Television Lecture

In the late 1940s, two-thirds of the population had never seen a television. By 1960 72% had access to ITV or BBC. People immediately identified with TV and it quickly moved from being a luxury to a necessity. Some of the most popular shows of the time were game shows, soaps, and American crime dramas. In the 1950s Opportunity Knocks, an older version of X Factor, pulled in 20 million viewers. Coronation Street, which premiered on the 9th of December 1960, was popular among the working class. By October 1961 it also had 20 million viewers. Still on the air, it is Britain's most popular programme.
BBC viewers were more middle class than ITV viewers. BBC became worried by ITV and added chat shows and comedies to their schedule but their programming still remained more serious than ITV's. The Wednesday Play, a show with serious topics, was BBC's response to Coronation Street.
Television became worthy of serious critical attention. The left was very hostile toward television as they thought it created "doped" people. For a long time people stopped going out to cinemas, theatres, etc. and preferred staying home to watch television for entertainment.

Over the past years, TV has become more of a necessity than a luxury within a domestic environment, which can be seen through the ownership in 1940 where no-one hardly ever watched television until the 1960's where 72% of the British population now had owned a TV.

In the early years of the BBC dominating over television, ITV a commercialised channel made a breakthrough during the mid 1950's aiming mainly at the working class audience. ITV popularity grew as they brought to us popular quiz shows such as 'An Opportunity Knocks' which grossed over 20 million viewers. It also launched the very first episode of the family soap called 'Coronation Street' . this drama highlighted the working class society of Salford. By thios time ITV had become a great success and forced BBC to imitate the style and format of ITV programmes, targeting a much broader audience, yet keeping their purpose to inform and educate such as; documentaries, educational quiz shows, popular crime drama etc.

Television

‘Television is the popular cultural form of the twenty-first century’ (Storey, p9). We know this because between 1936 and 1940 no-one had even seen a television but by the 1960’s 72% of people owned one. This shows how much culture has changed as a owning a television has changed from being a luxury item to a necessity, and is indicative of working class affluence and the way in which they entertained themselves.

Just as ownerships of televisions have grown so have studies on the ways of looking at television i.e. audience receivership. As Richard mentioned there are several different ways of looking at how audiences receive television, the glance is one way of looking at audience reception of television and occurs within a domestic environment. There is also The Hypodermic Needle Model where television is seen as a ‘narcotic where messages are injected into the mass audience as if from a hypodermic syringe’ (Abercrombie, p4). This is a view with which Adorno would agree as he views all popular culture as ‘rubbish’. The Uses & Gratifications Model takes the opposite approach whereby it insists that viewers create their own meanings from the text, this is also supported by the Encoding-Decoding Model because it says the ‘output of media is polysemic’ (Abercrombie, p13).

I'm Only Dreaming by The Small Faces

Joe Dwyer wants you all to watch I'm Only Dreaming by The Small Faces on You Tube. It is a Fan Vid which includes most of the main pop icons of the 1960s.

How many can you name?

LECTURE SUMMARY: THE POWER OF THE CONSUMER

The theory of Consumerism is that the consumption of goods is of economic benefit. This couldnt be more true, and upon closer study it becomes apparent just how huge a factor Consumerism is within economy.

The key factor in the success and effectiveness of Consumerism lies with the 'Teenage Consumer'. Rooted mainly in the 1930's, teenagers had more money to spend, and began spending this money on clothes, dances, records etc. This was due to Determinist philosophies making a revival of the economy possible, especially within sudden new industries e.g electrical equipment, pharmaceutical companies, car companies etc.

By the start of the 1950's, British society was starting to become more and more like America.

Leisure times for families increased, with smaller families and less working hours in the day. Middle-Class consumers were buying electrical appliances, cookers, washers and even family cars, and by 1960 the majority of Middle-Class families were enjoying the full benefits of electricity.

The Working-Class also shared the perks of this rise in the economy, with families now able to afford regular cinema trips, television sets and cars.

The power of the consumer was rising with the now cheap and dependable electricity on offer.

This change in society had a widespread effect of British culture.

People were now staying in more as they had television sets to replace the vaudevilles that they would normally have to leave their homes to see. The introduction of the T.V was very important for this reason as it gave people the option of not having to leave the comfort of their homes for entertainment.

Britain became even more like America still as it began to copy it's integration of fast-food into society. In 1954 the first 'Wimpy' was opened, the British answer to 'McDonald's', and by the 1960's over 500 Wimpy's were running in Britain.

The apparent option as a consumer to choose from a 'list' of options for entertainment was never really there, as the consumer was still choosing from a list provided by an industry. For this reason this type of consumerism is both creative and restrictive.

This returns to the importance of the teenage consumer. Infant mortality had fallen by 1950. As a result, children were suddenly healthier, taller, fitter and were hitting puberty quicker. They were spending longer in school and, were also wanting things more.

