On Popular Music (Task 2)

Theodor W. Adorno divides music into two seperate categories or 'spheres', the two forms he claims are standardized popular music and 'serious' music. The first part of his article focuses on the process of standardization and one of the characteristics of a consumer of popular culture in all forms - pseudo-individualization.

Standardization refers to the form and production of a song, wherein a sense of familiarity is constructed through pre-conceived reactions to popular music. The listener is expected to enjoy and consume certain songs with particular structures, and as a result the song is 'pre-digested' to suit this familiarity, "The composition hears for the listener."

The concept of pseudo-individualization is a product of Adorno's 'system of response mechanisms' which he claims are in stark contrast to the "...ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society." The consumer is part of a "collective experience" more than anything.

In the second part of the articles, Presentation of the Material, Adorno focuses branding, visual stimulus and plugging. Adorno uses the term plugging more broadly, in that he refers to the repetition of similar processes in production and song structures in pop music. He talks of the paradox in his theory of plugging; "To be plugged, a song hit must have at least one feature by which it can be distinguished from any other and yet possess the complete conventionality and triviality of all others." This, Adorno writes, can only be achieved by plugging outside the boundaries of the actual music, therefore an emphasis on the presentation of the music is required. The culture is therefore recognized by the listener as well as the conventional song structure, typical of any form of branding, a "...substitute for the lack of genuine individuality in the material."

This is part of overall consumption of popular culture, not just music. The theory of effortless entertainment inducing the consumer in a state of relaxation through reproduction of popular taste and opinion. Finally, Adorno claims that the forms in which popular culture could mainly be consumed at the time, movies and music, allure the consumer into a state of fantasy wherein they are made aware of the perfection of depicted individuals - forcing them to admit that they can never be what they consume; they "...have no part in happiness."

Skepta's 'Sunglasses at Night' is typical of the now heavily standardized song structure in which former grime artists have become accustomed to. The foundation of this trend was the level of popularity and consumption of Wiley's 'Wearing My Rolex', creating the formula for artists' to follow. Artists like the two mentioned, Lethal Bizzle, Tinchy Stryder and Chipmunk - when considered part of the sub-genre of grime - all typically worked with half-time 140bpm instrumentals of varying song structures. It's now an obvious convention to write songs that have a 4x4 kick drum, are around 130bpm and carry the structure of standardized pop music, pre-digested for the listeners consumption. This track, and in a wider sense the association of grime MC's with heavily standardized pop music, can also be attributed to pseudo-individualism - the consumer may buy into the association with grime as much as his/her response to the compositions.

Globalisation, Sustainability and The Media

- Hegemony of Western ideas
- Globalisation homogenous, unified culture.

- Capitalist definition of Globalisation: Free Market Economy

- Sovereignty of the nation-state, Accountability/control of forces and organizations, national Identity... suffer negative effects of globalisation

- Oligopolies dominate world media, ie. TimeWarner

- Cultural imperialism "if the 'global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilate one".

- Media power of the US - Americanized consumerism in societies that can ill afford it, drives consumer desires ie. 'Fair and Handsome' skin lightening cream

- Propaganda- Basic Filters; Ownership (ie. Rupert Murdoch owns much of Britains press and several broadcasting companies). Sourcing (ie. where news stories are chosen to be reported from). Funding (ie. advertising in press). Flak (ie. counter-campaigns, negative responses to news stories)

- Anti Ideologies domination of western ideas, demonising of non-western cultures. Mechanism- ideological overlay

- An Inconvenient Truth: Pseudo Science, manages to promote consumerism to help save the planet (ie. 'buy hybrid cars' and 'encourage everyone to watch this film')

- Competitive Enterprise Institute 'Flat earthers' claim global warming is a hoax

- Sustainability sustainable development; improving the quality of human life whilst living within the carrying capacity of the ecosystems.

- Greenwashing media ideology, to portray eco-friendly image / image of being sympathetic to environment. Ideology spinning.

- Victor Papanek 'Design for the Real World', Adbusters, OBEY.

Reality, Virtuality & Hyperreality

-Theory of 'Value'

-Saussure's Theory of The Sign ie. The signifier and the signified, the concept and the image/sound.

- Key theorists/precursors Guy Debord the 'society of the spectacle' Marshall McCluhan media and communication theory, 'the medium is the message', Georges Bataille symbolic aspects of ritual in diverse cultures, Marcel Mauss the 'gift' as an economic principle

- 'The world is an image of something' Plato, the Timeaeus

- Simulacra and Simulation

- The precession of Simulacra - 1. the reflection of a profound reality 2. masks and denatures a profound reality 3. masks the absence of a profound reality 4. has no relation whatsoever: Pure Simulacrum.

