The Media and Consumer Culture

When asked to pick either a text, an event or a phenomenon that I think exemplifies consumerism one thing sprang to mind.

Fashion Magazines.

For me they are the epitome of consumer culture all wrapped up in a neat package with a glossy front and shining celebrity staring at you from the cover. Depending on what fashion magazine you buy, whether its considered a more high end one like Vogue or a high-street one like Look, can affect your social ranking and status amongst other fashionistas. Which in my opinion is just plain silly. However everything about fashion magazines screams consumerism and highlights our ever growing consumer culture because they tell us what clothes to buy and which celebrity styles to admire which subsequently lead to the 'advise' of more clothes to buy in order to 'get the celebrity look'. Not to mention the 'what's hot and what's not' sections of these 'bibles'.

As for key features:

- Glossy cover with a well-known celebrity on it entices you to buy the damn thing.

- Sub-heading on the front cover outlining the best bits of the magazines contents, usually relating to the latest fashions, tips and sometimes fashion nightmares. (All 'juicy' news to us females)

- 'How to' pages. How to get the latest catwalk look or celebrity look by buying clothes that are affordable.

- Tips on make-up for different skins types, how to dress for your body shape etc. the things to buy for said shape and skin type, where to buy them, how much they cost and how taking their advise on what to wear and buy will help you look your best.

I'm sure there's countless other features, but these are the ones that jump out at me and well, to me one fashion magazine is very much like the other and they all seem to follow the same format and say the same things just the clothes featured are more expensive in some than others.

The media text I've chosen offers a form of escapism for the consumer much like most media texts. By being a regular buyer of fashion magazines you can keep up to date with the latest fashions, get tips from people in the know and find out the latest celebrity news/gossip. All in all, they appear to contain everything a woman would want in a magazine and contain some of the things that we seem to be more than marginally obsessed with within society, celebrities and the way we look.

As for how I relate to this type of media text, I'm afraid I don't. For me, fashion magazines are just something you skim through to pass the time while you're waiting at the hairdressers.

Joshua Gamson - 'The Name and The Product: Late Twentieth-Century Celebrity' and Holmes and Redmond - 'Understanding Celebrity Culture'

'Celebrity has become industrialised'

Gamson talks about how we separate fame from achievement and how the link between the idea of status and excellence has never truly been absolute. Throughout the text he explores the idea of celebrity and out fascination with celebrity culture looking at reality TV stars and how they help to create the 'illusion of intimacy' and make us believe we are really viewing someone else's world.

He also looks at the idea of how stars are 'made' and the notion that 'those who posses star quality have it onstage and off'. Celebrities are used to sell things to us because they are instantly recognisable and this helps to a certain degree to boost their celebrity status.

Celebrities are a 'powerful elite: the media, the industry, the star-makers, are able to control images and are able to direct mass attention through marketing machinery'. In other words, beware...

Holmes and Redmond state that 'if you are not famous then you exist at the periphery of the power networks that circulate in and through the popular media' and the idea that if your not famous your largely responsible for making the famous so ridiculously famous by being fans.

The relationship between fans and celebrities is something Holmes and Redmond go onto explore in order to analyse fame and the idea that stars and celebrities stand in as surrogate friends and family to their fans.

They go on to talk about how we, as a society, talk about fans and how celebrity talk/gossip becomes part of our everyday activities where we often talk about them as if we actually know them based upon the information we gather about them from magazines, TV appearances, photos and interviews.

On the whole they explore out relationship with celebrities and the surrounding culture and how 'fame, like power, could be evenly distributed'. However this thought becomes void because 'if everyone were famous then no one would be famous' and the power relationship between fans and 'celebritisation' wouldn't exist.

Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright - 'Consumer Culture and the Manufacturing of Desire'

Sturken and Cartwright talk about modern consumer culture and the use of imagery is used to sell things to us through advertising.

Advertising images are often use to construct cultural ideas about self-image, lifestyle, self-importance and glamour by presenting whatever is being advertised as things one should desire, people one should envy and how life 'should be'. These constructions based around consumerism can lead to capitalism ideologies, commodity fetishism, and images becoming ISA's or Ideological State Apparatuses to be exact.

Sturken and Cartwright examine how what we now recognise as consumer culture started, looking at the development of department stores in Paris in the 19th century and the invention of mail-order catalogues meaning converted items were readily available to the masses for the first time. Consumerism wasn't just for the cities anymore, it was spreading to the rural areas.

