Popular Culture and Media Notes

Defining Culture

  • Culture is a way of living encompassing traditions, values, beliefs, behaviors, daily tasks, rituals, & social norms.
  • Culture requires a group of people agreeing to observe it. Cliques in classrooms are an example.
  • Matthew Arnold (1869): Culture is "the best that has been thought and said in the world."

Spectrum of Culture

  • High Culture:
    • Associated with intellectual discourse & elaborate literature.
    • Examples: Mozart's The Magic Flute, Tagore's Gitanjali, Kasilag's Philippine Scenes, Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.
  • Folk Culture:
    • Practiced exclusively by a group before being shared.
    • Variable across geographies but stable over time.
    • Components: Songs (e.g Paruparong Bukid), dances (e.g., Tinikling), festivals (e.g., Ati-Atihan), folk icons (e.g., Malakas and Maganda).
  • Popular Culture:
    • Traditions & material culture of a society, availability defines it.
    • Availability called low culture to contrast sophistication of high culture.

Defining Popular Culture

  • Accessible to the general population; includes music, art, literature, fashion, dance, film, TV, radio, & the Internet.
  • John Storey's Six Definitions:
    • Widely favored by many.
    • What's left after identifying "high culture."
    • Commercial objects for mass consumption.
    • Folk culture arising from the people.
    • Negotiated between dominant and subordinate classes.
    • Blurred distinction between "authentic" and "commercial" in the postmodern world.

Categories of Popular Culture

  • Entertainment: TV, film, music, literature, celebrities (e.g., K-Pop, MCU, Lea Salonga, Coen Brothers).
  • Lifestyle: Trends in fashion, art, dance, language, food (e.g., visual kei, Ben Cab, swardspeak, vogue dancing).
  • Sports: Traditional and electronic sports (eSports) including merchandise and icons (e.g., NBA, GLOCO, Mobile Legends, Bea Binene).
  • News: Significant events shaping public opinion (e.g., Junko Furuta murder, Laglag Bala issue, Sandy Hook shooting).
  • Politics: Politicians and political events (e.g., Martial Law Crisis in Burma, Che Guevara, Gunpowder Plot, Kim Jong-Un).
  • Technology: New media forms, social media, gadgets, video games, Internet culture (e.g., Facebook, Cancel culture, TikTok, 4chan, Internet memes).

Subsets of Culture: Subculture, Counterculture, and Co-cultures

  • Subculture:
    • A particular culture contained in a larger culture.
    • Examples: Aeta culture (folk), ballet (high), Rico Mambo (popular culture).
    • Remains part of larger culture.
  • Counterculture:
    • Opposes established norms and rejects parent culture.
    • Examples: Hippie culture (peace, sexual exploration, drug legalization), punk culture (anti-authority).
  • Co-culture:
    • Subculture affiliated with while interacting within parent culture.
    • Can become counterculture if negotiation is ignored.
    • Example: Fil-Am culture negotiating within white culture in the U.S.

Youth Culture

  • Dynamic process driven by youth seeking self-identity.
  • Appeared with modern nation-states & the Industrial Revolution.
  • Locations: Educational institutions, religious sites, workspaces, prisons.
  • Evident in the 20th century after WWII with significant social & cultural influences.

Popular Culture in Philippine Perspective

  • Popular culture emerges from the working class valuing certain ideas and tendencies.
  • It is difficult to separate the spread of the idea from the Western perspective, particularly the American Perspective.

From Folk Culture to Renaissance

  • Culture, from a sociological perspective, represents the formation of shared traditions and trends.
  • Folk culture is a rudimentary form of popular culture in ancient societies.
  • Three popular culture milestones: wedding ceremonies, music, and fashion.
  • Weddings and religion became intertwined
  • William Shakespeare bridged fine art and popular art, making his works appeal to many.

Globalization of Popular Culture

*Globalization occurs even with simple conveniences such as pen and paper.

  • whatever popular aspects of their culture are brought to these new lands, they brought some of the popular culture aspects of the others back with them on their way home.
    Examples:
    *The opening of the Suez Canal allowed Filipinos access to Western popular cultures.
    *The introduction of opium to China almost ruined their countrymen.
    *Europe got hold of chocolate because of their conquest of the Americas
    *Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the movable-type printing press allowed knowledge to spread via books.

The Industrial Age

As technology boomed, folk and high cultures rapidly became part of popular culture.
Example: Filipino cinema started as a form of high culture around 1897 but soon became accessible to the masses.

Popular Culture, Society, and Technology

  • The development of the sewing machine allowed the mass production of high-end clothes accessible to the working class.
    Four common technological media for popular culture
  • Radio
  • Film
  • Television
  • Internet

The Icons and Trends of Philippine Popular Culture

*Legends Aswang, Malakas, Maganda and myths
*Dances Tinikling, Singkil
*Clothes abaca, nipa and other sturdy plant fibers.

When Spain came to colonize:

Spanish culture imparted much of their culture as well as other outside cultures into our traditions

  • Zarzuela (sarswela), pasyon (pasyon), and the cenaculo (senakulo)
    *Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo became our own literary novels.
    Folk dances were incorporated with Spanish elements
    *pasodoble, fandango (Pandanggo), curacha, rigodon, waltz, jota, polka, and lanceros.
    *