Disneyfication

Synopticon - ie. Big Brother, The Loud Family, Forget Foucault?

'Welcome to the desert of the real'

- The end of history? 'If there are no more dustbins of history...(history) has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.'

'America got what it fantasized about'

Although Zižek was referring to the unimaginable catastrophes of Hollywood disaster movies, this quote reminded me of a couple of 'predictions' by rap artists. Boots Riley, the male half of The Coup, is an activist as well as an emcee, and holds strong far left political views. The release date of The Coup's fourth album was put back as a result of it's untimely closeness to September 11th. The album cover - referring to money-obsessed Southern hip-hop in style - depicts Riley pressing a button whilst the World Trade is destroyed in the background.

Another example was Biggie's line on the James Mtume sampling single 'Juicy' ; "Time to get paid/ Blow up like the World Trade" Of course this was again a simple metaphor - in this case for making money rather than in The Coup's case, the destruction of Capitalist ideologies.

What struck me about this was the level of sensitivity, 'A Dream' a Jay-Z track released after the September 11th bombings included an acapella of the aforementioned Biggie verse over a newly produced instrumental, with the words "World Trade" censored.

The relevance in all of this is the different levels of signification, without the 9/11 disaster, the 'Juicy' lyrics would have little cultural meaning. Because the signified in both cases was involved in a very real historical event, this in turn changes the meaning of the signifier, in a way it intensifies its significance.

Communication Theory

"Who says what to whom in what channel with what effect"

- Contemporary technology - medium over message?

Conditions of communication theory

- Cybernetic or Information Theory (Transmissional)

- Semiotics, The Phenomenological Tradition, Rhetorical, Socio-Pyschological, Socio-Cultural, Critical (Constitutive)

- Transmissional send & receive process, perceptions of message

- Constitutive process of production, communication limitations shaped by medium/social context of medium

- Factors that effect process of sending and receiving - Shannon & Weaver Bell diagram

- Noise - different meaning in different contexts, factors causing limits on communication reception.

- Cybernetic model of advertising communication, hyper-extension of Shannon & Weaver Bell model

- "Cybernetics: Control and communication in the animal & machine" (Weiner, 1948)

- Systems Theory feedback, control loops, analysis of complex systems of communication

- Semiotics -semantics : stands for? means?

-syntactics : sign relations

-pragmatics : effect of signs

- Denotation & Connotation

- Using semiotics to analyse an image

- Signified 'Italianicity' would not work in Italy, scene implies return from market: signified freshness, net implies 'caught' food also signifying freshness of product. Tri-coloured (green, red and white) again, 'Italianicity'. Portrait - person to person communication?

- signs are meaningless without first haven been given meaning

- Phenomenology 'Meaning' - lived experience

- perception of 'reality'

- appearance of an object in ones perception

- language = vehicle for meaning

- social value

- interpretation & reinterpretation through past experience

- hermeneutic circle interpreters go back and forth between experience and assigned meaning

- the process of interpretation is central

- Rhetoric a series of linguistic devices, pictures without context are meaningless - application of rhetoric, gives meaning/message to an empty sign.

- ie. Hyperbole, Irony, Personification

- Metaphor a language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects or activities, creates associations.

- The Sociopsychological Tradition study of individual as social being, Behavioral, Cognitive, Biological.

- The Sociocultural Tradition social 'coding', definitions in social structure/context. Context is seen as being crucial to forms and meanings of communication.

- Critical Communication Theory synthesis of philosophy and social science, political agenda/ideology in news.

Film Theory, 'The Gaze' & Psychoanalysis

--The structure of consciousness -- Consciousness has become synonymous with meaning our awareness of self -- Its how we perceive the world around us --

Iceberg Metaphor

-- Consciousness is made entirely made of the Ego (the side we show the world) -- The Super-Ego lies below the surface - it is our conscience (moral, social etc.) -- Id is our desires and drives --

Society

We repress instinctual desires, mainly sexual or aggressive

Object Relations

-How we view and use objects - Transitional Objects are precursors to our adult appreciation of art - Advertising prays upon our investment in inanimate objects - Abject the part of our body that repulses us -- is that which society cannot accept -- it is that which we find repulsive - we regard as dirty and are taught to feel distaste for

The Gaze

Male dominated hollywood - Scopophilia an objectified other - Narcissistic Identification - Projected notion of 'ideal ego' in image reflected (Explored in Fight Club?)

