Sociology 137 Final

Klosterman "Appetite for Replication"

- "Paradise City" as a cover band of Guns and Roses - rituals: costumes, drinking, drugs, rock star life however, people see them to hear their replication, not their value as a band - sacred: Slash, associated with Guns N Roses - profane: not into Slash characteristics - cover band as satisfying because of exposure and life style but not from their own means of fame.

Gladwell "Brain Candy"

- According to IQ tests, people are getting smarter all over the world (James Flynn) - Popular culture, which we think makes us dumber, may actually be making us smarter - TV today as opposed to in the past is less obvious and requires more attention, "filling in" of plot details, and utilizes the part of our brain that tracks subtle shifts in intonation and gesture and facial expressions - TV makes greater cognitive demands on us now - Video games utilize delayed gratification and withholding important information to make players figure out the rules and strategies themselves, unlike board games or old video games like pacman, which were exercise of motor coordination and pattern recognition, these require far more cognitive insight - Video games are about creating a proper hierarchy of tasks - Reading is explicit learning—the content is what matters - Video games are collateral learning—the value is in how you think - We should not fall into the trap of thinking only explicit learning matters

Carr "Is Google Making Us Smarter?"

- Author claims that the more he uses the web, the more he has trouble focusing on longer, in depth pieces of writing - Users are not reading online in the traditional sense—skimming, skipping from source to source and rarely finishing sources over 3 or 4 paragraphs - The Net promotes a style of reading that puts efficiency and immediacy above all else - Nietzsche—writing equipment takes part in the formation of our thoughts - Contrary to popular belief, the adult mind is very plastic—nerves often break old connections and form new ones - The invention of the ticking clock had infinite changes on the way we interacted with the world—it brought into being the scientific man and mind, but it took away our ability to obey our senses and made us depend on the clock - Internet will affect cognition - The internet is absorbing all mediums and recreating them in its image (convergence) - Results in scattered attention and diffused concentration - Old media is forced to play by the rules of new media - Taylor's system of restructuring factory workers and putting the machine first from the Industrial Revolution is still with us today - What Taylor did for the hand, Google is doing for the mind - Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful - Google aims to solve the problem of artificial intelligence, and it argues that we'd be better off with our brains supplemented or even replaced by AI - Socrates feared reading and writing would make humans ignorant and forgetful

Jenkins "Convergence Culture" chpt 3

- Bagge's comic strip about The Matrix - The Matrix is "entertainment for the age of media convergence" because it incorporates media across all platforms and at each platform it added a level of excitement and complexity without changing the story, while bringing new things; to understand the entire Matrix story, one had to engage in all platforms →transmedia - To make sense of each installment of the movie series, one had to engage with the video game and the web - Transmedia: offering different installments of information through different mediums to arouse interest, sustain hunger, and satisfy. Each franchise entry must be self contained - Viewers get more out of the experience if they compare notes and share resources - The Matrix borrows extensively - Existence and discovery of hidden clues and connections in movie lead consumers to believe that there are even more hidden connections - "Sheer abundance of allusions" - "Synergistic storytelling": movies, video games, and animated shorts all interacting together crucially; economic benefits - Strong economic motives behind transmedia storytelling - Globalization plays a role in transmedia storytelling: major media companies are producing films in other countries and languages and increasingly aiming products at global and domestic markets. Many American cartoons are made in Korea or Japan; foreign media producers can distribute media content directly to American consumers without having to bypass US gatekeepers - Wachowski bros (Matrix) saw co-creation as opportunity to expand global market - "Corporate hybridity": occurs when one cultural space (national media industry) absorbs and transforms elements from another and a hybrid work exists which can be accessed by either direction. Can be seen as a corporate strategy that seeks to control rather than contain transcultural consumption - Current licensing system creates redundant works - Franchise products governed by economic logic not artistic vision, giving franchises and sequels a bad rep - Transmedia storytelling must be intended from the very start - Storytelling becoming the art of world-building - Art direction taking on a more central role in conception of franchises - Dawson's Desktop: a website modeled after the files on the desktop of the main character of Dawson's Creek which allowed viewers to have a personal look into all of his files, trash, papers, etc and fill in gaps between episodes of the TV show; sites like this were possible because of the shift in narrative complexity of TV—consumers didn't know what was going to happen next. Jenkins uses this as an example of the chapter themes because it uses innovative Web interactions and took viewers far deeper; collaborated with active fans - Jesus and Odysseus as examples of historical transmedia storytelling—it is not new - Mythologies as archetypes - Protagonists and antagonists as archetypes make them instantly recognizable - Even if classical myths are more valuable in terms of lessons and becoming a part of every day life than their modern counterparts like the Matrix, the modern interpretations draw consumers back to the older works and give them currency - Origami unicorn: the one key piece of information which changes the viewer's entire perception of the film, TV show, etc - Depth and breadth of the Matrix universe made it impossible for any one consumer to "Get it" but the emergence of knowledge culture made it possible for whole communities to understand - The knowledge cultures that are evolving in popular culture allow us to adapt to changing society which is becoming more collaborative in the workplace, more decentered politically, etc. - This new type of interaction with media works better with younger consumers - Going in deeper to media must be an OPTION, not a requirement

