Chapter 9: Popular Culture & Cultural Appropriation

popular culture

a new name for low culture, referring to those cultural products that most people share and know about, including television, music, videos, and popular magazines 

folk culture

traditional and nonmainstream cultural activities that are not financially driven

culture industries

industries that produce and sell popular culture as commodities

cultural texts

popular culture messages whether television shows, movies, ads, or other widely disseminated messages

encoding

the process of creating a message for others to understand 

decoding

the process of interpreting a message

reader profiles

portrayals of readership demographics prepared by magazines

media imperialism

domination or control through media

electronic colonialism

domination or exploitation utilizing technological forms

cultural imperialism

domination through the spread of cultural products

prejudice

• negative attitude toward a cultural group based on little or not experience

• may arise from personal needs to feel positive about our own groups and negative about others

• may arise from real threats 

Discrimination

• behavior that result from stereotyping and prejudice - overt actions to exclude, avoid or distance

• may be interpersonal, collective or institutional

three levels of a stereotype

1. iconographic

2. behavioral

3. moral-psychological 

iconographic 

• external, visible level

• how stereotype looks

behavioral

how a stereotype acts

moral - psychological

values and world views represented

burden of representation

expectation that a person of color can represent his/her whole group

active resistance

• conflict in cultural values and cultural identities is the impetus for resistance

• people resist popular culture texts by refusing to participate in them

• social roles may motivate people to resist popular cultures

• much of the resistance stems from concerns about the representation of various social groups

cultural appropriation

a dominant group adopting/trivializing elements of a culture without acknowledging the existence of its original source, specially when the adopted culture belongs to an oppressed group