People were beginning to migrate to towns, where moe things were going on, and as a result less people were living in the countryside.

They also had a better health service, living longer and healthier due to the introduction of the NHS in 1948.

The power of the consumer was very important in developing a new culture for Britain, and is just as important in today's society, boosting the economy in a constant circle of financial flux.

Summary of Lecture: The Power of the Consumer

One of the main questions raised when thinking about consumerism is whether it is seen as creative or restricting. This view on consumerism roots back to the 1950's/60's as the combination of Britain becoming an affluent society and the rise of teenage domination meant that there was more time for leisure, not only for those of middle class but working class families also. Alot of this is due to the fact that within the early 60's many within Britain were enjoying electricity, this ensured that there were many more activities and consumer products to be enjoyed and bought in to.

It is widely thought that the power of the consumer lies with young people and it is in fact their input that deems consumerism to be creative. Teenagers were spending money on luxury items and entertainment, meaning that they were spending more money of consumer products. They were spending a lot of money of clothes, music and socialising. This is something that helps to show consumerism in favour of being creative as young people were buying into such consumerism products but were however, turning them into their own. They were using consumption to form an identity and this is something that can be seen within the rise of the Mod culture.

Mod culture represents this period perfectly as it indicates the use of consumerism in the rise of creative culture within teenagers. Mod's were using such consumption products as music, fashion and leisure activities to define their identity. This helps to argue that consumer products can be used within a creative manor in which to produce selective and individualist groups.

However, it is argued that consumerism cannot be creative and that it is only restricting to those who buy in to it. It is thought that even though we are using consumer products to almost form an identity, it is never really truely individualised as we are chosing from a list that has already been given to us. Therefore, it is thought, that nothing can ever really be new or individual and that consumption will remain a dominant power.

London = A Theme Park

Conclusion to yesterday's lecture and a few discussion points for next week: Did London become a theme park in the 1960s? Was all the pop culture of the 1960s all about about money and manufacturing?


Five points to remember from the 'Consumption Lecture':

1) We looked at the growth of youth culture in the 1960s, the case study we chose was the Mods.

2) There was increased ability to spend

3) Consumerism and shopping were seen as creative and empowering activities (see lecture notes and John Storey's chapters on music and consumption).

4) Young people not dupes, but creative consumers.

5) What part does media hype play in our perceptions of the 1960s?

We Are The Mods

By the 1960s there was a ready market for teenage consumers with disposable income. There was an infrastructure of pop charts, magazines and pop television programmes to support the music industry. As well as the Beatles, the Mods were, in part, created by the infrastructure of this nascent pop industry.

When we watch Quadrophenia in week 8, look at the Mods' fashion sense: Button-down Ben Sherman shirts, short three-buttoned jackets, narrow trousers, desert boots, cropped Italian haircuts, Italian suits and Fred Perry shirts.

The Mods listened to the Who, the Small Faces and American Rhythm and Blues. they also rode Italian scooters and took amphetamines.

Bear in mind, that Quadrophenia was made in 1979. So see if you can notice any historical inaccuracies.

Any comments on the You Tube clip we watched of P.P. Arnold and the Small Faces.

White Heat

In the 1950s and 1960s Britain was obsessed with consumerism and the 'white heat' of technology.

Dominic Sandbrook appropriated this phrase as a title for his book from a speech by Harold Wilson.

The Affluent Society

All the culture industries we have examined in the lectures so far: James Bond films and paperbacks, The Beatles, theme parks, Mods, the British Press and British film are predicated on the revival of the British economy in the 1930s. 'New' industries such as cars, pharmaceuticals and electrical appliances made it possible for teenagers in the late 1950s and early 1960s to enjoy television, record players, glossy magazine and televisions. Their 'pop' culture is based one very important technological determining fact: electricity made this proliferation of popular art possible.

The affluent society meant Britain was becoming more like the USA. Not only in terms of popular culture, but also in diet. For the first time there was a food processing industry: baked beans, tinned pineapple, fish fingers, frozen chips and frozen peas.

Philip Larkin, 'Here' (1961)

Some of the students wanted to know the poem I quoted at the start of the 'Consumption' lecture. Here is the first verse: Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies, electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers.Philip Larkin is critical of the consumer society. He was one in a long line of elitists who are worried about encroaching materialism in 1960s British society

Lecture 5: The Beatles, Popular Music as Cultural Phenomenon

This picture is from 1960 in the Cavern before The Beatles were signed and commodified.

