Chapter 7: The Rules of The Game

1. Chapter 7: The Rules of The Game Cultural Consumption and Social Class in America By: Raven B Carrasco, Adrianna Casiano, Cecilia Castro, Trilisa Garrett, Genesis Gonzalez, Cassandra Mares, and Marcella Pena

2. Titanic: Economic & Cultural Divide • Movie depicts the boat divided economically and culturally on the basis of social class. • The poor, although are aboard, aren’t allowed to the fine dining above the deck with the rich so resort to their own party. • Wealthy live on upper decks, first class treatment • Third-class has music and dancing in a small area below the deck, away from everyone

3. Different Cultures Highbrow (High Culture) Lowbrow (Low Culture) • “Fine arts consumed by the affluent classes -classical music and opera, ballet and modern dance, abstract painting and sculpture, poetry and literary fiction.” • “Kinds of mass culture stereotypically associated with working-class (or so-called lower-class) audiences, including rap, blues, heaving metal, and country music; professional wresting, stock car racing, rodeos, and monster truck rallies; and gory horror films, gross-out comedies, and pornography.”

4. Jazz • Jazz was once considered to be “low-class” in the 1920s. • The music was thought to make people act rowdy and act on negative instincts (such as sex). Duke Ellington

5. How The Times Have Changed • Today, you can be recognized for any type of music not just what was once considered ‘high-class’ • For the most part a certain genre of music doesn’t necessarily depict what social class you associate with.

6. How The Times Have Changed • Affluent white teenagers listen to hip-hip music • Underprivileged African American teenagers sport Tommy Hilfiger and other preppy brands • & all social classes appreciate professional sports such as football, basketball and baseball

7. What’s Still The Same? • Wealthy are far more likely to listen classical music and opera, decorate their homes with abstract art and read books for pleasure • Because the wealthy are wealthy they have more opportunities to enlighten their children with broader forms of culture.

8. The Invention of Class Cultures in America

9. The Invention of Class Cultures in America • Over time the distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow cultures and taste change. • In the 19th century, Shakespeare's plays were considered popular culture in England and the U.S. • His plays were regularly performed on different stages and for working-class Americans as well as elites. • Shakespeare’s plays matched the tastes of the period with the dry humor and wit like the novels of Mark Twain and melodramatic and ghosts that were in the poems and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

10. The Invention of Class Cultures in American • Perhaps one of the biggest reasons his plays were considered popular culture in the 19th century was that Americans enjoyed it by people from all social classes. However, in theaters the audience were arranged according to socioeconomic status. • American entertainment blended diverse genres and styles in ways that would considered offensive by today’s standards. • Some acts presented alongside his plays were: magicians, dancers, acrobats, and comics.

11. The Invention of Class Cultures in American • The industrial Revolution created a new upper-class American elite of successful entrepreneurs, bankers, and businesspeople. • This class enjoyed untold wealth however, many came from humble backgrounds. There were elite institutions that the upper classes of the Gilded Age successfully invented highbrow/lowbrow class-based cultural distinctions that we take for granted today. • The elite would exclude members of the working classes from taking part in the new worlds of cultural esteem by making ticket prices and subscriptions expensive and strictly enforce the dress codes and rules of social etiquette,

12. Class Status and Conspicuous Consumption

13. Class Status and Conspicuous Consumption • For most of the American upper classes, attending a classical symphony and a Shakespearean theater performance represented part of a larger set of rituals and customs designed to display status and distinction in public. • Thorstein Veblen stated in The theory of the Leisure class, that the term conspicuous consumption was used to describe the status displays that represent ways to show off one’s wealth and the consumption of expensive and luxurious goods and services, especially those considered to be wasteful or unnecessary like high heel shoes or diamond bangles.

14. Even today upper- class chooses form over function and quality over quantity, which is why expensive restaurants often serve tiny portions of elaborately presented foods, such as salmon sashimi or Spanish tapas. Not only do the wealthy have excessive amounts of money but they also have a lot of spare time that Veblen called conspicuous leisure. This is where sports like golf, and equestrian riding come into play. (These sports require longer training.) Also learning how to speak certain languages like ancient Greek. The conspicuous consumption of luxury vehicles, summer homes, expensive vacations, and spa treatments has a noteworthy counterpart- the purposeful avoidance of popular culture associated (rightly or wrongly) with working-class tastes. Health crazes among the wealthy typically revolve around the denigration of food preferred by poor people, chiefly inexpensive yet efficient sources of protein, fat, and carbohydrates: fried chicken, cheeseburgers, tacos, pizza, and so forth. According to sociologist Bethany Bryson(1996), when asked about their music preferences and dislikes American respondents are most likely to express disapproval for those genres associated with less educated audiences like heavy metal, country, gospel, and rap. Pejorative class-based characterizations like “ghetto,” “trailer-park,” and “white-trash” are commonly affixed to low-status behaviors and styles as a strategy of dismissal.

