Ch. 7: The Rules of the Game Cultural Consumption and Social Class in America

1. Ch. 7: The Rules of the Game Cultural Consumption and Social Class in America Teri Bietel, Alexandra Villalobos, Kayla Johnson, Lori Trevino

2. Cultural Consumption & Social Class Today we recognize a distinct difference between upper and lower class in the United States This was not always the case: In the 19th century America “Americans enjoyed a national popular culture consumed and experienced collectively by the masses, by people from all social classes.” The only segregation was where the people were seated at the shows. The aristocratic members sat in the luxury boxes, middle class sat in the orchestra and the lower class were crowded into the balcony and gallery. Another difference was that genres intermingled….a Shakespearian play would be put on along side a comedy act, magicians, dancers, etc.

3. What Changed??? • The Industrial Revolution • Produced a new kind of elite: successful entrepreneurs, bankers and business people. • They were the “new rich” and enjoyed a mass fortune but not the refinement that usually goes along with wealth. • They started making distinctions in order to elevate themselves and put down those that they felt were beneath them.

4. How did the changes “look” • The new rich raised the price of admission to many cultural events: opera, ballet, and other “highbrow” events in order to keep classes “beneath them” from being able to attend. First real view of social exclusion • Clear Distinctions were made between the upper and lower class in the entertainment industry. • Highbrows: Classical music, museums, art galleries • Lower Class: rodeos, big truck, Nascar, etc.

5. Conspicuous consumption • Designed to “show off one’s wealth”: • Expensive and luxurious goods and services • Wasteful, lacking in utility • Diamond bangles • Expensive restaurants—tiny portions • SUV’s • Luxury homes • Elaborate training: golf, tennis, polo, fencing • Avoidance of popular culture associated with working class tastes

6. Class based characteristics • Low class status • Ghetto • Trailer-park • White trash • While upper class tries to avoid associations with classes beneath them; lower class tries to emulate upper class with cheap knock off look alike items

7. Emulating the Upper Class Weddings Does he play polo?

8. Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory:Cultural Capital and Class Reproduction

9. Cultural Capital and Class Reproduction • What is cultural capital? • Appreciating and being knowledgeable about the fine arts, elite forms of popular culture, experiences with cosmopolitan culture, familiarity with rules of dress and proper etiquette • Called “capital” because it is similar to wealth—unevenly divided, inherited--taught since childhood

10. Wealthy children have cultural capital http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq5kZi1GF5I&feature=related

11. Why does it matter? • Cultural capital is very important in our society • “Cultural tastes have value and can be transferred to others, converted into financial wealth, and ultimately help to reproduce the class structure of our society” • So, cultural capital can keep people in the classes in which they were born!

12. How? • Many high-paying jobs (like law firms) hire applicants partially based on their cultural capital • They’ll be expected to play golf or entertain clients at fancy restaurants and they have to know the rules!

13. Is Bourdieu’s Theory True? • Sort of: • Professionals and managers are RELATIVELY more likely to attend the symphony, ballet, or opera than “blue collar” workers • But still, only a small percentage actually do • Poll: 55% of upper class in Manhattan have abstract art in home, none of lower/middle class did • But the upper class who did have abstract art liked it because it was “colorful” or matched with furniture • Not much cultural capital needed to know this!

14. Cultural snobvs. Cultural omnivore

15. Cultural Snobs • According to the book a stereotypical upper class snob is a highly educated professional who enjoys and attends plays, musicals, performances, concerts, and museums.

16. Cultural Snob Cont’d • These individuals are also more likely to participate in and attend various sporting events, boating, hiking, camping, photography, gardening, and exercising.

18. Cultural Omnivore • Described as someone who has far ranging tastes. • “Cultural omnivores rely on their cultural capital not only to consume highbrow fare but also to successfully inhabit several different kinds of social universes, each with a different set of taste expectations, rules of etiquette, and codes of subcultural behavior, language, and style” (Grazian , 2010).

