An Introduction to Studying Popular Culture

by Strinati,Dominic

• ISBN13: 9780415157674
• ISBN10: 0415157676
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-08-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

How can we study popular culture? What makes 'popular culture' popular? Is popular culture important? What influence does it have? An Introduction to Studying Popular Cultureprovides a clear and comprehensive answer to these questions. It presents a critical assessment of the major ways in which popular culture has been interpreted, and suggests how it may be more usefully studied. Dominic Strinati uses the examples of cinema and television to show how we can understand popular culture from sociological and historical perspectives. He traces the development of popular Hollywood cinema, addressing key topics such as production, distribution and exhibition, narrative, and genre, with case studies of gangster and horror films, and film noir. Strinati shows how television has been studied rather differently, with study focusing on consumption as much as on production, and he looks at how the television audience has been studied and evaluated. Returning to the idea of genre, he usesthe example of soap opera to shows how genre can be used to study popular television. Finally, he assesses whether or not popular television has become a 'post-modern' medium.

Author Biography

Dominic Strinati is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leicester.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction	xiii
Popular cinema: the Hollywood system	1	(24)
The rise of the Hollywood studio system	2	(2)
The emergence of cinema	4	(4)
Early popular cinema	8	(4)
The coming of sound	12	(2)
The studio system	14	(3)
The decline of the studio system	17	(3)
The package-unit system	20	(5)
Popular cinema: Hollywood narrative and film genres	25	(28)
The narrative and ideology of the Hollywood film	26	(1)
The American dream	26	(2)
The Hollywood narrative	28	(6)
Narrative and ideology	34	(5)
Genre, popular culture and popular cinema	39	(10)
Conclusions	49	(4)
The gangster film	53	(26)
The gangster film	54	(1)
Cultural realism	55	(1)
The Hollywood system and the gangster film	56	(12)
Ideology and the gangster film	68	(11)
The horror film	79	(36)
The horror film	80	(2)
Definitions of horror	82	(4)
Cycles of horror	86	(1)
Universal and the `horror classics'	86	(4)
Psychological horror	90	(1)
Horror and science fiction in the 1950s	91	(4)
Teenage horror	95	(3)
Hammer horror	98	(3)
Modern horror and modern society	101	(4)
The `slasher' film	105	(2)
Modern horror and modern Hollywood	107	(3)
Theories of horror	110	(5)
Film noir	115	(36)
What is film noir?	116	(2)
Defining film noir	118	(6)
Gender and film noir	124	(7)
Explanations of film noir	131	(1)
Film noir as a reflection of society	132	(2)
Cultural interpretations of film noir	134	(3)
Political influences	137	(3)
Economic explanations	140	(4)
Conclusions	144	(7)
Popular television: citizenship, consumerism and television in the UK	151	(22)
Citizenship and consumerism	153	(4)
Public service broadcasting	157	(1)
The formation of the BBC	158	(2)
Commercial television and public service broadcasting	160	(1)
The introduction of commercial television	160	(5)
Channel 4	165	(2)
Consumerism, citizenship and video, cable and satellite television	167	(6)
The television audience	173	(28)
The `effects' of popular television upon audiences	179	(4)
The `uses and gratifications' approach to popular television and the audience	183	(3)
Semiology, theory and audience studies	186	(8)
Conclusions: audiences and power	194	(7)
Popular television genres	201	(28)
A general introduction	202	(8)
The production of popular television genres	210	(7)
The structure of popular television genres	217	(3)
Production, audiences and genres	220	(2)
Audiences and the soap opera	222	(7)
Popular television and postmodernism	229	(22)
The mass media, culture and society	231	(3)
Consumption, style and meaning	234	(3)
Popular culture, fragmentation and identity	237	(7)
Conclusion	244	(7)
Conclusion	251	(8)
Notes	259	(8)
Bibliography	267	(12)
Index	279