John Fiske – The Popular Economy

Fragments of a study entitled “Television culture” – study from 1987.

MacDonald - The masses have no connections. The masses lose all kind of distinctive characteristics. In
folk culture everyone has a role to play as you are a part of community where you have different roles to
fulfil. We can see a certain distinct identity whereas mass men functions as “a solitary atom” the bond
between people are broken and the purpose of it is to turn you into an identical atom. This is what
makes mass culture so efficient as It appeals to everybody. Also, this process of turning people – low classes
of urban environment is dehumanising process. They lose their humane characteristics. He is frightened with
this phenomenon of the creation – mass culture is extremely detrimental as it turns us into this senseless
crowds. We are joined by this lowest denominators. (e.g. Vega – sex and violence the surest kind of recipe,
the lowest denominators – mass culture will be based upon the lowest common denominators.

Producers – in folk culture it is created by people and in popular culture it is imposed from the above, from the top.

McDonald says popular culture alienates all kinds of distinctions, of gender, classes. Get rid of all kinds of
distinctions. Lowest denominators – appealing to some basic, primitive instincts. Idea of baseness – quality of sex
and violence. The word base is often translated as podły – the ambiguity of the notion base – podły nowadays is
associated with something wicked but this is only a part of the meaning of the terms, the other one means low – of
mean origin, of low origin. If you say base that mass culture is about baseness, you mean those 2 things at the same
time, lower parts of society, there is also the implication of sth evil meaning primitive and not humane enough. Thus
mass culture refers to what is primitive, not being cultivated, something that is crude and wicked as a result of it.
Animalistic nature in humans is negative, wicked.

Fiske rejects the idea of people having this common feature being baseness. How despite being homogenised, the
society still has this different people, social groups that are diverse. You cannot really ignore it or deny it.

He also rejects the idea that as Macdonald and Leavis would say – he says people are not passive but they are
various groups, not masses. He does not highlight the inferiority of people. He disagrees about the passivity of the
whole process of consumption. People are not cultural dopes – one of the typical phrases used to describes the
consumers of popular culture. Description of the audience as passive is wrong. They are not helpless masses. Don’t
consume whatever they are expose to. They are not powerless in this game of power happening between cultural
producers and consumers. Helplessness was the chief characteristic of consumers acc. to Macdonald. Fiske says they
have some power in this game, they are not helpless. IT is not to say that they are equally powerful as cultural
producers. The consumers are relatively powerless. There is some kind of domination of cultural producers and
consumers are in the position of disadvantage. The position and role of consumer implies the role of the dominated
one. But this powerlessness is relative – it is not a position that implies a total lack of power. This powerless is
negative.

He proposes two definitions, one serving producers and distributers – headcounting – it is more popular when it fits
to the needs of the public. Evolution of the term popularity. IF earlier it was about headcount, that is the number of
people who like, respond to a particular work of culture, in Fisk’s view you should consider popular in the sense “of
the people”. He suggests the revision of the term. Talking about popularity we shouldn’t think about numbers but its
responsiveness to the needs of the people. Popularity as serving people’s interest. Here in this description we can
see the first attempt to explain the nature of the limited power that consumers have in the relationship with the
dominant actors in the field of cultural productions – with the producers. If producers are in the dominant position
and consumers in the dominated, Fiske explains consumers have certain limited power. Consumers who find
themselves in the worse position are trying to exercise the limited power that they have.

They can choose what they want to watch, experience.

Cultural economy – all about how the production process is much more expensive, with the new technology it is
easy to reproduce sth and this is the problem for cultural commodities.

Financial economy – producing sth at the lowest costs and spreading it to make more money.
Works function within those two economies. It is about profit and money. Within financial economy you talk about
profit. Cultural economy – what is exchanged and circulated is not wealth but meanings, pleasures and social
identities. Key statement.

How does cultural economy redefine the role of the consumer? They in fact are the producers of the pleasures and
meanings and of social identities. Fiske is breaking, negating the claim formulated by Macdonald of the passivity of
consumers. IT is the consumer who is the producer of the pleasures, meanings and social identities. In this definition
of cultural economy as an economy in which what is circulated is not wealth, we have the redefinition of the role of
the consumer. Consumer who becomes the producer. Collapse of the distinction between the active, creative
producer and the passive consumer. Consumer is given the power to create. What he creates are meanings,
pleasures, identities. Not only the power of choosing what they want to consume but also about how the producer
wants to consume it. The consumers also have power over how, what they will make of the commodities that are
produced.