19. So what caused culturally omnivorous behaviors? • It’s simple! Americans emphasize egalitarianism ideologies. • When it comes to the working class people in America, they added to their already established cultural tastes as their finances increased. • Elite Americans are also becoming omnivorous consumers, and this is partly due to rising commercialization. • “Given how Americans so readily identify with the concept of equality as a symbolic ideal, perhaps omnivorous consumption among the affluent classes allows one to perform cultural distinction without appearing overly snobby, pompous, highfalutin’ or out of touch with so-called “common” people” (Grazian , 2010).

20. Code Switching • The “ability to negotiate among multiple and varied cultural worlds simultaneously” (Grazian , 2010).

22. Who Am I? • Now that we have talked about cultural omnivores and code switching, it is important for us to realize that they help us to tell others what our class status is without coming across as a snob.

23. Ch.7 – “The Rules of the Game”: The Blurring of Class Boundaries in American Popular Culture Kayla Johnson

24. What defines wealth and a person’s “class” in society? • “Class boundaries in the United States have always been a bit blurry” Grazian 149) • In the 19th Century, all kinds of people attended Shakespearean plays for the live entertainment; the “class distinction” was seen in where the people were seated • Today, it is a “purely, symbolic emulation of the wealthy by the working classes” by purchasing material items that make a person appear to be someone they are not • Ex. designer baby clothes

25. According to Michael Kammen, “the blending of highbrow, lowbrow, and mass culture has been a recognizable quality of American popular culture, entertainment, and art since the 1920’s.

26. Duke Ellington’s musical ensembles harmonized European classical music with ragtime jazz of Harlem and Mississippi blues of the Deep South during the 1920’sIn Walt Disney’s 1940 film, Fantasia, animated animals and Mickey Mouse were accompanied by selections from the Classical music canon, including Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky.Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Magazine began publishing serious short fiction along with its pictorial centerfolds, including work by John Updike and Philip Roth.

27. Rock and heavy metal artists, such as Van Halen and Rush, have incorporated classical music techniques into their songwriting and performing since the 1970’s and 1980’s (Walser 1994).“The blurring of class boundaries continues in today’s American popular culture, especially as elite culture absorbs more popular influences.Mainstream television and film borrow from classical sources.The 1995 movie, Clueless, is a modernized version of the Jane Austin book, Emma. The longest running talk show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, attracts 30 million viewers from all walks of life and different classes in society.

28. Professional sports attract people from all walks of life, as viewers tune in to watch basketball, football, and baseball games from “fuzzy TV sets in working class bars, from plasma screens in home theatres, and in upper deck bleachers as well as corporate skyboxes.”In 2009, the Super Bowl had 98.7 million American viewers of all social classes. The reason for the wide social class range in the audience is most likely due to the diversity in the performers at half time since 2001: U2, Shania Twain, Brittany Spears, Aerosmith, Nelly, Sting, Paul McCartney, P Diddy, Prince, Janet Jackson, Rolling Stones, etc…

29. Like the Shakespearean plays of the 19C, this sporting event best represents the nationwide reach of our mass entertainment and popular culture.

30. Resources • Grazian , D. (2010). Mix it up popular culture, mass media, and society. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

31. Images • Allthatjazzinfo.com • lsm.crt.state.la.us • Fineartamerica.com • Notsuchayummymummy.wordpress.com • Destination360.com • Nettle.blogspot.com • Flickr.com • Nytimes.com • Counterpoint22.wordpress.com • Culttvseries.blogspot.com • Edition.cnn.com • Metrolyrics.com • Wrapcritic.com • Exministries.wordpress.com • Live.drjays.com • Weblogs.dailypress.com • Onlineclimbing.com • compgovpol.blogspot.com

32. Exam Question #1 What event(s) in American history can be credited for the upper class/lower class division in the entertainment world? • A) World War I • B) The Industrial Revolution • C) The Civil Rights Movement • D) All of the Above

33. Answer: • The Industrial Revolution

34. Exam Question #2 • True or False: According to Grazian, cultural capital is usually ‘inherited’ and learned since childhood.

35. Answer: • True!

36. Exam Question #3 • A cultural _________ can “successfully inhabit several different kinds of social universes, each with a different set of taste expectations, rules of etiquette, and codes of subcultural behavior, language, and style” (Grazian)

37. Answer • Omnivore