Culture studies

       

            

         Assignment

Name :  Rupa Bambhaniya B

Enrollment no:    2069108420200002

Paper No : 8

Topic  : postmodernism and popular culture

Submitted by : Smt S.B. Gardhi Department of English

Email Id : rupabambhniya166@gmail.

 Words : 

    *   Postmodernism and popular culture : 

       Introduction :

Attempts to define post-modernism can come in many different forms as different people have different ideas as to what exactly the term means. This being said, most people who take part in the debate over modernism and postmodernism share a consensus that postmodernism might be many things, but it certainly is linked with the growth of popular culture in the late twentieth century in the West. In other words, postmodernism can be seen as a new historical moment, a new sensibility, or a new cultural style, but popular culture can be referenced as the site on which these changes can be most easily found. Postmodernism is a perspective which tends to reject many of the accepted values of modernism. It involves a reinterpretation of gender roles and the differenced traditionally applied to them. It takes a more global perspective in its view of ethnic and national distinctions, and rejects stereotypes of all kinds. At the same time, it embraces the notion of nostalgia in art (film, television, advertising) and uses multiple referencing (among other strategies) to communicate on a variety of symbolic levels.

   Postmodern culture is a far reaching term describing a range of activities, events, and perspectives relating to art, architecture, the humanities, and the social sciences beginning in the second half of the twentieth century. ... Additionally, postmodern culture stands for more than the current state of society.

A good early example of the new wave of post-modern popular culture can be seen in the American and British pop art movement of the 1950s and 1960s as it rejected the division between high culture and popular culture. This can be said to be “postmodernism’s first cultural flowering.”

Cultural studies started life as a radical political project, establishing the cultural centrality of everyday life and of popular culture. In a postmodern world where old certainties are undermined and identities fragmented, the way forward for those working with popular culture has become less clear. In contrast to more pessimistic readings of the possibilities of postmodernity, Postmodernism and Popular Culture engages with postmodernity as a space for social change and political transformation. Ranging widely over cultural theory and popular culture, Angela McRobbie engages with everyday life as an eclectic and invigorating interplay of different cultures and identities. She discusses new ways of thinking developed with the advent of postmodernism, from the ‘New Times ’ debate to political strategies after the disintegration of western Marxism. She assesses the contribution of key figures in cultural and postimperial theory—Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak—and surveys the invigorating landscape of today’s youth and popular culture, from second-hand fashion to the rave scene, and from moral panics to teenage magazines. McRobbie argues throughout for a commitment to cultural studies as an ‘undisciplined ’ discipline, reforming and reinventing itself as circumstances demand; for the importance of ethnographic and empirical work; and for the need for feminists to continually ask questions about the meaning of feminist theory in a postmodern society. Angela McRobbie is Principal Lecturer in Sociology at Thames Valley University, London. She has written extensively on popular culture, gender and youth culture, and is also a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines. Her current research is on the fashion industry.

What is popular culture.?

culture based on the tastes of ordinary people rather than an educated elite.

"the assimilation of elements of popular culture into the fine arts"

The most common pop-culture categories are: entertainment

 (such as movies, music, television, and video games),

 sports, news 

(as in people/places in the news), politics, fashion/clothes,

 technology, and slang...

Themes : 

There are so many themes in popular culture. So, you will have to be selective. Here are three themes that I believe are most prevalent.

First, one of the most common themes of popular culture is that our feelings are sacred. In our post-modern world there are few things that are authoritative. It appears only our emotions are left as the arbiter of truth.

Second, popular culture also glamorizes youth and the things associated with you, such as beauty, freedom, and spontaneity.

Finally, popular culture is anti-authority. It wants to dispense with all types of authority, such as police, parents, teachers, and anything else represents authority.

The term ‘popular culture’ holds different meanings depending on who’s defining it and the context of use. It is generally recognized as the vernacular or people’s culture that predominates in a society at a point in time. As Brummett explains in Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture, pop culture involves the aspects of social life most actively involved in by the public. As the ‘culture of the people’, popular culture is determined by the interactions between people in their everyday activities: styles of dress, the use of slang, greeting rituals and the foods that people eat are all examples of popular culture. Popular culture is also informed by the mass media.

Examples of popular culture come from a wide array of genres, including popular music, print, cyber culture, sports, entertainment, leisure, fads, advertising and television. Sports and television are arguably two of the most widely consumed examples of popular culture, and they also represent two examples of popular culture with great staying power.

Popular Culture Becomes Global :

Popular culture didn’t require satellite television and the Internet to become global. When the first explorers took to the seas or traveled overland routes to distant places, they were influenced by, and returned with, examples of other cultures’ popular art, artifacts and customs, such as drinking coffee. If that hadn’t caught on, Starbucks would be stuck trying to sell cups of hot, frothy milk for three bucks a pop.

Conclusion :

The masses were usually not the first to experience exotic forms of popular culture, but they were exposed to them over time. The mixture of popular elements of different cultures was also one of the factors that began to blur the lines between popular and fine arts. While Kabuki Theater was accessible to all classes of Japanese people, Europe’s aristocrats initially regarded it as high art.