OUGD501 - CULTURE LECTURE

Richard recommended reading:

Raymond Williams - https://tavaana.org/sites/default/files/raymond-williams-keywords.pdf

Culture = 'One of the two or three most complicated words in the English language'
Before C18th - The tending of natural growth
C18th - Cultivated or civilised
Human development
Modern usage - Music, art, literature, film etc

Natural growth

British Culture:

Countries becoming more uniform can be argued to be down to the spread of culture.

George Ritzer

Coined the term 'McDonaldization' to describe the wide ranging sociocultural processes by which the principles of the fast-food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American sociert as well as the rest of the world' - Manfred B Steger.

Global Village Thesis:

'As electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed at bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree'

'The electronic age' has sealed 'the entire human family into a single global tribe' (1962, p.8)

Problems of GLOBALIZATION:

Sovereignty - Challenges to the ideas of the nation-state
Accountability - Transnational forces and organisations

Manfred B Steger, Globalization: A very short introduction

It can be argued that the International Style and uniform aesthetic helped create a utopian set language, replacing individuality with uniformity.

Cultural Imperialism:

Schiller
Chomsky

Prevent Strategy:
Educators teaching British values:

Democracy
Rule of law
Individual liberty
Mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs


James Gillray
-Fashionable Contrasts, 1972
Visual culture has always been a weapon to fight for social empowerment

AdBusters - American Corporate Flag (2009)
Stars are replaced with the corporate organisations

The culture industry - Frankfurt School
Adorno and Horkheimer

2 main products - homogeneity and predictability
Not anarchy but conformity
Maintains social authority
Culture provides the illusion of entertainment, freedom, being thoughtful and happy while keeping the order of society the same.

Culture is an ideological cap to keep people in capitalism

'Authentic Culture vs Mass Culture'

Authentic:

Real
European
Multi-dimensional
Active consumption
Individual creation
Imagination
Negation - refuse the dominant
Autonomous

The extent to which graphic design can be negational

'They Live' (1988) Dir. John Carpenter
Mass culture is subtly communicating hidden messages
Keep people from creating social change

Plato's Cave
Shadows represent the advertising and mass media

E.P Thompson - The Making of the English Working Class
Industrial revolution
Charts the rise of the working class which forms class identity and segregation
Working class start to create their own culture - working class for the working class

CULTURE vs POPULAR CULTURE

SUBCULTURES
'Subculture, the meaning of style' - Hebdige D
According to Cohen (1972) subcultures attempt to express autonomy from the parent culture yet, paradoxically, also wish to maintain some sort of relation to the values of the parent culture.


Use popular culture to create radical change - Jamie Reid 'God Save the Queen' (1977)
Visual rebellion

Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm MacLaren - 'Sex Boutique'
'Subcultures represent 'noise'

As a result Zandra Rhodes Collection 1978 inspired by punk fashion

Elvis Presley and The Clash album covers

Fred Perry UK Subcultures

Street Sound and Style - More4

'Hegemony' - leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.

Potential question relating to the lecture:

In an era of globalisation, to what extent do contemporary graphic design practices reflect core British values?