Research: Popular Culture

Introduction:

There are different theories that outline their beliefs on popular culture on modern society including music. It is important to understand differences takes on the role of popular

Popular Culture:

Popular culture is a chosen culture based on the taste of ordinary people (who is the audience). The music that is played on the official charts is part of popular culture. Popular culture is what most people want to follow this is emphasised mainly by music.

Music is used in popular culture, as the people that run the music industry targets a mass audience  not only through music but through fashion as well. For example, rappers including French Montana and Kanye West tends to wear brand clothing like Versace, at times when their performing or in their music videos. This influences the mass target audience to follow their styles of fashion, this is the mainstream culture.

Popular culture relates to the morals and values that are held in society, for example the value of giving homosexuals equal rights especially in marriage is widely supported and popular and most of all reinforced in music.

Popular culture tends to be criticized by religious institutions, as they see that popular culture is making society secularized with the morals and values that they hold.


Frankfurt School:

Frankfurt school is a place originally for neo-Marxists. They have their beliefs on how music influences popular culture and how it affects society.

The Frankfurt school believe that popular music is the end product of a production line where everything sound similar. They state that the exploits the mass population(audience) for profit and social control, in the hope that they accept a certain Ideology about the world they are living in.

The music industry promotes absorption everything about these pop stars becomes a commodity; their clothes, images, likes and dislikes etc.

Antonio Gramsci: Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci is a Italian Marxist sociologist.
The idea of hegemony is based on the dominant cultural ideologies that are dominate in society, this strongly applies to music.

In this instance, the bourgeoisie who are the music owners maintain their financial power over the social lower classes by using their major pop stars to persuade the public which s the mainstream audience to accept the world they are living in, through consumerism material that is promoted within the music videos. This is mainly from mainstream media.

However, Hegemony seems to be challenged with the modern day media platforms that usually made to self-publish work on the internet. In the music industry, music that is never played on the mainstream platform, can be played on independent platforms and they could have values that are opposite to the mainstream pop stars.


Theodor Adorno:

Theodor Adorno was a German sociologist, philospher and musicologist.

Adorno states that culture feeds people with the products of a culture industry. This the opposite of a 'true art' to keep the passively satisfied and politically apathetic(no interest).

Adorno adopted the term 'culture industry' to argue that the ways in which cultural Items were produced was analogous(comparable) to how other industries manufactures and vast quantities.

Particularly these features are true in the popular music industry. Products of the culture industry maybe emotional or apparently moving.

Adorno was critical of what they referred to as pseudo.


The mass audience for music are easily manipulated by the major record corporations as well as authoritarian governments. This through their promotion of capitalist material.


Birmingham School:

The Birmingham school is a modern development on the theories on social media, culture and have critiqued older social media theorists.(Frankfurt).

The notable students of the school are:
Richard Hogatt
.Stuart Hall
.Richard Johnson
.Dick Hebdige
.Michael Green.

Hebidge:

Hebdige is against the Ideas of Adorno. Hebdige states that the audience are free to resist the power of large companies by ignoring or finding alternative products to consume.

Often then the audience constructing themselves as distinct from mainstream culture= subcultures.

Major record companies will try and cater for this too and create products that subcultures will consume.

When there is a resistance to popular culture in music subcultures are formed.

Conclusion:
I have learnt about specific theories on the popular culture within music. my opinions on the theory of 'Popular culture' is that it is realistic. I will want to represent my artist in a way that represents subculture.