COMM 2P20 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Popular Culture Studies, Modernism, Dwight Macdonald
20 Nov 2012
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Working definition of popular culture = the communicative texts, practices and experiences of everyday life . Intro to theories of mass culture: the politics of popular culture. In his book, politics and popular culture (1997), john street identifies four political or ideological perspectives on popular culture, which can be summarized in the following diagram. Our principal concern today is with the conservative elitist perspective represented by what story calls. The culture and civilization tradition in popular culture studies. But this tradition also shares certain assumptions with another approach, the radical elitists. Both conservative elitists & radical elitists are critical of popular culture, but differ with respect to: their attitudes to social change and the way they see the relationship between popular culture & social change. Want to preserve the existing social order. But see mass/popular culture as a threat to social order. Want to change the existing social order (capitalism) But see popular culture as propping up that social order.