The consumer is not in the passive position but also incorporates his own interpretations, meanings into the
production process. He’s making meaning. Creative role of the consumer, he creates meanings, pleasures. They
provoke the consumers to make meanings and pleasures. He also stresses this collapse of distinctions between a
producer and consumer.

The concept central to the theory of cultural economy is popular cultural capital.

Cultural capital (Bourdieu) - “cultural capital” – as we grow up, by way of our upbringing, education we accumulate
the capital, the ability to consume various types of culture. Culture is also about language – you can tell somebody’s
education by way you speak (pronunciation, your grammar, syntactic structures). This is also true of the way you
dress. The way you eat also, not only where you go – as a person of low cultural capital can go to posh places but
will not be capable of behaving properly.
A beholder without cultural capital can only see what is on the surface and don’t go deeper, cannot see what is
hidden, metaphors, what the author was trying to say through his art. What is the message on the deeper level. They
are lost, cannot make sense of it. Total confusion, lack of understanding. It is not they will make errors in
interpretation, they only notice the “sensible properties” – they can see colours but cannot go beyond it.

Bourdieu explained what is responsible for our success in social life. Cultural capital has a lot to do with cultural
competence. Our familiarity with various aspects of culture, with music, lit, fashion, table manners, with customs.
We will never make it in social life unless we do have the cultural capital. Unless we have learnt how to function in
this world of culture understood in the broadest way. Our ability to function in the world of culture, money is not
enough. Cultural capital is necessary!

Popular cultural capital belongs to the subordinate.

Cultural capital – the minorities had, the most educated people, the superiors. The higher classes. Those had the
highest cultural capital. Popular cultural capital belongs to lower classes. IF the function of the cultural capital was to
make sure the elites will remain the elites and the social order will reproduce itself, elites will make their children
accumulate the same cultural capital. Here the popular one belongs to the subordinate and the function – popular
cultural capital consists in this ability of making meanings and pleasures out of cultural products and its function is to
resist domination. Those acts of interpretation and meaning making are act of resistance to domination. Popular
cultural capital has a lot to do with the role of consumer as a producer and the consumer produces meanings and
social identities that will subvert the social order that puts them in the disadvantages position. It is about the
resistance, resisting the social power of the dominant classes, higher classes. Popular cultural capital is about
freedom to interpret the cultural works in the way that suits the interest, fits the interest of the lower classes and it
is about resistance. Consumers are not powerless, they will not consume the meanings and values, norms of the
dominant classes in the passive way. They will make their own interpretations, they will make their own uses of
them, put cultural works in their own uses.

Madonna – this is one example. Another is children’s play. The producers, the elites, the cultural businessmen they
create products, sent it but what you do is the recreation, remaking of the products in order to make it fit to your
own ideas, interests. Either you subvert it by parodying it, the idea is the powerless. Process of expropriation.
Process of subversive use of the dominant culture. Communicating their own message, attempt to dominate does
not work because the audience clearly uses it in a subversive way.

Ostry Cień Mgły – hot sixteen, in the way people respond to it, they start to ridicule it rather than doing what they
should do. 10 years ago another action – the action was on the Facebook – Czytam Prawicową prasę dla beki – when
you read a particular kind of writing but not to learn from it but in order to ridicule it. Another example – catholic
priest using hip-hop promoting Catolist values, concept of exporporaton like the use of the powerless to subvert the
dominant ideology. Rework the text in order to communicate their own meanings, purposes contradictory to the
dominant ones.

Semiotic power – when we talk about how the subordinate the consumers exercise their own limited power we talk
about semiotic power. He says that the semiotic power is the power to construct meanings, pleasure, social
identities. Power that the powerless, dominated have – the power to have their own meanings. They are not forced
to read, use consumer culture in the way it was intended by the authors. They can derive their own power, pleasure.
They can escape the domination.

Fiske is saying it often happens by creating the kinds of fiction that have been denigrated. The fantastic fiction is
subversive, in what way? – He talks about fantasy or escapism and he comments on the fact that sometimes
somebody escaping to the world of fantasy was traditionally interpreted as an act of surrender, basically this was the
idea that when you start to engage in fantastic world it removes you from the reality that depresses you, you don’t
want to function in it. You escape this reality by reading (video games also as children couldn’t cope with reality). But
fisk says that fantasy is not only about escapism, it is about the world that fits and responds to the needs of the
reader. Rather than looking at it as the way to escape, you should look at it as an act of resistance – getting indulged
in the world another. How people search for popular genres – back science fiction was considered as inferior,
popular kind of genre. This search for popular genres was also an act of resistance, looking for reality that would
respond to the needs of the consumers.

Exporporation, semiotic power – be able to explain the ideology.