Shively "Cowboys & Indians"

- Both Anglos and Indians loved the movie "The Searchers" - Both identified with "The good guys" - Liked the movie for different reasons: Native Americans because the idealized the cowboy lifestyle of freedom and independence and respect for the land; Anglos because they believed it was an accurate representation of their past - For college student Indians the significance lies in the false representation of their ancestry and history, while for whites it is seen as an authentic retelling of history -Both groups loved John Wayne→ "star effect" - An idea of how different audiences perceive the same cultural object

Jenkins "Convergence Culture"- Intro

- Convergence: Where old and new media collide; where grassroots and corporate media intersect; where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact - Convergence = the flow of content across multiple media platforms, cooperation of multiple media industries and migratory behavior of media audiences - Depends on active participation of consumers - Consumption is a collective process—communities form - Internet and cell phones represent paradigm shifts—the digital revolution - "Black box fallacy"—the old idea of convergence was that all devices would converge into one central device. This fallacy reduces media change to technological change. What we now see is the hardwire diverging while the content converges. Delivery technologies become obsolete and get replaced, while media content itself evolves - Movie industry seeing value in games - Music industry under attack - Convergence also occurs when people take media into their own hands→cultural shifts, legal battles, economic consolidations - New media technologies: lowered production and distribution costs; expanded range of available delivery channels; enabled consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate and recirculate media BUT it also has led to: concentration of ownership of mainstream commercial media - Both a top down and bottom up process - New consumers are active and want the right to participate in their culture - New consumers are migratory and considerably less loyal - New consumers are more socially connected - Convergence represents a risk for media conglomerates that fear fragmentations - Extension (of potential markets by moving content across different delivery systems), synergy (economic opportunities represented by ability to own and control all of those manifestations), franchising (coordinated effort to brand and market fictional content under these new conditions)

Production of Media

- Frederick - Neff, Wissinger, Zukin - Carr - Grazian - Gladwell "Kenna's Dilemma" - Hirsch

An Interaction Approach to Pop. Culture

- Grazian - Gladwell - Jenkins

Cultural Consumption and Social Class

- Grazian - Levine - Johnston & Baumann

Critical Apprach to Popular Culture

- Grazian Chapter 3 - Grazian "neoliberalism" - Klein "No Logo" - Simon - Jenkins

A Functionalist Approach to Pop Culture

- Grazian, chapter 2 - Bissinger, Friday Night Lights - Klosterman, Appetite for Replication - Strut! documentary

Creating Popular Culture

- Grazian, chapter 5 - Lopes - Gladwell "Group Think" - Pressler

How the Media and Culture Industries Work

- Grazian, chapter 6 - Hirsch "Processing Fads" -Gladwell "Kenna's Dilemma"

Audiences and Meaning Making

- Grazian, chapter 8 -Shively "Cowboys and Indians" - Baumann "Intellectualization and Art World Development" -Regev "Producing Artistic Value: Rock Music" - Postrel "Aesthetics"

Cultural Consumption & Style in Everyday Life

- Grazian, chapter 9 - Crawford "The World in A Shopping Mall" - Postrel "Substance of Style" - Simon "Everything But the Coffee" - Klein "No Logo" - Jenkins "Convergence Culture"

