Popular Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Popular Culture - Essay Example The Popular music and Rave culture dominates the discourse on culture particularly the popular culture. Certain genres of popular music have flickered controversy and opposition and criticisms have been centred on them particularly of their influence on 'youthful values, attitudes and behaviour through the music's (perceived) sexuality and sexism, nihilism and violence, obscenity, black magic and anti-Christian nature.'1 Popular culture in general has historically been the target of censure, condemnation and regulation, because of its intense relationship with consumerism. The essay examines the relationship between youth, youth behaviours, popular music and the consumption of music-dance cultures. In order to do this we have to examine the school of Marxist thought that is relevant to the debate - the Frankfurt School. The founders of this school of Marxism, including Marcuse, Adorno and Horkheimer were all critical of the development of what they saw as mass culture and mass consumption. The orientation of the school has been towards the linking of modern capitalism with the control exerted by media industries and products over the consumer. Strinati sees it as 'popular culture which is produced by mass production industrial techniques and is marketed for a profit to a mass public of consumers'. Mac Donald was far more critical: it is a debased, trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure, tragedy) and also the simple, spontaneous pleasures...a narcotised acceptance of mass culture and of the commodities it sells as a sub stitute for the unsettling and unpredictable...joy, tragedy, wit, change, originality and beauty of real life. These arguments also underline the relationship between popular music, dance and their consumption. Youth culture has been studied from several ideological perspectives on assumptions that they are 'not isolated and untouched by the surrounding culture' . This notion has lead researchers to assume that youth culture is not part of 'growing up', but a phenomenon that occurs as a precipitation of the social, political, cultural and ideological factors. There is not one monolithic youth culture that defines all young people. Popular youth culture embraces a diversity of sub-cultures or "tribes" such as skaters, druggies, snobs, band geeks, Satanists, Jesus freaks, techno-goths, computer dweebs, blacks, Latinos and white trash. Groups distinguish themselves by dress, style, music, body modification practices, race, ethnicity, and language. In her book Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, 2Thornton refers to the youth cultures based around the raves and dance clubs from the late 1980's to the mid-1990's. The main sociological context of Thornton's study was the approach to the study of youth subcultures developed by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham in books like Resistance Through Rituals. This