Popular Culture

Popular culture is associated with "mass culture" and ideas. This is seen as a commercial culture, produced in bulk for the majority of the population by popular media. For example, certain parts of pop culture may originate from, (or deviate into) a subculture, representing viewpoints with which the mainstream popular culture has only limited acquaintance or understanding. Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a wide range of the public.

 

 

Adorno:

 

Adorno proposed that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods— films, radio programmes, magazines, etc. — that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity. Consumption of the easy pleasures of popular culture, made available by the mass communications media, renders people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances. He believed that the inherent danger of the culture industry is the cultivation of false psychological needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of capitalism, and that rue psychological needs are freedom, creativity, and genuine happiness. So in this day and age, Adorno would assume listening to pop music would be wouldn’t be educative.

 

Hebdige:

 

Hebdige disagreed with Adorno. He believed Adorno’s view was cynical and flippant of mass audiences as inactive and effortlessly manipulated. He argued back that when people are listening to music, they are aware and active; however, an audience’s social and ethical beliefs and backgrounds lead to diverse interpretations of the same product.

 

Because R&B ballads are usually very narrative and expressive, I believe my subculture conforms more too Hebdige's argument. People understand the same product/song in different ways due to their different backgrounds. For example, I enjoy the song 'Runaway Love' by Ludacris feat. Mary J. I enjoy is because I sympathise with it. However, I do not relate to it because I have never been abused or lived through any hardship, but somebody else who has experienced these things will relate to and understand the song differently to me.