Jenkins "Convergence Culture" - Chapter 4

- Interactivity: refers to the ways that new technologies have been designed to be more responsive to consumer feedback. There are differing degrees of interactivity - Participation: shaped by the cultural and social protocols. It is more open-ended and less under the control of media producers and more under the control of media consumers - Internet become place of unauthorized and unanticipated ways of relating to media content - Prohibitionists: media industries adopted scorched-earth policies toward consumers seeking to regulate and criminalize many forms of fan participation. Dominant within old media companies and get most of the press - Collaborationists: new media companies that are experimenting with seeing fans as important collaborators in the production of content and as grassroots intermediaries helping to promote the franchise - Mass culture: a category of production displaced folk culture in the 20th century. Saw availability of grassroots singers and musicians as potential talent pool; required huge investments and demanded mass audience. Set standards of technical perfection and professional accomplishment and reached essentially every American. Eventually folk practices were pushed underground - Pop Culture: a category of consumption, it is what happens when materials of mass culture get into the hands of consumers and gets pulled back into folk culture. Grassroots fan communities emerged as a response to mass media content but in the beginning for the most part it was behind closed doors. In the 21st century there was a public reemergence of grassroots creativity as new technologies allowed ordinary people to take advantage of being able to annotate, archive and recirculate media content. It has culminated with the internet, built for sharing and collaboration - Folk Culture: 19th century American culture is the story of mixing, matching and merging of folk traditions from various indigenous and immigrant populations. Cultural production occurred mostly at the grassroots level. Stories and songs circulated broadly. Began to be raided by commercialized culture in the mid0to late 19th century and replaced by mass media by the 20th century. Works through a feedback loop of creation, polish and feedback - Old folk culture build on borrowings from various mother countries; modern mass media builds upon borrowings from folk culture; new convergence culture will be built on borrowings from various media conglomerates - Media companies sending out mixed signals of where to draw the line between fan participation and theft of intellectual property - Publicity surrounding Star Wars parodies because the idea that amateur filmmakers could develop global following runs counter to historical marginalization of grassroots media production - Amateur filmmakers are now producing commercial or near commercial quality films on miniscule budgets - Star Wars= prime example of convergence culture at work - Lucas's decision to defer his salary for Star Wars in exchange for maintaining a share of ancillary profits represents a change in the ways in which media is produced and consumed because it has been widely cited as a turning point in the emergence of the new media strategy of production and distribution utilizing multiple mediums (action figures, video games, short films, soundtracks all made Lucas millions) - Viacom took a strong arm approach aiming to push fans towards corporately controlled fan clubs - Increasing tolerance to fan movies - Growth of global sales in Japanese animation and character goods, much of which in American and western Europe - Success due to fact Japanese media companies were tolerant of the kinds of grassroots activities that American media companies wanted to shut down - American market open to global imports due to shift in fans now pulling to use all technology to expand community - Grassroots convergence paved way for new corporate convergence strategies - Rise of videotape recorders allowed Americans to dub Japanese cartoons and share them ("fansubbing"), and increase in demand led to opening of market to Japanese cartoon makers - Fan subbing remained a collective effort because the cost was high until the technology became cheaper when it spread considerably without permission - US media companies would have shut down the underground circulation of content as piracy - Japanese companies were tolerant of fan efforts using them to publicize, recruit and monitor audience shifts - Japan fears wrath of consumers; in US it will become necessary for producers to allow consumers to participate or else risk losing them - Today US licenses content as rapidly as Japan produces it - American consumers fear that companies are underestimating the import of grassroots publicity and are generating an uneducated consumer base - Overwhelmingly, fan parody is produced by men and fan fiction by women - Good quote on p. 172-3: "Neither producers nor consumers are certain what rules should govern their interactions, yet both sides seem determined to hold the other accountable for their choices. The difference is that the fan community must negotiate from a position of relative powerlessness and must rely solely on its collective moral authority, while the corporations, for the moment, act as if they have the force of law on their side." - Basic distinctions must be drawn between commercial competition and amateur appropriation, for-profit use and the barter economy of the Web, and creative repurposing and piracy - Media producers need fans as much as fans need them

Klein, "No Logo"

- Klein argues that the goals of companies to become the dominant force in their respective fields. This could be done by combining with other companies to create even larger powers with complex marketing strategies - brands try to make an association between their name and movie stars, athletes and social movements - brands are more important than the actual product of the corporation - brands have muscled there way into schools truly eliminating free space - brands use their size and clout to limit the number of choices available to the public or force companies to comply to their demands (Walmart uses market dominance to force manufacturers to comply to their family friendly demands - no jobs because companies are moving their factories and manufacturing plants overseas where production is cheaper - people are forced to partake in service jobs that offer minimum pay and no benefits.

Carr "A Comic Distributes Himself"

- Louis C. K. bypassed the middle man to ask his fans to not pirate his comedy sketches; asked for $5 payment - completely ignored the corporate backing to sell his DVDs or videos - through his promotion he ended up with a $750,000 profit - Louis compares NBC with himself saying that he did what the corporation wanted to do without any of the major sponsors or fancy studios - eliminating the middle man means less price inflation on the part of the audience and more direct sales from producer to consumer - effectively bypassed Hirsch's model

Pressler "The Philly School"

- Philadelphia's new reputation as an art town due to the increase of art galleries, loft spaces for studios and affordable living and top-notch art schools

Levine "William Shakespeare"

- Shakespeare's plays cohered with the mass aesthetic tastes and ideological world view of the 19th century American audiences • Melodramatic style • Use of humor • Art of oratory • Elizabethan English • Lessons of virtue and morality • Humanity as moral center of the universe - In order for Shakespeare to become reimagined as elite art instead of mass culture, American differences between "high" and "low" culture had to be invented •Borrowing cultures and customs of European aristocracies •Invented the distinction between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" culture • Levine critiques Bordieu by showing that high culture is socially constructed because it changes over time - In the 19th century Shakespeare was a part of popular culture; by the mid 20th he had become part of "polite" culture and "legitimate" theatre • Shakespeare became a possession of the educated used for learning not entertainment; since Shakespeare could appeal to the uneducated and the elite (main reading was the bible) - changes in language and rhetorical style and taste affected the popularity of Shakespeare - Shakespeare transformed from popular to polite culture at the turn of the century largely due to increasing segregation of theatre audiences and raises in ticket prices, and stylistic, special and class bifurcations in American society, and class feeling and division. Audiences became passive and homogeneous versus their previous interactive and heterogeneous

Jenkins "Convergence Culture" chpt 1

- Spoiling survivor -people use collective intelligence to solve problems and discover shows "ultimate truth" - Knowledge becomes power - Collective intelligence—ability of virtual communities to leverage the combined expertise of their members. Everyone knows something and no one knows everything. Different from shared knowledge - Relations between producers and consumers breaking down - Spoiling community aiming to collectively solve the puzzles before the production can deliver the answer---the point is in the game and working together, not in the actual answer - Expert paradigm: requires a bounded, finite body of knowledge which can be mastered by an individual - Survivor may not matter, but spoiling and collective intelligence do - ChillOne ruined survivor not spoiled it.

