issues reader 7: high and low culture 2 11
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High and Low Culture 2
Your third and final topic (write about one for Unit 3)Choose two brands of the same product and compare their packaging, design
and promotional material. One should reflect the values of high culture and the
other those of low or popular culture. Say what characteristics and contexts mark
each out as high or low. Lastly, discuss whether and why the boundaries between
high and low culture are still clearly defined or are becoming blurred today.
Minimum: 750 words.
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Brief: your tasks
1. Give a short introduction to, or adefinition of, high and low culture.
2. Analyse an example: how does itreflect high culture values
3. Analyse an example: how does it
reflect low culture values
4. Discuss with reasons and illustratewhether the boundaries betweenhigh and low culture are still clearly
defined or are becoming blurred?
5. Include a title page, bibliographyand images
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High and Low Culture
Culture: Collectively, art, literature and music but also describes how society isorganised in terms of knowledge, beliefs and attitudes of different groups.
High culture: high brow; the highest achievements in society in terms of art,music, literature, ones which are held to be improving and significant
Supported by an exclusive elite of refined or educated taste
Expensive, elegant and collectable Complex, often difficult to understand, deep, and supported by critical texts
Traditional rules and codes established, handed down and followed
Supported by Government funds, housed in official buildings
Low Culture/Popular culture: low brow, consumed by the masses, held to be
vulgar, worthless and insignificant Cheap, easily understood or appreciated, less complex and often amateur.
Consumed passively (no education required, no rules to understand)
Kitsch, trivial, simple, superficial and easily produced
Low value, trivial, throwaway and for fun and entertainment only
Low class consumers and often opposing the ruling elite
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Keywords
High Culture Long established forms
Professional and endorsed by critical material
Supported by an elite from the wealthy strata of society
Improving and elevating with profound and significant meaning & content
Housed in museums etc and so sanctioned
Supported by government subsidy or business and regarded as civilising
Low Culture
Regarded as vulgar, kitsch and transient/expendable
Cheap, expendable and for a mass audience
Consumed passively, indiscrimiinating
Entertainment, popular, and commercial
Often youthful (not exclusively)
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Which is Which?
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In Pairs
Discuss the cultural associations of these examples and then decide which
could be best described as reflecting the values of high or low culture,
and which cause you problems (and why)
Soap Operas
Rugby UnionThe Sun
Ballet
The Cinema
Jewellery
Tattoos
Primark
Remy Martin
Jeffrey Archer
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The Canon and Good Taste (Film Clip)
Last week we looked at how a set of rules and hierarchies was developed over
time, and as a part of the classical tradition, to establish a clear idea of
what high culture was and how an educated elite could acquire the
understanding to use them to identify high culture. This became known as
having good taste.
Use the sheet at the back of this Reader to follow Stephen Bayleys account of
this development and how it has changed in the twentieth century.
(The annotations are mine, to pick out the main points for you)
Next two examples: see how these illustrate, I think, the ways in which industry
and commerce stillplay on this hierarchy to suggest that an elite or
exclusive product must be superior to a more available and popular one.
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Exploiting Blurred Boundaries in a
Postmodern Age
However, its clear, as weve seen in earlier examples
and in the video, that marketing and the media
also exploit the modern tendency to criticize,
break and mock the divisions and pretensions of
a high-low culture hierarchy.
As we saw with Burberry, the consumer can be
encouraged, often with humour, to disrupt social
patterns by mixing and matching products and
styles from all parts of our culture: why do you
think this is commercially successful today?
Weve encountered these traits as Postmodernism
before (see Pop Art) and will return to it soon
and this makes these changes to High and Low
Culture part of bigger changes in culture/society
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Identify the styles, content
and contexts of this
example (texts, image,
production values,
connotations etc) and saywhich elements are best
described as high or low
culture.
Overall, does this examplereflect the values of high or
low culture?
We can now look at your
examples.
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UNIT 3: RECAPS
BRIEF
PRESENTATION
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
EXTENSIONS, LATE WORK AND THE MITIGATION PANEL
CAPTION PACK examples, key words, writing mistakes use this
6 COMMON MISTAKES: using Art examples, no name on the work, plagiarism, gaps
(not checking the deliverables), not applying for an extension in
advance and being late (up to two weeks = 40%, later = no
marks)
HAND IN ONE DOCUMENT
VRF + Contextual Issues Writing at the back
Cover, contents and bibliography
- VRF = 6 introductions, 12 images, 12 explanations + research
materialsWritin = one to ic from 3 covered min 750 words title and ima es
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