The Folk Fight Back: Protesting the Cancellation of Don Messer’s Jubilee in 1969

Author(s):  
Greg Marquis

This article examines part of the reaction to the 1969 cancellation of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (cbc) television’s Don Messer’s Jubilee, one of the most popular Canadian-produced programs of the era. In addition to an exploration of television history and popular culture, it is also a look at the neglected topic of “square” Canada in the 1960s. Messer began fiddling at dances in rural New Brunswick in the 1920s and moved to radio and recording prior to becoming an unlikely national television star by 1961. After exploring possible classifications of the show’s music, the article explores themes in protest letters and petitions sent to the cbc. These included Canadian nationalism in opposition to American mass culture, Canadian folk culture, cbc elitism, Maritime regionalism, nostalgia, and the related themes of the generation gap and permissive society. The article concludes that fans viewed Messer as a custodian of Canadian folk culture that was being erased by the national broadcaster at a time of heightened nationalism.

Author(s):  
Сергей Александрович Журавлев

Рассказ В.А. Солоухина «Двадцать пять на двадцать пять» (1974) становится эмпирическим материалом для рассмотрения ситуации, связанной со сменой социокультурных парадигм в жизни села Центральной России. Автор использует в тексте рефлексивное переплетение хронологических пластов, посредством которого показан процесс постепенной утраты живых народных традиций как в городе, так и на селе. Личностно окрашенные воспоминания об особенностях проведения народных праздников в русской деревне первой половины ХХ в. соотносятся с наблюдениями за реалиями 1960-1970-х годов. Действие рассказа происходит в селе Преображенское в его престольный праздник Преображения. Это название неоднократно повторяется в рассматриваемом тексте, помогая спроецировать модель сопоставления старого и нового общества. В рассказе В.А. Солоухина звучит мотив преображения, трансформации, изменения современной ему действительности. Герой текста горожанин в первом поколении Андрей Воронов испытывает ностальгию по народным обычаям, типичным для первой половины ХХ в. Предметным воплощением прежней деревенской народной культуры является гармонь. В довоенной традиции этот инструмент создавал и менял обстановку, задавал настроение, пользовался большим уважением на селе. Позднее на фоне урбанизации общества, распространения массовой культуры и доминирования принципов потребления, гармонь теряет свою былую привлекательность и воспринимается молодежью как предмет архаики. В.А. Солоухин совмещает в своем рассказе черты художественного текста и этнографического очерка. Писатель проводит экскурс в мир праздничных народных традиций, вспоминает о важной роли гармони и гармониста в жизни русского села. Затем на художественном материале показывает преображение известной ему с детства действительности. V. A. Soloukhin's short story "Twenty five by twenty five" (1974) becomes an empirical material for the consideration of the situation associated with the change of socio-cultural paradigms in rural life in Central Russia. The author uses in the text a reflexive interweaving of chronological layers, through which the process of gradual loss of living folk traditions both in the city and in the countryside is shown. Personal memories of the peculiarities of folk festivals in the Russian village of the first half of the twentieth century correlate with observations of the realities of the 1960s and 1970s. The story takes place in the village of Preobrazhenskoye on its patronal feast of the Transfiguration. This name is repeated in the text under consideration, helping to project a model of comparison of old and new society. In V. A. Soloukhin's story the motive of transformation, of changes of the reality manifests itself. The hero of the text, a citizen in the first generation, Andrei Voronov, is nostalgic for folk customs typical of the first half of the twentieth century. The subject embodiment of the former village folk culture is the garmon (the Russian button accordion). In the pre-war tradition, this instrument created and changed the situation, set the mood, enjoyed great respect in the countryside. Later, against the background of the urbanization of society, the spread of mass culture and the dominance of the principles of consumption, the garmonloses its former appeal and is perceived by young people as an archaic object. V. A. Soloukhin combines the features of a literary text and an ethnographic essay in his story. The writer makes an excursion into the world of festive folk traditions, recalls the important role of the garmon and its player in the life of the Russian village. Then, on the artistic material, he shows the transformation of the reality known to him since childhood.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Kunal Debnath

High culture is a collection of ideologies, beliefs, thoughts, trends, practices and works-- intellectual or creative-- that is intended for refined, cultured and educated elite people. Low culture is the culture of the common people and the mass. Popular culture is something that is always, most importantly, related to everyday average people and their experiences of the world; it is urban, changing and consumeristic in nature. Folk culture is the culture of preindustrial (premarket, precommodity) communities.


