{"id":20,"date":"2015-03-24T19:32:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T19:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotomedia\/chapter\/1-1-media-and-culture\/"},"modified":"2022-08-06T22:00:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-06T22:00:46","slug":"1-1-media-and-culture","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotomedia\/chapter\/1-1-media-and-culture\/","title":{"raw":"1.1 Media and Culture","rendered":"1.1 Media and Culture"},"content":{"raw":"
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Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n
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  1. Understand the impact pop culture has on society.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Discover historical and current music and other events and their global reach.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

    Pop Culture Mania<\/h2>\r\n
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    Figure 1.1<\/span><\/p>\r\n\"1.1.0\"<\/a>\r\n

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    Paul Townsend - 1960s Beatlemania Fashion<\/a> - CC BY-ND 2.0.<\/p>\r\n

    Just as fans could purchase Jerry Lind hats, Beatles fans could purchase Beatle wigs (as pictured above).<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n \r\n

    In 1850, an epidemic swept America\u2014but instead of leaving victims sick with fever or flu, this epidemic involved a rabid craze for the music of Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. American showman P. T. Barnum (who would later go on to found the circus now known as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey), a shrewd marketer and self-made millionaire, is credited with spreading \u201cLindomania\u201d through a series of astute show-business moves. Barnum promised Lind an unprecedented $1,000-a-night fee (the equivalent of $28,300 in 2009) for her entire 93-performance tour of the United States. Ever the savvy self-promoter, Barnum turned his huge investment to his advantage by using it to create publicity\u2014and it paid off. When the Swedish soprano\u2019s ship docked on U.S. shores, she was greeted by 40,000 ardent fans; another 20,000 swarmed her hotel (Barnum). Congress was adjourned specifically for Lind\u2019s visit to Washington, DC, where the National Theatre had to be enlarged to accommodate her audiences. A town in California and an island in Canada were named in her honor. Enthusiasts could purchase Jenny Lind hats, chairs, boots, opera glasses, and even pianos. Barnum\u2019s marketing expertise made Lind a household name and created an overwhelming demand for a singer previously unknown to American audiences.<\/p>\r\n

    The \u201cJenny rage\u201d that the savvy Barnum was able to create was not a unique phenomenon, however; a little more than a century later, a new craze transformed some American teenagers into screaming, fainting Beatlemaniacs. Though other performers like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley were no strangers to manic crowds, the Beatles attracted an unprecedented amount of attention when they first arrived in the United States. When the British foursome touched down at New York\u2019s Kennedy Airport in 1964, they were met by more than 3,000 frenzied fans. Their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show<\/em> was seen by 73 million people, or 40 percent of the U.S. population. The crime rate that night dropped to its lowest level in 50 years (Ehrenreich, et. al., 1992). Beatlemania was at such a fever pitch that Life<\/em> magazine cautioned that \u201ca Beatle who ventures out unguarded into the streets runs the very real peril of being dismembered or crushed to death by his fans.\u201d The BBC publicized the trend and perhaps added to it by highlighting the paraphernalia for fans to spend their money on: \u201cT-shirts, sweat shirts, turtle-neck sweaters, tight-legged trousers, night shirts, scarves, and jewelry inspired by the Beatles\u201d were all available, as were Beatles-style mop-top wigs.<\/p>\r\n

    In the 21st century, rabid fans could turn their attention to a whole swath of pop stars in the making when the reality TV program American Idol<\/em> hit the airwaves in 2002. The show was the only television program ever to have snagged the top spot in the Nielsen ratings for six seasons in a row, often averaging more than 30 million nightly viewers. Rival television network executives were alarmed, deeming the pop giant \u201cthe ultimate schoolyard bully,\u201d \u201cthe Death Star,\u201d or even \u201cthe most impactful show in the history of television,\u201d according to former NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker (Carter, 2007). New cell phone technologies allowed viewers to have a direct role in the program\u2019s star-making enterprise through casting votes, signing up for text alerts, or playing trivia games on their phones. In 2009, AT&T estimated that Idol<\/em>-related text traffic amounted to 178 million messages (Poniewozik, 2009).<\/p>\r\n

