MACH Unit 1 Flashcards: What is Cultural History?

Hua Hsu (1977-)

Author of Stay True, cultural critique, cultural historian, music fan, offered a critique on Spotify

Stay True (2022)

A memoir written by Hua Hsu detailing a friendship of Hsu’s while offering a critique on mainstream culture. This memoir also celebrates what it means to be a fan.

Spotify (2006-)

Music streaming service, kills how spontaneous music is, controls how artists produce and distribute music, knows our moods, forces us into subscriptions, only competition is silence, doesn’t care what we are listening to as long as we are listening to something

Napster (1999-2002)

File-sharing application, beginning of music piracy, introduced the free exchange of music at the global scale

Wayne’s World (1992) and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)

Comedy films where the characters listen to music in the car, feature music fans

James Corden (1978-) and “Carpool Karaoke” (2015-2023)

Host of The Late Late Show, segment on the show where famous music guests sang along to their songs in the car with the host

Bruno Mars (1985-)

Singer featured in “Carpool Karaoke”

Raymond Williams (1921-1988) and Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976)

Book which exams the cultural history of words. Socialist, writer, academic, novelist, and critic. Wrote on politics, culture, media, and literature, contributing to Marxist critique of the arts.

Leo Marx (1919-2022), The Machine in the Garden (1964)

Book which critiques the relationship between culture and technology. Historian, literary critic, educator, studied the relationship between technology and culture

Tower Records (1960-2006)

Retail franchise based in Sacramento, sold music. Claimed itself to be the intersection of music, art, and culture

Rolling Stone (1967-) and Spin (1985-2012)

American music magazines

The Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt aka “The Frankfurt School” (1923-)

School of thought in sociology and critical philosophy. Composed of intellectuals, academics, and political dissidents dissatisfied with the socio-economic systems of the 1930s, primarily capitalism, fascism, and communism

Netflix (1997-)

Most subscribed to video streaming service

Ticketmaster (1976-)

Ticket sales platform faced with controversy due to poor response to Taylor Swift concert ticket sales

Eminem (1972-) and “Stan” (2000)

American rapper and songwriter who wrote and sung the song “Stan.” This song illustrates the dangers of being a stan while critiquing stan culture.

Martin Scorsese (1942-) and Francis Ford Coppola (1939-)

Filmmakers who have collaborated on several projects, friends

Pavement (1989-1999) and Sleater-Kinney (1994-2006, 2014)

American rock bands from the 1990s

Don DeLillo (1936-) and Underworld (1997)

Postmodernist novel in which the prologue of 60 pages details a single baseball game

Rhianna (1988-)

Singer of “This is What You Came For” (2016)

Joan Jett

Singer of “I Love Rock ‘n” Roll” (1981)

Fans

A person who exhibits strong interest or admiration for something or somebody. They are followers and susceptible to propaganda. The experience of a fan is defined by distance and capital. However, being a fan also means to strive to build knowledge on someone/something, to be unselfish in your love to an artist, and to build a community and bond over it with others.

Stan

An overly enthusiastic fan of a celebrity

Tseng Kwong Chi (1950-1990)

Photographer, Asian-American, played with portraits, dealt with the issue of being Asian-American in US society

Giant Robot (1994-2011)

Magazine, A way to define Asian-American pop culture

The Image Bank (1975-1991)

Collection of 5 million+ stock photos, bought by Kodak in 1991

Getty Images (1995-)

Bought the Image Bank from Kodak in 1999, collection of archive of images, supplier of 200 million+ stock images

Corbis (1989-)

Acquired the Bettman Archive, company with a collection of over 100 million photographs, photos locked away from the public in storage

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

German theater practitioners, poet, and playwriter. Marxist thought influenced his works and he had ties to the Communist Party. He claimed photographs of factories don’t tell us the reality of the situation

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

German-Jewish, philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. Associated with the Frankfurt school. Claimed every document of civilization is a document of barbarism.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

Teen comedy film, preserved in the United States National Film Registry by The Library of Congress

Dead Poet’s Society (1989)

Film, coming of age story, story of English teacher who inspires students through his teaching of poetry. The film has critical and commercial success

Fame (1980)

Teen musical drama film chronicling the lives and hardships of students attending The High School of Performing Arts (Later Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School), preserved in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress

M.I.A aka Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam (1975-)

British rapper, record producer, songwriter, singer, refugee of Sri Lankan civil war as a child, war influenced her artistry

John Berger (1926-2017)

English art critic, novelist, painter, and poet. He was a Marxist literary critic with strong opinions on modern Art.

Ways of Seeing

BBC series and series of essays by John Berger. Explained how seeing is never a natural experience due to staging. Look closely at any peace of visual culture. Forget what you have been taught and focus on what YOU are seeing. Images are no longer unique, so the art object itself is made unique (Think Mona Lisa)

Stereolab (1990-2000)

Pop band, singers of “John Cage Bubblegum” (1993), loved by intellectuals and those who study American Studies, lyrics are often deeply Marxist