Reception Theory
A body of research that focuses on what audiences do with popular culture. The important thing which distinguishes this body of work from the rest is its foundational axiom that audiences are active, not passive, consumers of pop culture. They do not simply accept what is being sold to them, as Adorno and Horkheimer worried, but rather incorporate or reject what they seeexplores the ways in which audiences create meaning in popular culture. Whether these meanings are aligned with or different from those intended by cultural producers, reception research (and its cousin,media effects research) demonstrates that the processes of meaning creation are not automatic/robotic, but complex,and based on more than just the cultural product; the ways in which that product is embedded in peoples'everyday lives are of central importance.
Media Effects Theory
The way the media perceives something will have an effect of the way the public perceives something. Which attempts to find causation between pop culture consumption and behavioral and ideological changes. All of the examples concern romantic popular culture, from romance novels to rom-coms.
Romance industrial complex
The idea here is that romance novels are part of a cultural world where true expression, creativity, originality, etc. did not matter. The only thing that mattered was getting the book out under budget, and selling as much as possible. Perhaps the economic logic of the production of the books crept in to our ideas about love as well: we are not capable of love anymore, only well-trained customers for love experiences
What is the central difference between hegemony research and media effects research?
Hegemony research is interested in ideology, while media effects research is interested in behavior.
Hegemony is a form of domination that Gramsci famously defined as "the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent. Indeed, the attempt is always made to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent of the majority""Hegemony implies a willing agreement by people to be governed by principles, rules, and laws they believe operate in their best interests, even though in actual practice they may not.
Gramsci/Burawoy
Hegemony in any political context is indeed fragile. It requires renewal and modification through the assertion and reassertion of power.
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Counter-hegemony
Counter-hegemonic tendencies do not inhere solely in texts. They are formulated in processes of communication-in the interpretations, social circulation, and uses of media content. As with the American soldiers' use of military gas masks as inhaling devices to heighten the effect of marijuana smoke, or the homeless's transformation of supermarket shopping carts into personal storage vehicles, ideological resistance and appropriation frequently involve reinventing institutional messages for purposes that differ greatly from their creators' intentions. Expressions of the dominant ideology are sometimes reformulated to assert alternative, often completely resistant or contradictory messages. • Furthermore, resistance to hegemony is not initiated solely by media consumers. Texts themselves are implicated. Ideology can never be stated purely and simply. Ways of thinking are always reflexive and embedded in a complex, sometimes contradictory, ideological regress
Queering
acts and ideas that resist heteronormativity by challenging the gender and sexuality binaries.concerning the representation of marginalized groups in popular culture.
Queer Theory
The central tenet of queer theory is that there is tremendous power in what gets defined as normal, and tremendous adversity for those identified as not-normal; readers will surely note similarities with hegemony.Queer theory argues that sex, gender, and sexuality, like identity, are not automatic and natural, but socially constructed in interaction. Nonetheless, it is obvious that certain expectations, associations, ideas and practices are normative and common
Discourse Theory
These theories talk about language as being made up of discourses, ways of seeing the world, which position the language user as well as the receiver, and influence the individual and collective understanding of self and reality (Pahl and Rowsell). These discourses wield different amounts of power and influence, depending on their cultural dominance at any one moment in time. Discourses and associated identities vie for power in the open market of culture. • "The notion of discourses is particularly exciting for the study of language such as rap lyrics because • 1) discourses and their associated identities tell a great deal about the values of an individual or culture when analyzed, and • 2) discourses' and identities' influential and dynamic nature means that if enough people use a discourse, it can make a change in people's thinking, identities, and the language itself.
Colonized viewing
Over time, these representations contribute to a mainstream televisual landscape that encourages audiences to engage in colonized viewing. Such viewers simply watch the programming, do not question what is said or not said, do not situate the representations of redface within their larger historical and social contexts, and do not try to interpret or formulate a way of reading the televisual content that can move them toward decolonizing their minds
Decolonized viewing
the intelligent, calculated, and active resistance to the forces of colonialism that perpetuate the subjugation and/or exploitation of our minds, bodies, and lands." Located within this larger project, decolonized viewing is a critical approach of resistance to subjugating and dehumanizing content found on American television's channels of colonialism. In line with poststructuralist thought, it also is a process of respectful intervention into audiences' rational sense-making practices of television""decolonized viewing holds critics responsible for their ignorance as well as image-makers accountable for their (mis)perceptions and (mis)representations of Native Peoples
Globalization
Globalization refers to today's heightened mobility of people, money, goods, culture, and media across international borders. There is nothing new about the concept of globalization[.] But globalization in the new millennium represents an intensification of worldwide networks, markets and exchanges that have truly revolutionized the culture of everyday life around the globe, as we will discuss at the conclusion of this chapter, the environmental future of this planet.Three forms of globalization have been important to the pop culture world. The first, as indicated above, is economic globalization, which has been happening in some form throughout human history, but is now at fever pitch. The second form, which emerged in the late 20th century, is globalization as a process whereby the USA projects and imposes its cultural on the rest of the world. The third form is called glocalization, and refers to how global culture is "domesticated" for local contexts.
Economic Globalization
The increasing integration and interdependence of national economies around the world.
Americanization
Belief that assimilating immigrants into American society would make them more loyal citizens
Glocalization
The process by which people in a local place mediate and alter regional, national, and global processes.Now it is certainly true that we can travel around the world while never being too far from signs of American commodities. What is not true, however, is that commodities equal culture. Globalization is not simply the production of a homogenized American global village in which the particular is washed away by the universal. The process is much more contradictory and complex, involving the ebb and flow of both homogenizing and heterogenizing forces and the meeting and mingling of the "local" and "global" in new forms of hybrid cultures."Glocalization refers to the way that in the contemporary world, cultural products, like others, cannot simply be imposed on other cultures, but must be adapted and modified. While the USA still distributes a tremendous amount of its culture to the rest of the world, it changes up the products to pay respects to, and thus sell better in, other countries. We will look at this process of transforming culture for local contexts in terms of The Transformers films.
Tentpole Films
-Expensive films expected to earn a great deal of money and help support other studio activities-Often pre-sold properties, major stars, "spectacular," and can be merchandized/marketableTentpole movies are movies that are intended to be so successful that they will spawn tons of ancillary revenue that can support the rest of the studio's work, and make large profits. Films, as it turns out, are incredibly risky, because despite the billions spent on trying to figure it out, no one can predict a hit. As such, more and more money is spent on advertising and other costs to promote the movie. The general rule now is that a movie must make triple its budget to cover its production and promotional costs in order to turn a profit.