Lopes "Innovation & Diversity in Pop Music Industry"

- against the notion of homogenous, standardized music - innovation/diversity preceded change in industry & market - Claims that musical diversity depends on whether or not the system is open (record company allows labels to be semi-autonomous) or closed (media conglomerate does everything in house) - Analyzed Billboard charts to demonstrate diversity - Throughout 50s, # of labels was consistent with number of firms that controlled them; with time there became fewer firms and more labels - Naomi Klein would oppose Lopes' theory - Major record companies rely on their exclusive control over manufacturing, distribution and access to principle avenues of exposure - They have adopted multidivisional corporate form - Open system remains under oligopolistic conditions because major record companies find it advantageous to add new producers and artists to reinvigorate the pop music market and ensure no large demand occurs - This open system helps maintain diversity and a healthy market and is an effective strategy for controlling the pop music market - The contemporary pop music industry demonstrates that even under oligopolistic conditions a large culture industry can provide innovation and diversity - Large culture industries that use closed systems tend to produce homogeneous and standardized cultural products - Large culture industries that use open systems are geared towards a loosely segmented market and tend to incorporate diversity and innovation as a strategy of maintaining the market

Crawford "World in a Shopping Mall"

- argument: never before have we seen transformation to emphasize consumption • resturants, retail stores, striking similarities among landscapes, experience as important as goods - shopping malls as town centers in suburban America - homogenization of local downtown areas through growth of brand-name chains - experience of place-lessness - longer your there the more you'll buy - all malls follow the same rules of financing & marketing - indirect commodification: a process by which nonsalable objects, activities and images placed in commodified world of the mall - adjacent attraction: "most dissimilar objects lend each other mutual support when they are placed next to each other - fantasy, theme park, Disneyfication, entertainment, fashion shows - Gruen transfer: the moment at which a destination shopper becomes an impulse buyer - Law of retail gravitation: all other things being equal, people will go to the largest retail center that they can get to easily - Dumbbell format: department stores on either end of the mall making a dumbbell shape - Threshold demand: calculated based on purchasing power of the surrounding area of the mall; size and scale of mall reflects socioeconomic status of surroundings - Staging authenticity: the ultimate purpose is to separate customers from their money - Illusion of choice/abundance: all malls are more or less the same; malls even repeat the same stores within themselves

Grazian, chapter 8

- audiences are generally on a quest to make meaning of popular culture; cultural meaning is a product of human engagement and interpretation - meaning draws from personal memories and social circumstances such as identity and cultural background - when these identities inform understandings of culture in patterned ways they are called interpretive communities - interpretive communities share a specific intellectual, religious or political worldview within a larger institutional context (eg. Native American men (Shively); rap music for African-Americans) - culture wars: cultural conflicts fought among ideological adversaries in the public arena - cultural meaning is NOT FIXED; it shifts over time as the interpreters do - movies were considered lowest dominator of entertainment, inferior to more "legitimate" live theatre. Over time those ideas changed (See Baumann) - music has been canonized in ways that weren't the artists' intent, using terminology that has been employed by film reviewers (some opinions found this ridiculous and unauthentic) - general search of being "authentic" (rap artists keeping it real from the suburbs, reality shows capturing "real/ordinary people" - authenticity: credibility, originality, sincerity, naturalness, genuineness, pure; often associated with hardship and disadvantage (childlike art work of self-taught artists) - hybridity: disparate cultures are melded together in a self-conscious manner to generate new possibilities for creative expression; mockery or kitsch

Simon "Everything But the Coffee

- begins by talking about the beginning of Starbucks and its intention to be like an Italian equivalent - Starbucks manufactures authenticity as a branded costumer experience - corporations aim to create an experience that associates everyday consumer behavior with upscale value & lifestyle choices - creating a private second space where people can come together in a private public space with security - authentic by replicating the local culture within a larger replicated structure - corporation "teaching us how to drink coffee" and what expectations to hold

Grazian, chapter 5

- cities are unique due to urbanism, measured by the number of residents, pop density and degree of diversity - the massive anonymous crowds of residents, commuters and visitors that flood city centers give urbanites the incentive to pull together into small groups creating subcultures - cultural creation is defined by the technological constraints, organizational apparatus and legal systems (hip-hop albums & American authors) -cultural conventions: taken-for-granted rules and agreed upon assumptions that make social activity possible (standardized materials, tools and technology, defined language and terminology - cultural creativity is a collaborative activity; this collaborative circles provide a kind of dynamism that pushes innovation and rebelliousness in the arts (Parisian artist like Hemingway, Ezra Pound & Gertrude Stein) - art vs. craft: for art one relies on aesthetic skill and judgment to create a unique vision; craft is similarly creative but with the purpose of making something useful or providing a specific purpose (mass produced in commercialized context)

Jenkins 'Convergence Culture'

- corporations have conflicting ideas between old & new media especially due to niche media adjustment -corporations trying to control the interactions of the audience by facilitating websites, boards and discussions - corporations fighting against the invasiveness of audience members (Survivor Spoiling); but corporations still keeping the power by facilitating the interaction between the audience and the product.