Suture often forces empathy with lead protagonist - spectators look through the eyes of the actors in the film - we are 'their' gaze ie. Peep Show invites us to be part of the scene, we view through the eyes of the character

Forms of Gaze

1. The spectators' gaze

2. Intra diagnostic gaze

-Recognition of the power of the gaze

-We are not the perpetrators

3. Extra diagectic gaze

-The subject gazes upon us

-we are invited to be viewed

Different forms of gaze evoke different strucures of power - We can objectify and identify

Contextual & Theoretical Studies Portfolio (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.

Social Networking and Panopticism

The function of social networking sights is somewhat overlooked by a majority of registered users. Environments like Facebook and MySpace put us in a state of constant self regulation, the panoptic gaze and the power relationship, appears to us, in a more peer-driven sense. Foucalts theoretical Panopticon, however, makes clear that this in no way the case, as - although we are subject to surveillance from our peers - it is a mutual surveillance. The user is the subject in communication, Foucalt stresses that "He (the individual in question) is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication". In this sense, the site owners, modulators and developers are the institutional powers.

Facebook and MySpace are perfectly designed disciplinary mechanisms, we voluntarily register ourselves to be under constant scrutiny, to be in an "...enclosed segmented space, observed at every point...all events are recorded." Facebook and MySpace alert all individuals through the activity stream and news feed to any activity, from the acceptance of a friend request, to being tagged by our peers in photos to changes of even the slightest details of our online information. The governing bodies of these sites will have the power to constant access of this information. It is evident in the strategic advertising, targetting each individual through his/her place in society. Data is scrutinised and allows "...the assignment to each individual of his 'true' name, and 'true' place.

The way these sights work as a disciplinary mechanism is the use of the constant gaze, whether real or fictitious, of our peers. MySpace provides the user with the amount of times his/her page has been viewed, Facebook sends relentless emails reminding individual of the slightest form of activity. This is in order to engage docile bodies in online activity, benifitting the institutional powers by giving these environments more value as a place to target and advertise individuals. The surveillance in these environments is "...based on a system of permanent registration." the more we sign in the more useful we are to the governing bodies. The more we update our online data the greater our part as the observed in the panoptic mechanism, the greater our levels of self regulation in these virtual environments. Thus the users' in social networking allow sites to become "...a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it." The modulators have no need to constantly survey the users, the users function without the need to be subjected to a ceaseless gaze "..he becomes the principle of his own subjection."

As the individual allows himself/herself to be observed at any point, he allows the functionality of power - he places himself in a virtual Panoptical cell to be scrutonised at the leisure of the governing bodies. If within the Panopticon "Visibilty is a trap" then the Facebook/MySpace users are in Alcatraz.

I want to add that having been made aware of the concept of the Synopticon, which is perhaps more relevant when referring to reality TV shows, this would likely apply in the sense of the aforementioned engagement in peer-driven surveillance.

"The Synopticon refers to the creation of another power mechanism, that contrary to Panopticon, is not base (sic) on ceorcion and constriction of movement" (Britez, R)

However, is it not possible that in this case that our peers have no real power despite watching us, as a whole the sites governing bodies hold the controlling gaze. Our private messages and chat cannot be seen by our peers but are viewable by the site regulators, this would allow supervision. I also mentioned the user-specific targeted adverts, this is proof of the governing bodies scrutinising our behaviour. Or maybe I should've just picked something easier.

Britez, R. Globalization & Education,

http://globalizationandeducation.ed.uiuc.edu/Concepts/S.html, Accessed 2/12/09

Panopticism: CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY & SURVEILLANCE

-- Physical punishment, public discipline (Pillory's etc.) --

-- A system of discipline / institutional power -

-- Michel Foucalt's Metaphor based on Jeremy Bentham's design proposal for a prison building --- Emergence of forms of knowledge (biology,

psychiatry, medicine..) - The Great Confinement - Houses of Correction - The 'insane' infantized - forms of mental discipline -- Internalisation of responsibility through disciplinary society -- Birth of Panoptic Prisons -- The Panopticon

Pantopticon - Allows scrutiny and supervision - Creates productivity -

Confine and ultimately correct the insane - Ruling power to mental cohersion, a new mode of power called 'Panopticism' - Organisation of knowledge, power, surveillance of bodies and 'training' of bodies - Prevalent in modern societycaused individual to be in a conscious state that he is always being watched -- Manipulation causing fear of deviance through the sense of being watched -- Self Regulation -- Surveillance: CCTV Recordings, digital sign-in systems.

Institutional Gaze - Relationship between power, knowledge and the body - disciplinary society - cult of h

ealth - TV: passively being fed fear and ideology - Power is not something people have, its a relation between individuals and groups - The exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted - techniques of the Docile Bodies