• DISCLAIMER: I do not claim ownership on the contents of this presentation.

This
is an accumulation of lectures, seminars, and workshops I attended and
participated with supplementary contents from your module. I pay respect to the
original owners of these wisdom passed on to us through oral and written
literature.

• Note: This is for academic purposes only under GELECT1 (Philippine Popular
Culture) of the University of Baguio. No part of this presentation shall be
extracted and shared to other students. Thus, it is your responsibility to protect
this document and uphold academic honesty.
Lesson 4:
FRAMING POPULAR CULTURE
OBJECTIVES:
• Through the lesson, the students should be able

to: 1. Determine the meaning of popular culture.

2. Contrast popular culture from high culture, fads,

and mass culture.

3. Demonstrate diligently their comprehension about

popular culture and key concepts related to it
A starting culture
point of •
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV50

understanding AV7-Iwc

popular
culture
• Mainstream culture
• Subculture
A starting • Ethnocentrism

point of • Melting pot

• Afrocentrism
understanding • Multiculturalism

popular • Counter-culture
• Cultural Diffusion
 • Cultural Lag Functional Structuralism •
• Symbolic Interaction • Conflict Theory

A starting • a quantitative index is not enough to

provide an adequate definition of popular

point of culture. Such counting would almost certainly

include ‘the officially sanctioned “high

understanding popular culture” which in terms of book and record

sales and audience ratings for television

culture dramatizations of the classics, can justifiably

claim to be “popular” ‘in this sense‘.
• An obvious starting point in any attempt to
define popular culture is to say that popular
culture is simply culture that is widely
favored or well-liked by many people. And,
undoubtedly, such a quantitative index would
meet the approval of many people. Other
definitions of popular
culture exclusion that guarantees the exclusivity of its
audience.
• it is the culture that is left over after we have
decided what high culture (culture of the

Other
elites, aristocrats, well-educated) is.

• Popular culture, in this definition, is a

residual category, there to accommodate texts
definitions of popular
and practices that fail to meet the required culture
standards to qualify as high culture. In other
• If mass culture is something that is
words, it is a definition of popular culture as
produced, and popular culture is something
inferior culture. What the culture/popular
that is consumed (Marbach, 2015), a third
culture test might include is a range of value
way of defining popular culture is as ‘mass
judgments on a particular text or practice. For
culture‘. This draws heavily on the previous
example, we might want to insist on formal
definition. The first point that those who refer
complexity. In other words, to be real culture,
to popular culture as mass culture want to
it has to be difficult. Being difficult thus
establish is that popular culture is a
ensures its exclusive status as high culture.
hopelessly commercial culture. It is mass
It being very difficult literally excludes - an
produced for mass consumption. Its
audience is a mass of non-discriminating
consumers. The culture itself is formulaic,
manipulative (to the political right or left,
depending on who is doing the analysis). It is
a culture that is consumed with brain
numbed and brain-numbing passivity.
Other
definitions of popular
culture
• A fourth definition contends that popular produce culture from raw materials of their
culture is the culture that originates from ‘the own making.
people‘ (high culture). It takes issue with any
approach that suggests that it is something
imposed on ‘the people‘ from above.
According to this definition, the term should
only be used to indicate an ‘authentic‘ culture
of ‘the people‘. This is popular culture as folk
culture: a culture of the people for the people
(traditional folkways of everyday life).
• One problem with this approach is the
question of who qualifies for inclusion in the
category ‘the people‘. Another problem with it
is that it evades the ‘commercial‘ nature of
much of the resources from which popular
culture is made. No matter how much we
might insist on this definition, the fact
remains that people do not spontaneously
 between the ‘resistance‘ of subordinate groups
and the forces of ‘incorporation‘ operating in the
interests of dominant groups.

