Popular Culture: Entertainment, Sports, and Music 1/26/15 10:40 PM • A great need for popular culture was created by the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. Factories with regular workdays defined and expanded people’s leisure time. With larger blocks of free time available, the demand for amusement and entertainment expanded in the form of mass-communicated diversions, amusements, and entertainment. • Much of the content of mass media today is popular culture that is sold for a profit and integral to the economics of the media. Audiences are encouraged to consume popular culture, ranging from various forms of entertainment to sports and even pornography. People will probably argue forever about whether a given image or presentation is popular or not. • We can somewhat formulate a definition of popular culture. Simply put, it is a mass-communicated message that makes limited intellectual and aesthetic demands—content that is designed to amuse and entertain media audiences. • Popular culture reaches almost all of the public in one form or another; it influences the way we think, act, dress, and relate to others; and it has a tremendous economic impact on the media and strongly influences almost all mass communication content. • Media criticism is an arena of debate where conclusions are reached on the basis of personal opinions and values, rather than carefully assembled data. • Folk art consists of products that are developed spontaneously among anonymous people. It is unsophisticated, localized, and natural. Many unknown artists who are talented and creative but who receive no recognition for their contributions produce folk art. • Talented and creative individuals who often gain great personal recognition for the achievements deliberately produce elite art. • With the advent of cheap newspapers, magazines, paperback books, radio, movies, and television, kitsch made its debut, catering to massive, relatively uneducated audiences with undeveloped aesthetic tastes. • Several different levels of taste exist among these whom the media serve. The largest is the lower-middle level, which has the greatest aggregate purchasing power, and therefore its preferences dominate the production of media content. • Syndicates coordinate many people and tasks, including contracts between the creators of material, the syndicate itself, and contracts between the syndicate and subscribing newspapers.• Sports are a form of popular culture that is deeply rooted in modern society. From neighborhood games, to high school, college, and professional sports, it is so pervasive in society that even presidential debates have to step aside rather than compete for public attention and approval. • Music is a critical indicator of popular culture, expressing the values and references of different generations. • Sports coverage occupies 20% of all newspaper space and 25% of television’s weekend and special event coverage. Roughly 19% of all newspaper reporters cover sports, as do 21% of all consumer magazines. No other subject gets as much media
View Full Document
Unlocking...