Study Task 3 - Urban Surveillance and Panopticism

Urban Surveillance and Panopticism 

Panopticism is a modern social theory that was instituted to organise and control. By using Michel Foucault's chapter on Panoptism in the book 'Discipline and Punish', I will compare urban surveillance with Panopticism. In our modern day world the city is jammed full with CCTV cameras that are there to record and help investitigataton. But is that all they are doing? How does Panopticm come into it? "Visibility is a trap" (Foucault, Page 64) CCTV cameras relate very strongly with the Panoptocon, the idea and thought that you are being watched but you don't know when or who by, keeping people in control with out being phsyical in any form, making the city one big Panopticon. 

 "The major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the intimate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in it's action."(Foucault, Page 65). If we concentrate on CCTV cameras we can relate to this quote from Foucault. The UK today has over 4.2 million cameras meaning on average there are 14 citizens to ever one camera. If people are aware of being watched by a surveyor so to speak will they act differently? These cameras are there to record crime but many people don't know if these cameras are actually working.

"He is seen but he does not see... axial visibility... lateral invisibility. And this invisibility is a guarantee of order." In the Panoptocon inmates were aware that they were being watch but they couldn't see who they were being watched by, or in fact, if they were being watched at all. It has been said that many cameras in the cities of the United Kingdom don't work, they are just there to make people think twice about committing any kind of offence. We don't know what cameras work and which ones don't, which at the end of the day means many people won't risk breaking the law.

"They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualised and constantly visible." This is a strong sentence when summing up how one would 'act' in the Panopticon and indeed how one would 'act' when aware of being in the sight of a camera. We are being watched so we are being judged? Here Foucault's is relating a small thetre with being in the Panopticon, constantly being watched therefor contrantly acting to please your surveyor. 

In conclusion the relation between CCTV cameras and the Panopticon are very obvious and strikingly similar. It all comes down to being aware you are open to judgement and you have to act in a way that will satisfy the viewer. As panoptic surveillance continuos to cover more and more of urban spaces, individuals will begin to learn that every move they take is being recorded and they will increasingly become aware of their behaviour. In a result of that they themselves will become better behaved, this was exactly the result inmates got when spending time in the Panopticon.

Lecture NINE// Identity

Theories of Identity

Essentaialsim ( Traditional Approach 

Our Biological make up makes us who we are

We all have inner essence that makes us who we are 

Physiognomy- The facial features, if you had a straight face you were said to be intelligent, if you had a slanted face you were considered to be stupid.

Phrenology - Black science meaning it is not a real science, based on a idea that its made up, based on a white skin blue eyed person. Allows for anybody who doesn't have a perfect look to be considered more human. Cesare Lombroso (1835 - 1909) was the founder of Positivist Criminology- The notion that criminal tendencies are inherited. 

Physiognomy Legitimising Racism

Examples in Fine Art- Artest sometimes exaggerating racial face types, portrayed as being Sub Human. Hieronymous Bosh ( 1450 - 1516) 'Christ carrying the Cross, Oil on Panel 1515.  

Chris Ofili, Holy Virgin Mary, 1996 

Pre-Modertn Identity- Secure Identifies such as Farm workers, Soldiers, Factor workers, The House wife, The Gentleman. Modern Identity 19th and early 20th centuriesCharles Baudleaire - The Painter of Modern Life (1863). Thorstein Velblen- Theory of the Leisure Class. 

The Flaneur - Gentleman stroller. Veblen- 'Conspicuos consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman leisure. 

Modern identity, 19th and early 20th centuries. Simmel

• Trickle down theory 
• Emulation
• Distinction 
• The 'mask' of Fashion' 

Georg Simmel writes about the feeling of isolation.  Discourse Analysis. Possible Dicources 

• Age 
• Class
• Gender
• Nationality etc.

Discourses being considered.

• Class
• Nationality 
• Race -OTHERNESS
• Gender and sexuality -OTHERNESS

 Class

Humphrey Spender/ Mass Observation, Worktown project, 1937 

Martin Parr, New Brighton, Merseyside (1983)

He photographs people on holiday, is he making a social comment on the way people live. Other photos of Martin Parr, Sedlescombe. 

Vivienne Westwood, Anglomnia Collection, Autumn/ Winter. 

Las Vegas- The idea that in the modern age do you really have to travel to see things. Most Americans don't have passports, why do you need passports when you have the internet? 