• Popular culture in this usage is not the imposed

Other culture of the mass culture theorists, nor is it an

emerging from below, spontaneously oppositional

definitions of popular
culture of ‘the people‘ – it is a terrain of exchange
and negotiation between the two: a terrain, as
already stated, marked by resistance and
culture incorporation. The texts and practices of popular
culture move within what Gramsci (1971) calls
• A fifth definition of popular culture, then, is one
‘compromise equilibrium‘.
that draws on the political analysis of the Italian
Marxist Antonio Gramsci, particularly on his
development of the concept of hegemony.
Gramsci (2009) uses the term ‘hegemony‘ to refer
to the way in which dominant groups in society,
Other
through a process of ‘intellectual and moral
leadership‘ seek to win the consent of definitions of popular
culture
subordinate groups in society. Gramsci‘s
approach see popular culture as a site of struggle
• A sixth definition of popular culture is one
informed by recent thinking around the debate on.
Postmodernism [Postmodern works reject the
idea of absolute meaning and instead embrace
randomness and disorder]. The main point to insist
on here is the claim that postmodern culture is a
culture that no longer recognizes the distinction
between high and popular culture. As we shall see,
for some this is a reason to celebrate an end to an In Conclusion?
elitism constructed on arbitrary distinctions of • What all these definitions have in common is the
culture; for others it is a reason to despair at the insistence that whatever else popular culture is, it
final victory of commerce over culture. An is definitely a culture that only emerged following
example of the supposed interpenetration of industrialization and urbanization.
commerce and culture (the postmodern blurring
• It is a definition of culture and popular culture
of the distinction between ‘authentic‘ and
that depends on there being in place a capitalist
‘commercial‘ culture) can be found in the
market economy. This of course makes Britain the
relationship between television commercials and
first country to produce popular culture defined in
pop music.
this historically restricted way. There are other
ways to define popular culture, which do not
depend on this particular history or these
particular circumstances, but they are definitions
that fall outside the range of the cultural theorists
and the cultural theory.
• The argument, which underpins this particular
periodization of popular culture, is that the
experience of industrialization and urbanization
changed fundamentally the cultural relations
within the landscape of popular culture.

In Conclusion? In Conclusion?
• First of all, industrialization changed the
• Before industrialization and urbanization, relations between employees and employers. This
Britain had two cultures: a common culture which involved a shift from a relationship based on
was shared, more or less, by all classes (shared mutual obligation to one based solely on the
folklore) and a separate elite culture produced anddemands of what Thomas Carlyle calls the ‘cash
consumed by the dominant classes in society nexus‘ (monetary transactions) (Morris, 1979).
(Burke, 1994; Storey, 2003). As a result of
industrialization and urbanization, three things
happened, which together had the effect of • Second, urbanization produced a residential
redrawing the cultural map. separation of classes. For the first time in British
history there were whole sections of towns and
cities inhabited only by working men and women.
 • These three factors were combined to produce a
• Third, the panic engendered by the French cultural space outside of the paternalist
Revolution – the fear that it might be imported considerations of the earlier common culture. The
into Britain – encouraged successive governments result was the production of a cultural space for
to enact a variety of repressive measures aimed at the generation of a popular culture more or less
defeating radicalism. Political radicalism and trade outside the controlling influence of the dominant
unionism were not destroyed, but driven classes.
underground to organize beyond the influence of
middle-class interference and control.

In Conclusion?
FADS VS TRENDS • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf1Z
1cUzo-k
 trend and a fad? This is the interesting part.
Sometimes it follows a logical progression,
and sometimes you can gauge what will be a
fad based on the current market landscape.
It is also worth noting that it is not always an
exact science, some things that started off
as fads have evolved into being trends
and even become completely normal over
FADS VS TRENDS time like touch keyboards for example.
• In general, trends and fads are both things
we all experience once every few years.
Whether that is in the form of fashion,
technology or music, trends and fads shape
the way we perceive a certain brand or how
we identify. They are a part of everyday life
and we experience different trends and fads
FADS VS TRENDS
without even knowing it most of the time. • Trends and fads are remarkably difficult to
identify before they happen, easy to identify
while they are happening and blatantly
• So how do we tell the difference between a obvious after they have happened. This is a
never-ending cycle and it will always go
exactly like this.

• In relation to culture, if a fad becomes a

trend, the trend then becomes a subculture
of popular culture within a society. Which
means that what was produced to be part of
culture will then be consumed to be part of
popular culture if popular is to mean
majority in number. Thus, we have to look at FADS VS TRENDS
fads and trends within the context of
education, communication, and technology. Fa

Note taking
Distance
Send to man
Handou
Courtship by
Collabor
Lesson 5:
TERRAIN OF POPULAR CULTURE
OBJECTIVES:
• Through the lesson, the students should be able to:

1. Compare Matthew Arnold‘s view of culture and that of

F.R. Leavis.

2. Deduce the main views of the two critics or perspectives

in connection to culture and/or popular culture.