They go onto explore many different aspects of a consumer society and how consumerism can spark desire and envy and help create subcultures depending on what's being marketed and to whom its being marketing to. However this can have a reversed desired effect too. For example band merchandise is obviously marketed at people who like the band, but it's marketed on such a level that it often becomes desired not just to fans but to people who don't even like the band. In this sense it becomes a brand. A good example of this would be Sex Pistols merchandise, thousands of people buy bags, t-shirts, notepads etc with countless recognisable Sex Pistols imagery on such as 'Never Mind The Bollocks' and 'God Save The Queen' when they neither like the band or follow the associated punk culture.

In conclusion the line between what we really need and what we simply desire has become blurred and 'the boundary between the mainstream and the margins is always in the process of being renegotiated'.

Matt Hills - Fan Cultures Reading

Matt Hills' 'Fan Cultures Between Knowledge and Justification' explores the idea of individuals identity through the concept of 'fandom'.

Hills concentrates on four individuals that have written about their own personal interactions with 'fandom' and being a fan. He outlines and analyses what each one says about their own experiences before conducting his own analysis of his 'fandoms'. The individuals, including their accounts, he uses to explain the context of 'fandom' and the idea that within a fan base individuals can form a sense of identity, are John Fiske, Scott Bukatman, Sue Wise and Janet Wolff.

He looks at individuals experiences with being a fan in an attempt to explore the idea that fan 'justification's are accepted cultural facts by ethnographers when they are different for everyone. Their are similarities and crossovers between individuals experiences of 'fandom' but they are mostly unique to the person involved and when looked at in a wider and more analytical context are rudimentary forms and aspects of individuals personalities. Instead of becoming 'home-truths' about a particular type of fan they are more narratives of the self.

In conclusions Hills explores the many different aspects of being a fan and concludes that 'fandom' is a way of exploring who you are as a individual and getting to know yourself, often helping to shape your identity because sometimes 'fandom' doesn't last forever. What we once were fans of, we often grow out of or move on to other interests that then become our new 'fandom'.

Post-Postmodernism Theories - Hypermodernity

So what exactly comes after postmodernism in cultural theory? Why post-postmodernism of course...
So out of three possible new ideas in which to explore, hypermodernity/supermodernity, performatism or new sincerity, I decided to choose the first one.
So what's it all about....

Key features/ideas:
- Hypermodernity explores a stage of society that reflects an intensification of modernity.
- It's a theory that's big on looking at the way we understand, control and manipulate the aspects of our existence.
- It's used to explain how we regard technology and biology as factors that contribute to the above.
- Hypermodernity places emphasis on how highly we value technology within society and the notion that 'yesterday's knowledge is always less than today's'.
- It differs from postmodernism that rejects the idea of 'reasonable change'. Hypermodernity is a term that relies on change, in a technological sense, in order to exist as a way of analysing how society has changed.

Key Theorists:
The main two that I could find and after numerous google searches kept popping up are:
- Sebastian Charles
- Gilles Lipovetsky

Reading List:
- 'Hypermodern Times' - S. Charles and G. Lipovetsky
- 'The Empire of Fashion: Dressing a Democracy' - G. Lipovetsky
- 'Development as Modernity, Modernity as Development' - L.S. Lushaba
- 'Space and Social Theory: Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity' - G. Benko and U. Strohmayer

How it could be used:
I don't feel hypermodernity would be a theory that would really fit with the media text I've chosen for my research repost but I can see where the ideas behind the theory have come from. We appear to live in a very consumer driven society these days and
we go nuts for anything and everything technology. We can never seem to get enough of the stuff and are constantly developing it. When the term hypermodernity comes down to explaining our behaviour then I might be able to relate it to my media text. The way of thinking for one of my media text's, BBC drama 'Small Island', character's isn't really postmodern as that's a theory that isn't big on the whole idea that society can actually change but a truly hypermodern way of thinking for the era the drama's set in. In a time where different ethnicities weren't treated equally, the character dismisses her societies values and believes we are all the same no matter the colour of your skin and that societies way of thinking really can change.

'Postmodernism And 'The Other side' - Dick Hebdige

This week's reading, by Dick Hebdige, looks at the term 'postmodernism' and what exactly the term means. Hebdige applies postmodernism to several different cultural aspects, including different cultural events, as examples to reinforce the points he makes about postmodernism. The main point Hebdige makes is that the term is had to define or pinpoint because used in the many different contexts that are described as 'postmodern' it means different things.

