Dear Soc. 199 Scholars,
In 300 words or more, using paragraph form (so, 2-3 paragraphs), please identify what you think are the strongest and weakest points of Gans' arguments about high culture and popular culture, defending your choices with examples from several parts of the reading (from pages 60-156). Also mention an interesting tangential point (minor point of information) that you remember from the reading.
Blog Post #3
ReplyDeleteOne of the strongest connections I see in Gans’ writing is his distinction between our culture and the influence of both the media and politics. Earlier in the book, I remember him saying that news stations on television and in the newspapers do not create our “moral code” per say, but that we choose certain stations to watch and certain articles to read due to our personal preference and what stations and articles line up with our morals and values. On pages 130-133, Gans’ generalizes each class and describes their stance (Right vs. Left, Conservative vs. Liberal). He tells us that generally, high cultured people are liberal, while low cultured people are more conservative, and middle cultured people are a bit of both. I found this to be an accurate observation, although not necessarily true for every human being. As I read this section of the book, I was wondering if money had an influence in this, or if there was some explanation or study behind this observation? When I first read this segment of the book, I laughed a bit because I know that sometimes I get caught up in the different sides, and thinking like a sociologist made me understand the general views of different social classes.
The weakest concept I have with Gans’ writing is his classification of “middle culture.” I understand high culture and low culture, but feel as though the middle is a little hazy. He classifies the middle culture in to two categories, both “high-middle and low-middle.” On page 106, he describes the high-middle class as people who attended the “better colleges.” Is he saying that these people went to private colleges? I guess I was not fond of his terminology. I assume this might be what he was saying because in the description of “low-middle,” he explained that most of these people went to state universities. They both seem very similar to me, so it makes it hard for me to make a distinction between the two.
What I’ve enjoyed while reading Gans’ writing is his occasional references to television shows. In this last reading, he talked briefly about Seinfeld, which has been a show that both my father and myself have enjoyed watching. He also referred to the “I Love Lucy” show, which is a favorite of mine.
- Trina Thorell
One of the most important things I got from Gans’ explanations was the huge influence that media has on culture. In today’s society, especially, the media has a huge impact on every aspect of a person’s life. The media can take many forms. It is seen in books, television, magazines, billboards, movie theatres, etc. Media can be sometimes good and sometimes it can be bad. It can influence greatly the ideas that one has about many things in a person’s life. These ideas can range from body image to the greatest craze in food. Since media plays such a huge part in a person’s life, it is expected to have highs and lows. Sometimes media can have positive feedback, such as the Dove commercial, which is an advertisement for true beauty. This ad is very inspiring to many women regardless of weight or even race. Although media can be good, most times it can have bad influences. The most popular bad influence is the one seen where young girls strive for that “model” type body. The most important aspect of media that I took away from this chapter was that not all media is bad and media is a huge influence of the ideas people have.
ReplyDeleteThe think the thing that lacks in Gans’ arguments is the whole high and low culture and the cross over between them. I understand the concept of high culture. High culture is more focused on those people who have an appreciation for art and music, those people who enjoy a good symphony or art gallery. I also understand low culture. Low culture is seen as middle or lower class standards. These people don’t necessarily appreciate or understand the concept of music or the beauty of art. The thing that I don’t understand is the middle culture (between high and low culture). I also don’t understand the lower high culture or the higher lower culture? I think that these arguments that Gans has aren’t supported well enough.
I would have to agree with Trina and say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading when Gans mentioned famous television shows. I love watching re-runs of “I Love Lucy” and when these were mentioned, I got sucked into the reading.
One of the strongest connections I see that Gans is able to make is how he connects old high culture and popular culture to that of the cultures that are present in todays society. He does a really nice job of describing the rise of these two cultures on pages 65-66. Here he states how popular culture was originally folk culture that altered and grew when farmers were forced to integrate into the city life. This new culture grew because of the pure numbers of peasants that had "free time and disposable for their own art and entertainment" thus they shed folk culture and began buying popular culture. Gans also describes how as peasants began to increase the city numbers how the rich with the high culture began to lose income thus high culture had to adapt to survive the rise of popular culture. That artist’s began creating not for others, but for themselves and their peers. Another strong point that Gans makes (pg. 76) is how popular culture is a more user-oriented and the fact that popular culture survives to satisfy audience values and wishes. Because of this high culture must attack popular culture to retain its audience or it will slowly die out.