3. Demonstrate diligently their comprehension about the

Arnoldian Perspective and Leavisism
 Topic 1: THE ARNOLDIAN
PERSPECTIVE (Storey,
2003)
MATTHEW ARNOLD
(1822 -1888)
• One of the most well-known British
political and poetical writer in his
lifetime

• Author of the book “Culture and

Anarchy” which is a long series of
essays on social and political
critique
Definition of Culture
by Arnold Arnold’s Arguments
• it is a body of knowledge: in • A study of perfection, in making things
Arnold’s famous phrase, ‘the best better than they are, moved by the moral
that has been thought and said in and social passion for doing good.
the world’. (1)
• He notes that religion suggests that the
Kingdom of God is within you so culture
• culture is concerned ‘to make places in an internal condition.
reason and the will of God
prevail’. (2) • He criticized the system that “a man
values himself on how much of a
commercial success he could be rather
than who he is.
Definition of
Culture by Arnold
• “culture . . . is a study of
perfection . . . perfection which
consists in becoming something
rather than in having
something, in an inward
condition of the mind and spirit,
not in an outward set of
circumstances”

Definition of
Culture by Arnold
• In other words, culture is the
endeavor to know the best and
to make this knowledge prevail
for the good of all humankind.
But how is culture to be
attained? According to Arnold,
we shall attain it by ‘the
disinterested and active use of
reading, reflection, and
observation, in the endeavor to
know the, best that can be
known‘.
perfection – “our prevalent notion
is…that it is most happy and important
Sweetness and for a man merely to be able to do as he
likes.”
Light
• Light is intelligence as a component of
• Culture leads to a harmonious society
rd
3 and 4th that
culture consists
• Culture is now the means to know the
best that has been thought and said, as
well as that body of knowledge and the
application of that knowledge to the
‘inward condition of the mind and
spirit‘. (3)
• culture is the seeking of culture, what less poverty, less ignorance, etc., but
Arnold calls ‘cultivated inaction‘(4)
Definition of Culture
by Arnold
• Getting the best is culture
• Removing or unlearning old concepts
and learning new and fresh thoughts
that would lead us towards perfection.
• It is not that Arnold did not desire a
better society, one with less squalor,
that a better society could never be
envisaged as other than a society in
which the new urban middle class weretime that we add our voice to swell a
‘hegemonic’. blind clamor against some unpopular

3 Divisions of
personage, every time that we trample
savagely on the fallen [we have] found in
our own bosom the eternal spirit of the
Society Populace.”

• Barbarians (aristocracy),
• Philistines (middle class) and
• Populace (working class) Counteracting
“every time that we snatch up a
the Feudal
vehement opinion in ignorance and
passion, every time that we long to
System
crush an adversary by sheer violence, • It is the function of education to
every time that we are envious, every restore a sense of subordination and
time that we are brutal, every time that deference to the class. In short,
we adore mere power or success, every education would bring to the working
 class a ‘culture’ that would in turn remove popular culture.
remove the temptations of trade
unionism, political agitation and cheap
entertainment. In short, culture would • Education is the road to culture.

Arnold • Popular
suggests • Emotionally meaningful
• Innovative
that culture • Referred to by other ideas

is the best • Superior

• Elicits emotions to

that has viewers • Helpful to

humanity • Positive
been thought
and known
Arnoldian Culture
in the Arts
(Kyle Kusch)

• Prestigious
• Refined
• Meant for educated people
• Critically acclaimed
• Technical/Difficult to learn

Non-Arnoldian Culture
in the Arts (Kyle Kusch)
• Meant for the masses
• Accessible
• Marketed towards the youth
• Appeals to base desires

Topic 2: Leavisism
(Storey, 2003)
Frank Raymond (F.R.) Leavis
1895 – 1978

• English literary critic of the early-to-mid

twentieth century
 • Involved in the campaign for the
professionalization of literary
studies
• Literary “high” or minority
culture
Leavisites’ • The pursuits and habits of the
“ordinary” or “common people”
Approach to Positive Negative
Culture
Organic, vital common Products of urban, mass,
folk culture and industrial society
 finer living of an age, the sense that this is
worth more than that, this rather than that is
the direction in which to go, that the center is
here rather than there.”

Leavis and Thompson

Culture and Arts
Leavisism is based on the assumption that
‘culture has always been in minority
keeping’ (Leavis and Thompson, 1977): • Leavisism looks back longingly to
a cultural golden age, a mythic
rural past, when there existed a
shared culture uncorrupted by
“Upon the minority depends our power of
commercial interests.
profiting by the finest human experience of
the past; they keep alive the subtlest and most
perishable parts of tradition. Upon them
depend the implicit standards that order the
 he might not be able to follow the ‘thought’
minutely in the great tragedies, was getting
his amusement from the mind and sensibility

Q.D.
that produced those passages, from an artist
and not from one of his own class. There was
then no such complete separation as we have .

Leavis
. . between the life of the cultivated and the
life of the generality.”

“The spectator of Elizabethan drama, though

Effects of Industrial Revolution

• What we have lost is the organic community with the living culture it embodied. Folk
songs, folk dances, Cotswold cottages and handicraft products are signs and
expressions of something more: an art of life, a way of living, ordered and patterned,
involving social arts, codes of intercourse and a responsive adjustment, growing out of
 immemorial experience, to the natural environment and the rhythm of the year.