Race

Chris Ofili 'No Woman No Cry' & 'Captain Shit and the legend of the Black Stars'1994.

He's work goes on top of elephant dung because that what he thinks the white race thinks about the black race. As a teenager he begins thinking about Black super heroes and how their aren't any.

Gillian Wearing, A series of photographs. Is she taking photos of the black stereotype?

Alexander Mcqueen, Its a Jungle Out There collection 1997-8. 

Gender and Sexuality

Edmund Bergler draws attention to how woman are dressing and how it is men that dress them, design them. 

Sarah Lucas, Au Natural

Sam Taylor, Wood, Portrait

Tracey Emin, Everyone I have ever slept with 1963. 

The Wounderbra 'I can't cook, Who cares? 

Gillian Wearing, Lynee, 1933-6.       

The Post-modern Condition 

Post modern theory

Identity is constructed through our social experience.

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of self in everyday life (1959). 

Zygmunt Bauman 

Identity (2004)

Liquid Modernity (2000)

Liquid Love (2003)              

Gillian Wearing's photographs, From Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants them to say 1992. 

Postmodern Identity

Rene Descarted (1596 - 1650) 

quote by Tom Hodgkinson (2008) 

Real and Virtual chase for second life divorce couple. a couple started a second life.

Responsive// Leeds Brewery 'Hell Fire'

Hell Fire

This beer above is the beer that I need to redesign for the Leeds Brewery Brief which has been set today. From the Briefing a lot was said about target audience and the audience are people of my age which I suppose is quite handy. Because the beer isn't that famous yet, the design is crucial in that it has to stand out from the rest. The logo already is very modern and trendy so I think its going to be quite a hard mission in re-designing. I will start off by looking at some examples I found on the internet, just to give me an idea of where I can go and what the possibilities are. 

Camden Hells

It was the middle example that caught my attention as the colour and some aspects of the type have similarities. Being the colour red, it almost gives you this idea that it is a dangerous beer that you would have to be dared to try. This I feel would appeal to men, trying to stand out with the beer that looks dangerous. When comparing this example to the Hell Fire example, I feel this one looks a lot more like a beer, if you look at Hells Fire in that context it looks very much like a hot chilly sauce or something along those lines. The Camden Drinks are type only a lot like Hell Fire but Hell Fire is very busy. Camden is much more simplistic. 

Website : designspiration

O'Brian

This is the sort of beer I could imagine people of 24+ would drink. It has certain characteristics that suggest it is an elegant, sophisticated beer. If we take that idea and try and communicate it into a beer targeted at maybe a younger audience I think that it would work very well! The Red example caught my eye but it's the example next to it that I really admire, only because the colour of the label works perfectly with the colour of the beer bottle.

Website : designspiration

Gordon

This in to me is a great design of label, I like the illustrations and the colours used are perfect...considering its a red ale. Not quite the road I want to go down though because I feel the rebrand of the Hell Fire label should be type based. Then again its usually the illustration of a beer that attracts the attention of thr audience? Thinking about that statement thats not true. Most popular beer is type based, or mainly type based. Think of Fosters, Stella, Carlsberg etc, its those beers that use big type and a logo, its beers like Tiger that use big illustrations that make it stand out. It will be hard to choose a style of design to go with. 

Website: mypinterest

Mark & Rich

this is right up my street in terms of design, I really like the type chosen, it gives quite an old feel but on a modern scale, if that makes any sense. The shape of the 2nd example is fantastic, however thats something I can't optimise or have any control over. I mostly like the red bottle because obviously the colour relates to the design I need to create and the shape it very similar to to the Hell Fire bottle.

Woodsman Beer

I like the modern illustration mixed with the bold type and its the example on the left that really stands out to me. I like the illustration of the man but I really don't know what it has to do with the blond beer, maybe the illustration is of the man who created the beer or on the other hand it could just be a representation on a woodsman. A beer for woodmen created by woodsmen? I think so! Quite a niche audience however I think people would buy it anyway. To me its quite a 'hispter' beer that people will love in modern clubs in popular cities.   

Website: Pinterest

 National Brewing 

This reminds me of medicine from the 1800's or something like  that! The type is fantastic especially the main logo with 'National Brewer'. The colours work well together and the layout works perfectly. I'm trying to work out what the illustration is on the neck and underneath the logo. It looks like a fork or something I'm not sure what it could be. I like the boarders used on the main logo, when it comes to designing I might try and give that kind of style a go. 

