ENGLISH 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Postmodern Culture, Radioteletype, Tangled
Document Summary
Popular culture is dominated by practices of consumption. Much of our experience of popular culture is tangled up in relations of economic exploitation. Popular culture is a process defined by the often contradictory but sometimes collaborative interests of private and public interest, of commerce and creativity, and capitalism and community. The evolution of popular culture has not proceeded in a linear fashion. New developments don"t necessarily supersede or cancel out what came before. Notwithstanding the power of media culture today, other currents persist. It is impossibly to clearly separate the different strands of the fabric of culture. Struggles over the meaning and value of popular culture connect to broader relations of power in complex and changing ways. The class-consciousness of the 19th century has helped to pave the way for consciousness of other unequal social relations. Contemporary popular culture differs in critical ways from the cultural forms that preceded it.