4 Characteristics of Pop Culture
1. Produced by cultural industries
• Ex; Disney Corporation produces
movies, cartoons, amusement
park, and merchandise.
2. Differs from folk culture
• Folk culture; traditional activities
that are not financially driven.
3.
It’s everywhere
• T.V, movies, radio, commercials.
4.
Fills a social function
• It serves as a cultural forum.
• Ex; friends and family ask about
your reaction to a new movie or
show.
Patterns of how People Consume
Popular Culture
• People seek or avoid specific forms
of popular culture.
• Ex; some like reality T.V. shows others
avoid them.
• Cultural Texts: Popular culture
messages on T.V. shows, movies,
advertisements.
• Encoding: Creating a message
• Institutions form text by relying on
peoples identities and then target
specific markets.
• Decoding: Interpreting the message
• Our social identities help guide our
interpretations as decoders.
Magazines and
Cultural Identities
• Advertising offices of Magazines make their reader
profiles available to potential advertisers.
• Average age, gender, incomes.
• Some Magazines serve certain ethnic groups
• Ex; Hispanic Magazine targets Latino audiences.
• Cultural Texts vs. Cultural Identities
• People come together through cultural magazines and
newspapers to affirm their relationship with their cultural
identities.
• But not all popular culture texts are correlated to particular
cultural group
Resisting Popular Culture
• Refuse to engage in them
• Not owning a T.V., refuse watch movies with violence.
• Ex; University of North Dakota’s fighting Sioux mascot;
want to ban Indian imagery that’s considered hostile or
abusive.
• Social Roles
• Pop Culture plays a big role in how we think about other
groups, so there’s concerns about the representation of
various social groups.
• Ex; Disney film Aladdin racist portrayal of Arab culture.
• Targeted at profits of corporations
• Ex; Iraqis buy pirated DVD’s of U.S. films, market doesn’t
earn profit for these sales.