F. R. Levis Minority Culture

Bulman explains, “I analyze these films as data, as cultural artifacts, to see what patterns and trends they reveal…I intend to gain access to certain aspects of American society through the myths that Americans tell to them in the movies (12).”Therefore, this shows how the division of social groups and economic inequality plays a role in our perception of American society. Bulman introduces his topics of different social school by separating each and dismembering them WORK ON INTR

In the first chapter of The Rhetorical Power of Pop Culture by Deanna Sellnow, the author defines popular culture and explains the importance of studying the subject. Sellnow begins with a short explanation of ethics to convey that the influence popular culture has is not always used ethically. Secondly, Sellnow compares the different contexts of culture, elitist and diversity, to explain what popular culture is not. Popular culture is compiled of everyday things that influence people through subtle messages such as what is appropriate and inappropriate, good and bad, and so on.

The culture industry affects everything in today’s society. Adorno states, “The whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry” (99). Everywhere people go, there are billboards, commercials, and advertisements that demand their attention. Before seeing a movie, one must sit through previews of other movies that may interest them, as the theater hopes that the moviegoer returns to watch another movie. In the culture industry, people no longer exist as individuals. They only exist as objects that increase the wealth of the big business owners that control this capitalistic society. Because no one contests the existence of the culture industry, the culture industry can continue to exist. About the film and radio industries, Adorno states, “They call themselves industries, and the published figures for their directors’ incomes quell any doubts about the social necessity of their finished products” (95). Creating unique and groundbreaking films in today’s world is considered “risky,” and filmmakers would rather create sequels to films that were successful in the box office. People excitedly consume these sequels and the directors make huge profits, thereby ensuring yet another sequel to be made. Adorno also points out that the film and radio

The film "Thunder Heart" contained numerous viewpoints identified with society arranging issues in regions, for example, Politics and political defilement, Education, Cultural arousing and Social system. Thunder heart investigates common points, for example, segregation, political activism and homicide. The film collected a few grant designations from the Political Film Society. Thunder heart, Ray Levoi changes his previous social personality of being F.B.I. Specialists to his social personality of being part Sioux Indian. Since this is a film about white government authorities connecting with Native Americans the component of preference turns into a focal subject. This article will examine these society issues arranging issues with connection to the film and in connection to Gary R. Weaver 's article "American Cultural Values".

Hook: Historically, the minority cultures have fought for their freedoms. Most of them have been oppressed and force them to stay in the underclass of society, consequently, they will be unrecognized or assimilated by the rest of the country.

It is accessible to the masses regardless of their educational or intellectual level, it simplifies complex issues to an accessible model, which does not require the consumer to employ critical thinking, and finally, popular culture appeals to the Categorical Imperative within a consumer, bypassing any reflective thought process. Feature films, by definition are expressions of the popular culture. During the 1950’s and 1960’s, Western movies as a rule, portrayed the Natives as disorganized savages, underdeveloped humans, or at best as “Noble Savages”. Subsequently, the image of the Indian that formed in audiences’ minds was one of pity at best, and animosity at the worst. It is worth mentioning, because it illustrates the power of popular movies to disseminate a certain image or idea in the minds of the audience. On the other hand, documentaries are of interest to relatively small percent of the audience, who are already interested in these issues, (perhaps through a popular movie or a college class on the Native American history) and willing to explore the subject further through documentary films, archives, statistics and so

North American mass culture is continuing to evolve, causing debate about the quality of media being exposed to the public. The debate of mass culture can be perceived in many different ways. Fiedler and Shils suggest that mass culture can be broken down into three categories; Refined, Brutal, and Mediocre. The “Refined” category focuses on excellence, the “Brutal” category focuses on vulgar subject matter, and the mediocre category focuses on both.(Shils 1978)(Fiedler 1957) The shift from Refined Culture to Brutal and Mediocre Culture can be seen as the beginning of a “Mass Culture.”

In today 's society, culture is impacting our everyday life, experience and social relations; we are all categorized by our cultural “groups”, but this has changed rapidly throughout the years from one generation to the next. Cultural studies were developed in the late 1950’s, through the 1970’s by the British academic scholars. The British scholars were able engaged cultural analysis and the developed then transformed of the different fields, for example, politically, theoretically and empirically that are now represented around the world.