ReplyDeleteOne of the weak points in Gans argument is that he often throws around different words that refer to the same thing such as he describes (pg. 93) taste cultures or publics. These are just different versions of the high and popular cultures which can lead to confusion. I like that he is thoroughly describing popular and high culture, but he constantly changes his terminology and it’s hard to follow. I also don’t like how he throws in middle culture and though he spends time talking about it from pages 100-114 he doesn’t get very clear and it lead to a lot of confusion for me.
I really enjoy how Gans uses different references to different forms of entertainment like different comic strips, poetry (T.S. Elliot pg. 95), books, and musicals or plays (Hair pg. 109.) I think by doing this he better solidifies the different cultures by giving descriptions that I for one find very valuable.
(I don’t have access to a hard copy of the book this week, and the digital version that I am using has a different page numbering system. I have done my best to estimate page numbers, but some of them may be a little off.)
ReplyDeleteI don’t know if it’s necessarily the most important point, but my favorite point and one of the strongest points Gans makes is that about the culture currently being supplied. Around page 79, he mentions that today’s culture is “less sophisticated or complicated, or tasteful, or thoughtful, or statusful than a past one.” The suppliers of entertainment are essentially “dumbing down” their products. I agree that much of today’s culture requires less brain power than that of previous eras. Music, especially, seems to have succumbed to this the most. Song lyrics of today’s popular music is mostly repetitive, clichéd, and unintuitive, whereas music from the past actually meant something.
One of the weakest points of the book seems to be the author’s wording in regards to high culture. I feel that one of the flaws in society is that it is so caught up with classes and certain people being better or holding more importance than others. Reinforcing the stereotype that high culture tends to invite more sophisticated audiences just alienates the average person from attending an event that might put him or her outside of that comfort zone of familiarity. On approximately page 105, Gans mentions that high culture is typically considered “serious,” sending those seeking entertainment to the popular culture events. I feel that he focuses too little on how fun can be had at high culture events. Gans may believe that entertainment is not exclusive to popular culture, but he should make this point clearer.
I found it quite interesting when Gans talked about “word of mouth” having more of an effect than what the published critics have to say. I would tend to agree with this because I discovered some of my favorite tv shows not through magazines and professional reviews, but via the internet and the opinions of ordinary people who share similar interests with me.
Gan's arguments about high culture have weak points and strong points. Gan’s stated that high culture has become less visible than when he first wrote the book Popular and High Culture. He thinks that high culture has become more popular due to the idea of higher education. I agree with the idea that many high culture has survived only by attracting the upper-middle classes. The upper and middle classes have allowed the high culture to strive.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy the phrase “the big money these days comes increasingly from corporations seeking to improve their image or goodwill, most notably when they are fighting huge public and private lawsuits for health and environmental offenses.” (Gans, 149) The idea that high culture and popular cultures are stereotypes is a very important view. I think high culture can fade and then come back to show its importance. With popular culture it is just a fad that changes with the visions of society. Gans states that culture is coherent with social class.
Gans states that popular culture is an industry organized for profit. I agree with the idea of popular culture is for profit. Many things are invented so people will want what the newest product is that is out. Popular culture is also more standardized. It has to relate to other cultures by making stereotypical characters and plots. I think the idea that popular culture borrows content from high culture. High culture can be the popular culture because high culture finds the newest fads and sets the trends for the popular culture. I agree with Gans on the topics of high and popular culture. I think the two of them collaborate to create the cultures separately.
When reading this section, I found it to be difficult to detect strong and weak points, as I read this like it was an informational read and not an argument. This being said, I will do my best to complete this assignment.
