2. Andrew Goodwin
0 Music Videos demonstrate genre characteristics.
0 There is a relationship between the lyrics and visuals.
0 There is a relationship between the music and visuals.
0 The demands of the record label will include the need for
lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop
motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).
0 There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screen
within screens, telescopes, etc.) and particularly
voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
0 There is often intertextual reference.
3. The Birmingham School
(Centre for Contemporary Cultrual Studies) –CCCS for short!
0 Believe that all sub cultures are based on a reaction
against the mainstream. In that they have disagreed
with the ideology of the mainstream and have
separated themselves and created an alternative
culture. The CCCS also don’t take into account that
teenagers can chance from one subculture to another,
they believe people stay within the same culture.
4. Grant McCracken
0 The world’s culture is now dynamic and diverse in
creativity and with so many different values and
ideologies that people have, we cannot believe that
there is one main idea “There is no mainstream. There
are many streams.”.
5. Hebdige
0 He believes that subcultures should be called ‘little cultures’
because they are deep enough in cultural value to stand on their
own and not to be a ‘sub’ of another culture.
0 Hebdige also argues that when people listen to music (consume
popular culture) they are aware of what they are doing (active)
and how they experience it depends on their background and the
society they live in, so that different people may think differently
about the same piece of music. For example Gangsta rap may be
disliked by someone who lives in a rural area, plats classical
music and enjoys the opera because they mat not relate to the
lyrics. In the contrast someone who has experienced an inner city
life style and brought up within a gang culture may appreciate
the lyrics and be able to relate to it.
0 Hebdige thinks that people choose what they consume and reject
what they don’t like, they are not governed by the culture
industries.
6. Richard Dyer
0 Dyer’s theory is based on film stars but can be adapted to music.
0 Dyer believes a star’s image is constructed and therefore not a real person.
0 They are also ‘objects’ to sell and rely on a variety of mediums to sell their
image e.g. magazines, TV, film, advertising, music etc.
0 He believes the star image is based on 2 paradoxes (2 things that go against
each other)
1. The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the
consumer.
2. The star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer.
0 Dyer believes that depending on which star a person likes, it can position
them in the mainstream or in a subculture. For example Person A likes One
Direction they are positioned in the mainstream because the band is in the
mainstream. Whereas person B likes Blood Red Shoes they are positioned in
a subculture because Blood Red Shoes are seen as a sub-cultural group.
0 “In these terms it can be argues that stars are representations of persons
which reinforce, legitimate or occasionally alter the prevalent
preconceptions of what it is to be a human in this society”
0 In the above quote Dyer is saying that the star represents a person in society
and depending upon their ‘image’ they either reinforce what our society
belies is the way to behave or they alter it. Think about how people
perceived Britney when she was an example of ‘good wholesome virginal
girl’, then her image reflected what society believed is the ideal way to
behave. Compare that to Liam Gallagher from Oasis, society perceives him as
an undesirable way to behave and therefore his image alters the ideology.
7. The Frankfurt School
0 A collection of Marxist philosophers, based in
Germany in the mid 20th century. They were
concerned that the creation of popular culture meant
that the ‘masses’ (lower classes) would rise up and
take over the power that the bourgeois (upper class)
had their work was the first attempt to write about
popular music.
8. Theodor Adorno (1903-69)
0 Adorno suggest that popular culture industries churn out mass
products that are unsophisticated and sentimental which have
replaced the more ‘difficult’ and critical art forms which might
lead people to actually question social life. He was also against
capitalist as he believed it created a culture whereby people felt
that they needed material things which replace people’s ‘true’
needs – freedom, full expression of human potential and
creativity, genuine creative happiness.