Website: Pinterest

Print and Web// App Research

APP MAP

Above we have the perfect example of how I want my map to look like on my map. Can I state that my App doesn't have to work! I simply have to make detailed mock ups that could pass as a real app. In this example you are looking at the view where you can actually see houses and the greenery etc but my map is going to be simple grey and white. I think this will work better and on the whole be a lot easier when trying to get form A to B. I don't want my cycle routes getting lost in all the detail of the map itself. 

In comparison to the example I found above, this is much better. The map is much more simplistic and anyone looking at it will find it much easier to use. Please ignore the Pin I don't want to have that in my final designs! I also like the route line as its not a thick red line but a more de-saturated example, again making the viewer more aware of the route they are taking.

Quite simple a genus idea, to be able to attach your i phone to your bike. However I don't want the impression on my cyclists that they have to go out an buy one of these cases....or indeed a i phone...to take part in 'On Yer Bike'. I realise that not everyone will have an iphone and I will be making signs that people can follow with out the use of a map or phone. I think I should do a little something on this idea also for people that want to use the app. The app side of this brief will be a little extra but I will be concentrating much more on the signs as they are much more important.

The Gaze and the Media// 300 Word Essay

Here are some of the quotes I managed to find from Rosalind Coward's chapter 'The Look". With these quotes I will analyse an advert that Axe made.

• "Women's Experience of sexuality rarely strays far from ideologies and feelings of self image. There's a preoccupation with the visual image of self and others and concomitant anxiety about how these images measure up to a socially prescribed ideal."

• "Human Beings don't all look at things in the same way, innocently as it were. In this culture, the look  is largely controlled by men. Men also control the visual media. The film and TV industries are dominated by men, as is the advertising industry."

• "Entertainment as we know it crucially predicated on a masculine investigation of women, and a circulation of of women's images for men. The camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the streets. Here, men can, and do, stare at women."

• "Women in the flesh, often feel embarrassed, irritated, or downright angered by men's persistent gaze. But not wanting to risk male attention turning to male aggression, women avert their eyes and hurry on their way."

• "In this society, looking has become a crucial aspect of sexual relations, not because of any natural impulse, but because it is one of the ways in which domination and subordination are expressed. The relations involved in looking enmesh with coercive beliefs about appropriate sexual behaviour for men and women."

• "The saturation of society with images of women has nothing to do with men's natural appreciation of objective beauty, their aesthetic appreciation, and everything to do with an obsessive recording and use of women's images in ways which make men conformable."

• "Clearly this comfort is connected with feeling secure or powerful. And women are bound to this power precisely because visual impressions have been elevated to the position of holding the key to our psychic well-being, our social success, and indeed to wether or not we will be loved."

• "Men defend their scrutiny of women in terms of the aesthetic appeal of women. But this so-called aesthetic appreciation of women is nothing less that a decided preference for a 'distances' view of the female body."

• "Perhaps, this 'sex-at-a-distance' is the only complete secure relation which men can have with women. Perhaps other forms of contact are too unsettling."

• "Thus the profusion of images of women which characterises contemporary society could be seen as an obsessive distancing of women, a fan of voyeurism. Voyeurism is a way of taking sexual pleasure by looking at rather than being close to a particular object of desire. Like a Peeping Tom."

• "In the twentieth century, sexology found a spectacle of incompetent fumbling and rampant discontent with 'doing it'. Heterosexuality, it seemed, was on the edge of extinction. Saved only by porn in sock draw or by the widespread availability of images which could be substituted in fantasy for the real thing. Perhaps in the images, the meanings are fixed and reassuring. Perhaps only in the images could true controlling security could be reached?"

• "Freud casually added to his account of the development of all humans that women were, however, 'more narcissistic'; 'nor does (their) need lie in the direction of loving, but being loved."

• "Fascination there may be, but there's certainly no straightforward identification which women experience with the multitude of images of glamour women. Instead, advertisements, health and beauty advice, fashion tips are effective precisely because somewhere, perhaps even subconsciously, an anxiety, rather than a pleasurable identification, is awakened. "

................................................................................................................................................................

Find an image from contemporary mass media which reflects the issues using five quotes from this text. Analyse the gaze relationship in the image and think about what kind of masculinity and femininities are presented. What kind of challenges to the gender roles is happening?