15. Although the rich try to avoid symbolic or cultural association with the working class, the opposite is certainly not true, since the members of all social classes often try to emulate the conspicuous consumption of the superrich, at least in superficial ways. While poor African American youth embrace Tommy Hillfiger and Polo Country –club fashion, young inner-city mothers adorn their babies in expensive brand-name clothes like Reebok and Nike (Anderson 1990).

16. Everyone wants to live the rich lifestyle…or at least have some of what they have • This is why there are so many Designer Knockoff handbags, wallets, earrings, and sunglasses, replicas of high-priced brands from Prada to channel to Louis Vuitton. • Tiffany and Co. sells a small heart-shaped charm for $80, which caters to a significant market of consumers who desire the celebrity luster of the tiffany brand but cannot afford their $7,100 diamond bracelet.

17. The Success of the $161 billion american wedding industry • The idea of everyday people deserve their fantasy wedding no matter what the cost is. • The one day that you are not only the center of attention but you live a dream come true. • Limousines, glamourous clothing, catered cocktail parties, ice sculputres, endless glasses of champagne-if only for one special evening.

18. Cultural Capital and Class Reproduction

19. Cultural Capital and Class Reproduction • Cultural Consumption is all about image but why do images matter so much? Ex: Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, who has overflowing bank accounts drove a beat-up pickup truck and dressed in discount-store clothes. • Is he dressing this way to promote his store or is he dressing this way to keep his financial life stable? Or is it both?

20. Continued • Cultural taste and consumer habits have social consequences.. Ex: Wealthy people keeping to the level of the common society..they don’t flaunt what they have • Cultural taste have value and can be transferred to others, converted into financial wealth, and ultimately help to reproduce the class structure of our society.

21. What is cultural capital? According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, cultural capital is defined as: one’s store of knowledge and proficiency with artistic and cultural styles that are valued by society, and confer prestige and honor upon those associated with them. Cultural Capital

22. Other definitions of Cultural Capital • Refers to one’s experience with cosmopolitan culture, particularly one’s fluency in foreign languages, and the cultivation of taste for global, international, or fusion cuisine. • It can also refer to one’s familiarity and competence with rules of dress ands etiquette appropriate for upper-class social situations.

23. Why call this kind of knowledge cultural capital? • Bordieu uses the term because it shares many of the same properties as economic capital or wealth. • Like wealth, cultural capital is unevenly divided among the social classes, largely because it tends to be inherited. • Through constant exposure and positive reinforcement at a young age, one can develop a taste and appreciation for the fine arts.

24. Cultural Capital continued • Wealthy families introduce their children to the fine arts by having collection of novels, nonfiction books, paintings and drawings in their home. • They also take their children to museums, plays, and concerts, and by sending them to private piano, violin, and ballet lessons. • They take them on vacation to world capitals and take them to exotic ethnic restaurants and send them to preparatory boarding schools.

25. Cultural Capital Reproduced • These parents are trying to cultivate their children to have the same sense of respect and esteem for the fine arts as they have. • This transfer of cultural capital from upper-class parents to their children can be a pricey proposition. • Economic capital can be converted into cultural capital as an investment.

26. Cultural Capital • This investment can be a substantial one given that the cultural capital can be converted back into economic capital. • Ex. High-paying law firms and consulting agencies screen their applicants not only on the basis of their intellect and academic achievement but on their cultural skills and habits as well.

27. Cultural Capital • In essence cultural capital is transferable (from parents to kin), and convertible (to economic rewards). • One can hypothesize that over time the organization of cultural tastes and consumer habits might work to reproduce the class structure of our society. • Upper-class adults use their cultural capital to secure lucrative jobs and invest their incomes in cultivating the same taste and cultural skills in their children, who eventually generate enough cultural capital of their own that they effectively continue the cycle.

28. Cultural Capital • When accessing how cultural capital operates in the United States, we must remember that our industries and social institutions not only discriminate on the basis of socioeconomic class, but race, ethnicity, and gender as well. • Different professions may reward different kinds of knowledge. • In the end, Halle’s research on abstract art indicated that one would not need much cultural capital to make aesthetic evaluations such as: I like its colors, it matched the furniture etc. • Halle concluded that although the consumption of abstract art is unrelated to status and distinction-far from it- it does emphasize the superficial and sometimes flaky character of class-based tastes.

