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- All commodities of capitalism are “goods to speak with”
- The basis of the theory of everyday life is not the products, the system that distributes them, or the consumer information, but the concrete specific uses they are put to, the individual acts of consumption-production, the creativities produced from commodities.
- Popular culture
- Popular culture in industrial society is produced as a commodity
- The industry does not assign meaning to the product
- Goal of the industry is to generate profit
- People
- Popular culture made by people and not produced by industry, but people do not make commodity
- They are consumers of cultural commodity
- People consume commodity and make meanings and pleasures for themselves
- Culture is a living, active process: it can be developed only from within, it cannot be imposed from without or above.
- Popular culture is made by the people
- "The people" is not a stable sociological category; it cannot be identified and subjected to empirical study, for it does not exist in objective reality.
- A shifting set of social allegiance, felt connctivity rather than external sociological factors
- In the consumer society of capitalism, everyone is a consumer. Consumption is the only way of obtaining the resources for life, whether these resources be material-function or semiotic-cultural.
- All material-functional resources are imbricated with the semiotic-cultural.
- Example: a car is not just a form of transportation; it is also a speech act. Cooking a meal is not just providing food, but a way of communicating.
- Such allegiance may coincide with classes or other social categories, but not necessarily.
- People realign their social allegiance according to their best interest or convenience of the moment.
- The various formations of the people move as active agents, and are capable adopting apparently contradictory positions alternately or simultaneously without any sense of strain.
- Very difficult to study, as they are made from within by the people in specific context and time.
- All allegiances have not only a sense of with whom, but also against whom.
- In pop culture, there must be a dominant ideology and the opportunity to speak against them.
- evade from subordinated, but not totally disempowered position.
What is this space for? A place of higher learning, experimentation and research. What other meanings have been associated with university?
Television & Advertising
- The audience is known as the mode of production, they are the producers of popular culture, such as television programs and advertisements (commercials).
Examples of Cancelled Television Programs:
- Turn On (1969) – Comedy series, the show alarmed broadcast officials and sponsors who immediately perceived the show as offensive due to its strong sexual and political humor.
- Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos (1992) – TITLE SAYS IT ALL.
- Proving Ground (2011) – Popular science reality show, in which stunts from video games, films and comic books are tested in the real world.
- Ford Nation (2013) – Talk show hosted by Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto and his brother, Doug Ford. The Ford brothers had been in the news at that time, due to an ongoing scandal involving a video allegedly showing the mayor smoking crack cocaine.
- John Fiske writes, “We construct our space within and against their place, of speaking our meanings with their language.”
- An example: The Shopping Center. What is this place within society?
The Shopping Center is a place of commerce, a place where merchants sell their products to consumers. Is this space assigned other meanings in our culture, outside of what it was originally intended for?
The Production Studios:
- The production studios produce a commodity, a program and sell it to the distributors, the broadcasting or cable networks, for profit.
- Simple financial exchange common to all commodities.
- The economic function of a television program is not complete once it has been sold, for in its moment of consumption it changes to become a producer, and what it produces is an audience, which is then sold to advertisers.
- The audience “the producers” in the cultural economy produces cultural industries.
The Consumer Society:
- We need to extend the idea of an economy to include a cultural economy where the circulation is not one of money, but of meanings and pleasures.
- Here the audience, from being a commodity, now becomes a producer, a producer of meanings and pleasures within the capitalist society.
- The original commodity (television program) is, in the cultural economy, a text (symbol), and a loose structure of potential meanings and pleasures that constitutes a major resource of popular culture.
- In this economy there are no consumers, only circulators of meanings, for meanings are the only elements in the process that can be neither commodified nor consumed: meanings can be produced, reproduced and circulated only in that constant process that we call culture.
Television & Advertising
- Different advertisements of products are aired during commercials, because they are set up by the cultural industries from the television programs that the audiences consume, while watching certain television programs that are found interesting by the viewers.
Examples of Commercials:
- After watching the World Cup or the Super Bowl, during the halftime, all the commercials the audience get to observer are the Chevy, Dodge/Ram Truck commercials, different beer brands, other sports, etc. The commercials are focused on the male consumers.
- While watching a soap opera for example, the commercials are focused on the female consumers, because everything in the commercials are home based commodities like; food, detergents, cleaning supplies, makeup, shampoos, etc.
Do we let the cultural industry form our culture, or do we decide as a society?
- Pleasure is what keeps the consumer entertained and not money.
- Commodification in television programs is in cultural economy
- Culture can be produced, reproduced and circulated
- Profits are made by the production studio
- Once television becomes consumption, it changes to a producer, producing the audience, eventually sold to advertisers
- The audience is the producer, we decide what becomes popular and not.
- Audiences decide what becomes popular culture
- During commercials different products are advertised which are geared towards the type of viewer that is interested in the show
- Everyone is a consumer in our culture of capitalism
- Culture and commodity are intertwined