After exploring the internet for a suitable advert for the question given, I decided to go with this Axe advert called 'The Axe Effect'. Using 5 quote from Rosalind Coward's chapter 'The Look' I will attempt to analyse this avert in detail, Identifying how this particular advert has been made to attract and absorb the attention of men.

"Entertainment as we know it is crucially predicated on a masculine investigation of women, and a circulation of women's images for men." (p. 35) 

This is interesting when thinking about who the advert is targeted at and how woman are being portrayed. The advert is quite obviously targeted at a male audience and by using the female body in this particular way it is obvious Axe are using male gaze to sell this particular product. The female representation in the ad work wonders with the moral of this advert. The message to men is by using Axe you will attract woman of this nature.

 "Entertainment as we know it crucially predicated on a masculine investigation of women, and a circulation of of women's images for men. The camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the streets. Here, men can, and do, stare at women." (p. 35).

The way in which the woman in this advert have been filmed almost make it acceptable for a male audience to look at woman in a sexual way with out being caught out. The way the advert has been shot backs this statement up as the woman aren't looking at the camera making men feel free to stare with nothing to loose. Relating to the point of entertainment being predicted on a masculine investigation of woman, is this stating that is indeed a decision of men to how a woman ends up dressing?

"Clearly this comfort is connected with feeling secure or powerful. And women are bound to this power precisely because visual impressions have been elevated to the position of holding the key to our psychic well-being, our social success, and indeed to wether or not we will be loved." (p. 34) 

The example I have chosen isn't the best as these woman are wearing bikinis which happen to be very conventional when being on a beach. In the quote above, the part about whether or weather not we will be loved I feel connects with how females are presented in the media. If this is how men want woman to look like then possibly woman feel they have to present themselves in this way.

"In this society, looking has become a crucial aspect of sexual relations, not because of any natural impulse, but because it is one of the ways in which domination and subordination are expressed."

Today, woman have began dressing in such a way that men will find pleasing, woman dress like this to attract a man. Because woman are being presented in such a way through the media, the female audience take note this is how men want woman to look like and in a result they wear less clothing. Men notice this is how woman are being presented in the media whey expect woman to dress like this on a day to day basis for their own pleasure? It's an odd circle, however this advert on a whole take away any respect from the female species turning them in to an animal more than a human being.

Print and Web// Cycle Guides

I decided to order some free Cycle guides of London as I feel it will be great research, from this I will be able to choose certain routes and be able to decided where I want to base my work.
 

I'll be honest in saying once these arrived I didn't know what to do with them as I knew I wanted to focus on my app. Towards the begginging of the brief I thought these would give me a very good idea of how the cycling system worked but then in the end I didn't need them! 

Lecture EIGHT// Creative Rhetorics

Talking about Creativity

Illustrated; The Blank Sheet Project. D&AD. 

Interviewing 4 creatives, askgin them about their creative process.

Introducing Creative Flow

What its like to be creative.

Rutger Hauer Sheet Process. (Youtube)

Youtube Video : I almost gave up acting. Rutger talking about him maybe not bring able to act, it gave him a shock when he realised acting might be able to give him a living. 'Stay in the Box'. An expression in Dutch that is very negative. The Dutch are known for being very pessimistic towords life.

The whole 'thats not going to work' attitude. 

He explained that he danced through the movie and the whole process was such a joy. The whole process being a flow. 

Renzo Rosso's Creative Rhetoric (Youtube)

Youtube Video: The Blank Sheet Process interviews Renzo Rosso's. They want to know what makes him tick, how they began, what they have achieved and how they have tackled the daily challenge of the blank sheet of paper. Renzo's talks about his spark of inspiration. Renzo was the founder of 'Diesel Jeans'. He talks about when he made his first pair of jeans at the age of 16. The beginning for him was a very big change. 'The best must be the next'. Very few new companies fail to be consistent over a long amount of time. Diesel being different. Renzo talks about having a strong working team 'I am a lucky man who can drive my team'. The creative advertising of diesel was a key result of Diesels success.

How Rosso talks about Creativity:

Practise based beggining (School of fashion)

Best idea- Always next creativity 'Dynamic. George Dickie (1971)

Be STUPID. Using the heart not the head expressionist theory. 

WORK IN TEAMS: This was the key to Diesels success. 

