|
|
| |
Production and political economic analysis
of popular culture have several distinct dimensions. One dimension
focuses on media ownership, stressing the fact that more and
more of the American mass media is owned by fewer and fewer, very
large corporations. The argument usually made is that this “media
monopoly” homogenizes content and limits coverage of controversial
views, especially those critical of corporate capitalism.
A second dimension stresses the ways in
which the values in much mass-mediated culture reflect the class
values of the producers of that culture. Again, the claim is
that this limits media content, marginalizing the viewpoints of
individuals and groups not part of the mostly white, mostly male,
mostly upper-middle to upper class folks who control the production
of popular culture.
Third, some analysts claim that the commercial
or commodity forms that surround popular culture, and the marketing
of culture as a commodity, overwhelm content. In other words, the
assertion is that popular culture as commercial culture constantly
serves to reinforce high consumption and other corporate values
as the ultimate social values regardless of whatever values may
be promulgated in the cultural texts themselves.
Fourth, production analysis looks at the
process by which the often terrible workplaces in which pop items
are produced are made invisible to the wealthier folks who consume
the beautiful or entertaining items.
Fifth, and finally, some analyses stress
the way that constraints in production processes shape content.
These analyses tend to stress either “technical constraints”
(how the nature of a given technology forms content, i.e. how the
visual medium of television reshapes news to emphasize visually
dramatic events), and/or “commercial constraints” (how
the need to make a profit or showcase products shapes the nature
and content of popular culture, i.e. the division of network television
into small bites surrounded by commercials).
Often these various dimensions of production
analysis are woven together in a given work of criticism. Most important,
production analysis draws attention to the fact that no analysis
of popular culture is complete unless it sees that culture in the
wider, in many ways determining, context of a general political
economy. Whatever else popular culture may be, it is deeply embedded
in capitalist, for-profit mass production.
GENERAL SITES
[ BACK
TO TOP ]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[Few topics
on popular culture can be adequately researched on the web alone.
These reading suggestions are designed as beginning points for further
offline study.]
 |
|
|
Allen, Robert C. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1985. |
| |
Excellent study of the production and consumption of daytime
soap operas. |
|
|
Allen, Robert C., ed. Channels of Discourse Reassembled:
Television and Contemporary Criticism.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. |
| |
Introduces a variety of critical approaches to popular culture
(semiotics, genre analysis, ideological analysis, etc.) through
essays focusing on American television. |
|
|
Ewen, Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen. Channels of Desire: Mass
Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. |
| |
Incisive look at how advertising and related consumer-oriented
messages have shaped US culture and consumer consciousness.
|
|
|
Gamson, Joshua. Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary
America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. |
| |
The best book yet written on the role of pop “celebrities”
in US culture, using production, textual and gender analysis.
|
|
|
Kellner, Douglas. Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity
and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern. London; New York: Routledge, 1995. |
| |
Broad study that offers both a fully developed theoretical model
and case studies ranging from Rambo to Madonna to Gulf War news
coverage. |
|
|
McNair, Brian. Mediated Sex: Pornography and Postmodern Culture.
UK: Arnold Publishers, 1996.
|
| |
Sociology-based analysis weighing various arguments about the
production and consumption of pornography; focused primarily
on the US and Britain. |
|
|
Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy
and Popular Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1991. |
| |
One of the most often cited “classics” in American Studies
literature, this analysis combines production analysis, textual
analysis and ethnographic audience analysis of the “romance
novel” genre. |
|
[ BACK
TO TOP ] |
|
