Theories of Culture
- Created by: Laura
- Created on: 01-05-13 21:02
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- Theories of culture
- Cultural decline approaches suggests everything is getting worse
- High culture is refined and improves it's audience as people
- Low culture has bad values. It encourages swearing, violence, uncouth behaviour and general lack of respect
- Society gets worse because almost nobody is exposed to high culture and almost everyone is exposed low culture
- As society gets worse, low culture gets even worse in response and in turn brings society down even further
- Marxism says that the working class are oppressed by capitalism via culture. Some examples of the Frankfurt school were:
- Hollywood films that distract ordinary people from social issues, giving them false dreams of glamour and adventure
- Newspaper horoscopes which suggest that a person's life experiences were down to luck or fate, rather than social structures or personal actions
- TV and radio advertising that reinforces the values of capitalism
- Marxists said capitalism creates false needs and commodity fetishism
- Mass culture is used to dull the minds of the working class
- Mass culture promotes capitalist ideology
- Commodity fetishism ('must have' objects') encourages economic activity
- The population are passive victims of mass culture
- Not all Marxists agree with Frankfurt School
- Antonio Gramsci said a single mass culture was too simplistic
- Gramsci (1971) - capitalism creates dominant culture (dominance hegemony)
- By allowing some opposition to exist, functionalism creates the illusion of a fair and free system
- Feminism links popular culture to socialisation and Patriarchy
- Ferguson (1983), McRobbie (1978) - magazines promote traditional female roles
- Dworkin's study of *********** - images of women in pop culture encourage and justify violence against women
- Popular culture representation of women can be empowering e.g. Camille Paglia writing about Madonna as a strong female role model
- Cultural decline approaches suggests everything is getting worse
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