Rewind

Mimesis

Plateo's Problem with creativity

Republic- Idea of society

Metaphysics- Forms 

Physical world of mimics the real

Art mimics an imitation 

Creativity merely a techincal skill 

Denied creativity knowledge- producing capability. 

History of Art

Gombrich (1950) 

Bernal (1991)

Classical Greeks did not see their philosophy, as original, but delivered from the Wast of Egypt. 

Evidence classification of GK art. 

Striving to imitate nature better

Fast Forward 300 years

Classicism

Roman art, they were said to cop the Greeks. They thought Greeks reached an Apex. 

Fast Forward again

There are aid to be 9 different ways of talking about creativity. 

1. Creative Genius
2.  Romanticism
3. Transformed (Movement changed ideas) 
4. The Creative (The artist is a creative, not imitator)
5. Creativity ( Through creating, artists create new RULES) 
6. Hearty Talks About Creativity He talks about working in a team, a huge topic these days. At the end of the day creativity is an individual vision)
7. The Creative Classroom.

Fast Forward

Democratic & political creativity.

Future Everything 2012

Abundance research new media profound change on creatives & citizens.

Art and design Education changes 

Brown (2012) Digital Technology, Event horizon

The ownership of content has changed. One to many, inverted knowledge is accessible through my computer (for example this lecture)

ESTUDIO

An online extension of my studio 

Abstract

Art and copy teams working in a team- at the same time the practise based approach was optional.  

Students working online which is a type of creativity.

Little c Creativity Banaji (2006)

- The crowed, made up of online users, groups of people that have a interest in the same topic and sharing their knowledge of this topic. 

VCOP Life Cycle. Creative Cycle.

Active synergic engaging generation of new knowledge.

Experts of this topic playing the important role of pushing it forwards.

Showstudio Founder

Nick Knight (Fashion Photographer) has worked with the worlds most famous filmmakers

Creativity for social good 

Only the brave foundation 

Brave actions for a better world( 2008)

Play and Creativity 

Divergent thinking activities 

Image surfing.

Brainstorming.

Free Thinking.

Creativity is now a type of thinking.

CREATIVITY IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN COLLABORATIVE.

Flow illustrations for the award winning movie Spirited Away. 

Beattie (bmb) ECD

Internet is the biggest idea since the wheel, enables lots of small ideas to circulate

Digital media enabled convergence on a scale never seen before.

Visualising Creativity.

Creative affordances/ possibilities technology

Creativity is now is massive, open and online. 

Talking about creativity

What is the source of a creative idea? 

The point of the lecture was to make us think ABOUT HOW WE CAN TALK ABOUT OUR OWN WORK AND OUR CREATIVITY. Creativity is considered a major value of any persons creative practise. 

You are not a gadget

You have to be a creative before you can share it

Lecture SIX// Critical Positions on Popular Culture

Critical Positions on Popular Culture

AIMS:

•Critically define ‘popular culture’

•Contrast ideas of ‘culture’ with ‘popular culture’ and ‘mass culture’

•Introduce Cultural Studies & Critical Theory

•Discuss culture as ideology

•Interrogate the social function of popular culture

WHAT IS CULTURE?

•‘One of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’

•General process of intellectual, spiritual & aesthetic development of a particular society, at a particular time

•A particular way of life

•Works of intellectual and especially artistic significance’

The State

‘…but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’ (Marx & Engels (1848) ‘Communisit Manifesto)

Instruments of the State

Ideological & Physical Coercion

The Bourgeoisie

The Proletariat

Ideology

1  system of ideas or beliefs (eg beliefs of a political party)

2  masking, distortion, or selection of ideas, to reinforce power   relations, through creation of 'false consciousness'

[ The ruling class has ] to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, ... to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.

Karl Marx, (1846) The German Ideology, 

Caspar David Friedrich (1809)‘Monk by the Sea’

Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane (2005) ‘Folk Archive’

Banksy piece exhibited in Covent Garden

Graffiti in South Bronx

E.P. Thompson (1963) ‘The Making of The English Working Class’

Matthew Arnold (1867) ‘Culture & Anarchy’ 

Culture is:

–‘the best that has been thought & said in the world’

–Study of perfection

–Attained through disinterested reading, writing thinking

–The pursuit of culture

–Seeks ‘to minister the diseased spirit of our time’

Leavisism- F.R Leavis & Q.D. Leavis

•Still forms a kind of repressed, common sense attitude to popular culture in this country.

