The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong Community College
CC3720 POPULAR CULTURE AND CONSUMPTION
Individual Assignment
Group: 203
Student name: Fung Yeuk Wun Yvonne
Student number: 10104816A
Lecturer: Dr Siu-lai Lau
In this individual assignment, I would like to summarize my understanding on two articles I have read and hence discuss my criticism and reflection about that.
The first article is The Culture Industry – Enlightenment as mass deception by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.
With the rise of culture industry, folk culture has die out. To Adorno and Horkhimer, high art is the only redemption as both high culture and folk culture have the similar core elements and functions. In contrary, mass culture is failed
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The relationship between culture production and technology is increasingly close.
3. The subject of culture is longer as the cultural consumers of the masses.
Under the impact brought by culture industry, human loss its individuality and the nature of culture are generally replaced by commercial logic. Culture is only for exchange value but not for the need. Standardization and schematization bring about the vulgarization of mass culture.
According to Adorno, our world is full of suffering regardless of the absurdity derived from any surviving or relative limitation derived from different era. With the development of production power, instrumental domination of enlightenment, control of economic power and etc, the society nowadays is seemingly break through the old rules and disciplines, however, it does not bring us real liberation but a new formation of sufferings.
The suppression of negativity towards culture industry is one kind of manifestation of suffering and the trick of it is to falsely solve or evade any sufferings. Culture industry constructs different solutions once we face inquires and various kinds of suppression and pain in reality through product.
Adorno stated that the impact of culture industry towards consumers was constructed through
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Luxury resorts, sentimental fashion, the bright lights of the karaoke bars and magnificent party is keep coming in your life which are not allow you to ward off. It is everywhere in life but seems completely not related to us. The promise of illusional culture false, it uses fictional way to bring people to an unreal world. To most public, it is a dream which can only wish but not expect, but it induces people’s possessive desire and tendency in order to change people 's values and way of life. Nostalgic mode captures the composition of beauty and public taste in consumption society which becomes an illusion of people to go along with the survival of a pleasant life. People try their best to recover the loss in the past old photos, old houses, old furniture and etc. Besides painting, Jameson also uses film as an example. It surrounds the reality in front of people by using a soft romantic and pretended nostalgia, repackage the time of our history and make you believe it is a new
Fee and Gunew describe in their interview, From Discomfort to Enlightenment: An Interview with Lee Maracle, “there’s very few of us left [...] that have any kind of a foundation in the culture, [...] you have only one knowledge system [...] the Western knowledge system” (211). What this means is that since colonization began, there has been a disconnection between indigenous people and their own culture; the cause of this is because of the takeover of Western thought during the colonization of North America. It was considered the “right” and only way that a culture could act. Although the Enlightenment is portrayed as a necessity to the colonization and formation of the Americas, it has been discovered that this action had a cost: the cost of individuality between indigenous cultures. As a result of the Enlightenment, European imperialism ran rampant, beginning the processes of colonization, which inevitably led to the destruction of individual cultures.
1.1 Background of the Research Technology has always develop for a long time. Until today, it is still develops at a stunning pace. As a matter of fact, technology has touched every aspect of life; from the way we move by using a horse changed into automobile, from walking on the land to flying in the air and reach farther distance. The products we are using in our daily life also produced by the technology. Under those circumstances, including the economy, politics, and also society, are affected by technology.
The author includes pathos to persuade the audience to support his argument "there are very few countries in the world where anti-intellectualism runs as high in popular culture as it does in the the U.S. " This statement makes the audience feel pity of our nation and gives us
In his article “The Naysayers,” Alex Ross analyzes the debate that looms between Benjamin and Adorno. Ross concludes that “if Adorno were to look upon the cultural landscape of the twenty-first century, [Adorno] might take grim satisfaction in seeing his fondest fears realized” (Ross). That fear being is Adorno’s expressed concern that music was progressing as another tool for the capitalist society. Unfortunately, this concern of Adorno’s has become all too realized, particularly in the pop music industry. Artists like along the lines of Justin Bieber and Kesha are manufactured products.
