Student’s Full Name: Mohamed zoubir S5-B

Code apogee: 21004867

CHAPTER 4: THE PRODUCTION OF POPULAR CULTURE

The production of popular culture main argument is that in order to truly understand the

different varieties of objects and things we consume be it music, fashion or digital products

we must first analyze the powerful economic and industrial systems that produce them,

which is often highly emphasized in trading site or economical trade markets stating that

the size of the contribution of popular culture to the overall economy increase each year

and it’s contribution to the gross domestic product placing at the front of our modern age

economical landscape, this connection between culture and profit lead to a timeless

paradox where one helped the other to exist and thrive, for example the market rise of the

1990s that was largely caused by popular culture milestones providing the road map for

future services, experiences and goods, which was further globalized by the rise of the

internet, leading new investors to believe that there was money to be made, causing a high

investments when it comes to the technological sector such as hardware, fiber optics and

signal towers, while others invested on mediums that inhabited this new shift to create

new cultural experiences for the people, either self-development podcast for the men

which leans into the communication aspect, or for example shopping online for the women

which leans into the accessibility aspect. These cultural experiences wouldn’t be able to

flourish without financial investment and at the same time, there wouldn’t be no need for

this whole technological advancement of the sector if there was no public interest these

technologies enable, depending on the perspective we can notice that the economy is
highly dependent on cultural, this is widely apparent when major companies try to use a

cultural reference that is popular among the people in order to seem relatable or down to

earth which showcases how culture has become increasingly important to CEO’s and

management consultants, transforming it from folk authentic culture to mass culture which

is a negative term that refers to culture as mass produced and distributed by large

corporation for a mass audience contrasting the authentic folk culture or the highly

esteemed high culture which is reserved for the elite according to Matthew Arnold. This

focus on the relation between money and popular culture is often shown in the discussion

about the production of culture to begin with, the chapter highlights this aspect by

showcasing the everyday news coverage of culture in the media, while websites and

newspapers share ratings reviews about a specific movie, they also share incomes and

sales of the movie incorporating the economical aspect of culture. For example, the

Hollywood box office revenues are reported with detail and financial news articles analyze

the impact of piracy on its impact, suggesting that this phenomenon has lead most people

to know more about a cultural product impact or commercial performance than I’s actual

content, for example a song you first hear in the grammies so you give it a try or a movie

you never heard of till it is shown in the Oscars, many people know which films were box-

office hits or aware of the controversies surrounding a video game like *Grand theft Auto*

or *Manhunt* without seeing the film or playing the game, which makes these products

mainly known for their financial and cultural impact being a closely linked points,

demonstrating how their identity is shaped by the system of production and distribution

before they get to be experienced by that audience. This focus on the economics of culture

can spark a debate between artists and business men asking the question; is financial
success crucial for the artistic vision to thrive or the other way around? This perspective is

manifested through the inverse relationship theory, where a cultural product commercial

success is seen as a direct indicator of it’s decline in quality or authenticity. We can take an

example from our own popular culture discourse, the early works of the rap singer

“LMorphine” mainly naming *morphinia 17* and *passe simple* are deemed as cult classics

being valorized over his later more commercially successful mainstream work, meaning an

artist is labeled underground and cool until he works with corporations with

advertisements than he gets exposed to a border audience while his words and the way he

carries himself changes in order to appeal to theses corporations which are highly driven

by sales and PR, and the this is manifested on the same artist after doing an advertisement

with a private company “CIH BANK” the public perception around him changed. The

chapter critiques this simple formula through three key reasons. The first be it that often

this perspective is driven in the elite class, which automatically name it as the “ masses” be

it uncultured without taste leading it to refuse popular culture and its audiences not taking

their opinions seriously, secondly the claim of culture being highly driven by sales taking

the history of “Hollywood” cinema which many people say it’s a system designed for profit

but through history it has produced countless films that are both critical and popular

