Approaches to Media and Culture: Critical Reader Introduction
Within this reading log, I will discuss various articles that address issues and debates affecting contemporary media – challenging or supporting the authors’arguments with my own examples and opinions. I will talk about genre and the increase of horror films, question the need for the distinction between high and low art, moral panics revolving around violence and hip hop, the media spreading Islamophobia through stereotypes, and finally feminism (or rather lack thereof) in superhero movies. The aforementioned topics I will discuss are relevant to how the media is developing and affecting contemporary society , all related in a way to the term “popular culture”.
Popular culture is in itself a debate, indeed what is popular culture? Definitions for popular culture can be conflicting, but often not wrong. It is widely thought to be culture-based on the tastes of average (as opposed to abnormal?) people, rather than the more ‘educated’ elite. This raises immediate issues.. For example, the educated elite may enjoy watching Downton Abbey as much as everyone else, does it then become high art instead of popular culture? I will later delve further into this debate when discussing the need for the distinction between high and low art.
Horror film makers slash and earn; Low cost, high returns, wider audiences mean bloody good business
In this article, Souccar suggests that horror films have become an almost guaranteed profit generator for studios. This is exemplified through the film Open Water, and is thought to be due to technological advancements and large, passionate fan bases.
Souccar points out that Open Water was a perfect example of the profitability of horror films. The film only cost $120,000 to make, requiring only a couple of unknown actors, crew and equipment. The film was bought by Lions Gate for $2.5 million at the Sundance film festival and later grossed over $30 million worldwide at the box office.
Looking further into the industry and finding other examples, it is hard to find a horror film that flopped. Similarly to Open Water, Paranormal Activity cost $150,000 to make, yet made over $107 million at the box office.
A reason that these films do so well is because, in most cases, it is not difficult to scare people. Horror films do not always need expensive CGI or well known actors to be received well by audiences. Souccar states that ‘less polish, more fear’, meaning technological advancements have made it easier for filmmakers to create films that are ‘less polished’, resulting in the film being scarier. Furthermore, horror films may be so popular, because people like feeling terror as it is an uncommon feeling.
Touching upon the star theory, Roth, director of Cabin Fever, states that “The scare is the star, so as long as the film delivers, the film will make money” (Roth, 2004). Therefore, horror films do not need expensive well-known actors to do well either. Upon researching this topic, it has proven difficult to find a horror film that has not at least turned a profit, bar a few exceptions. Does this give studios an excuse to make cheaper, lower standard horror films?
Souccar points out that horror films have been coming in and out of popularity in the past, quoting Peter Paulsen, “Horror goes in cycles” (Paulsen, 2004). In the 1980s, horror was popular with Nightmare on Elms Street. This dipped and later became popular again with Scream. However, horror films seem to stay in popular culture today, with blockbusters released every year. Now, there is such strong demand for horror films that there are 15 film festivals devoted to horror films in the US.
Studios have noticed this and are starting to discover that making horror films are virtually risk free. This can be seen by studios producing films with much larger budgets. Warner Brothers Pictures gave the Stephen King adaption IT a $35 million budget, which paid off by making over $350 million at the box office. So perhaps instead of spending less money on horror films to make a healthy profit, studios are instead investing much more money to make a considerable profit.
Ivan Hewett (2015) Is it time to end the distinction between high and low art?
In his article, Hewett questions whether it’s time to stop categorising high and low art. He says the question was raised when a German professor hosted a conference on a pop music, entitled “Industrielle Volksmusik for the 21st Century: Kraftwerk and the Birth of Electronic Music in Germany”. Many wondered why the professor would organise a conference on pop music, when in the past he organised conferences on ‘higher art’ such as “Goethe as Prophet of Multi-Culturalism”. Theorists such as Hall and Hoggart have long thought that “everyday culture was as deserving of close study as high art”, as put by Hewett.
One way Hewett suggests that we end the divide between high and low art is by raising low art; showing pop music can be as intricate and meaningful as higher art. This was originally suggested by William Mann, a music critic for The Times. This can be done for many (if not all) songs, but as an example I will use Ninety by Jaden Smith (2017).
It would be easy to pass the song off as an average pop song, but it does have a deeper meaning. The song has multiple distinct rhythmical sections, each carefully produced. The lyrics in the first part of the song expresses how he can offer his lover more than empty sexual pleasures, yet she is never around for him to prove it. In the second part, he does the opposite, yet still longs for a perfect relationship. The lyrics are just as moving and intimate as a poem, including techniques that makes poems poetic. Despite this, the music isn’t as highly regarded as poetry. Why? Because the song is popular.?