    These three crazes all relied on various forms of media to create excitement. Whether through newspaper advertisements, live television broadcasts, or integrated Internet marketing, media industry tastemakers help shape what we care about. For as long as mass media has existed in the United States, it\u2019s helped to create and fuel mass crazes, skyrocketing celebrities, and pop culture manias of all kinds. Even in our era of seemingly limitless entertainment options, mass hits like American Idol<\/em> still have the ability to dominate the public\u2019s attention. In the chapters to come, we\u2019ll look at different kinds of mass media and how they have been changed by\u2014and are changing\u2014the world we live in.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

    References<\/h2>\r\nBarnum, P. T.\u201d Answers.com<\/a>, http:\/\/www.answers.com\/topic\/p-t-barnum<\/a>.\r\n\r\nCarter, Bill. \u201cFor Fox\u2019s Rivals, \u2018American Idol\u2019 Remains a \u2018Schoolyard Bully,\u2019\u201d New York Times<\/em>, February 20, 2007, Arts section.\r\n\r\nEhrenreich, Barbara, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs, \u201cBeatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun,\u201d in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media<\/em>, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (New York: Routledge, 1992), 84\u2013106.\r\n\r\nPoniewozik, James. \u201cAmerican Idol\u2019s Voting Scandal (Or Not),\u201d Tuned In<\/em> (blog), Time<\/em>, May 28, 2009, http:\/\/tunedin.blogs.time.com\/2009\/05\/28\/american-idols-voting-scandal-or-not\/<\/a>.\r\n
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    BTS: everything you need to know about the astounding success of the world\u2019s favourite\u00a0K-Pop<\/span>\u00a0band<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_515\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]\"\" Image by Ak Graphics from Pixabay.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
    Published on TheConversation.com<\/a> October 12, 2018<\/div>\r\n
    by Stephanie Dennison <\/span><\/a>Professor in Brazilian Studies, University of Leeds, and<\/span><\/div>\r\n
    Stefania Pozzi <\/span><\/a>PhD Candidate, University of Leeds<\/span><\/div>\r\n
    <\/div>\r\nSouth Korean boy band BTS are in the middle of a sell-out world tour, performing to tens of thousands of people in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and France. But in case you\u2019ve missed their meteoric rise, here\u2019s what you need to know about the latest K-Pop phenomenon.\r\n\r\nSimply put: BTS are huge. Jimmy Fallon recently introduced them<\/a> on The Tonight Show as \u201cthe biggest boy band on the planet\u201d, and he might be right. In May this year, they became the first Korean band to\u00a0top the US Billboard charts<\/a> with their album Love Yourself: Tear. They have sold more than 2.5m copies of the follow-up compilation album Love Yourself: Answer since its release in August \u2013 that\u2019s twice as many sales as One Direction\u2019s last album.\r\n\r\nBTS broke onto the scene in Korea with the hit song I Need U in 2015, gradually building momentum through album sales and endless public appearances. Since then, they have bagged all of the most sought-after awards at home:\u00a0Mnet Asian Music Awards<\/a>,\u00a0Seoul Music Awards<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Golden Disk Awards<\/a>.\r\n\r\nJapan can\u2019t get enough of them \u2013 there, they\u2019ve played sell-out stadium tours and their albums have achieved double-platinum status. This is an impressive achievement, considering how lucrative the Japanese market is, how it has its own homegrown pop movement (J-Pop) and given the historical tensions and mutual suspicion between the two countries.\r\n