To try and put some of the various ways postmodernism is used to describe things, to put it in context, he relates it to people describing the decor of a room, the design of a building, an arts documentary, a TV commercial etc. In a cultural context, as in society, these types of things can be described as postmodern.

Hebdige explains that no matter what perspective you view postmodernism, it's hard to deny that it doesn't carry some remnants of Marxist ideas. Postmodernism is sort of 'follow on' or progression of earlier, more dominant theories. Hebdige says that you can't 'move back from or go beyond' modernity as the terms of postmodernism are too generally defined, the meaning just isn't specific enough.

I agree with Hebdige because from first studying Postmodernism at college and now re-visiting it at University, it still doesn't seem clear what exactly Postmodernism is. It's a very ambiguous term, with no clear definition, what's postmodern to one person isn't postmodern to another. Postmodernism and our understanding of it is different to everyone.

Useful Quotes and Their Meanings:

'It becomes more and more difficult as the 1980s wear on to specify exactly what it is that 'postmodernism' is supposed to refer to as the term gets stretched in all directions across different debates, different disciplinary and discursive boundaries, as different fractions seek to make it their own, using it to designate a plethora of incom-measurable objects, tendencies, emergencies'. - Postmodernism is such an ambiguous term and applies to a wide variety of different things, it's hard to define.

'A Marxism of whatever kind could never move back from or go beyond 'modernity' in the very general terms in which it is defined with the Post, which is not to say that Marxism is necessarily bound to a 'dynamic' and destructive model of technological 'advance'. - Postmodernism has been built on Marxist ideas and is one of the theories that has evolved against Marxism as times have progressed, but the ideas are still there, and it wouldn't be right to say that Marxism was totally against advances in society, culturally, in terms of technology which we see as a very postmodern thing, but is it really?

While I was looking for something else....

While I was looking on the internet for interesting conservation stories as part of my Online Journalism module. I came across this on The Birmingham Post website about how close Birmingham is to becoming the 'City of Culture'.

I thought it was quite fitting with the culture debate and the events that Birmingham would get to hold if it we're named the 'City of Culture' well, can they really be classed as cultural? I think any of The Frankfurt School theorists, if they were still alive, would have a heart attack....

Pierre Bourdieu: 'Distinction and the Aristocracy of Culture'

Bourdieu talks about the values of cultural goods and their consumers. He talks about how consumers 'tastes' for the goods that they consume are produced to convey general meanings of culture and that to fully understand 'culture' it needs to be refined.

He argues that 'legitimate culture' and the scientific observations it brings show certain cultural needs and based on the consumers upbringing determines their understanding. Bourdieu's point is over complicated, but in a nutshell he believes that an individual's understanding of culture and its art is very dependent on the consumers education, upbringing and often their social position and class.

One of Bourdieu's method's of explaining consumers understanding of culture and cultural goods are to compare consumers' tastes to that of food and that refining their taste will somehow help them to understand the culture they consume better and widen the variety of culture they consume.

I don't think I really agree with his conclusions because, if I use myself as an easy example, I'm from an average background and have an interest in high, middlebrow and low culture and understand them for what they are, particularly low culture, I tend to take it at face value and not read too much into its products. I don't feel people's tastes necessarily need to be 'refined' to better their understanding of cultural goods or culture itself because culture is different to everyone. We don't and can't all think the same, we're too opinionated and thats one of the ways we learn, we simply create our own definitions of culture and I don't think that's a bad thing.

Useful Quote....

'[but] one cannot fully understand cultural practices unless 'culture', in the restricted, normative sense of ordinary usage, is brought back into 'culture' in the anthropological sense, and the elaborated taste for the most refined objects is reconnected with the elementary taste for the flavours of food'. - Useful because it sums up the beginning of his justification that to understand culture we need to consider social roles and backgrounds and 'refine our taste'.

A Frankfurt School Critique Of A Culture Industry

This week's challenge, as the title on this post suggests, is to form a Frankfurt School style critique of a culture industry of our choosing. So I thought I'd stick to an area I can critique fairly well as it's an industry I'm interested in. The culture I've chosen is film culture but the industry i've decided to focus on is something we all know and love, Disney....

Disney is a prime example of an industry within film culture that is, in the words of Walter Benjamin, 'Mechanically Reproduced'. Disney makes several films a year and no matter what the story, they all have the same principal message to them. Now I'm not trying to completely diss Disney because after all, we all have our favourite Disney classic and they have made some good films, but if you pay to see a Disney movie at the cinema, you know what you're getting. Disney have taken the fairy tale format, put a different spin on it every time and made a shed load of money out of it. We can sit and enjoy them while being amused without having to put any thought into the watching process at all. Disney films are truly for the passive audience.