This article explains the use of power in film and tv, where different social groups have more power over others. It defines Hegemony as “dominance and subordination in the field of relations structured by power”, simply explaining that one social group will dominate over another. He explains how this works in film, as mass media assists in popularising the “elites” morality. He gives an example of American Children’s TV shows, where by 1990 they consisted on toy-based programmes as a way of marketing and influencing children, as an example of how hegemony is in our daily lives.

To avoid the one-sidedness of textual analysis approaches, or audience and reception studies, I propose that cultural studies itself be multiperspectival, getting at culture from the perspectives of political economy, text analysis, and audience reception, as outlined above. Textual analysis should utilize a multiplicity of perspectives and critical methods, and audience reception studies should delineate the wide range of subject positions, or perspectives, through which audiences appropriate culture. This requires a multicultural approach that sees the importance of analyzing the dimensions of class, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexual preference within the texts of media culture, while studying as well their impact on how audiences

From this analysis, we can see that the media has done a god job in shaping public opinion and even though it has also done a commendable job enlightening the masses and promoting social freedom; its success is not true in the case of portraying the true picture regarding culture and social classes. Gans (1999) identifies that the points of view expressed by popular culture is a fallacy and a creation of the writers and journalists who write about popular culture. Often, they have been criticized by critics of popular culture that they have failed to conform to the principles of high culture and therefore they criticize it. Much to their advantage, they have been given the time of day because their audience is essentially people of low culture (the masses) and therefore they have found a big market for their works. This situation, has even led to the arrogance of some writers and journalists of popular culture who have stated in the past that so long as their audience buys their works, proponents of the high culture are either wrong or irrelevant (Gans 1999, p.

Adorno and Horkheimer suggest ideology as the reason dominant culture industries are able to sustain themselves. They argue that “The culture industry tends to make itself the embodiment of authoritative pronouncements, and thus the irrefutable prophet of the prevailing order” (Adorno and Horkheimer 17). Thus, we can think of these “authoritative pronouncements” as methods Hollywood employs to sustain its dominance. By proclaiming a certain set of ideas which convinces the public that no other authority or ideas exist otherwise, Hollywood mystifies and obfuscates all other traces of thought. It normalizes its manipulation of the public by ostracizing other values and ideas outside the predominant notions of standardization and mass production.

Within its many forms, subsets, and purposes, Culture has long been an object of investigation, dissection, and interpretation across various facets in business, literature, and everyday lives. It encompasses the most direct and contemporary aspects of our lives via entertainment, sports, news, music, politics, technology, fashion and more. As many of us have ventured into these outlets and taken interest (and obsession) with things within them, we are able to take what is being ‘sold’ to us and form our own meanings and also, create new ones. In the process of building upon our own interpretations and values based on these things we so strongly associate with, many of us have become part of a subset(s) within these

The study of popular culture is useful in many ways. To be more specific, this course has reached its three intended main ideas: what it means to be American, how to be more consumption-conscious, and how to apply these studies in our own lives. Jim Cullen puts this in a less specific sense, arguing that the study of popular culture can “afford valuable clues – about collective fears, hopes, and debates” (Cullen, The Art of Democracy, 2). We use these clues to understand the world around us, as well as why we do what we do as Americans and as humans. I will be touching on themes that relate to this quotation by Cullen, escapism, exploitation, and globalization, as well as how these themes relate to the course goals.

The analysis on the construction and dissemination of cultural values, ideologies, and hierarchies is as varied as the historian. Again semantics and semiotics, important issues to understand the full web of the “word-concept” culture, dominate much of the theory and practice. The most common debates are over naming eras and redefining terms like popular, culture, popular culture, etc. Despite the debate, the historiography maintains four important foci for the construction of cultural values: industrialization and the Progressive Era, the influence of industrialized media, the concept of shifting contexts, and a reference an attempt to identify the “word-concept” of “the people”. Like the construction, the dissemination of cultural values has a historiography filled with competing ideologies on semantics and time frames, but there is one important disseminator of cultural values that nearly every historian, theorist, and critic agrees is primarily essential: the media. Interpreted broadly, media refers to any host of dissemination avenues, from Shakespearian plays to blue jeans and shopping malls, from museums to movies. Whether popular, mass, folk, or highbrow, American cultural values connect with “the people” consistently through varied forms of media messaging.