• The quality of work has also deteriorated with the loss of the organic community.

• Instead of recreation (re-creating what is lost in work), leisure provides workers

with only ‘decreation’ (a compounding of the loss experienced through work)

Effects of Industrial Revolution

• people turn to mass culture for compensation and passive distraction • the

drug habit develops and they become junkies addicted to ‘substitute living’

• A world of rural rhythms has been lost to the monotony and mediocrity of
‘suburbanism’
• But, although the organic community is lost, it is still possible to get access to its
values and standards by reading works of great literature. Literature is a treasury
embodying all that is to be valued in human experience. Unfortunately, literature as
the jewel in the crown of culture, has, like culture, lost its authority.

Leavisism Remedies:
• Dispatching cultural missionaries, a small select band of literary intellectuals
• Establish outposts of culture within universities to maintain the
literary/cultural tradition and encourage its ‘continuous collaborative
renewal’
• Arm students to wage war against the general barbarism of mass culture and
mass civilization

“The re-establishment of literature’s authority would not of course herald the

return of the organic community, but it would keep under control the
expansion of the influence of mass culture and thus preserve and maintain the
continuity of high literary cultural tradition. In short, it would help maintain
 and produce an ‘educated public’, who would continue the Arnoldian project of
keeping in circulation the best that has been thought and said”
Lesson 6: CLASSICAL
MARXISM and PRODUCTION
CONSUMPTION

“Marxism is a social, political,

and economic theory that
focuses on the struggles
between the capitalists and
the working class.”

OBJECTIVES
Through the lesson, the students should be able to:
 a) Compare the production and consumption of popular culture.
b) Determine what Marxist approach to culture is.
c) Demonstrate diligently their comprehension about Production and Consumption
and Marxism in culture.
• Mode of production focuses on the (distribution of income and
products of society or source of assets)
livelihood that are being produced
(agriculture), exchanged (trade and
commerce), or used (consumption)

• Leads to:

a. Forces of Production (Production Concepts of

process)
Classical Marxism
b. Relations of production
Mode of c. specific social institutions (including
cultural ones).

Production
Marx argues that each significant period in
history is constructed around a particular
‘mode of production’: that is, the way in Marxism
which a society is organized (i.e. slave,
feudal, capitalist) to produce the necessaries Analysis
of life – food, shelter, etc. In general terms,
each mode of production produces: (Storey,2003)
a. specific ways of obtaining the necessaries
How a society produces its means of
of life; existence (its particular mode of
production) ultimately determines
b. specific social relationships between the political, social and cultural shape
workers and those who control the mode of of that society and its future
production, and
development.
 life conditions the social, political and
intellectual life process in general.”
“The mode of production of material
Ideology

Marxism
Capitalism

• Though Marxism also follows a

Bourgeoisie structure which is a system referred to
that shapes one’s behavior, values, and
ideas, there are still conflicts that exist
Proletariat in a very structured society.

• Marx suggests that bourgeoisie, or

the ruling class (which operates on
hegemony) still exploits the
proletarians at their own benefit.
Marxism • How to use Marx’s theory in
analyzing a text, an art, theatre ideological perspectives.
performance, or film vis-à-vis
popular culture?
• Popular culture is hegemonic?
Marxism and
Popular Culture Popular Culture?
• Popular culture has the tendency

Maxism
to prevent revolutionary thoughts
to emerge and be developed.

• Popular culture operates on

Popular Culture?

Maxism

“Historically, Marxists have generally distinguished between those aspects of popular

culture which have been produced by working people themselves, e.g., folk art, tales or
music, and those aspects which have been produced for them, e.g., commercial
television, advertising, arcade video games, film and music. This distinction is usually
associated with a valorization of the former — as being authentic expressions of mass
creativity — and deprecation of the former — as being mechanisms of cultural
pacification and domination. Indeed, the Marxist literature dealing with culture has
had two distinct strands: one rediscovering and celebrating manifestations of
“authentic” grassroots culture, the other elaborating a detailed critique of the
mechanisms of cultural domination via consumerism and the society of the spectacle.”

References:
• https://www.thoughtco.com/popular-culture-definition-3026453 •
https://literariness.org/2016/03/18/fr-leavis-conception-of-great-tradition/
• https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/karl-marx.asp
• https://branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=peter-logan-on-culture-matthew
arnolds-culture-and-anarchy-1869
• https://prezi.com/d1wwh2znwd9k/arnoldian-culture/