Low culture

Low culture is a derogatory term for forms of popular culture that have mass appeal. Its contrast is high culture. It has been said by culture theorists that both high culture and low culture are subcultures. Today, this would mean things like 'take-away' meals, gossip magazines, and books that are current best-sellers.^[1]^[2]

Manifestations

The boundaries of low culture and high culture blur, through convergence. Many people are "omnivores", making cultural choices from different menus.^[3] The 1990s artwork of Jeff Koons appropriate low art tropes of kitsch and pornography. Rhys Chatham's musical piece Guitar Trio (1977) is an example of incorporating (low culture) primitive punk rock aesthetics into (high culture) contemporary classical music.

Romanticism was one of the first movements to reappraise "low culture," when previously maligned medieval romances were taken seriously and influenced literature.

Standards and definitions of low culture

In his book Popular Culture and High Culture, Herbert J. Gans gives a definition of how to identify and create low culture:

Aesthetic standards of low culture stress substance, form and being totally subservient; there is no explicit concern with abstract ideas or even with fictional forms of contemporary social problems and issues. ... Low culture emphasizes morality but limits itself to familial and individual problems and [the] values, which apply to such problems. Low culture is content to depict traditional working class values winning out over the temptation to give into conflicting impulses and behavior patterns.
— Herbert Gans, ^[4]

When applying that lens to mass media, it often includes shows that do not go too deeply into abstract ideas, or that do not address head-on contemporary social problems.

Culture as class

Herbert Gans states in his book Popular Culture and High Culture that the different classes of culture are linked correspondingly to socio-economic and educational classes.^[5] For any given socio-economic class, there is a culture for that class. Hence the terms high and low culture and the manifestation of those terms as they appeal to their respective constituents.

Mass media

Creators of culture

When one watches television, someone else is in control of the content of the programming; one just has the choice in what one happens to be watching. Therefore, the content creators (media companies) are largely in charge of finding what it is people like, so they can make money from it. Media entertainment’s sole purpose for existing is profitability; they drive and are driven by consumer demand.^[6]

Audience

All cultural products have a certain demographic to which they appeal most. Low culture appeals to very simple and basic human needs. Low culture offers a perceived return to innocence,^[7] the escape from real world problems, or the experience of living vicariously through viewing someone else’s life on television.^[8]

Stereotypes

Low culture can be formulaic, employing trope conventions, stock characters and character archetypes in a manner that can be perceived as more simplistic, crude, emotive, unbalanced, or blunt compared to high culture's implementations—which may be perceived as more subtle, balanced, or refined.

References

↑ Chris Livesey and Tony Lawson. "AS Sociology For AQA (2nd Edition)" (PDF). http://shortcutstv.com/. Retrieved August 6, 2015. External link in |website= (help)
↑ "Culture, Low and High)". encyclopedia.com. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
↑ Gans, Herbert J. (2008). Popular culture and high culture. Basic Books. pp. 8–10. ISBN 0465026095.
↑ Herbert Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture pg. 115.
↑ Herbert Gans Popular Culture and High Culture pg. 7
↑ , Anna Tomisino Discovering Pop Culture, pg. 210.
↑ , Anna Tomisino Discovering Pop Culture, pg. 211.
↑ , Anna Tomisino Discovering Pop Culture, pg. 225 (although this is an excerpt from "The Happiest Place On Earth: Disney" by Eric Mazur and Tara Koda.)

Culture

Outline

Sciences	Cultural anthropology Cultural astronomy Cultural ecology Cultural geography Cultural neuroscience Cultural studies Culturology Culture theory Neuroculture

Subfields	Bioculture Cross-cultural studies Cross-cultural communication Cross-cultural leadership Cross-cultural psychiatry Cross-cultural psychology Cultural analytics Cultural economics Cultural entomology Cultural health Cultural history Cultural mapping Cultural mediation Cultural psychology Culturomics Intercultural learning Intercultural relations Philosophy of culture Popular culture studies Semiotics of culture Sociology of culture Sound culture Theology of culture Transcultural nursing

Types	Constructed culture Dominant culture Folk culture High culture Individualistic culture Legal culture Low culture Microculture Official culture Political culture Civic Popular culture Urban Primitive culture Subculture Alternative culture list Super culture Vernacular culture Culture by location

Aspects	Acculturation Cultural appropriation Cultural area Cultural artifact Cultural baggage Cultural behavior Cultural bias Cultural capital Cross-cultural Cultural communication Cultural conflict Cultural cringe Cultural dissonance Cultural emphasis Cultural framework Cultural heritage Cultural icon Cultural identity Cultural industry Cultural invention Cultural landscape Cultural learning Cultural leveling Cultural memory Cultural pluralism Cultural practice Cultural property Cultural reproduction Cultural system Cultural technology Cultural universal Cultureme Enculturation High- and low-context cultures Interculturality Manuscript culture Material culture Non-material culture Organizational culture Print culture Protoculture Safety culture Technoculture Trans-cultural diffusion Transculturation Visual culture

Politics	Colonial mentality Consumer capitalism Cross cultural sensitivity Cultural assimilation Cultural attaché Cultural backwardness Cultural Bolshevism Cultural conservatism Cultural contracts Cultural deprivation Cultural diplomacy Cultural environmentalism Cultural exception Cultural feminism Cultural genocide Cultural globalization Cultural hegemony Cultural imperialism Cultural intelligence Cultural liberalism Cultural nationalism Cultural pessimism Cultural policy Cultural racism Cultural radicalism Cultural retention Cultural Revolution Cultural rights Cultural safety Cultural silence Cultural subsidy Cultural Zionism Culture change Culture minister Culture of fear Culture war Deculturalization Dominator culture Interculturalism Intraculturalism Monoculturalism Multiculturalism Biculturalism Pluriculturalism Security culture Transculturism

Related	Animal culture Archaeological culture Bennett scale Bullying culture Cannabis culture Circuit of culture Coffee culture Cross-cultural Cultural center Cultural Christian Cultural Mormon Cultural competence Cultural critic Cultural Detective Cultural determinism Cultural diversity Cultural encoding Cultural evolutionism Cultural homogenization Cultural institution Cultural jet lag Cultural Judaism Cultural lag Cultural literacy Cultural mosaic Cultural movement Cultural mulatto Cultural Muslim Cultural probe Cultural relativism Culture speculation Cultural tourism Pop-culture Cultural translation Cultural turn Cultural sensibility Culture and positive psychology Culture and social cognition Culture gap Culture hero Culture industry Culture shock Culturgen Children's culture Culturalism Cyberculture Death and culture Disability culture Deaf culture Emotions and culture Intercultural communication Intercultural competence Languaculture Living things in culture Media culture Oppositional culture Participatory culture Permission culture Rape culture Remix culture Tea culture Transformation of culture Urban culture Welfare culture

Category Portal Commons WikiProject changes

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.