Summary of: Adorno's 'On Popular Music' - Portfolio Task 2

Quickley read Adorno's (1941) article 'On Popular Music'. In no more than a few paragraphs summarise his ideas on pop music, concentrating on highlighting key points such as 'standardisation.

Adorno believes that there are 'two spheres of music'. He calls these, serious and popular music. In this article, Adorno talks about the differences between the two. He talks about 'standardisation', how all popular music is the same. It repeatedly uses the same subjects and the same rules.

In comparison, he says that every detail of a serious piece of music is unique, if notes were missing the music would not be the same. Unlike popular music where, 'every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine' (Adorno, On Popular Music, 1941). Therefore, to listen to this music you don't need to think or be engaged.

As all popular music is 'standardised', the listener has the same reaction to all songs in a particular genre, regardless of the song, lyrics or artist. Because they all sound the same, it makes popular music easy to sell. The costumer doesn't have to think, they know they like that type of music, so they buy it.

Post a link to a Youtube pop video that, in your opinion, epitomises Adorno's sentiments. Explain why, trying to emphasise the links to the wider 'culture industry' in general.

Taylor Swift- Love Story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xg3vE8Ie_E&feature=artistob&playnext=1&list=TLSbx3q4AW0JI

This is a good example of popular music. The song is 'standardised' and the story and characters of the song can be seen in countless others. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they get together in the end (happy ending). The song has about 7 versus and a chorus that is repeated until the last one where its slightly different. These 'standardised' songs follow the same rules and patterns so even though you may of only heard it once, you instantly recognise it and like it.

This song plays on every girls dream/fairytale of falling in love and living happily ever after. Makes us feel like this is what we should aim for/have, '..their response to music immediately expresses their desire to obey' (Adorno, On Popular Music, 1941). Adorno believes that listening to this sort of music is an escapism and that this 'sentimental music lies rather in the temporary release given to the awareness that one has missed fulfillment' (Adorno, On Popular Music, 1941)

Lecture 2

11/11/10

CRITICAL POSITIONS ON THE MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE

-What is culture? complicated

word in our language to define

-Definition- general process of spiritual and aesthetic development of a particular society at a particular time.

-Particular way of life

-Works of intellectual and especially artistic significance

- Marx's concept of Base / Superstructure (communist manifesto)

-Base -Determine content + form of- Superstructure

-Superstructure -Reflects form of + legitimizes- Base

-Ideology - 1) system of ideas/b

eliefs, 2) distortion/selection of ideas (propaganda)

-Pyramid of Capitalist system

Bourgeoisie/Bourgois - working class

-Marx 'ruling class controls/ dominates culture'

-Definitions - 'popular'

-Well liked by many

-Inferior kinds of work (mass not kitch)

-Work deliberately setting out to win favour with the people

-Culture actually made for people for themselves: made by people for people

-High culture- famous painting, popular culture-making copies, paint by numbers

-High culture-Banksy piece, Popular culture-Graffitti

-Industrialisation brought separation of class.

-Traditional vs. Popular culture

-Culture and anarchy, Matthew Arnold (1867)

-Culture-study of perfection

-"best that has been thought and said in the world"

-pursuit of culture

-seeks "to minister the diseased spirit of our time"

-Culture polices 'the raw and uncultivated masses'

-Uncultured should strive to be like cultured not create their own culture

-Arnoldism

-F.R. Leavis + Q.D. Leavis = Leavisism

-20th Century sees cultural deadline

-Collapse of traditional authority comes at the same time as mass democracy

-Popular culture-books, films, advertising

-Frankfurt school- Critical Theory, institute social research, uni of frankfurt, 1923-33

-Rise of national socialism

-New York 1933-47

-Adorno, Horkheimer, reinterpreted Marx for 20th C (late capitalism)

-All mass culture is identical

-Homogeneity + Predictability

-Conformity not anarchy

-Herbert Marcuse, Depoliticises working class

-Che Guevar t shirt

- X Factor/Big Brother= way to success is join in gameshow instead of education

-Authentic (real, european) culture vs. mass culture

-Multidimensional

-Imagination, Autonomous

-Adorno 'On popular music'

-Walter Benjamin-Work of art of mechanical reproduction (1936)

-Concept of 'aura'

-Mona Lisa - dont know what it means socially but we know its important

-Challenges high culture, when appears on t shirts books plates

-Birmingham school

Contextual & Theoretical Studies Year 2 - Lecture 1

4/11/2010

PANOPTICISM - SURVEILLANCE AND SOCIETY

- The Panopticon- Jere

my Benthams 1791

- Michael Foucault (1926-198

4)

Madness & Civilisation (book by Foucault)

- Village idiot's used to be laughed/with not outcasts, late 1600's this changed..

