality plays, Aesop’s fables and
traditional folktales: give tangible form to
otherwise abstract ethical dilemmas concerning
the nature of human relations and social
behavior
Mad Men
• What does Mad Men tell
us about us?
• Set in the sixties, we can
see how ‘we were’
• Sexism, homophobia,
racism
Rituals of Rebellion
• Rituals of rebellion are seemingly
transgressive displays which ultimately
restore and solidify the social order.
• Rituals represent a kind of institutionalized
protest that allows subordinate group
members to momentarily let off steam
without actually granting them real power
for a significant period of time
Rituals of Rebellion
• By temporarily inverting the hierarchical
structure of the social order as a form of
play, such rituals remind participants of the
dominant status norms that organize and
regulate society on a more daily basis.
• How does popular culture fulfill this
function?
Darker Functions of Popular Culture
• How rebellious are these acts?
• Does their ritualized character
takes out their bite?
– All political parties are attacked
• Does the comedic atmosphere
in which the attacks are levied
diminish how seriously viewers
will take the criticism?
• Do these collective rituals of
solidarity ultimately bolster the
legitimacy of those in power by
artfully appropriating dissent?
Do we critically
evaluate their
critiques?
Darker Functions of Popular
Culture
• Promoting stereotypes, myths and fears
• Portrayal of sexist, racist, classist and
homophobic images (including ads)
• Reinforcement of status quo
• Propagating of the American Dream ideology
• Pop culture provides not only a resource for
reflection but for distraction
• The word ‘sport’ derives from the French
desporter, which means “to divert, amuse, please,
play”
• Only 0.03% of all high school men’s basketball
players make it to the NBA