Grazian Chapter 3

- critical approach: certain kinds of popular 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 - Marx: prevailing ideologies and cultural norms of any society serve to benefit its ruling classes and perpetuate their power - the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force - cultural producers create a cultural monopoly where companies solidify and maintain their own economic power and social dominance through conglomeration - media companies stunt the consumers power of imagination and spontaneity; consumers react automatically - media companies are extremely powerful due to their small numbers and multiple outlets - cultural hegemony: process of cultural domination of one social group by another; uses the tools of culture & media to engineer a consensus

Grazian "Neoliberalism"

- critics mock reality tv for its false representation of "reality" due to its staged nature - neoliberalism: associated with global free trade, deregulation of industry, weakening union labor and privatization of publicly-owned resources - reality tv was created as a response to the writer's strike in the 1980s. It allowed a "writer-free" form which alleviated the costs of hiring unionized writers and unionized actors. - producers seek out new ways to increase their level of production which leads to new global market development. Film the series in places that are underdeveloped for cheap labor.

Johnston & Baumann "Democracy vs. Distinction"

- culinary tastes reflect socio-economic status and class distinction - the broadening of high-status culinary arts represent omnivorousness (high status as signaled high status is signaled by selectively drawing from multiple cultural forms from across the cultural hierarchy) - in music, high status is now knowledge about multiple styles of music; not just classical like the past - the modern food discourse helped to establish its high class status -democracy implies a sense of equal footing among classes and cultures but it was overshadowed by the need to distinguish oneself

Gladwell "Group Think"

- cultural creation as a group process, case study: Saturday Night Live cast and crew - collective orgies, drunkingness, drugs, sex, etc. - current SNL creators are more professional with side jobs - innovative nature is around collaboration - myth of the lone artist as defunct

Hirsch "Processing Fads"

- cultural products: nonmaterial goods directed at a public of consumers which serve an esthetic or expressive function - flow of products from "creative personnel" to a technical system "interorganizational" -Way more talent (surplus) than consumers→thereby creating the need for filters - There exist two boundaries (input and output)→ one needs the help of "boundary spanners" (agents, managers, publicists, etc) to get around these boundaries and get from subsystem to subsystem (technical, managerial, institutional) - Hirsch calls the mass-media gatekeepers "surrogate consumers" - The point of filtering is so that the cultural industries can minimize risk and demand uncertainty→ "all hits are flukes" - Three strategies of minimizing dependence on elements of task environments of production and distribution 1. Boundary spanners "contact people" 2. Overproduction and differential promotion Sleeper hits 3. DVD =corporate ATM 4. Advertising companies heavily advertising certain films over others; front table book display' spine vs. front cover 5. Different type of advertising power behind things 6. Cooptation of the mass media - "Payola" record companies used to bribe radio DJs to play their music • This model supports the critical and interaction approaches to pop culture; n argument could be made for functionalism since it exists

Grazian; chapter 1

- culture can transcend its historical moment to enjoy endless cycles of rediscovery and reinvention (ex. Rihanna's SOS) - collective activity: pop. cult is never a solitary feat. It is generated by a network of interlocking cultural creators - pop culture = aesthetic products created and sold by profit-seeking firms operating in the global market. • culture that is popular is well liked and receives commercial success • icons or media products that are globally ubiquitous and well liked • commercial media that is thought to be trivial, tacky and geared toward the lowest denominator • associated with songs, dances and other folk expressions belonging to the people under populism and authenticity - culture: a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development • richly symbolic and socially constructed • embodied in some sort of form - culture's meaning is ultimately decided by the consumers, not the creators; meaning is based on overriding ideologies

Neff, et.al "Entrepreneurial Labor for Cool Jobs"

- entrepreneurial labor: based on the idea that the laborer takes on the risk --> invest time, money, resources for themselves. - similarities and differences between new media jobs and fashion modeling through •freelancing (traveling from job to job with little company investment) •self-investment (capital outlays, skill training & body prep [models]) • portofolio work (prestige work for little money) • foreshortened careers (lack of stability and realistic-ness after marriage or children) • autonomy & flat career hierarchy for easy replacement

Baumann "Intellectualization of the Art World"

- film as originally identified with working-class audiences; theatre as high art style - advent of television boosted the quality and opinions of film - increase of secondary education through the GI Bill and other sources - increase in local film festivals and creation of departments in universities - transition from studio system to director system --> "auteurism" - film critics provide an intellectualizing discourse - change language to froms of high art - employed mechanical techniques of commercial art - development of institutions of prestige (Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and American Film Institute)

Grazian, chapter 2

- forms of mass entertainment can be explained primarily in terms of social uses in generating solidarity among individuals within large anonymous communities - Durkheim: observed that early religions relied on signs, images and symbols from natural as signifiers or symbols to distinguish self from other: collective conscious - collective effervescence: a shared feeling of identity in which the individual members of the group experience waves of emotion and togetherness - pop culture serves as a resource of public reflection: we obsess over highs and lows of celebs as a way to comment on social world in impersonal way - rituals of rebellion: rituals that disturb the social order as a way to reestablish it.