Because we have learnt to expect specific genres and products from Disney, Disney's culture has become standardised. There isn't really anything they can offer to the 'individual' and the products they make don't present any material that is challenging or particularly cultural for consumers. They do kind of offer a small sense of pseudo individualisation to some consumers in the way of minority groups but even they aren't really buying into something that offers them a voice for individuality and they often almost become the 'token piece' of the film.

Disney's main aim is to make money and they have succeed on a grand scale. It's a corporation that is ever growing and a franchise that's already been going for 87 years and one that I'm sure will continue for another 87 and beyond.

A media text I think communicates values...

Okay, I thought this was difficult and I don't think i'd really say this specific media text offers 'sweetness and light' or is 'the best that's thought or said' but I do think it communicates values especially social and cultural ones.

The context i've chosen is TV dramas but specifically the channel 4 drama 'Shameless' and this is why. Even though it's not based on or about real people I think it reflects what a lot of today's modern society and culture is like especially the state of Britain's council estates and their often colourful inhabitants. Naturally the character's are larger than life because after all it is a TV drama, it's not meant to be real, but some of the values it communicates ring true to the lifestyle choices and living situations of a fairly large majority of British citizens. Because believe it or not there really are people out there like Frank Gallagher, scary huh? And children having to look after one another because their parents just aren't capable is at times a very real situation. Even though these situations aren't necessarily 'happy' ones, 'Shameless' manages to make light of some pretty heavy situations without completely dulling their seriousness and well, it's down right rude but horrendously funny and it's hard to find people who don't like it.

The types of cultural values it communicates surrounding Britain's poorer areas and how some of our society act and live is something I think we can all relate to in some way or other and we more than likely know or know of someone in situations like those in the drama. 'Shameless' doesn't try to put a glossy finish on what it portrays, it simply puts it out there for the world to see in all its gloriously shocking technicolour, and that's why I think dramas like this one are media texts that offer us a slice of culture that at times can be the best, and worst, that's thought or said.

A Leavis style analysis of a media text

When we got given this task, I though yippie, this will be fun. We get to pick something we dislike, be mean about it and tell everyone why we should be mean about it. So here goes...

I'm afraid what i've chosen isn't new and well they're mentioned a lot because they're like marmite you either love them or you hate them but for me my pet hate is reality TV shows. Even after being bombarded with them solidly for like the last 10 years, they still seem to pop up every now and again and well they bother me, ALOT! I can honestly say I've never liked them or sat down and watched them for even one series, I think I actually inwardly rejoiced and threw a little party when I heard the news that this year's BIg Brother would be the last ever and they weren't lying to us.

Even though I believe them to be pointless and just another waste of time, money and people's efforts I realise that many people love them and no matter how hard they try and convince themselves otherwise will actually miss BB and the what seems like an endlessly pregnant Davina. So this leads me to consider the reasons why people are fascinated by these animal like observations of humans as that's what they remind me of, people staring at animals in the zoo and getting amused when they start on each other because animals don't like to be caged, and secretly or not so secretly humans don't either....
I guess in some ways it's morbid curiosity, we want to know what'll happen if they feel threatened or others push them, how they'll react and at the centre of it many of us are willing something to kick off and for the situation to become a messy one because after all it makes it more entertaining, right?

So, even though people don't want to admit to it, I guess that's really why these reality programmes are so popular because I really doubt it's because of their content. As sad as it sounds there's truth in the fact that we as human beings like chaos, we just love it when things go wrong, particularly when it's not happening to us. It doesn't make us bad people, it's just in our nature.

Reality TV is something that's accessible to everyone and appeals to our culture, particularly as many of them are around ordinary people often but in extraordinary situations, they're humanised more than celebrities and we can relate to them in some ways. I think it's a bad part of modern culture and I don't really agree with it and even though it's dying down I think it'll still be around for some time to come.

So, I've not really been that Leavis like about this analysis but in a Leavis style nutshell, I think Reality TV is the epitome of bad culture and well it reflects areas of today's society that don't necessarily need highlighting. I also think it brings out the worst in people and shows that some will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame.

Because I forgot about it last week...

I do believe we were meant to post if we'd done something deemed cultural in our spare time such as go to the theatre or pay a visit to the cinema. Well, like a nonce, I forgot and thought I should add some more to my sorry looking blog.

