1. The Double Matrix of
Popular Culture

2. The First Matrix: the
Media of Popular Culture
• Popular culture comes in many
different forms, and is composed
using a variety of technology
• They include: television, books, the
internet, film, music, magazines &
newspapers, and more
• They overlap: CDs can hold music,
books, TV shows and movies. Tapes
might hold music or audio books. A
story may appear as a book, a movie,
and a TV series, and also have a
soundtrack.

3. Matrix 1: the Media
• They each have their own logic.
• Each medium of popular culture has
its history, its own industry norms,
its own strengths and weaknesses,
its requisite skills, its own
distribution networks, etc.
• But they are also often produced by
the same artists and the same
corporations.

4. Genre Analysis: TV
• TV is the most conforming form of
popular culture because it is the
most centrally controlled and the
most expensive.
• Some films cost far more to produce
than a TV show, but the cheapest
films cost far less
• TV is also controlled by a number of
powerful institutional forces,
especially advertisers, networks,
and studios.

5. Genre Analysis: Literature
• Literature is the least conforming
form of culture, because it is the
cheapest to produce
• Access to printing presses, or even
just printers, is cheap
• Internet technology makes the
production and distribution of
literature even cheaper
• If you have radical ideas, you
probably embrace literature long
before you make a TV show

6. Genre Comparisons
• A continuum of conformity and
independence:
Conformity Independence
TV
Lit
Film
Music
Internet

7. Putting the Media
Together
• Within each genre, we can
identify cultural items that work
well (meaning, they are
powerful), ones that work
moderately, and ones that do
not work:
Culture
that
works
Culture
that does
not work

8. Putting the Media
Together
• Although the many forms of popular culture
have their issues, logics, and dynamics,
they also work together to produce shared
effects.
• Across all popular culture, we can look for
similarities in culture that works, and
culture that does not work.
• Remember our continuum from the
previous slide (works  doesn’t work)?
• Let’s line up the continua for all forms of popular
culture, and then put them together, as
illustrated in the next 2 slides.

9. Putting the Media
Together
TV that
works
TV that
does not
work
Film that
works
Film that
does not
work
Music
that
works
Music
that does
not work
Lit that
works
Lit that
does not
work
Internet
that
works
Internet
that does
not work

10. Putting the Media
Together
• The first matrix: the various
genres, comparing what works
and what doesn’t work:

11. The Second Matrix:
Popular Values
• Although many values are relevant to American
popular culture, we will focus on: Class, Race,
Gender, Sexuality, Disability Status, and Age
• For each of these issues, we can identify
experiences of privilege for some and oppression
for others.
• Privilege and oppression are not an either/or binary
where you must be one or the other. They exist on
a continuum, where some are more privileged than
others, some more oppressed than others, and
some relatively unaffected.
• Looking at the list above, each person is likely to
have some areas where they experience privilege,
and others where they experience oppression.
• Our position on the continuum can change as
society’s treatment of these issues changes, or as
we ourselves change (when we age, when our
health changes)

12. The Second Matrix:
Popular Values
• These value systems each have
their own logics and dynamics.
• For example, race works in very
different ways from sexuality.
• We have to spend some time
talking about them separately.

13. The Second Matrix:
Popular Values
• But we also have to talk about them
together, because at times they
work hand-in-hand.
• Consider the following:
• What it means to be a Chinese-American
depends in part upon your gender
• What it means to be White depends in
part upon your class
• What it means to be a man depends in
part upon your sexual orientation
• What it means to be disabled depends in
part upon your income
• What it means to be a senior citizen
depends in part upon your racial identity

14. The Second Matrix:
Popular Values
• The point is that we have to find
a way to talk about these value
systems all at once.
• Again, we want to take our
continua, line them up, and then
put them together, as in the
next 2 slides

15. The Second Matrix:
Popular Values
Oppression
by Race
Privilege
by Race
Oppression
by Gender
Privilege by
Gender
Oppression
by Class
Privilege
by Class
Oppression
by Sexuality
Privilege by
Sexuality
Oppression
by Age
Privilege by
Disability
Status
Oppression by
Disability
Status
Privilege by
Age

16. The Second Matrix:
Popular Values
• But as we said, you can’t place yourself on
the continuum of one issue without
thinking about the influence of the other
issues, so we have to put them together,
into another matrix.

17. The Double Matrix
When we put the matrices
together, as illustrated at
right, we combine the hard
tangible matrix of cultural
genres (tv, music, internet,
books, film, etc.) with the
internalized matrix of
values with regard to
inequality (class, race,
gender, disability status,
age, sexuality).

18. The Double Matrix
• This approach allows us to
think about cultural
expressions with regards to
inequality. There are lots of
messages about inequality in
popular culture, but when we
look at the sum total of these
messages, which ones work
the most often and which ones
fail to find an audience?
• We will explore this question
all semester long, and produce
a variety of answers.
• You will reach your own
conclusions.