Pop Culture and

Culture Industry
HUMS2 Lesson 3
Objectives
1. Define pop culture.
2. Extract pop culture in order to understand the
categories.
3. Explain culture industry.
Pop and the Culture Industry
In the work 'Cultural Theory and Popular Culture,' John Story
describes Culture and Popular Culture as 'works and practices of
intellectual and creative activity, texts and practices whose main
role is to represent, create or be an opportunity for meaning
development.
This Concept of Culture is synonymous with what structuralists
and post-structuralists call 'important practices,' or pop culture,
will enable us to talk as examples of culture about soap opera, pop
music, and comics. Typically, these are referred to as documents.
Popular Culture Six Sub-Definitions
Culture that is popular or valued by others by measurable means,
such as sales of songs, playing on the radio, attending screenings or
concerts, and ratings of viewers on TV shows.
Culture that is not high culture, for example, culture seen in a gallery is
high culture, this category would include all art and media that are not
regarded as 'cultural' in other cultures. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
notes that the cultural concept of non-high culture serves as a symbol
of social and economic status, although the distinction for this
classification is a little blurred in contemporary times, for example artist
Banksy would fall into this category, but his works have now made it
into some of the best galleries for sale to the 'high society
Popular Culture Six Sub-Definitions
Popular Culture's third term is consumer culture, and consumer is the key
word in this concept as it refers to the majority of society, and this culture is
mass production and consumption.
Culture is people's culture, identified as people's or working class's authentic
culture, in the past also known as “folk culture”. Rock or punk bands may be
described as making people's authentic art under this category.
Supremacy is characterized as a culture that uses the site of struggle between
the lower economic and social class to those of a much higher social and
economic demographic or a compromise area between the two, where the
dominant, subordinate and oppositional cultural meaning is mixed depending
on what message they express in the society.
Popular Culture Six Sub-Definitions
The sixth category of culture refers to Postmodernism and this is
characterized as culture that no longer sees the difference between
high and low art, some celebrating the end of high art, and the other
divide is desperate by the achievement of trade over culture. Also
known as critical culture, for considering and discussing an argument
or problem. Therefore, mass media is a place where daily life can be
attacked.
Culture industry

• Critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max

Horkheimer (1895–1973) coined the word culture
industry (Deutsch: Kulturindustrie)
• In the chapter "The Cultural Industry: Enlightenment as
a Mass Illusion," from the book Dialectic of
Enlightenment (1947), it was described as a critical
vocabulary.
Culture Industry
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973)
• Suggested that popular culture imitate a factory that produces uniform
cultural goods — films, radio, magazines, etc. –which are used to exploit
passivity in mass society. Consumption of the simple pleasures of popular
culture, made accessible through the mass media, makes people docile
and happy, no matter how complicated their economic circumstances
may be.
• The fundamental risk of the culture industry is the creation of false
psychological needs that only the products of capitalism can fulfill and
satisfy viewed mass-produced culture as harmful to the more
technologically and intellectually demanding high arts.
Culture Industry
• In comparison, true psychological needs are
independence, imagination, and genuine happiness,
referring to an earlier demarcation of human needs,
which Herbert Marcuse had created.