    Slick and polished<\/h2>\r\n
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    <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nLike all K-Pop bands (or \u201cidols\u201d, as they are known), they look good, move well and know how to sing. They are groomed, micro-managed, slickly packaged and unmistakably K-Pop in look and sound, combining soft masculinity with US-inspired pop genres. They will have endured the usual gruelling training programme before being \u201cdebuted\u201d\u00a0in 2013<\/a>.\r\n\r\nLike other bands, BTS make creative use of social media to communicate with fans in a seemingly more intimate way \u2013 from starring in good-humoured \u201cvariety shows\u201d on\u00a0their YouTube channel<\/a>, to sending positive messages about the need for self-care\u00a0on Twitter<\/a>, BTS are so big on social media that Twitter\u00a0created an emoji<\/a>\u00a0just for them. On September 25 they addressed the UN Assembly to launch a campaign to encourage young people to speak up about bullying and abuse.\r\n\r\nHere is a Tweet posted by UNICEF<\/a> with a video from the band.\r\n\r\nBTS have built on the success of more established K-Pop bands such as Super Junior and Girls Generation, extending beyond the East Asian market into the US and now, tentatively, into Europe. News, gossip and video footage of the band is sought out and shared on social media, much of it translated and subtitled by K-Pop fans into Mandarin, English and even Portuguese (K-Pop artists regularly perform in Brazil,\u00a0one of their largest markets<\/a>\u00a0outside East Asia).\r\n\r\nBut above all, BTS are big because they are \u201cdifferent\u201d. Managed by Big Hit Entertainment, BTS are\u00a0reportedly allowed<\/a>\u00a0to contribute creatively to the band\u2019s style and sound \u2013 a freedom\u00a0not always afforded<\/a>\u00a0to successful K-Pop acts. Big Hit has a relatively good reputation, in an industry\u00a0known for its ruthless treatment<\/a>\u00a0of pop stars. With their well-publicised\u00a0focus on mental health issues<\/a>\u00a0in songs, tweets and their work with UNICEF, BTS seem to have struck a chord with Western audiences.\r\n

    Fan army<\/h2>\r\nNot a fan club: an ARMY. The word ARMY is the acronym of the rather clumsy \u201cAdorable Representative MC for Youth\u201d, a term chosen by managers Big Hit and readily embraced by the fan base. Like the Beliebers and Swifties, the ARMY is an essential part of their band\u2019s marketing machine.\r\n\r\nTheir recent success in the US was partly driven by the three million votes accrued through a fan-driven campaign on social media to ensure their success at the Billboard Music Awards. Members of the ARMY are active on social media and have been instrumental in spreading awareness of the band\u2019s UNICEF-sponsored \u201cLove Myself\u201d campaign.\r\n\r\nGroups of anonymous fans have also set up support groups on Twitter to help anyone struggling with mental health issues: the biggest account of this type is\u00a0@BTS_ArmyHelpCentre<\/a>, where anyone can DM to access mutual support and help regardless of gender, age and nationality.\r\n\r\nSo, what can you expect from a BTS concert? A tightly choreographed, energetic performance with pitch-perfect harmonies and very fast rapping. Expect the fans to know all the dance moves to their hit songs: they will have been rehearsing too. The noise will be deafening: as well as the music, you\u2019ll hear famous fan chants, in which all the band members get a name check in time to the rhythm of the songs. Check out this YouTube video<\/a> from a show in 2018 to experience a taste of it.\r\n\r\nMost fans, regardless of nationality, will know all the words of the songs (sung mostly in Korean) and what they mean. They\u2019ll all have a BTS light stick, used to keep rhythm and to create complicated light-based choreography. And expect screaming, plenty of tears, exhaustion and the odd fainting incident. There will likely be a crowd of enthusiastic fans (mostly teenage girls) outside the venue: the concerts sold out in minutes and not many could afford the four-figure resale prices on e-Bay.<\/span>\r\n
    \"CC<\/h5>\r\n
    We believe in the free flow of information<\/div>\r\n
    Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.<\/h6>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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    Exercises<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

    \r\n\r\nThe Far Reach of Mass Media\r\n