Standardisation and commodification both play key roles in building a cultural phemomenom, the cultural machine that runs the music industry is churning out mass produced repetive artists, even John Lennon believed The Beatles sold out, which is easily seen from the above picture and the clean cut image that everyone associates with them. In this LA press release after their album 'Revolver'  http://youtube.com/Irw1OCWp1Gs

 In the clip George says 'our image is how you see us' showing us how important fans are to an artist and there is 'not art without an audience'. Fandom especially for The Beatles was why they became such a phenomenon. Youth create a vibrant culture to create their own meanings, from things such as the way they dress by adopting the production line to their own needs for example the mods, as resisting the dominant ideology or creating fanzines to integrate or participate in the commodity. 

Overall texts are designed to be relevant in the moment and by commodifying the artist it helps them stay relevant longer. 

We Are The Mods!

For tomorrow continue reading John Storey: Chapters 6 and 7 ('music' and 'Consumption in Everyday Life'. . The lecture is entitled 'The Power of the Consumer' and I will adapt Storey's writing on youth subcultures and music to 'Mod' culture. Sandbrook also looks at the roots of this youth phenomenon in his two books: White Heat and Never had It So Good.

Topics to be discussed are: lived cultures, Mods, cultural imposition, fan culture, shopping as a creative activity and production of texts.

Try to watch The Small Faces performing Tin Soldier in 1968 with P.P. Arnold, they are the ultimate 'Mod' band.

This lecture is also preparation for the screening of Quadrophenia later in the course.

Keep blogging!

Richard

Summary of lecture: The Beatles A Hard Day's Night

Standardisation is an important factor to cultural phenomenon, in which music becomes standard and repetitive. The Beatles image became standardised moving from leather jackets and jeans to identical suits and hairstyles. Image influenced youth and style, the standardisation of their image made The Beatles commercial to adopt the production line to produce own art forms, this challenges their authenticity.

All art is a commodification as there is no art without an audience. Some would argue that The Beatles are capitalists, that art is packaged and sold; a culture industry. It is important to note the album ‘Beatles for Sale’ could demonstrate this. However they became subversive when they moved from a subculture to a hippie stage.

Fandom played a role within The Beatles, this is obvious from the beginning of the film. Extremities of fandom led to the death of John Lennon and the stabbing of George Harrison. The Beatles have a huge label attached to the 60’s, not musicals such as The Sound of Music which we discussed. Harold Wilson latched onto The Beatles influencing politics; illustrating how big they had become. A Hard Day’s Night contributed to the acceptability of regional accents and Englishness, moving away from received pronunciation seen on television etc.

In conclusion The Beatles and the film demonstrate that the relationship to commodity can lead to an authentic self expression, an emotional realism. Hybridity of young people creates vibrant cultures to express own meanings. The way music is produced is down to industry but the way it is used cannot be predicted. The Beatles lead us to ponder: Is commodity there to sell itself?

This link may be of use ‘I was there when The Beatles played the Cavern’. First two minutes of part two discuss image and interviews with fans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNXnv8ltVcQ&feature=channel_video_title

Bend It Like Beckham - Seminar Write up

In this session we examined the film “Bend it Like Beckham”. We tried to analyse the film in terms of the representation of it’s races and ethnicities.

We looked beyond common sense meanings and got into different levels of understanding. It is clear that the different cultures interpret the events differently. For instance, Jules’ dad encourages her football, and yet Jess’ dad forbids her from it. This is a constant theme in the film as Asian Sikh culture is contrasted with more liberal gender equal British culture. It is also significant how much more Jules’ knows about the female game, in comparison with Jess’, who is largely oblivious. This again shows the cultural divide. Also, the black girl on the team, Mel, is the captain, which suggests she is a strong powerful captain as she is the on field leader. Jess is rather timid in contrast.

The film is a representation of modern, multicultural Britain, but it also highlights some of the conflicts and problems that can arise in such a system.

Week 3 - Structuralism

In this lecture we started off the discussion with the question of what exactly Structuralism was. Yet being hard to define we all agreed that it distinctly resembles a chessboard. There are two sides, all with positions, hierarchies and meanings within the board, each piece has a certain role or function and consequences arise when certain movements are made. Therefore through the interplay of relationships within the board, by different configurations, for example from different movements on the board, the meaning is made possible: structuralism is the grammar that makes meaning possible.
Saussure’s theory of how the signifier+signified= sign, helped us understand structuralism by realising how elements of language or objects can be read. Structuralism can be viewed as a text, visual imagery can be viewed through stereotypes and then work in binary opposites (touching on Levi Strauss theory), like the chess board these meanings can only be produced and work within such structures.
The use of narrative within a text is a structure itself, and the most common of these help us read it. Propp’s Narrative theory gives us a clear indication even today of certain heros, villains, princesses yet in contemporary films they may be harder to find. Disney films are a clear distinction of this which may have seemed a bad influence on children at the time, a naïve representation on a structured society (fantasy or not), expecting women to be vulnerable and having a knight in shining armour to rescue them, when in reality, it is a myth, men on white horses don’t seem to be around the corner very often.
This also draws on Laura Mulvey’s feminist approach we discussed in the lecture, as women were most certainly always used in such narratives as the damsel-in-distress or prize for the male hero, however increasingly since the 1980s luckily more women are becoming heros themselves. It proves that films show an evolution in socio-cultures within society as well as whole cultures themselves.
It also shows how economic statuses have changed in consumerist films such as James Bond films, or in Westerns as we discussed. Such films elaborate Marxist views of celebrating capitalism, consumerism and individualism all together. Films in a sense always have these within their structures, and their purposes are for escapism, identification and consumerism. Through studying structuralism, texts’ pragmatic and semantic meanings are clear. Therefore structuralism is the key that makes such meanings possible.