Further into the article, Hewett states “The fact is that pop songs can never rival classical music in terms of syntactic subtlety”, but I strongly disagree. There are a plethora of popular songs that are just as syntactically subtle, in many different ways. Bohemian Rhapsody is a symphony in itself, similar to a typical Dmitri Hvorostovsky piece. Heaven by Beyoncé is a deep, personal and poetic insight into her miscarriage, just as moving Sylvia Plath’s poem Parliament Hill Fields. Hewett, however, does point out that the power of popular music that is held as high art is in its tendency to become engrained in the “social, everyday lives of their listeners”.
The distinction between high and low art is outdated. Art is art. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and therefore individually subjective, thus no one is entitled to say some art is more beautiful than others. If art means something to someone and invokes an emotional response, then it is art.
Neil Spencer, Patrick Neate (2006). Is hip hop really responsible for Britain's rampant knife culture?
This article is split into two sections. Firstly, Spencer argues that hip hop (or “gansta rap” as he calls it) is responsible for much of the knife crime in Britain, contributing to a moral panic. Similarly to David Cameron, Spencer calls particular attention to BBC’s Radio 1, suggesting that the music the station plays celebrates the “knife-toting, gun-happy, life-is-cheap mindset” of R&B and rap artists, that enacted on the streets and playgrounds. To argue this is to argue that audiences, or more topically Britain’s “underclass”, is passive. Spencer is supporting the idea behind the ‘Hypodermic Needle’ theory, a theory which is widely accepted to be outdated and irrelevant in today’s society. Spencer believes that by listening to R&B and Rap, otherwise innocent members of society are being corrupted and induced to commit crimes, re-enacting the songs of the artists they listen to.
This is a common misunderstanding – that correlation equals causation. Correlation, in this case , does not equal causation. Simply because there is hip hop and there are knife crimes, this does not mean the two are directly linked. This confusion between the two is causing an unnecessary moral panic, one in which instead of being focused on hip hop, should be focused on the knife crime itself. Despite Spencer’s arguably dramatic views, he advises not to “turn it into a moral panic, but also let's not just look the other way.”.
In the second half of the article, Neate argues that the two are unrelated. He says an “opportunistic politician”, such as Cameron, pointing the blame of social ills on hip hop is as predictable as a breakdown on Big Brother. Yes, R&B, Hip Hop and Rap do tell violent stories and they are often misogynist, but so are movies and video games. Video games especially caused a moral panic as people thought that playing Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty would encourage children to hijack cars and go shoot people. Yet, people understood it was an overreaction and the moral panic soon faded. Neate also mentions that there are so-called “conscious” rappers that produce political or positive content. For example, Kendrick Lamar is known for his deep and political work, such as XXX in his album DAMN. (2017) where he calls attention to youths growing up in poverty in America. Perhaps instead of encouraging violence, rap artists are pointing out the injustice in society they have lived through, a “social documentary” of sorts. Neate admits that hip hop can be “aggressive, over-sexualised and materialistic ad absurdum; but so is the culture that spawned it.”
Neate interviewed a young rapper from Johannesburg in South Africa, who pointed out that the genre was beneficial because it introduces people “all sorts of political, moral and cultural ideas” that otherwise wouldn’t be heard. He admits that hip hop has influenced him as a person, but to suggest that it has influenced him more than his parents, education and general upbringing is “patently ridiculous”. He finishes the article with “By the same token, therefore, it should go without saying that it's not hip hop's fault people carry guns and knives. Is it the politicians’?"
Muniba Saleem (2017) Spreading Islamophobia: Consequences Of Negative Media Representations
Stereotypes in the media effects people’s perceptions. In this article, Saleem discusses the ways in which media can spread islamophobia, focussing in America. Saleem points out that most Americans hardly see or interact with Muslims, and are instead introduced or exposed to Muslims through the media they consume. Typically, the media represents a stereotypical Muslim as a terrorist or “the Other”. This can be seen through all sorts of media, including newspapers, cable news, TV shows, movies, and video games.