•For Leavis-

  C20th sees a cultural decline

Standardisation & levelling down

‘Culture has always been in minority keeping’

‘the minority, who had hitherto set the standard of taste without any serious challenge have experienced a ‘collapse of authority’

•Collapse of traditional authority comes at the same time as mass democracy (anarchy)

•Nostalgia for an era when the masses exhibited an unquestioning deference to (cultural)authority

•Popular culture offers addictive forms of ditraction and compensation

•‘This form of compensation… is the very reverse of recreation, in that it tends, not to strengthen and refresh the addict for living, but to increase his unfitness by habitutaing him to weak evasions, to the refusal to face reality at all’ (Leavis & Thompson, 1977:100)

    Frankfurt School – Critical Theory

  Institute of Social Research, University of Frankfurt, 1923-33

  University of Columbia New York 1933-47

  University of Frankfurt, 1949-

  Theodore Adorno

  Max Horkheimer

 

  Herbert Marcuse

  Leo Lowenthal 

  Walter Benjamin

Frankfurt School :
Theodore Adorno & Max Horkheimer 

  Reinterpreted Marx, for the 20th century – era of “late capitalism”

•

  Defined “The Culture Industry” : 

  2 main products – homogeneity & predictability

•

  “All mass culture is identical” :

 

  ‘As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will be rewarded, punished or forgotten’.

•

  ‘Movies and radio need no longer to pretend to be art. The truth, that they are just business, is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. ... The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry. ... The culture industry can pride itself on having energetically executed the previously clumsy transposition of art into the sphere of consumption, on making this a principle. ... film, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part ... all mass culture is identical.’

  Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment,1944

Frankfurt School : Herbert Marcuse

  Popular Culture v Affirmative Culture

  The irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers more or less pleasantly to the producers and, through the latter, to the whole. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood. ... it becomes a way of life. It is a good way of life - much better than before - and as a good way of life, it militates against qualitative change. Thus emerges a pattern of one dimensional thought and behaviour in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe.

  Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 1968

  (of affirmative culture): a realm of apparent unity and apparent freedom was constructed within culture in which the antagonistic relations of existence were supposed to be stabilized and pacified. Culture affirms and conceals the new conditions of social life.

  Herbert Marcuse, Negations, 1968

  -  Cultural Commodities

  -  Negation  = Depriving culture of “its great refusal” = Cultural Appropriation

  ACTUALLY DEPOLITICISES THE WORKING CLASS

‘Authentic Culture vs Mass Culture’

Qualities of authentic culture

•Real

•European

•Multi-Dimensional

•Active Consumption

•Individual creation

•Imagination

•Negation

•AUTONOMOUS

Products of the contemporary ‘Culture Industry’

Adorno ‘On Popular Music’

•STANDARDISATION

•‘SOCIAL CEMENT’

•PRODUCES PASSIVITY THROUGH ‘RHYTHMIC’ AND EMOTIONAL ‘ADJUSTMENT’

Walter Benjamin

‘The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction’

1936

‘One might generalise by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own situation, it reactivates the objects produced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition… Their most powerful agent is film. Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage’

Aura

Louise Lawler 

‘Pollock and Tureen, Arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Connecticut,’ (1984)

Max Ernst ‘The Wavering Woman’ 1923

‘Nosferatu’ 1922

Mechanical Reproduction changes the reaction of art towards the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into a progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterised by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert’

(Benjamin, The Work of Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936)

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies- CCCA (1963 - 2002)

Hebdige, D (1979) ‘Subculture: The Meaning of Style’

•INCORPORATION

•IDEOLOGICAL FORM

•COMMODITY FORM

Conclusion

•The culture & civilization tradition emerges from, and represents, anxieties about social and cultural extension. They attack mass culture because it threatens cultural standards and social authority.

•The Frankfurt School emerges from a Marxist tradition. They attack mass culture because it threatens cultural standards and depoliticises the working class, thus maintaining social authority.

•Pronouncements on popular culture usually rely on normative or elitist value judgements

•Ideology masks cultural or class differences and naturalises the interests of the few as the interests of all.

•Popular culture as ideology

•The analysis of popular culture and popular media is deeply political, and deeply contested, and all those who practice or engage with it need to be aware of this.