Frederick "Intern Economy"

- free labor has been a staple of out economy with apprenticeships and even child labor - modern day institutions pay short-term employees less than minimum wage if they are of educational capacity - glamour industries as the real abusers of interns but hiring interns for virtually nothing, making them clerical temps and calling it "experience" - working some place cool is better than making money - internships are for a pool of applicants that have the financial backing to not earn wages (ie. the rich and well off; making the economy racist and elitist) - interns also lower the working wages since they represent free labor - the experience myth: many internships fail to provide useful skills or training

Gladwell "Kenna's Dilemma"

- hard time classifying music due to racial classifications - through a series of connections he met a producer and lead singer; created an MTV video - insiders predicted that Kenna would be well liked - test marketed music on radio stations and websites; used raters and sample CDs--Kenna was a FAIL - complicated to find out what people actually think - public opinion is based on package and product combines

Grazian, chapter 7

- high brow: fine arts consumed by the affluent classes (classical music, ballet, etc.). Also traditional art like Tuvan throat singing - in general high brow represents traditionally humanist conception of culture itself as the most intellectual and civilizing of leisurely pursuits - low brow: refers to mass culture associated with the working class (rap, blues, rodeos, monster truck); generally associated with sexuality and the lower half of the body -fluidity of the distinctions: jazz was considered low brow in the 1920s and accused of ruining the culture of elites but then the music was considered high art in the 1940s and 1950s. - modern blurring of distinctions (ie. Aretha Franklin and Yo-Yo Ma performing on the same stage) - mass culture is typically appreciated by all classes (basketball, baseball) - distinctions as social fabricated - Shakespeare Revolution (see Levine) - industrial revolution created a new upper-class elite full of successful entrepreneurs, bankers and business people. New elite had money but no aristocratic upbringing so they called upon staples of European nobility -Bifurcations: 1. spatial: rise of the so-called "legitimate" theatre for upper-class audience 2. social: development of exclusionary social practices (expensive ticket prices, dress codes, enforced rules of etiquette) 3. stylistic: rise of categories distinguishing "serious" culture from "popular" culture - naturalization of class cultures masks how class is a social construct - cultural capital (BOURDIEU): one's store of knowledge and proficiency with artistic and cultural styles that are valued by society and confer prestige and honor upon those associated with them •unevenly divided among the social classes largely because it tends to be inherited and passed among generations • economic capital can be converted into cultural capital as an investment. This in turn can be converted back to social capital--> upper classes reproduce themselves over and over again - omnivores: affluent consumers that have far-ranging tastes; upper classes attend opera, jazz and classical music concerts AND lower class equivalents like exercising, blues, soul music and hiking. - code switching: ability to negotiate multiple and varied cultural worlds simultaneously (ie. Jay-Z) -reasons for the omnivore: upwardly mobile Americans never shed their tastes but increase as they move; rising commercialization of folk, low and mass culture that makes it accessible - general blurring of cultural boundaries (Playboy with literary short stories, jazz with traces of classical

Grazian, Chapter 4

- interaction approach considers the influence of one's peers, neighbors and informal friendship networks on the spread of pop cultural tastes in clothing styles, movies, etc. - people constantly change their identities to fit the social standards and judgment from others (identity requires acknowledgement from society)uying p - embodiment of social identity that switches depending on the social world - basic ties can be determined by their strengths or weaknesses. Weak ties are the most practical because those connectors spread information to groups since those in the strong ties are very similar to you and therefore have no new information. - connectors: people who truly know everyone; cultural influence lies in the many different kinds of ppl they know • no obvious material interest in the success or failure of a particular product, brand or lifestyle - opinion leaders draw on their deep familiarity and involvement with specific kinds of cultural products, categories or genres to make informed recommendations to their peers. - early adopters: first person their network to have the latest and greatest; considered pioneers - maven: consumers who maintain a vast wealth of knowledge about many different kinds of products and therefore even greater influence over consumer buying power. - subcultures: participants appropriate the raw materials of pop culture to distinguish themselves from others through creation of identity and style •scenes: where subcultural identities are at work

Grazian chapter 6 cont.

- main target of cultural production are the gatekeepers - gatekeepers often bought out to coopt and promote a particular product. - synergy and conglomeration: parent companies market products on their own promotional platforms - reality TV: flexible norms of production; low commitment from networks, no writers, product-placement campaignys (Price is Right; Trading Spaces) - shifting weight of expense to the workers; company backing only after the product has financial viability

