JOHN FISKE - 'CULTURE INDUSTRY'

According to John Fiske and some other cultural studies thinkers, the terms ‘Popular Culture’ and ‘the popular’, suggest that people themselves choose and construct the popular. 

Here, popular culture describes culture of, by and for the people. In this, the people create and participate in cultural practices which articulate their experiences and aspirations.

Fiske has tried to provide the term ‘Popular Culture’ with an inflection consistent with the socially critical approach of cultural studies. He defines ‘Popular’ as that which the audiences make of and do with the commodities of the culture industries. These Culture Industries operate in a market which is governed by commercial and ideological imperatives. For him, there can be no instance of popular which involves domination. Therefore, according to Fiske, ‘popular’ is excluded from any domination and manipulation.

Fiske held that a cultural analysis of cultural texts and audience reception would reveal the way the dominant ideology was structured in the text and into the reading subject. It would also reveal the textual features which enable negotiated, resisting or opposition readings. In addition, it would help to reach a satisfactory conclusion by studying historically and socially located meanings. This idea excluded analyses of how texts are manufactured within the context of political economy and system of production of culture. It also leaves out how audiences are formed by a variety of social institutions, practices, ideologies and through use of different media.

Fiske claimed that a cultural studies analysis of Madonna needed to analyze her marketing strategies, use of new media technologies, and skillful exploitation of the themes in keeping within their socio-historical moment. All these would account for important dimension of the “Madonna Phenomenon”. Madonna first emerged in the moment of Reaganism and she embodied the materialistic and consumer-oriented ethos of the 1980s. She appeared at the time of fashion fever, MTV, intense marketing and promotion. Madonna’s popularity was mostly a function of her marketing and promotion strategies, along with creative fabrication of music videos and images which appealed to diverse audiences. The meanings and effects of her artefacts can therefore be best understood within the context of their production and reception. This involved discussing MTV, the music industry, concerts, marketing and construction of images. We also need to study the audiences as individuals and also as members of distinctive groups like teenage girls. Along with that, we need to analyze how her work might reproduce a consumer culture which gets identity in terms of images and consumption.

The fetishism of ‘popular’ in contemporary cultural studies overlooks the role of marketing and public relations strategies which actually help to produce the so-called popular. The ‘popular’, is not just created by the audiences alone, as Fiske pointed out. It is actually negotiated between audiences and cultural producers. This is with the mediation of the culture industry, hype, public relations and media discourses.

The Popular is produced by advertising, public relation, critics and general media. The audiences are told which movies to watch, which television shows to see, which music to listen, etc. Therefore, the popular is actually a negotiated interaction between the audiences and culture industries.

Culture industries relates to the process of industrialization of mass-produced culture and commercial imperatives. Commodities of creative industries exhibit the same features as other products of mass production: commodification, standardization and massification. The products of culture industries had a specific function. They provided ideological legitimacy to the capitalist societies and integrated individuals into the framework of mass culture and society. These culture industries pay people huge amounts of money to accurately research what will sell in the market and then aggressively produce and market such profitable products.

 

Ref: Introduction to Culture Studies – R. Rai & K. Panna