Week 3

What is culture and how does it effect the meaning of a product or artwork?

I. Define: Culture
     a. high culture --> philosophy, intellectual pursuit
     b. low culture --> everyday consumption of goods and services as well as popular activities           and sports
     c. if barbie went to Nigeria
          - just a doll
          - not interpretable the same way
          - skin color

II. Barbie in Time (culture)

     a. history reflects the fashion of the time
     b. blonde, big lips, large eyes, extreme proportions, very long legs, blue eyes proportional           differences is between breast and waist measurements
     c. having the figure of barbie gives a woman power

III. Bratz

     a. features can be paralleled to the features babies are born with
     b. babies represent innocence, compliance, submission, manipulable, sweetness,           unquestioning love
     c. these offer the male a sense of power
          - 2 sources of power in our society: money and sex
          - this perpetuates and old paradigm (the imbalance between the sexes)

IV. Culture vs. Popular Culture
     a. Culture
          - the process of society’s intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development (ex.                philosophers, poet, etc.)
          - particular way of life of a people, period, or group (ex. the development of literacy, the                types of sports played, the celebration of festivals)
          - works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity novels, ballets, operas, fine art
     b. Popular Culture
          - phenomenon evolving out of the consumerist and emerging youth culture of the 50s                and 60s
          - its products are accessible and mass produced
          - work deliberately setting out to win favor with the masses or specific communities
          - culture produced by industy and consumed and popularised by word of mouth and the                media
     c. Criticisms of Popular Culture
          - Theodore Adorno of the “Frankfurt School” described consumers of such culture                victims. Political implications are: that this process maintains public passivity                towards instructions. In this way, visual communication is an agent of ideology