Research: Popular Theory.

Popular music/ culture theory has an influence on us as an audience. It is the way we understand and our attitudes towards things within modern society. These theories discuss and argue how popular culture is created for the masses and how 'true art' is only provided to those of the ruling class that belong to the bourgeoisie. It is like this because theories argue that the lower class of people do not recognise real music so only listen to what is presented to them; more likely this is the same thing over and over again. Even if music for the masses aims to be different, it all ends up sounding the same. The theorists that I have researched are; Antonio Gramsci, The Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno, The Birmingham School and Dick Hebdige.

Antonio Gramsci...
Gramsci is the creator of the hegemony theory. Hegemony is when the social class of others is looked down upon. This usually suggests that their is power or control from a class that is 'ruling' or of higher importance over the working class. The upper class is seen to have a unique viewpoint of the world and believe that there is an incredible, quite obvious difference between them and the working class. Gramsci believes that the judging of ideology can be effective if and when it connects with the 'common sense' of people. Therefore this is were the idea of the ruling class producing music or art for the masses comes along and proves the theory of their dominance within society.

Frankfurt School...
The theorists behind this argue that culture plays a specific role in cementing audiences into certain situations and transformed culture into an ideology of domination. A 'hypodermic syringe model' was created by the school thats shows that in society they are able to feed audiences what ever they desired. Max Horkheimer encouraged changes within society. Adorno believed that art provides an alternative vision of reality for the audience to feed into.

Theodor Adorno...
Adorno believed that their was a divide between the two social classes. He was strongly influenced by Karl Max and argued that there was a standard production that manipulated the masses of society into being passive. He also believed that there was a pseudo; stating individualisation and how audiences think vary, however this wasn't the case. Theodor Adorno came up with the idea that 'true art' was created for the bourgeoisie as they are higher than the working class and stereotypically listen to genres such as jazz and classical music. This leads to the point of the working class listening to music that is 'dumbed down', this is done bye the ruling class through hegemony.

Birmingham School...
Stuart Hall was from the School of Birmingham, he was a cultural theorist and sociologist along with Williams and Hoggart. He is credited for broadening cultural studies that mostly link to race and gender. He made contributions to the music industry by stating opinions on the popular music we listen to. Hall also created the reception theory which is the idea of encoding and decoding. Encoding is the definition given to the process where text is created by producers whereas decoding is the process where the audience read, understand and interpret the text in their own way; this is not always how the producer expects them too. This also means that when the audience do read and interpret text, the result of their decoding will depend mostly on their cultural upbringing.

Dick Hebdige...
Dick Hebdige believed that although we believe that sub-cultures were presented as different, they are all the same deep down. He stated that sub-cultures are just little cultures but they are no different because they are all doing the same thing. Hebdige also believed that consumption was an active process, that allows audiences to read into cultural products. Even though subcultures aim to be different, the fact that they are popular amongst the masses challenges this idea showing, really that they are all the same.

Looking at my research and all the different views from the various theorists. I would say that my views lay strongly with the theories of Stuart Hall. I strongly agree with the Reception theory of how things are decoded due to the individuals cultural upbringing. However i do also believe that individuals all interpret things differently and that not one person things exactly the same as the other, this challenges the views that adorno has.