The Black Culture Industry

The Black Culture Industry
Author: Ellis Cashmore
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2006-06-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134809379

Cashmore's controversial study argues that black culture has been converted into a commodity, usually in the interests of white owned corporations. Using detailed studies of the marketing of Motown, Michael Jackson and the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, Cashmore suggests that inflating the significance of this commodified 'black culture' may actually be counter-productive in the struggle for racial justice.

The Black Culture Industry

The Black Culture Industry
Author: Ellis Cashmore
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2006-06-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134809387

Cashmore's controversial study argues that black culture has been converted into a commodity, usually in the interests of white owned corporations. Using detailed studies of the marketing of Motown, Michael Jackson and the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, Cashmore suggests that inflating the significance of this commodified 'black culture' may actually be counter-productive in the struggle for racial justice.

The Culture Industry

The Culture Industry
Author: Theodor W Adorno
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2020-07-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000158721

The creation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory in the 1920s saw the birth of some of the most exciting and challenging writings of the twentieth century. It is out of this background that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno's thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture industry commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated individuality and destroyed critical thinking. At the time, Adorno was accused of everything from overreaction to deranged hysteria by his many detractors. In today's world, where even the least cynical of consumers is aware of the influence of the media, Adorno's work takes on a more immediate significance. The Culture Industry is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture.

Selling the Race

Selling the Race
Author: Adam Green
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226306410

Black Chicagoans were at the centre of a national movement in the 1940s and '50s, when African Americans across the country first started to see themselves as part of a single culture. Green argues that this period engendered a unique cultural and commercial consciousness, fostering ideas of racial identity that remain influential.

The Culture Industry Revisited

The Culture Industry Revisited
Author: Deborah Cook
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 210
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780847681556

Adorno viewed mass culture as commodified - produced to be sold on the market and without aesthetic value. Here, Deborah Cook critically examines this view and argues that even in Adorno's "pessimistic" theory, mass culture can be understood as potentially liberating.

Beauty in a Box

Beauty in a Box
Author: Cheryl Thompson
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2019-04-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1771123605

One of the first transnational, feminist studies of Canada’s black beauty culture and the role that media, retail, and consumers have played in its development, Beauty in a Box widens our understanding of the politics of black hair. The book analyzes advertisements and articles from media—newspapers, advertisements, television, and other sources—that focus on black communities in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary. The author explains the role local black community media has played in the promotion of African American–owned beauty products; how the segmentation of beauty culture (i.e., the sale of black beauty products on store shelves labelled “ethnic hair care”) occurred in Canada; and how black beauty culture, which was generally seen as a small niche market before the 1970s, entered Canada’s mainstream by way of department stores, drugstores, and big-box retailers. Beauty in a Box uses an interdisciplinary framework, engaging with African American history, critical race and cultural theory, consumer culture theory, media studies, diasporic art history, black feminism, visual culture, film studies, and political economy to explore the history of black beauty culture in both Canada and the United States.

Race and the Cultural Industries

Race and the Cultural Industries
Author: Anamik Saha
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2018-01-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1509505342

Studies of race and media are dominated by textual approaches that explore the politics of representation. But there is little understanding of how and why representations of race in the media take the shape that they do. How, one might ask, is race created by cultural industries? In this important new book, Anamik Saha encourages readers to focus on the production of representations of racial and ethnic minorities in film, television, music and the arts. His interdisciplinary approach combines critical media studies and media industries research with postcolonial studies and critical race perspectives to reveal how political economic forces and legacies of empire shape industrial cultural production and, in turn, media discourses around race. Race and the Cultural Industries is required reading for students and scholars of media and cultural studies, as well as anyone interested in why historical representations of 'the Other' persist in the media and how they are to be challenged.

The Postcolonial Cultural Industry

The Postcolonial Cultural Industry
Author: S. Ponzanesi
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2014-05-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137272597

The Postcolonial Cultural Industry makes a timely intervention into the field of postcolonial studies by unpacking its relation to the cultural industry. It unearths the role of literary prizes, the adaptation industry and the marketing of ethnic bestsellers as new globalization strategies that connect postcolonial artworks to the market place.

Popular Culture

Popular Culture
Author: Raiford Guins
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2005-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780761974727

"The selection of essays here is outstanding. The Reader is particularly strong in bridging between founding figures and cutting edge work by newer writers."- Henry Jenkins, MIT "An extraordinarily well considered selection of articles and essays, arranged with skill and style." - Charlie Blake, University College NorthamptonPopular Culture: A Reader helps students understand the pervasive role of popular culture and the processes that constitute it as a product of industry, an intellectual object of inquiry and an integral component of all our lives.The volume is divided into 7 thematic sections, and each section is preceded by an introduction which engages with, and critiques, the chapters that follow. The book contains: Classic writings from all the ′big names′ including Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Frederic Jameson, Dick Hebdige, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy and many more. Contemporary cultural references throughout - this is not simply an historical account. Pieces drawing on diverse national, disciplinary and subdisciplinary contexts. Sensitivity to issues of gender, race and sexuality. This reader is a key resource for students of media and communication studies, cultural studies, and the sociology of the media.

Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry

Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry
Author: Sandra Jean Graham
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2018-02-26
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0252050304

Spirituals performed by jubilee troupes became a sensation in post-Civil War America. First brought to the stage by choral ensembles like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, spirituals anchored a wide range of late nineteenth-century entertainments, including minstrelsy, variety, and plays by both black and white companies. In the first book-length treatment of postbellum spirituals in theatrical entertainments, Sandra Jean Graham mines a trove of resources to chart the spiritual's journey from the private lives of slaves to the concert stage. Graham navigates the conflicting agendas of those who, in adapting spirituals for their own ends, sold conceptions of racial identity to their patrons. In so doing they lay the foundation for a black entertainment industry whose artistic, financial, and cultural practices extended into the twentieth century. A companion website contains jubilee troupe personnel, recordings, and profiles of 85 jubilee groups. Please go to: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/graham/spirituals/