ReplyDeleteI believe Gans' strongest point was his ability to identify the characters of each class. It was apparent that he gave careful consideration to the personalities of the people who would occupy the invisible layers of this “taste culture”. In the High Culture category, he titles the domineering entities “creators” and “critics”. They are only serious artists, writers, and people of the same mind. The other “users”, as Gans likes to call them, are either creator-oriented (do no creating of their own, but looking at the world through a creator's perspective) or user-oriented (not creators at all; rather, partakers). As for the Upper-Middle Culture, these are described as being people who are executives, professionals, managers, and the spouses of each that have attended the more prestiges colleges and universities. Gans says that they are not satisfied by High Culture, despite being well-educated. The Lower-Middle Culture is equivalent to America's chief population today. They are lower- to middle-class citizens that are employed as accountants, public school teachers and the like. Lower-Middle Culture has learned to appreciate High and Upper-Middle culture after many years of being completely against it. Now onto the Lower Culture. Gans tell us that this class consists of lower-middle class personages that work in factories or the service industry. And finally, Gans labels the bottom rung Quasi-Folk Low Culture. The people who make up this category are the poor and less fortunate that hold what Gans calls “unskilled blue collar and service jobs”. Their education ended in grade school, he says, and they are mostly of ethnicities that are not caucasian.
Although he gives very good descriptions of the dominant flavors that stew in the pot of each culture, he fails to really delve into the ethnographics of them. Gans makes note of this on page 100 before he starts his dissection of the classes, but overall I believe that had he chosen to include the characterization of the ethnicities involved, that would have really helped him and gave him a stronger basis for his analysis.
Something I really found interesting as I was reading was the mentioning of the type of plot and characters required in the reading of High Culture and Upper-Middle Culture. He says on page 101, “[High Culture's] standards for substance are less variable; they almost always place high value on the careful communication of mood and feeling, on introspection rather than action, and on subtlety, so that much of the culture's content can be perceived and understood on several levels. High culture fiction emphasizes character development over plot, and the exploration of basic philosophical, psychological, and social issues, with heroes and heroines of novels and plays often modeled on the creators themselves. Thus, much high culture fiction deals with individual alienation and the conflict between individual and society, reflecting the marginal role of the creator in contemporary society.”
And about Upper-Middle culture he says (on page 107), “Upper-middle fiction emphasizes plot more than mood and character development, although heroes and heroines are more important than in high culture. In content, upper-middle fiction reflects the permanent and current interests of its public, which in turn reflects that public's economic and other roles in society.”
All in all, this was an interesting topic, and I luxuriated in (don't you just LOVE thesauruses?) the new information.
I thought the reading for this discussion was fascinating because it opened my eyes and gave me a new and broader view of culture. I think most people believe since we all live in one country or state that we automatically all share the same culture. However, while reading Gans’ arguments he points out several high and low points of culture. He describes the difference between our culture and the influence that the media and our politics have on us. During his argument, he also explains how high culture is when someone is liberal and low culture is when someone is conservative. However, when discussing middle culture he says that they are a little of both and in the middle. I thought he did a good job explaining the rise of high and popular culture on pages 65 –66. He also brought up a subject that I have heard a lot about in my other sociology classes, which is the term moral code. Moral code simply defines a persons morals or vales. The media is all around us and sadly there is just no escaping it. There are things such as; billboards, television, magazines, radio, Internet, etc. Even though we can pick what television show we watch and what radio stations we listen to there is always going to be the media that you can’t escape. I think today we live in a society that is so fascinated by other people’s lives, which would explain why reality television shows are so popular and seem to have taken over television sets around the world. Also, today when we hear about an athlete, political person, or anyone else that is in the public eye having sexual affairs everyone wants to know everything about it and wants to point fingers. However, if it was the neighbor down the street sending nude pictures to a girl on the internet most of wouldn’t care or pay much attention to it.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I thought this was a very interesting read, I wish he had explained the meaning of middle culture more in detail. I understand it’s between high and low culture, however I don’t feel like he gave it as much concern as the others or took much time explaining it. My favorite part was listening to him discuss television shows because I love watching television shows because it can remind you a lot of your past. I know when I turn on certain shows; I automatically think about what grade I was in and where I lived. It’s a good way to recall memories of our past. Sadly, the generation of the children that are growing up now have mostly reality shows and contest shows like American Idol so it would be interesting to see what they have to say about their television shows growing up as a child.