success praised from the people and the movie critics such as “The Godfather”, proving that

commercial production and artistic vision can be shipped together. Third, this view relies

on a romanticized myth of the artist who is free from financial concerns but in reality the

artist lives in a economically driven reality what ever art is produced it is contained within

an economic systems where money is the central motivating factor, going back to the

example of the rap singer “LMorphine” he stated that each year he will release a song
naming it *morphinia ( a number based on his age)* creating a creative narrative where in

these yearly songs he talks about the past social and political events in the country while

putting his own personal reflection on it, but in a yearly sales based economy it could be a

way to stay relevant and maintain his presences in a competition driven scene, by

countering this theory we can see a more nuanced perspective, based on that we can argue

that we can not judge as cultural product as bad or just because it’s commercially

successful or produced with corporations. Leading to a stronger framework for

understanding this system which is the Frankfurt School culture industry thesis developed

by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. This theory provides a structural system for

understanding how economics directly decide cultural content and the global social

attitude towards it. Horkheimer and Adorno theory contrasts with Mathew Arnold

definition of culture being the best that has been thought and known at a specific

community in a specific point in time, in order to highlight their theory they purposeful

fused two separate words not often associated with each other “culture” and “industry” in

there work “Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)” which created the term culture industry to

intentionally dismantle the global belief that people have when it comes to popular culture

be it natural or authentic way of expression by the people for the people, but instead they

argued that it is the pre-determined by profit driven companies. Horkheimer and Adorno

work writing in the aftermath of the brutal World War II and the holocaust, they were

seeking to understand why the enlightenment modernism which was categorized by

rationality, reason and logic while promising human progress and freedom, has been

transformed into the new form of domination, they identified it as the instrumental

rationality instead of being a form of reason it instead become a tool for finding the most
efficient means to a predetermined end like profit or control, while at the same time

forgetting to question the moral or human value of those means themselves, when it comes

to this historical context the culture industry is the primary tool of social control not

functioning as enlightenment but for mass deception which was later questioned with the

age of postmodernism, Horkheimer and Adorno detailed the real life functionality of this

theory of deception through three main ways; first is by the standardization of culture it

becomes produced by a specific formula becoming predictable in order to guarantee

market success and minimize economic risk, for example we can see that in the video

games industry in order to produce one AAA game (AAA is measurement referring to the

scale of the game which is the highest quality) it takes game studios a lot of time and a lot of

money so most companies tend to make games that are guaranteed to sell in order to

satisfy investor but at the same time limiting there creative spirit by not taking any risks

defeating the whole purpose of the cultural impact, and pseudo-individualization which is a

slight variation of the same manipulative system .secondly it creates a false need that

deceives the public by offering an illusion of choice and agency but in reality it only serves

to distract them from their exploitation and lack of power or personal choice in this

capitalist driven society, thirdly it reinforces the status Quo which serves the powerful, by

promoting passivity, conformity and the acceptance of these capitalist social relations

without critical thinking, the cultural industry can sneakily manufacture ideologies of the

ruling class, it makes the existing social and economic system appear natural and

unchangeable, as stated by cultural theorist Ronald Barthes this dominant cultural

discourse can create images that also carry myths enabling us to naturalize these cultural

ideas and political ideas to be seen as normal and natural which ultimately prevents us
from critically thinking about them or questioning them. Despite its powerful model for

understanding structural domination of cultural production the culture industry thesis has

some significant limitations, facing three major criticisms mainly being critiqued as elitist

for portraying audiences as passive receivers, universally controlled by the ideological

messages embedded in mass culture. This perspective contrasts Stuart Hall “encoding and

decoding” model, Hall argued that the meaning of a cultural text or message is not fixed by

its production which encoding but is created when it is consumed by that audience

“decoding” and can be interpreted differently depending on the position of the receiver and

whether they adopt it or not, having different degrees; dominant reading, negotiated

reading and oppositional reading.