Grazian chapter 9

- malls rely on similar formulas to generate the most profitable mix of retail, dining, entertainment and services - stylized and all-inclusive shopping malls highlight the centrality of cultural consumption and the rise of aesthetics and the triumph of style - aesthetics: how we communicate and express through the senses - remodeling of different versions helps to facilitate planned obsolescence...style matter and culture is design intensive (in locations and products) - change in the locales of commercialism--> chicago and philadelphia which were factory towns were reestablished through an urban renaissance - urban landscape of of overindulgence and branding among franchises; attempts to position themselves favorably within the global tourism economy - consumers seen as audiences within the space - staging of commerce (creating dreamworlds and other experiences such as Disneyfication) - manipulating lighting, personnel (beauty aesthetics, clothing, etc.) used to hide unattracitive and unsanitary conditions - book stores using books as wallpaper or scenery to maximize appeal (buying books and selling them back to manufacturer and buying them again - Underhill: science to shopping malls--> increase time shopping there, turn to the right, gathering attention for consumers to slow down, merchandise placement, etc. - costs of consumption is physical appeal of workers, low wages, no benefits, limited work hours, sexualization of employees - public spaces under constant surveillance whether from secret shoppers, security guards or video cameras - books: author seen as gorgeous or not - elevating style over substance

Grazian, chapter 6

- mass media is a cultural gatekeeper - everything is dictated by risk minimalization - input boundaries: operates as a filter used by record labels, movie production houses and firms to hand select talent from an enormous pool of media hopefuls -boundary spanners: personnel responsible for making connections between artists and corporation (casting directors, A&R scouts, acquisitions editors) - output boundary: last stage before product reaches the attention of the entertainment press and eventually the public; second set of boundary spanners that are internal personnel (publicists, promoters, sales reps and press coordinators) that help to get exposure through magazines, shows, etc. - gatekeepers: boundary spanners on the receiving end of output boundaries; responsible for disseminating even smaller group of products to the public; surrogate consumers since they are expected to make choices on the behalf of their readers and viewers - genres serve as organizational devices used to make the production process more efficient (especially since corporations are organized around a particular specialty) Makes it unusual for corporations to back products that do cross boundaries - sticking to what you know as a way to minimize risk (ie. use the same directors/producers for multiple shows, sometimes even the same actors. Helps to guarantee success): SEQUELS, REMAKES, SPIN-OFFS, CROSSOVERS - secondary markets: alternative opportunities to generate profit from a cultural product beyond its original format (DVD sales); create profit-making opportunities without developing further production costs (international movie sales; syndication which allows viewing out of order) - strategy of overproduction: assumes that from all the offers, a few blockbuster hits will generate enough profit for distributors, publishers and record labels to cover the cost of the duds. - licensing: branding and merchandising deals that use the image from a product like a movie (ie. darth vader potato head dolls)

Jenkins "Convergence Culture"

- micro interactions appear on the individualized level until eventually a new culture forms (Pottermania or Survival Spoilers) - groups serving as subcultures that interact with the media and corporations - subcultures are unique in places like conventions or even online communities through MMORGS - fan fiction; minimizes the need for a gatekeeper

Regev "Producing Artistic Value: The Case of Rock Music"

- rock critics often compare to great works of art - establishment of the rock & roll hall of fame which canonizes great artists - classic rock albums and singles are canonized - university curses - rise of the concept album (narrative, poetry, internal monologues) - rock as authentic cultural expression (value placed on electric sounds)

Simon, "Consuming Starbucks"

- uses stagecraft to engineer the consumer experience 1. manufactures authenticity as a branded consumer experience 2. simulates 3rd places or centers of community and public life (first space = home, second space = work) - uses Starbucks to fulfill desire, lack of gov't, consumerism to fill gaps - aesthetic feel through color schemes, natural look, signage, italian names for coffee - soundtrack/music; people = aesthetic - space: how consumer uses the space vs. intention of designer -end of Starbucks? coffee shops as mapping out space, offer discounts& value cards - people use the space as a filtering system: price high in white suburban/middle class consumer - rise of the independent coffee shop - store placement in suburban centers and business heavy urban centers

Jenkins "Convergence Culture" Chapter 5

-"Potter Wars": struggle for competing notions of media literacy and how it should be taught - Struggle one: struggle of teachers, librations, book publishers, and civil liberty groups to stand up against efforts of religious zealots to have HP banned from school libraries and local bookstores - Struggle two: efforts of Warner Bros to rein in fan appropriations of the HP books on the grounds that they infringed on the studio's intellectual property - Both struggles threatened the creativity of children - Jenkins argues that the struggles surrounding Harry Potter are actually a struggle over literacy - Five camps: 1. Those who support HP fan community for encouraging writing and creativity in kids 2. Those who support HP in schools to encourage kids to read more; "affinity spaces": informal learning cultures; why kids get more interested in learning about HP than in text books; "scaffolding": building upon skills you already have; fanfiction expands the experience of the HP world, creates social connections with other fans, improves writing skills and allows escapism→ can this be imported into schools? Jenkins would say no, because there is a hierarchy in schools and fanfiction is democratic. Kids are passionate about the subject of harry potter 3. Those who oppose HP community for copyright infringement; collaborative policy between fans and Warner bros, Warner bros police sites, fan fiction as free speech or copyright violation? 4. Those who oppose HP for its pagan values→ the fantasy world of HP is dangerous because it creates memories, builds values, guides thinking and molds understanding of reality. Is read over and over like Bible. Jenkins argues that backlash against HP represents secularization of education 5. Those who support HP within 'discernment movement' to reinforce Christian values in kids→ fitting kids with armor so that they can bring their own values with them as they encounter popular culture - Participatory culture like fan fiction removes the gatekeepers and allows consumers of all races, genders and classes to form a community - Children need the ability to pool knowledge, share and compare value systems, make connections across scattered pieces of information, express own interpretations and feelings toward pop fiction, and circulate what they create via the internet so it can be shared with others - Affinity spaces are spaces outside of the classroom where children draw on their own experiences to flesh out fictional ones. They are informal learning cultures where people more actively engage and participate, and learn more than with their textbooks (p. 186)? They are important for fans engaging with fictional content because they are sustained by common endeavors that bridge differences in age, class, gender, race and educational level. Younger authors are becoming contributors of fan fiction - Fan community has gone to extraordinary lengths to provide instruction and feedback to newer, younger writers - Definition of author necessarily shifts - Defense Against the Dark Arts was the period after Warner bros bought the film rights to HP, when they began taking control of fan sites and the content on them, reserving the right to shut such sites down if there was any content deemed "inappropriate." Line between engaging with work and copyright infringement becomes blurred. The editor of The Daily Prophet created Defense Against the Dark Arts to argue that fans had helped turn HP into an international bestseller and that the rights holders owed them latitude to do their own work. The result was the development of a more collaborative policy by Warner bros - Children are active participants in these new media landscapes

