Passage

1．“Popular”is a more elusive term even than“culture”，one meaning of the word，a widespread but debased one，is statistical—what is most popular is what appeals to the most people．Another，a more productive one，is that“the popular”serves the interests of“the people．”“The people”as we use the term here，is not a class or social category，but rather a shifting set of social interests and positions that are defined by their subordinate relations to the dominant society．In this definition，the“complaint”wives^[3]were not behaving as members of“the people”for they(“the people”)were promoting the power relations and maintaining the norms of the dominant society—they were performing the roles and identities provided for them，they were making sense of their experience in a predetermined way，using the provided value system to evaluate their experience and to enjoy only the pleasure that culture legitimates．

2．“The people，”then，are better recognized by what they do than by who they are，and popular culture，by analogy，is better recognized by what it does than by what it is．Popular culture is more a culture of process than of products．This understanding of the word“popular”is both recent and a reversal of its earlier uses in cultural theory．As Europe and America industrialized themselves during the nineteenth century，their populations moved from rural areas to the cities that were built at high speed to house the workforce needed by the new mills and factories．This urbanized，highly concentrated mass of people was a new social phenomenon that traditional concepts of the people as rural peasantry or folk could not describe．As the development of a society's language and its ways of thinking is shaped primarily by its ruling classes(though this is less the case in today's multicultural，market driven societies)，so the ways of talking and thinking about this new“people”reflected ruling class interests—they were either elitist and anxious，or patronizing and nostalgic．

3．Mass culture，like high culture and like Brecht's^[4]putative popular culture，is a culture of products for products are readily sold．Mass culture produces cultural commodities，high culture produces artworks or texts．The cultural commodities of mass culture—films，TV shows，CDs，etc．—are produced and distributed by an industrialized system whose aim is to maximize profit for the producers and distributors by appealing to as many consumers as possible．This industrialized mass culture is not popular culture，though it does produce many of the resources out of which popular culture is made，and its market centered approach means that it is often more effective in producing texts that the people can use for their progressive purposes than was Brecht with his explicit progressive intentions．The marketplace has always been a site of negotiation rather than one of economic exploitation，and the market places of capitalism are，in this respect，no different from those of other economic systems．In industrialized societies the people make their culture out of resources that are not of their making and are not under their control．Popular culture typically involves the art of making do with what is available．

4．Popular culture，then，is not mass culture，though it is typically made from it．The relationship between the commercial interests of mass culture and popular interests is always antagonistic and unstable．The people constantly scan the repertoire produced by the cultural industries to find resources that they can use for their own cultural purposes．The industry similarly constantly scans the tastes and interests of the people to discover ones that it can commodity and turn to its own profit．The same may be said of the relations between high culture and popular culture，for popular culture is also defined in part by its difference from the high brow．High culture is recognized better by its texts or artworks than by its processes，though the cultural processes performed by these texts are now much more central in literary studies than at times they have been．Many argue that in postmodernity the distinctions among high，mass，and popular culture are rapidly disappearing．I think that this is overstating the case，though there is evidence that the boundaries are blurring and becoming more permeable．But some differences remain．

5．Many of these differences are clustered around the status and use of the text．In popular culture the text is a cultural resource to be plundered or used in ways that are determined by the social interests of the reader/ user not by the structure of the text itself，nor by the intentions(however we may discern them)of its author．Indeed，the text typically originates from a social position that differs markedly from that of its popular readers/users．To the extent that its conditions of origin are inscribed more or less explicitly within its structure，the text works in ways that can oppose the interests of its readers—the relations between reader and text contain strong elements of antagonism．In this light the text may be compared to the terrain of a landowner and the reader to a poacher:so the reader poaches meanings that promote his/her interests while avoiding capture by an ideological gamekeeper who controls the overall structure of the text itself．The reading relations of high culture are not typically seen as antagonistic．(From“Populat Culture”by John Fiske)

Questions for Understanding

1．What are the two“slippery words”the author intends to discuss?

2．How many ways are there in defining word“popular”according to paragraph 1?Which one do you like better?Why?

3．What are supposed to be the differences between“what they do”and“who they are”in recognizing popular culture?

4．According to paragraph 2，who may be“the people”(referred to in paragraph 1)in the process of industrialization in Europe and America?

5．What similarities do“mass culture”and“high culture”share according to paragraph 3?

6．According to paragraphs 4 and 5，how can people tell apart popular culture and mass culture and high culture?

7．What relationship does the metaphor(landowner and poacher) reveal between the author and the reader?Do you agree?

8．How many cultural concepts altogether do you think the author discusses in this passage?