For example, Homeland is a highly successful TV show that represents a negative stereotype of Islam and its followers. It painted Islam in a poor light, contributing to the stereotype that Islam preaches violence. Not only does it portray individuals or religion negatively, it paints a false and puerile image of the Middle East, saying that most countries in the region have the mutual hidden agenda to take down the United States. In fact, three Arabic graffiti artists the show hired to make the refugee camps appear more authentic have used their art to slyly challenge the show. In Arabic, they wrote scripts such as “Homeland is racist” or “Homeland is a watermelon” (meaning not taken seriously), showing the discontent Muslims have with how they are showed in the media.
Though many would argue that it is just a TV show, the stereotypes painted by this can affect individual’s perceptions. Saleem stated that a study in the Journal of Communication found Americans relying on the media for information about Islam and Muslims is associated with support for Trumps racist policies targeting Muslims, as well as taking military action against Islamic countries. Saleem also points out that that these negative stereotypes do not only change the way people think about Muslims, it also influences the way in which minorities think about themselves, expressing that “Muslims are aware of and distressed by the negative representation of their religious group within mainstream American media.”
Reza Azlan, an Iranian-American author, argued that mainstream media needs to challenge negative stereotypes of Muslims to have the population better accept Islam. This is possible, and was done with Modern Family. This show broke the stereotypes that would cause homophobia by showing that gay men are just like everyone else and have their own struggles and lives. This eventually (and arguably) led to the legalisation of same sex marriage due to swaying the opinion of the public. If there were a show similar to Modern Family involving muslims, perhaps there would be much less Islamophobia in everyday life.
In order to fight Islamophobia, the public needs reject media that enforces a racist stereotype of Islam to prevent it influencing people who are not educated on Islam, and instead demand a fairer portrayal of Muslims.
Kelsey Snyder: Hollywood Sets Up Its Lady Superheroes to Fail
There is an undeniable lack of female lead characters in superhero films. Snyder addresses this in her article, pointing out that even though 40% of the Avengers: Age of Ultron audience was female, studios are not recognising their demand for a superhero female role model. Yes, there are female superheroes, but they are hardly given the priority or attention that their male counterparts do, and as a result, the few female-led superhero films flop.
An example Snyder uses is the film Catwoman, which was given a budget that was more than 30% than Batman Begins. DC’s neglect for superheroines becomes apparent straight away with the smaller budget of Batman’s female counterpart. This neglect goes deeper, with DC picking a director that has little to no experience with the American market, as opposed to the big name directors Batman is assigned such as Christopher Nolan. Furthermore, the scriptwriters for the film were all male, committing atrocities such as having characters killed over face cream.
There are examples of studios trying to change this and producing more female-led content, such as Agent Carter. The show is a spin-off of Captain America and does well to use a female lead that does not revolve around romance. Supergirl has attempted to empower female leads, but focussed the plot too much on romance and fashion, Snyder even said the show is basically “The Devil Wears Prada…with superpowers”.
It can be said that the ball is rolling for female equality with the release of Wonder Woman. Being a huge success, it showed studios that female superheroes can be just as successful as males. The film contains many acts of feminism, such as the montage where she is finding what to wear to fit in with 1915s Britain, complaining about the clothes being impractical and too tight, or even having a female as the villainous Nazi scientist. Put well by Zoe Williams from The Guardian, “Wonder Woman is a bit like a BuzzFeed list: 23 Stupid Sexist Tropes in Cinema and How to Rectify Them.” (Williams: 2017)
Snyder states towards the end of article that “there is little hope that female superheroes will be given the chance they deserve”, to which I disagree. I think the chance has been given and it is working. Supergirl is, at the end of the day, a female superhero that children can look up to, despite still having elements of post-feminism by assuming that romantic struggles are equatable to super villains that threaten the world. It is a start, and it is continuously improving shown by Wonder Woman, and hopefully to still be seen with upcoming films Batgirl and Black Widow.
Conclusion
To conclude, I discussed various articles about popular culture, some I challenged and some I agreed with. I discussed the reason for the increase in horror films and their future in society; the reason why the distinction between high art and low art should be abolished; the unreasonable moral panic involving hip hop and R&B; how the media is contributing to widespread islamophobia by stereotyping their portrayal; and how feminism is finally changing female superhero for the better.
Regarding the debate of popular culture and high culture, it is safe to say that the classification between the two is subjective and is becoming increasingly unnecessary, and perhaps even improper in contemporary society. In our global village, there are many issues and debates involving the media, including (but not limited to) the subjects I have touched on previously. The debate around high and popular culture is a controversial topic, but not the most important when compared to Islamophobia and the need for feminism.