Popular culture

CTS session

Communication Theory

Lecture notes 25.11.10

Task 2- On popular culture

Adorno's view on 'Popular' music is that it is not serious. He thinks of it to be for the 'Lower class' or uneducated, where as 'serious' music is for the intellectual and educated. "Structural standardisation aims at standard reactions" (Adorno, 1941, p.76) He thinks that people who buy into standardised products are standardised consumers and are not 'free'. He also thinks that all pop music sounds the same, serious music has details which you have to be well educated to appreciate. "The composition hears for the listener" (Adorno, 1941, p.77) The consumers are given what they think they want. The music is already 'pre-digested' therefore there is no effort required. "Concentration and control in our culture hide themselves in their very manifestation. Unhidden they would provoke resistance" (Adorno, 1941, p.78) If people weren't controlled then they wouldn't buy into it. "Standardisation of song hits keeps the customer in line by doing their listening for them." (Adorno, 1941, p.79)

Pseudo individualisation, people forget that what they are listening to has already been 'Pre-digested', listened to for them. Adorno is very patronising when he talks about pop music. By saying 'entertainment which does not demand attention' he in insinuating that this type of music is for a 'general kind'. He thinks that consumers of popular music do not need an escape from the world as they do not have hard lives.

Quotes taken from the text:
Adorno, T. (1941) 'On popular music', studies in philosophy and social science, No.9

I chose these songs by David Guetta because they are both very similar as with a lot of David Guetta's other songs and remixes he does for other artists. I think that with his music you always know what to expect and is almost 'Pre-digested'

Task one

Panopticism

Choose an example of one aspect of contemporary culture that is, in your opinion, Panoptic.

Hospitals may be seen as Panoptic. “Each street is placed under the authority of a syndic, who keeps it under surveillance; if he leaves the street he will be condemned to death” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p.61) This is much like being in hospital where the beds are in rows beside each other, with a curtain to separate them and a nurse or doctor who will come around and check on the patients and 'keep it under surveillance'. The nurse or doctor has the authority. The patients are observed regularly creating a 'self regulating' behaviour, the feeling of being watched constantly which changes ones usual behaviour.

This is how it was in the Panopticon where the prisoners where each separated by large walls so they could not see each other but be seen by the guard who would observe from the center of the tower. The hospital is a panopticon. The prisoners were conditioned into thinking they were constantly being watched therefore self regulating their behaviour. “Hence the major effect of the panopticon: To induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p.65) assuring this power over the patient is happening automatically and therefore does not have to be exercised.

“The surveillance is based on a system of permanent registration: reports from the syndics to the intendants, from the intendants to the magistrates or the mayor.” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p61) Much like in hospital how the nurse will have all your details, medications, symptoms etc or file, usually at the end oh the patients bed. These details will normally be passed up to a doctor and then perhaps further up to a surgeon. “This document bears 'the name, age, sex of everyone, notwithstanding his conditions” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p61)

These are personal files about a patient but the patient themselves will not be able to see the documents, the files are the patients subjectivity taken from them so they become an object. The doctor will then willingly submit to power because you take their judgment.

“The magistrates have complete control over medical treatment” (Foucault in Thomas, 2000, p.61) very much like in hospital the doctor has control over one's treatment. This shows the Foucauldian concept 'Docile bodies'.

Quotes taken from;
Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading images', NY, Palgrave Macmillan.

Lecture notes

CTS lecture

Panopticism - Surveillance and society

The panopticon

Michel Foucaut
Madness and civilisation
discipline and punish  the birth of the prison

The great confinement (late 1600's) house of correction to curb unemployment and idleness

unwedded pregnant woman, drunks, mad men
make them work, make them normal

hide them away so society seems normal
forced to work, beaten

The emergence of forms of knowledge - biology, psychiatry, medicine, etc
legitimise the practise of hospitals, doctors, psychiatrists

faucolt
the pillory
shown to be abnormal publicity humiliated

1870- Guy Forkes - hung

disciplinary society and power keep us under surveillance control conduct, behaviour aptitudes, improve performance

1971
panopticon
Jeremy Banthon
pres

Millbank 1867
constantly visible

Internalises in the individual the conscious state that he is always being watched

eventually didnt need to be watched people were so scared of doing anything wrong

Laboratory to judge the insane experiment on them

allows scrutiny
allows supervisor to experiment on subjects
aims to make them productive

reforms prisoners

offices- open plan desks
worker always being watched or think they are
bars, pubs
google maps

knowing we're being watched cause's us to change
CCTV

relationship between power knowledge and the body

'Power relations have an immediate hold upon it, the body, they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it, ..

disciplinary society produces what faucalt calls docile bodies

self monitory
slef correcting
obedient bodies

disciplinary techniques
Danaher, Schirato and webb 2000

gym, glass windows

nazi sport event
cult of health
nazi de generate art

don't smoke or drink, not because its bad for you, because if you do you become ill and therefore useless to society

definition is not a top down model as with marxism

Power is not a thing or a capacity people have its a relation between different individuals and only exists when it is being exercised

the exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted

where there is power there is resistance

Bruce Nauman
Video corridor pieces 9late 1960's)

Chris Burden, Samson 1985