CHMN 608: Youth in Contemporary Culture

1. Understanding the Dynamics Of Faith and Culture CHMN 608: Youth in Contemporary Culture

2. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • 1. Religion in Relationship to Popular Culture • How popular • culture shapes • or is appropriated • by religious groups.

3. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • Religion in Relationship to Popular Culture • b) How religion is • represented in • popular culture.

4. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • Religion in Relationship to Popular Culture • c) How religious • groups interact • with popular • culture.

5. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • How popular • culture serves • religious • functions • in culture.

6. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • How popular culture serves religious functions in culture. • Social function – religion • binds people into • communities of • shared beliefs • and values

7. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • How popular culture serves religious functions in culture. • Existential/Hermeneutical • Function – religion • provides identity, • meaning, and • purpose

8. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • How popular culture serves religious functions in culture. • Transcendent Function • – religion provides a • medium by which • we experience the • “other” or “beyond”

9. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • 3. A Missiological Response • to Popular Culture • Pop culture • as potentially • harmful and • in need of • critique

10. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • 3. A Missiological Response • to Popular Culture • b. Pop culture • can sometimes • mediate fundamental • religious truths.

11. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • 3. A Missiological Response • to Popular Culture • c. Pop culture • as a potential • source of new • understandings • of the faith

12. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • 3. A Missiological Response • to Popular Culture • “Sensusinfidelum” (the wisdom of • the unfaithful): “People (or forms • of popular culture) who profess to know little or nothing about the religious may indeed form, inform, or transform religious meaning for people of faith.”

13. Studying Religion & Popular Culture • Four Approaches (Lynch) • Using texts and practices • of popular culture as • material for theological • reflection • Pop culture in relation to biblical texts • Pop culture in relation to theological questions or themes www.hollywoodjesus.com

14. POP CULTURE

15. 1. Quantitative View: Popular culture is culture that is well liked by many people.

16. Any definition of popular culture must include a quantitative measure. • But how far must we count before something is considered popular? • What if a piece of high culture becomes popular? Does that make it popular culture?

17. Classical or Popular?

18. 2. Qualitative View: Popular culture is what’s left after we’ve defined high culture.

19. Makes value judgments. • Defines popular culture as the substandard culture of the masses. Creates an elitist class marked by high culture. • Believes popular culture leads to social and cultural decline. • Sees education as the means to civilizing the common class.

20. 3. Mass Culture View: Popular culture is what is mass-produced for mass-consumption.

21. Views popular culture as formulaic and manipulative – an impoverished culture imposed on a group of non-discriminating, passive consumers.

23. Sometimes speaks of popular culture as a form of public fantasy, drug or escape.

24. Uses the term “culture industry” to describe the means (radio, television, magazines, etc.) by which the products of popular culture are mass-produced and distributed.

25. Adherents to this view are divided on whether mass culture leads to anarchy (political/social disorder), or to conformity and the maintenance of a contented (if not be-numbed) populace.

26. 4. Folk Culture View: Popular culture is culture by ‘the people’ for ‘the people.’

27. Problem: Who is to be included in the category of “the people?” • Fact: The raw materials of popular culture in a capitalist society are provided by big business not ‘the people.’

28. 5. Political View: Popular culture is culture in a state of conflict and compromise.

29. Popular culture is a tug-of-war between the ‘resistance’ of subordinate groups and the ‘incorporating’ forces of the dominant group.

30. The dominant class controls culture by continually striking a compromise with the subordinate classes (a process known as hegemony).

31. Popular culture, then, is neither entirely from ‘above’ (commercially imposed) or ‘below’ (authentic culture) but a negotiated mix of intentions and counter-intentions from both the subordinate and dominant groups.

32. Youth cultures move from originality and opposition to commercial incorporation as the culture industries mainstream and market their resistance for consumption and profit.

33. 6. Postmodern View: Popular culture is a self-constructed culture.

34. It blurs the distinctions between: • High/Popular Culture. • It celebrates all types of cultural expression and the blending of genres.

35. It blurs the distinctions between: • Production/Consumption • Youth produce their own culture and meanings by actively consuming and splicing together cultural products (‘bricolage’).

36. It blurs the distinctions between: • Culture/Commerce • Artistic values merge with economic ones. The question of “Is it true and lasting?” must now answer to “Is it marketable?”

38. It blurs the distinctions between: • Real/Imaginary • Actual events and media coverage, movies and reality, live performance and recorded sound dissolve into each other (known as ‘hyperrealism’).

40. Postmodernism blurs the distinctions between: • New/Old. • The present is collapsed into the past by imitating and recycling the old (a culture of quotations and ‘intertextuality’).

41. Forrest Gump

42. Three Approaches to Popular Culture in the Classroom: Defensive strategy – introduces popular culture in order to condemn it as second-rate (or evil/dangerous/sinful) culture.

43. Three Approaches to Popular Culture in the Classroom: Opportunist strategy – embraces the popular tastes of students in the hope of leading them to better things.

44. Three Approaches to Popular Culture in the Classroom: Discrimination Strategy – teaches students to discriminate withinand not simply against popular culture – to sift ‘good’ popular culture from ‘bad.’ Teaches students to evaluate popular culture on its own terms, within a Christian context.

45. Culture as Map • Directs • Prescribes • Shapes

46. Culture as Mirror • Reflects • Describes • Imitates

47. Culture as Conversation • Symbolic • Dialogue • Conflict and Compromise

48. Culture as Toolbox • Provides • Select • Construct

49. Commercial Culture

50. We are consumers by choice.