- 'Houses of correction' - to curb unemployment + idleness, criminals

This didn't work and the criminals affected the non criminals and so on

- Birth of the Asylum - patients split up so cant influence one another

- The emergance of knowledge/ Doctors + Physciatrists seen as 'gods'

- End of the pillory/ guillotine/ hung drawn and quartered, not physical punishment anymore, now modern discipline, keep u

s under

survallience, improve ourselves

- Millbank prison (modern prison) opposite of dungens where the person is shut away/hidden/forgotten

- Panopticon - always being watched/reforms them/ self regulation through fear of being watched

- No panoptic prisons any more as see

n as torture

- Modern panopticism = open plan offices / The office

- Factories with balconys

- Security cameras

- Google streets/ strange things on here car on fire

- Pentonville prison

- Brotherton Library

- CCTV panoptic gaze

- Archive of looked at websites, emails on computers

- Guy arrested for terrorist activity from his list of website history

- Docile bodies - easy to control/ controllable to surveyor/ self monitoring

- Gym is panoptic

- TV - very panoptic

- "Where there is power, there is resistance" Foucault

- Resistance vs. submission

- Men watch women, women watch themselves being looked at.

- Facebook - EXTREMELY panoptic

- Bruce Nauman (1960's) video corridor pieces

- Art gallery = Institution

- Chris Burden - Samson (1985)

Contextual & Theoretical Studies Portfolio (Vis Com Year 2 Task 1)

Choose an example of one aspect of contemporary culture that is, in your opinion, panoptic. Write an explanation of this, in approximately 100-200 words, employing key Foucauldian language, such as 'Docile Bodies' or 'self-regulation, and using not less than 5 quotes from the text'Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading Images', NY, Palgrave McMillan.

Mobile Phones

Mobile phones are a modern day example of Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon was a circular prison where the prisoners in cells around the building were constantly observed by guards in the central tower, which is a complete opposite of the dungeons, which were “to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p64). The prison was based on the theory of Panopticism founded by Michael Foucault.

Mobile phones are a perfect example of this, as we know that they can be tracked by the battery and sim card also that certain words that we say or type can be flagged up and recorded. The trackers e.g. satellites are “visible and unverifiable” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p65), meaning that we can see the satellites in spaces in photos or the Internet, yet you never know for sure if your being looked at or not.

Because we never know if we are being watched or not, we, ourselves, monitor what we say, and what words we use and therefore the person becomes “the principle of his own subjection” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p66). Instead of, for example people being punished for committing terrorism acts, the acts can be prevented as the satellite or the police can “..act even before the offences, mistakes or crimes have been committed.” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p68)

“Visibility is a trap” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p64), which creates a fear of being watched, this produces docile bodies, making people easy to control.

Bibliography

-'Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading Images', NY, Palgrave McMillan.

Portfolio Task 4

Haussmann's changes to Paris (Extra Portfolio Task)

The late nineteenth century brought a new way to how people could spend their days with the onset of urbanisation and also with world time being standardised in 1912. Due to the industrial revolution, rural workers from the countryside and abroad, poured into the major cities of the world searching for employment.

'A policy of discouraging building outside the city limits had resulted in a population of well over one million being crammed into a realtivly small area' (Tinniswood, 1998, p144). In the outer edges of paris the slums grew as the population doubled and tripled, bringing with it poor health and disease from the closeness in which the working class were forced to live. The fear of illness spreading from the slums to the richer city center, meant change was needed. Baron Haussmann was brought in by Napoleon III to remodel the city and in doing so, modernize Paris. '..According to the duc de Persigny, the Minister of the Interior, Haussmann was just the man to push through radical change' (Tinniswood, 1998, p144). Haussmannisation was the term given to this major change and it began in 1852 carrying on till after 1870. The slums were destroyed and in their place boulevards and streets were built. (PJ- Director History Department, 2002-2004)

Bibliography

• Tinniswood, A. (1998) 'Visions of Power: Ambition and Architecture from Ancient Rome to Modern Paris', London, Reed Consumer Books Ltd
• PJ- Director History Department (2002-2004) 'Paris in the 19th century: from walled city to agglomeration' [Internet], Available from: <http://www.parisrama.com/english%20version/pages_history/haussmann.htm > [Accessed 24 March 2010]
  
  

Analysis of Caillebotte's painting "Paris Street; Rainy Day" (Extra Portfolio Task)

Gustav Caillebotte’s painting “Paris Street; Rainy Day” (1877) depicts people strolling down Haussman’s boulevards in the rain. Fashion had become a status symbol which now divided the classes.'One of the first industries to flourish was luxury fabrics..' (Johnston, 2007). In this image you can tell that these people are upper class from their clothes, the males shiny top hats and tailored suits. The couple in the foreground are referred to as ‘Flaneur’s’ which was the term used for rich people that walked around the city in order to experience modernity. The overall painting resembles a photograph as the image is cropped, cutting out half the man on the right side of the image. It doesn’t look staged or set up using models, it looks like a photo that captured a moment in time. Paintings began to use the cropping technique a lot as cameras became popular.

Bibliography

• Johnston, R. (2007) 'Parisian Architecture of the Belle Epoque', West Sussex, John Wiley & Sons Ltd