Pop Culture Audiences and Fan Culture

  • Introduction to Audiences and Fan Culture

    • Core Focus: The power of people who consume popular culture; what we do with it and what it does to us.

    • Key Debate: Are fans passive recipients, controlled or dominated by media, or are they active, in control, free-willed, engaged, and questioning popular media?

    • Major Theories Explored: Marxist approaches to audiences, the hypodermic theory, ethnography, and oral history.

    • Analytical Techniques:

    • Ethnography: An analytical technique used by anthropologists to study culture. Henry Jenkins employs it in his study of Star Trek fans.

    • Oral History: An interview technique used by historians. Erin, Rick Hess, and Jacobs utilize it with Beatles fans.

  • Historical Perceptions of Pop Culture Audiences: Matthew Arnold's Influence

    • Early American History: Pop culture audiences were primarily perceived as people from the working and middle classes, distinguishing them from high culture enthusiasts.

    • Anxiety of Elites (18th and early 19th Century): With the rise of the middle class, intellectuals and elites became anxious, fearing this growing class would "take over and destroy civilized America" with their perceived "barbaric and simplistic" tastes and ideas.

    • Paternalistic View: Many viewed the middle and working classes as similar to children, in need of proper guidance and control from the upper classes. This paternalistic belief permeated debates about lower-class amusements.

    • Matthew Arnold (English Poet and Cultural Critic):

    • Historical Context: Wrote during a time when many in the middle and working classes sought the right to vote and fair political representation.

    • Duty of the Elite: Arnold believed it was the duty of the educated elite to enlighten the lower classes, teaching them about "civilized forms of entertainment and education." He argued that only then would they be deserving of the rights they sought.

    • Definition of Culture: For Arnold, culture should represent "the best that society has to offer," a "study of perfection, which moves by the force of the moral and social passion for doing good." Good, quality entertainment needed to be moral and serve a noble purpose.

    • Critique of Lower-Class Entertainment: He argued that the entertainments of the middle and lower classes were "simple," "not good," "not stimulating or worthy of any kind of merit." Their enjoyment of such entertainment was evidence they were not ready to be part of the elite.

    • Fear of Decline: Failure to educate and uplift these groups would lead to "the nation's moral and cultural decline" if they gained political power.

    • Lasting Influence: Arnold's ideology deeply influenced cultural critics throughout the 19^{th} and 20^{th} centuries, forming the roots of many discussions about the perceived problems with popular culture. Critics today still link certain music, TV shows, and movies to a "decline of civilization."

  • The Beatles Fans: A Case Study in Audience Perception

    • Fan Audiences: Provide a clear connection between pop culture texts (e.g., The Beatles, Star Trek) and audiences. Fans are emotionally invested, finding meaning and using texts/rituals to satisfy desires.

    • Purpose of the Aaron, Rick Hess, and Jacobs Article: Both articles discuss how particular audiences have been perceived by academics, cultural critics, or ordinary citizens, highlighting misconceptions and stereotypes. They offer alternative explanations.

    • Historical Examination of Beatles Fans: The article focuses on adolescent female fans during Beatlemania, interviewing women about their past experiences.

    • **