29. From Cultural Snob to Omnivore

30. From Cultural Snob to Omnivore • According to Vanderbilt sociologist Richard A. Peterson (1992), highly education professionals are more likely than others to attend opera, jazz and classical music concerts, Broadway musicals and dramatic plays, art museums, ballet modern dance performances, as we might expect of the stereotypical upper-class snob. • More likely to participate in almost all other recreational activities than the lower-class counterparts. For example, sports events, exercising, gardening, boating, camping, hiking, and photography. • Also, more likely to listen to blues, soul and big band music. • This suggests the that in the context of the American life, elite status is signified not only by an affinity for highbrow culture but an appreciation for practically all major kinds of leisure activities, creative pursuits, and cultural consumption, highbrow and low.

31. Peterson (1992) calls these affluent consumers cultural omnivores because of their far-ranging tastes. For example, well-off suburban teenagers who enjoy hip hop and punk rock, or the college professor who loves country. • 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. • This refers to an ability to negotiate among multiple and varied cultural words simultaneously as code switiching. • For example, rapper Jay-Z moves easily between underground hip-hop clubs and the executive suites of Def Jam Recordings, having served as its president and CEO.

32. In contemporary American life, the capacity for code-switching and omnivorous consumption signifies class status without necessarily appearing snobbish. • For example, many Facebook members and online daters overload their profiles with dozens of music genres and activities that mix highbrow and lowbrow. • While the upper classes do not fit the image of the stereotypical snob, working-class consumers do not represent an indiscriminate mass audience either. • One that moves down the class hierarchy, cultural tastes are extremely varied and more easily explained on the basis of other factors besides class, race, age, gender, and religion.

33. What can explain the emergence of the cultural omnivore? • Upwardly mobile Americans who hail from working-class backgrounds never really shed their cultural tastes but merely add to them as they cultural capital. • For example, four-star restaurants serve upscale, gentrified versions meat and potatoes. • The persistence of formative tastes among upwardly mobile immigrants who carry traditional ethnic and religious customs and cultural practices into the high-society world of the upper class might help explain the omnivorous consumer habits among elite Americans.

34. Another reason can be the rising commercialization of numerous types of working-class, folk, ethnic, and non-Western popular culture. • For example, in the early 1980s, New York art dealers sold samples of the street graffiti common to the city’s ghetto walls and subway trains in exclusive downtown galleries.

35. Omnivorous consumption is a product of national ideals concerning democracy and equality. • A 2008 Pew Research Center estimated 53 percent identified as being “middle class.” • Omnivorous consumption among the affluent classes allows one to perform cultural distinctions without appearing overly snobby or out of touch with so-called “common” people. • In American politics, highly stylized candidates often emphasize their working-class tastes, however manufactured. • For example, during the 1990s Tennessee Republican Fred Thompson’s U.S. senatorial campaign reinvented the wealthy lobbyist “as a good boy: it leased a used red pickup truck for him to drive, dressed up in jeans and a work shirt, with a can of Red Man chewing tobacco on the front seat.

36. The Blurring of Class Boundaries in American Popular Culture

37. A major part of American pop culture is live entertainment which includes the arts, television and sports. Dating back to Shakespearean times, there is blending of high class, middle class, and the poor. In the 19th century, there is also blending of various races. In addition, composers, choreographers, and performers blended a variety of genres to enhance entertainment.

38. Creative Blending • In the late part of the decade, Duke Ellington’s harmonious compositions and performances blended together European classical music , ragtime jazz, and the Mississippi blues. It became music that combines the blues melodies of the deep south and the muted trumpets and stride piano Harlem Jazz sound .

39. In the 1940 film Fantasia animated elephants, hippopotamuses, ostriches, and Mickey Mouse are accompanied by selections form the classical music canon: : Bach’s Toccata and Fuge in D minor, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, Beethoven’s sixth symphony, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

40. This blurring of class boundaries continues in contemporary American popular culture, especially as elite culture absorbs more popular influences. • Twyla Tharp’s creations included ballet, interpretive modern dance, theatrical performances, jazz music, and pop songs. • In 1993, the Joffrey Ballet premiered a rock ballet danced to the recorded music of Prince. Social and Racial Blending

41. Social and Racial Blending • Central attractions of American popular culture consumed by huge audiences whose members hail from all social classes. • Oprah Winfrey has the longest running and most successful talk show in television history. This show is watched by 30 million American viewers every week; its famous host, the highest paid personality in television, attracts female fans from all walks of life.

42. Sports such as football, basketball, soccer, hockey, and baseball, attract fans from all social classes. Of all American sporting events the Super Bowl is the most celebrated. Its inclusiveness is illustrated by the diversity of pop music stars that performs during its live half time show. Social and Racial Blending

43. Alright by Janet Jackson music video was inspired by an American Jazz singer and band leader from the 1920s. http://youtu.be/JgeAUejUZhg