Culture is significant in forming our World’s history along with defining what a society is. Cultural impact will always exist due to history and national pride. But what exactly is a culture? To Americans, culture is the everywhere. Within our pop music, fashion, cuisine, and much more.
Popular Culture I Öğr. Gör. Gülbin Kıranoğlu The Capitalist and Patriarchal Elements in the Products of Popular Culture Betül Kılıç 110111077
Between films, television, novels, and the Internet, there are many different types of popular culture in which society is immerged. One might argue that studying pop culture is shallow and worthless, but this is debatable because most of what we do is shaped by pop culture in some way. Studying pop culture may allow us to understand trends in culture that can aid in other society-based careers, as well as study societal and power constructs with greater accuracy. As technology and media develops further and further, pop culture should be studied in academia, as it is a relevant way to examine the moral constructs of the society and understand trends in culture. In the future, if pop culture is included in academia with the same importance as other subjects, future graduates may be more in tune with society than ever
While the definition of culture has changed dramatically since the 16th century the ideals of social expectations as well as the influence of war have not as today many people still are influenced by these cultural definitions. In conclusion, “Much Ado About Nothing” ultimately defines the structure of human nature through painting a complex understanding of cultural influence that still compares greatly to the 21 century
Whilst in exile in the USA key theorists Max Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno developed an account of the “culture industry” calling attention to how industrialized and commercialized culture had become under capitalist relations of production. This observation was most evident through the overwhelmingly low level of state support for film and television industries. Mass culture was highly commercialised which was a key facture in determining a capitalist society. This became a focus of critical cultural
This process of recuperation happens in two ways: by converting subcultural signs into mass-produced objects (the commodity form) and by labelling and re-defining deviant behavior by dominant groups (the ideological form). The commodity form benefits from the relationship between the spectacular subcultures and the industries, which is based on ambiguity and the difficulty to distinguish between commercial exploitation and originality, since consumption is an indispensable part of spectacular subcultures and they feed on production and publicity. However, this commercialization and mass production of cultural symbols takes their meaning away from the subculture and makes it available for everyone.
Mass Culture and Style in The Matrix Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, in “The Culture Industry as Mass Deception,” conclude that mass culture in the United States is identical and unoriginal “under monopoly capitalism” (Adorno, Horkheimer 1242). The Matrix (1999), directed by the Wachowski siblings, is about a group of enlightened outsiders who wage a war against the machines in control of human beings, who are subdued and experiencing a false reality through a simulation called the Matrix. In this paper, I will describe how the film, while seemingly original in its concept of questioning reality and rejecting conformity, ultimately succumbs to the cliches and stylizations of mass culture/media, failing to break from the formula Adorno and
Adorno and Horkheimer drew from Marx with regards to capitalism. According to Lorimer and Scannell (1994), “Following Marx, they saw the application of capitalist methods to cultural production as exploitative of the mass of the production” (p. 165). Adorno and Horkheimer believed that mass culture due to capitalism makes it homogenous. The audience then becomes homogenous and unified. Baofu (2009) further explains the culture industry as, “Popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods to manipulate the masses into passivity; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture make people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances.”
Thus, mass media are centrally involved in the production of modern culture. Moreover, advertisement can bring a big group of audiences (Jawitz W., 1996) in order to attract the biggest possible audiences for the television shows, newspaper and so on; the media have to do every way to entertain the audiences the most. The audiences are absorbed the advertising by the media. Hence, when the media are trying to advertise something; it likes a trend; people in similar group will have the same culture which means they are forced to buy the
From the end of World War II, following major cultural and social changes brought by mass media innovations, the meaning of popular culture began to overlap with those of mass culture, media culture, image culture, consumer culture, and culture for mass
People are immersed in popular culture during most of our waking hours. It is on radio, television, and our computers when we access the Internet, in newspapers, on streets and highways in the form of advertisements and billboards, in movie theaters, at music concerts and sports events, in supermarkets and shopping malls, and at religious festivals and celebrations (Tatum,