Jenkins "Convergence Culture" Chapter 6

-Shift in public's role from informed citizen to monitorial citizen (vigilant and read to take action) - New media influences youth political participation - Traditional media sources still ranked highest but people are moving away—they feel old media failed them - Hard to tell the difference between fact and fabrication - Celebrity politicians - Use of collective intelligence: pooling of resources and skills to reach a common goal - "The revolution will be digitized" - Shift in public's role in the political process - Entrenched institutions are taking their models from grassroots fan communities - Changing the way people think about community and power so they can mobilize collective intelligence - Shift from individual conception of the uninformed citizen to the collaborative concept of a monitorial citizen - Popular culture influenced the way that the campaigns courted their voters and shaped how the public processed and acted upon political discourse - Digital democracy will be decentralized, unevenly dispersed, profoundly contradictory, and slow to emerge - "Tipping point" refers to the point when the politics of TV gave way to the politics of the internet after Joe Trippi used the internet to raise money online for candidate Howard Dean, a model which John Kerry followed to close the "money gap" in the 2004 election - This is similar to Gladwell's phrase because it refers to the key moment when isolated events turn into a trend - "The empowerment age"" when average citizens challenge the power of entrenched institutions - What does Jenkins mean when he says on p. 222 that "at the same moment that cyberspace displaces some traditional information and cultural gatekeepers, there is also an unprecedented concentration of power within old media. A widening of the discursive environment coexists with a narrowing of the range of information being transmitted by the most readily available media channels"? - Push medium: where messages go out to the public whether they seek them or not (TV reaches the undecided) - Pull medium: serves those with an active interest in seeking out information on a particular topic (internet reaches the hard core) - Bloggers as "spoilers" of the American government - A monitorial citizen is one that tends to be defensive rather than proactive. They engage in environmental surveillance more than information gathering. They are perhaps better informed than citizens of the past, but don't know what to do with this knowledge...it relates to spoiling in that a monitorial citizen is a participant in a collective knowledge culture where they are knowledgeable in some areas, somewhat aware of others, and operating in a context of mutual trust and shared resources - The Daily Show vs. mainstream cable news shows that a growing percentage of young people felt that entertainment media more fully reflected their perspectives on current events - Traditional media walking away from historic responsibilities and pop culture taking pedagogical potential more seriously - Pop culture matters politically because for one, it doesn't seem to be about politics at all. It allows us to be able to talk across our differences if we find commonalities through our fantasies - Next step is to think of democratic citizenship as a part of everyday life

Bissinger "Friday Night Lights"

-connection between sports and religion - sports provide collective solidarity - symbolic power of the team; players of celebrities - increased social integration through local rivalries - small communities, football allows the community to be great - feeling of being stuck in time; nostalgic - distinctions btwn self & other: • team symbols & colors, images on helmet • temporal and spatial time (Monday Night Football, Lincoln Financial Field) • collective effervescence

Gladwell "The Tipping Point"

1. law of the few: everything starts on a micro level; power of the connectors even within a tight group: 80/20 rule: 80% of work by 20% of ppl - connector: weak ties in diversity; code switch - maven: knowledgeable connectors who collecr info and share i - salesman: not neutral, self-invested in their persuasion, trying to get people on the fence 2. stickiness: creating an image in the minds of people; message matters, if done right it'll stick 3. power of context: situation matters; being in a group affects behavior/social experience - magical #150; being anonymous limits responsibility; peer pressure due to normalization

Social Organization of Popular Culture

Grazian Chapter 1

Postrel "Substance of Style"

definition of aesthetics: by nature, deep & biological; we are tactile creatures - communicate through the senses - form, tone, texture, color, lines - style becomes the distinctive feature when products are similar - meaning-making: aesthetic is the way we make objects special; not simply about product - adding special features makes it unique -aesthetics as a means of authenticity