The movie system, at one time outside the direct influence of the broader marketing system, is now fully integrated into it through the strategies of licensing, tie-ins and product placements. The prime function of many Hollywood films today is to aid in the selling of the immense collection of commodities. Jhally, Sut. Advertising at the edge of the apocalypse: http://www.sutjhally.com/articles/advertisingattheed/ The press called the 2002 Bond film `Die Another Day' featuring 24 major promotional partners an `ad-venture' and noted that James Bond “now has been `licensed to sell'” As it has become standard practise to place products in motion pictures, it “has self-evident implications for what types of films will attract product placements and what types of films will therefore be more likely to get made”.
Advertising and information are increasingly hard to distinguish from each other. “The borders between advertising and media …. become more and more blurred…. What August Fischer, chairman of the board of Axel Springer publishing company considers to be a `proven partnership between the media and advertising business' critics regard as nothing but the infiltration of journalistic duties and freedoms”. According to RTL-executive Helmut Thoma “private stations shall not and cannot serve any mission but only the goal of the company which is the `acceptance by the advertising business and the viewer'. The setting of priorities in this order actually says everything about the `design of the programmes' by private television.” Patrick Le Lay, former managing director of TF1, a private French television channel with a market share of 25 to 35%, said: "There are many ways to talk about television. But from the business point of view, let's be realistic: basically, the job of TF1 is, e. g. to help Coca Cola sell its product. (…) For an advertising message to be perceived the brain of the viewer must be at our disposal. The job of our programmes is to make it available, that is to say, to distract it, to relax it and get it ready between two messages. It is disposable human brain time that we sell to Coca Cola.”
Because of these dependencies a widespread and fundamental public debate about advertising and its influence on information and freedom of speech is difficult to obtain, at least through the usual media channels; otherwise these would saw off the branch they are sitting on. “The notion that the commercial basis of media, journalism, and communication could have troubling implications for democracy is excluded from the range of legitimate debate” just as “capitalism is off-limits as a topic of legitimate debate in U.S. political culture”. McChesney, Robert W. “The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas”. Monthly Review Press, New York, (May 1, 2008), pp. 235, 237, ISBN 978-158367161-0
An early critic of the structural basis of U.S. journalism was Upton Sinclair with his novel The Brass Check in which he stresses the influence of owners, advertisers, public relations, and economic interests on the media. In his book “Our Master's Voice - Advertising” the social ecologist James Rorty (1890-1973) wrote: "The gargoyle's mouth is a loudspeaker, powered by the vested interest of a two-billion dollar industry, and back of that the vested interests of business as a whole, of industry, of finance. It is never silent, it drowns out all other voices, and it suffers no rebuke, for it is not the voice of America? That is its claim and to some extent it is a just claim...” Rorty, James: “Our Master's Voice: Advertising” Ayer Co Pub, 1976, ISBN 0405080441, ISBN 9780405080449
It has taught us how to live, what to be afraid of, what to be proud of, how to be beautiful, how to be loved, how to be envied, how to be successful.. Is it any wonder that the American population tends increasingly to speak, think, feel in terms of this jabberwocky? That the stimuli of art, science, religion are progressively expelled to the periphery of American life to become marginal values, cultivated by marginal people on marginal time?" Rorty, James: (1934) “Our Master's Voice - Advertising”, Mcmaster Press (June 30, 2008), ISBN 1409769739, ISBN 978-1409769736
Popular culture
Popular culture (commonly known as pop culture) is the totality of artistic products, ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/ce6.shtml images and other phenomena that the average person of any nation or group is likely to have encountered or been influenced by. In developed countries, cultural products are often disseminated by market-driven mass media (at least from the early 20th century onward). For this reason, it sometimes comes under heavy criticism from various scientific and non-mainstream sources (most notably religious groups and countercultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist, and corrupted. "Teens for Jesus want wholesome pop culture". AuburnPub.com. 2008-02-15. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
^ "truthXchange Articles > Spirit Wars in the Third Millennium". Truthxchange.com. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
^ Darrell L. Bock and Daniel B. Wallace. "Rebecca's Reads - Darrell L. Bock & Daniel B. Wallace - Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture's Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ". Rebeccasreads.com. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
^ "Calvin College: Calvin News". Calvin.edu. 2001-03-15. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
^ "7 Things From Pop Culture That Apparently Piss Jesus Off". Cracked.com. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
^ "Christotainment: Selling Jesus Through Popular Culture: STEINBERG SHIRLEY R. : 9780813344058 : Book". eCampus.com. 2009-02-21. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
^ Tucker, Austin B.. "Christian Living In A Pagan Culture". Preaching.com. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
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It is manifest in preferences and acceptance or rejection of features in such various subjects as cooking, clothing, consumption, and the many facets of entertainment such as sports, music, film, and literature. Popular culture often contrasts with the more exclusive, even elitist "high culture", that is, the culture of ruling social groups, and the low or folk culture of the lower classes. The earliest use of "popular" in English was during the fifteenth century in law and politics, meaning "low", "base", "vulgar", and "of the common people"; from the late eighteenth century it began to mean "widespread" and gain in positive connotation. (Williams 1985). "Culture" has been used since the 1950s to refer to various subgroups of society, with emphasis on cultural differences.
