Understanding Popular Culture

There is little historical evidence to suggest that any form of radical art has produced a discernible political or social effectivity. In saying this, I have no wish to marginalize radical or avant-garde art any more than it has already marginalized itself, but I do wish to question the claims that…

— John Fiske, amazon.com

Poetry Does Nothing Radical Art Social Change

The left's concern for the interests and wellbeing of the powerless and the weak, and its belief that such powerlessness and weakness are the results of the social system, and not of the inadequacies of the people within it, leads it to propose a political program of social action. The right has bee…

— John Fiske, amazon.com

Individualism Political Rhetoric Tricks Powerlessness Social Systems Leftism

Popular culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry. All the culture industries can do is produce a repertoire of texts or cultural resources for the various formations of the people to use or reject in the ongoing process of producing their popular culture.

— John Fiske, amazon.com

Culture Industry Popular Culture Relevance Social Tools

The intensity of concentration required to play the games results in the loss of social identity and the ideology it bears; it is an evasion of the forces of subordination. The player's body interacts with the signifiers on the screen in a pure eroticism of the text, and the muscular spasm followed…

— John Fiske, amazon.com

Powerful Art Video Games

The aesthetics of the bourgeoisie demand that their art should be valued to the degree of its appeal to human and aesthetic universals rather than to the specifics of the here and now: even though some art may be 'realistic' and refer explicitly to the details of the everyday, the middle-class 'appr…

— John Fiske, amazon.com

Aesthetics Media Class Univeral vs. Particular

It is the social system that makes violence popular, not the 'baseness' of the citizens: the roots of violence are to be found in society, not in individual morality. So it is predictable that the movement to eradicate violence from our screens would be led by middle-class moralists. By 'blaming' so…

— John Fiske, amazon.com

Class Mass Audiences Media Media Wars Scapegoat

Relevance is discovered or produced by the reader; it is the moment and process of production in the cultural economy that takes the text beyond its role as commodity in the financial. Popular discrimination, then, does not operate between or within texts in terms of their quality, but rather in the…

— John Fiske, amazon.com

Defining Quality Relevance Relevant Thought Catalog

Popular discrimination is concerned with functionality rather than quality, for it is concerned with the potential uses of the text in everyday life.

— John Fiske, amazon.com

Cultural Elitism vs. Democratic Consumerism Popularity Populism Virality

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