The Beatles, A Hard Day's Night (1964)

The theme of tomorrow's lecture is to examine popular music as a cultural phenomenon. The case study we use is Richard Lester's 1964 film about the Beatles: A Hard Day's Night.

You should re-familiarise yourself with Adorno's work on popular music, especially his assertion that popular music is 'standardised', 'Popular music is a production line that churns out inferior commodities'. This links to a key scene in A Hard Day's Night: 'A clue to the new direction', where George Harrison argues with an opportunistic advertising executive.

In this film we have an authentic subculture colliding with an inauthentic mass produced mainstream culture. You should read what John Storey says about this, and also his use of the term 'structured irresponsibility'.

I will also introduce the term 'subterranean values' in this lecture. Research this term and tell me its meaning.

The seminar discussion will look at ideas such as fan culture as a creative and productive process, George Melly's phrase 'Revolt into Style' and folk culture versus consumerism.

I will give you a handout looking at the following issues: The Affluent Society, Pop and Consumerism, pop and Politics, Englishness, Regionalism and Identity, Surrealism and Film and the media creation of the 1960s: The Sound of Music sold more than Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Remember to watch A Hard Day's Night in the LRC, there is not a screening of the film on the course, but (technology permitting) we'll look a key scenes tomorrow.

This lecture also relates to consumption, so read Storey's work on commodification and consumption.There is a chapter called 'consumption' in his book.

Keep blogging,

Richard

Introduction to PC200

Modules main themes and whatever else I thought interesting and wrote down.

History for the class of PC200 (with Dr Richard Mills down in the bowels of St. Mary’s or D10) starts in 1956 (approximately), a year of significant change for Great Britain. The Suez crisis effectively spelled a mayor change in international political power for the once great empire and a change in political balance around the world. The tensions of the cold war and the influence of the America became all too real for the financially struggling island. The irony of the Suez crisis to the modern viewer is the change in roles that we see in the international sphere today. When Britain (with the help of France and Israel) attempted to invade Egypt, to gain back control of the Suez Canal and the important oil importing trade route America stepped in with the help of the U.N. (Ironic when we look at more recent American behaviour towards the U.N. and its own crusades for oil within the middle east.) The political balance of power between the U.S. and Britain can also be seen to be mirrored by the change in the balance of cultural influence that America has over British popular culture.

The many strains of influence which form the cultural fabric of Britain today where touched upon; the end of the British Empire and the cultural influence of the immigrants from the former empire, the rapidly growing youth culture of American consumption, the rise of what can essentially be seen as uncensored entertainment in the form of texts such as ITV and just to make Richard happy; the emergence of a little know four piece from Liverpool called the Beatles.

The introductory session of this module did exactly what it said on the tin (How about that for a cultural reference?). It introduced the module but more importantly for myself it introduce the idea that when looking at cultural texts the influence these have, not only influence society in a great many ways that they themselves are permissive to influence. So do we look at the picture of Harold Macmillan on the front cover of our module guide as clever photo opportunity for him or the persuasiveness of popular culture on our lives? Or rather more interestingly does the truth lie somewhere in between with both ideas influencing and reacting as whole?

Lecture 4: Bend It Like Beckham

Tomorrow's lecture will introduce some new critical terms: hybridity, post-colonialism, 'double-identity', 'cultural polyvalency' and 'third space'.

The main focus of the lecture will be two areas: identity and gender. These themes will be discussed in the seminar. As as mentioned at the start of the course, there is not a screening of the film , but make sure you watch the DVD in the LRC. However, we do look at some key scenes in the seminar.

I will introduce some of the key texts on post-colonial theory and identity. Most of these texts are in the LRC. So it is important that you familiarize yourself with names such as Homi K. Bhabha, Franz Fanon, Edward Said, Hanif Kureishi and Richard Kearney.
The core reading for the module is Storey and Sandbrook, but make sure you do some independent reading and find out who these people are and their contribution to British cultural life.

There are still some blogs due, there may be problems with students accessing the blog. Tell me if you are having any problems and I'll do my best to rectify it quickly.

Best,

Richard