Modern Italy ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Gundle

SummaryThe problem of the legitimacy or otherwise of the Resistance tradition in post-war Italy has been addressed in recent years mainly in terms of the role of the partisan struggle and its political legacy. This article aims to assess the tradition in terms of commemorative practices, rituals, artistic representations and monuments. It seeks to evaluate whether the Resistance gave rise to a civic religion that may be compared to those which existed in the Liberal period, based on the heroic struggles and figures of the Risorgimento, and the Fascist period, which drew on the feelings of loss and injustice that followed the First World War. It is argued that, although the Resistance lacked, prior to the 1960s, a high degree of official sponsorship, it did acquire some of the features of a civic religion. Its appeal was mainly limited to the regions administered by the Left which had seen a significant degree of Resistance activity in 1943-5. Even here, however, it was difficult to sustain the tradition as a key feature of community life during and after the economic boom: the eclipse of public culture, the decline of public mourning and the development of commercial leisure and mass culture all served to deprive it of meaning. Although intellectuals, politicians and ex-partisans reacted to this situation, the visual and rhetorical languages associated with the commemoration of the Resistance became increasingly divorced from everyday life and dominant social values.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 293-299
Author(s):  
Michael Kelly

This article introduces the special number of French Cultural Studies commemorating the role of Brian Rigby as the journal’s first Managing Editor. It situates his contribution in the emergence of cultural history and French cultural studies during the rapid expansion of higher education from the 1960s in France, the UK, the US and other countries. It suggests that these new areas of study saw cultural activities in a broader social context and opened the way to a wider understanding of culture, in which popular culture played an increasingly important part. It argues that the study of popular culture can illuminate some of the most mundane experiences of everyday life, and some of the most challenging. It can also help to understand the rapidly changing cultural environment in which our daily lives are now conducted.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Citra Kemala Putri

Mass culture and popular culture is one of the important phenomena that was born after the postmodern era. In a society that lives in the midst of mass culture and popular culture, will grow consumer communities that produce new cultural symbols and activities. This discourse then influenced various aspects, for example, the emergence of popular music and popular art movements which soon became a commodities that was consumed by many youth people. This study discusses the influence of popular culture on the visuals of music album covers which take several album covers of international musicians from different time periods as samples to compare the similarities or friction caused by various art developments as their response toward happening trends. This study uses qualitative method. This study of various visual images was considering the aesthetic idioms of postmodernism, including Pastiche, Parody, Kitsch, Camp and Schizophrenia, as well as the concepts of several art movements, such as Pop Art and Lowbrow Art. The final result of this study reveal that several music albums using the Pop Art and Lowbrow Art style contained postmodern aesthetic idioms. Each album cover can contain one or several aesthetic idioms simultaneously.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Ferry Fauzi Hermawan

This study aimed to identify the forms of masculinity in the Indonesian popular culture in the beginning of New Order regime. This study was based on the two novels: Cross Mama and Kekasih-Kekasih Gelap, written by Motinggo Busye. The analysis used new historicism theory proposed by Stephen Greenblatt. The analysis also considered various cultural contexts emerged in 1970s. The results show three shared trends in the novels. The first trend shows that the masculinity tends to be represented by both men worshiping patriarchal values such as the myth of woman’s virginity and men perceiving woman as a sexual object. The second trend shows that masculinity is stereotyped based on masculinity, power, and male dominance. The third trend shows that masculinity relates to various products of mass culture at the time. This last trend shows that in that era,the ideal male figure is represented as the one who: (1) is sexually active with many women, (2) has a muscular body, (3) has a handsome look, and (4) has a financial capability. Besides the shared three trends, the result also shows that the texts in the novels do not only reflect the cultural situations in the 60’s and 70’s but also contribute in shaping the social values of the cultural situations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (8) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Ma Weihong ◽  

The article deals with identifying Russian rock culture as elitist or mass culture. The author characterizes the concepts of elitist and mass culture, explaining the difference between them, and examines the characteristics of Russian rock culture on the basis of this analysis. The author concludes that Russian rock culture is a kind of reconciliation of elite and mass culture: in the second half of the XX century the complexity of the Soviet political system and ideology determined the destiny and cultural attributes of Russian rock, making it a complex, multifaceted and eclectic phenomenon. Forced to survive, rock bands had to incorporate elements of popular music into their works and use mass media to attract the public. Having joined the ranks of commercial performances, rock 'n' roll gained more popularity, and gradually there appeared some signs of the rock culture decline. In the end, however, rock culture did not transform into mass culture, and Russian rock musicians and rock poets continued to play their music in search of a new cultural niche for themselves to express their critical attitude to reality, their denial and opposition to the processes of industrialization and urbanization, returning to the history and culture of the nation, paying attention to philosophical and religious issues and to the depth and completeness of poetic content, reconstructing Russian cultural memory, reflecting on the environmental situation in the modern world. Rock culture is still a culture of resistance, but as society continues to change, the form and content of resistance is also constantly changing, and it is because of this that rock culture has acquired a kind of humanistic foundation that is much deeper than that of popular culture, so ignoring the difference between rock culture and popular culture destroys the innate spirit and the essence of rock culture itself.


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