A CRITICAL APPROACH
TO POPULAR CULTURE
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Lesson 3
Robert Wonser
SOC 86 – Popular culture
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According to the critical approach
to popular culture, the ascendance
of certain kinds of pop culture can
be explained primarily in terms of
their ability to reflect and reinforce
the enormous economic and
cultural power of the mass media
industry.
CRITICAL APPROACH
FOUNDATIONS
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“The ideas of the ruling class are in every
epoch the ruling ideas: i.e. The class which
has the means of material production at
its disposal, has control at the same time
over the means of mental production, so
that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas
of those who lack the means of mental
production are subject to it” - Karl Marx
CULTURAL
HEGEMONY
Gramsci recognized the ideological power of
culture as a means of social control, engineers
consensus through the power of persuasion.
Dominance without awareness of being
dominated in this case, through pop culture
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Adorno’s critique of jazz and popular music’s
“Factory-made” standardization as the root of
its “lasting domination of the listening public
and of their conditioned reflexes”
CULTURE INDUSTRY
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“Culture now impresses the same stamp on
everything. Films, radio and magazines
make up a system which is uniform as a
whole and in every part… Under monopoly
capitalism all mass culture is identical, and
the lines of its artificial framework begin to
show through.”
– Adorno and Horkheimer from “The Culture
Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception”
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ADORNO AND
HORKHEIMER
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Rather than satisfying preexisting desires
among audiences, the culture industries rely
on advertising, popular music, and the
glamour of cinema to invent new (and
largely useless) desires for consumer goods,
all to be fulfilled through shopping and
entertainment—thus creating endless
markets for the surplus products sold that
helped to manufacture the desires for such
things in the first place.
ADORNO AND
HORKHEIMER
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The formulaic amusement provided by
popular culture encourages the “stunting
of the mass-media consumer’s powers of
imagination and spontaneity,” rendering
working- and middle- class audiences so
deluded that they overlook the source of
their exploitation as underpaid,
overworked, and deprived of their
autonomy and creativity as employed
workers.
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THE POWER OF THE
CULTURE INDUSTRIES
Four major broadcast networks: CBS, NBC,
ABC, FOX
Nearly all music is released through: Sony
Music Entertainment, Warner Music
Group, EMI Group, Universal Music Group
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Publishing: HarperCollins, Random House,
Penguin, Simon & Schuster
Sony Corporation of
America
Time Warner
Walt Disney Company
Viacom
CBS Corporation
General Electric
New Corporation
Due in part to their lobbying
efforts, in 1996 congress
passed the
Telecommunications Act of
1996 which eliminated
many of the caps on media
ownership that formerly
limited the number of
newspapers and radio and
television stations a single
firm could control
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SEVEN PARENT
COMPANIES
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Why is this
trend toward
media
consolidation
troubling?
INTERNET =
DIVERSITY OF VIEWS?
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With all the
options
available, we
still see most
people going to
the wealthiest
media giants 
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HOT TOPIC
MOST VISITED
WEBSITES?
Google
Facebook
Yahoo!
Youtube
Amazon
Wikipedia
Blogger
Twitter
Ebay
Craigslist
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
REPRODUCING
SOCIAL INEQUALITY
Our purchases bolster corporations power to
greater heights and simultaneously widen
the gulf between these enormous
companies and their would-be competitors.
Also widens the gap between nations like
the U.S. and third world nations
Reinforcing degrading stereotypes of
women, minorities, and the poor in the
images they produce
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Controversial hiring practices
POPULAR CULTURE
AS SOCIAL CONTROL
Cultural hegemony operates at the level
of common sense; it is a soft power that
quietly engineers consensus around a set
of myths that we have come to take for
granted.
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Let’s look at some ideas the culture
industry puts forth:
CULTURAL
HEGEMONY
Ideas propelled by the culture industry:
Last season’s fashions are so last season
• planned obsolescence
Shopping completes us
• Average adult – 48 new pieces of clothing a
year, child – 70 new toys
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• Retail therapy
CULTURAL
HEGEMONY
We can all live like celebrities
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• No longer the Jones’, we evaluate our consumption
relative to reference groups that live financially beyond
our own means.
• Americans carry $2.56 trillion in consumer debt, up 22%
since 2000
• Average household’s credit card debt is $8,565 up 15%
from 2000
• Ironically, this doesn’t make us any happier by only
highlighting existing disparities between the middle and
upper classes.
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DEBT IS ACTUALLY
COMING DOWN
CULTURAL
HEGEMONY
Our self-worth is determined by our looks and
cultural norms of sexual attractiveness
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• Airbrushed images of perfected bodies
normalize an unattainable expectation of
beauty.
CULTURAL
HEGEMONY AND
CONSUMERISM
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Brands matter
Connote status
McDonald’s coffee beats Starbuck in unbiased
Consumer Reports taste tests.
Ramones t-shirts have outsold their cds and
records 10 to 1
Average 10 year old has memorized 300-400
brands
Cool hunters
WHEN POP CULTURE
ATTACKS
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The primary motivation for designing programming
media and pop culture is money—not creativity,
not free expression, not pleasure, and certainly not
fun, but the unabashed pursuit of profit.
Tv shows are what get you to sit through the ads
A softer form of power and a means to manipulate
consumers through advertising, brand exposure
and the habituation of fashion cycles.
Are their logos or jingles stuck in your head right
now that you can’t get rid of?