Definitions
Defining 'popular' and 'culture', which are essentially contested concepts, is complicated with multiple competing definitions of popular culture. John Storey, in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, discusses six definitions. The quantitative definition, of culture has the problem that much "high culture" (e.g. television dramatizations of Jane Austen) is widely favoured. "Pop culture" is also defined as the culture that is "left over" when we have decided what high culture is. However, many works straddle or cross the boundaries, e.g. Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Storey draws attention to the forces and relations which sustain this difference such as the educational system.
A third definition equates pop culture with Mass Culture. This is seen as a commercial culture, mass produced for mass consumption. From a Western European perspective, this may be compared to American culture. Alternatively, "pop culture" can be defined as an "authentic" culture of the people, but this can be problematic because there are many ways of defining the "people." Storey argues that there is a political dimension to popular culture; neo-Gramscian hegemony theory "... sees popular culture as a site of struggle between the 'resistance' of subordinate groups in society and the forces of 'incorporation' operating in the interests of dominant groups in society." A postmodernism approach to popular culture would "no longer recognize the distinction between high and popular culture'
Storey emphasizes that popular culture emerges from the urbanization of the industrial revolution, which identifies the term with the usual definitions of 'mass culture'. Studies of Shakespeare (by Weimann, Barber or Bristol, for example) locate much of the characteristic vitality of his drama in its participation in Renaissance popular culture, while contemporary practitioners like Dario Fo and John McGrath use popular culture in its Gramscian sense that includes ancient folk traditions (the commedia dell'arte for example).
Popular culture changes constantly and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, and represents a complex of mutually-interdependent perspectives and values that influence society and its institutions in various ways. For example, certain currents of pop culture may originate from, (or diverge into) a subculture, representing perspectives with which the mainstream popular culture has only limited familiarity. Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public.
Institutional propagation
Popular culture and the mass media have a symbiotic relationship: each depends on the other in an intimate collaboration."
--K. Turner (1984), p.4 "one look at the sheer mass and volume of what we euphemistically call our popular culture suffices", from Winthrop Sargeant, 'In Defense of the High-Brow', an article from LIFE magazine, 11 April 1949, p. 102.
The news media mines the work of scientists and scholars and conveys it to the general public, often emphasizing elements that have inherent appeal or the power to amaze. For instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become well-known items of popular culture; parasitic worms, though of greater practical importance, have not. Both scholarly facts and news stories get modified through popular transmission, often to the point of outright falsehoods.
Hannah Arendt's 1961 essay "The Crisis in Culture" suggested that a "market-driven media would lead to the displacement of culture by the dictates of entertainment." Susan Sontag argues that in our culture, the most "...intelligible, persuasive values are [increasingly] drawn from the entertainment industries", which is "undermining of standards of seriousness." As a result, "tepid, the glib, and the senselessly cruel" topics are becoming the norm. Some critics argue that popular culture is “dumbing down”: "...newspapers that once ran foreign news now feature celebrity gossip, pictures of scantily dressed young ladies...television has replaced high-quality drama with gardening, cookery, and other “lifestyle” programmes...[and] reality TV and asinine soaps," to the point that people are constantly immersed in trivia about celebrity culture. Gloria Steinem, 'Outs of pop culture', LIFE magazine, 20 August 1965, p. 73
In Rosenberg and White's book Mass Culture, MacDonald argues that "Popular culture is a debased, trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure, tragedy) and also the simple spontaneous pleasures.... The masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial and comfortable cultural products." Van den Haag argues that "...all mass media in the end alienate people from personal experience and though appearing to offset it, intensify their moral isolation from each other, from reality and from themselves." Shuker, Roy (1994). Understanding Popular Music, p.4. ISBN 0-415-10723-7.
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