Last monday, the 8th feb, I went to the theatre something I class as fairly middlebrow culture depending on what you see. well what I went to see, essentially isn't usually classed as middlebrow culture, I went to see the Ballet, however what I saw was a 'reworking' if you like of the classic, Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake'. This newer version is the brain-child of Matthew Bourne and is more contemporary ballet meaning it's not all leaps, straight lines and lady's in tutu's, than classical ballet. Some puritans may think it sacrilege to go about changing something so well known and loved into something that will appeal to and feel more accessible to the 'masses' but I don't care because to put it simply, it was awesome. It was clever, had some well placed comedic moments that were still in keeping with the tone of an essentially tragic tale and had some social comment moments that reflect the times we live in. A truly modern take on an old masterpiece that works as it keeps bringing audiences back after making the rounds for the last 15 years so it must be doing something right. Anywho, that's a cultural experience of mine....

Also, I've no idea if this counts too, but yesterday, tuesday 16th feb, I visited Stratford-Upon-Avon, a lovely place if you've ever been, and well was generally nerdy along with my mother of all people and spent the day being a bit of a tourist and a culture vulture visiting the many sites around the area associated with Shakespeare himself. Again something that I suppose is middlebrow culture as well, Shakespeare's works are know, loved, admired and studied by people of all academic, cultural, social and class backgrounds. All I know is that it was fun and we made a little girl stare at us in a funny manor by giggling at the audio/visual piece about his life and when being asked if we'd like to take a walk through the 'Shakespeare Hall of Fame' stating 'Does anyone else feel like they should do the 'Monty Python' gallop down said hall of fame?' I guess you never grow up no matter how old you are = ]

'Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture' - F.R. Leavis All Summed Up...

My interpretations of this reading is that Leavis talks about how at the time of the theorist Matthew Arnold's work, culture and where certain classes of people fit into it, was more clearly defined. There were certain segregations between cultures and clear boundaries as to what was High culture and what was Low culture. However in a more modern society, it's much harder to pinpoint and categorise.

Leavis bases his argument more around literacy and language aspects to explain his conclusions about cultural divides in a 'modern society', this might have something to do with his academic literacy background, and he uses famous writers and their works to justify the points he makes about different levels of cultural understanding and cultural backgrounds.

He argues that it is wrong to view 'mass culture' as completely wrong but it shouldn't be viewed as 'utterly new', because then it 'surrenders everything that can interest us'. He believes we can't deny the future. We can't hang on to traditionalist ideas of what culture and we should 'keep open our communications with the future'.

A Text That Screams 'My Culture'

Now, I found this quite hard and I really have racked my brains trying to think of all the things I could possibly write about. Even as I write this John, it still feels a bit like a trick question....

Anyhow, I finally thought of something and how it didn't jump up and slap me in the face to begin with I've no idea but it hit me, what pretty much consumes my spare time? What do I do when I'm not stressing over pointless things and trying to avoid Uni work at all costs? And the answer is... films. Watching them, reading about them and talking and boring others about them is a big part of what I do and helps to define me. Not only as what would be my ultimate job, working for a film magazine, but as the bit of a nerd I am who often would prefer to be holed up inside watching a film than actually having to talk to people.

Instead of picking a single film that I think really stands out as part of my culture, because I wouldn't be able to do that there's simply too many, I thought I'd choose my 'bible' or Empire magazine as the text that I think best fits the bill. Every month I religiously spend a little of my hard earned cash and read the thing cover to cover, even the films, film stars and other things I don't care about because the writing draws me in. I find the writers witty, informative, opinionated but fair not like some film critics, but most of all when I read the articles I feel like they're actually bothered about what they're writing. That they're not just about dropping names and getting all of the personal facts drawn from an interview with an actor/actress/director into their piece but that they actually want to help tell you about a film and the bigger picture in which it sits in and relates to. They sure as hell know their stuff however their style is relaxed, but not condescending, and is truly enjoyable to read. You feel that they're just ordinary people who were lucky enough to land themselves a not so ordinary job but they don't necessarily take advantage of it and if you're ever lucky enough to meet any of them, they live up to your expectations because they're all genuinely lovely people who, even though they're Journalists, still take an interest in others.

This is why I aspire to work for a magazine like this one someday. Empire magazine and it's lovely bunch writers helped to restore and maintain my faith that Journalism isn't just about personal gain and that no matter how small, there is still a corner of the magazine industry that provides publications that are written by people who are as equally passionate about they're writing as their readers are about reading it.