Contemporary Culture and Its Effects - Essay Example

Contemporary Culture and its effects The concept of evolution is applicable in every field of life. Man has changed the usual ways of doing things to a great extent. Every generation comes with its own norms and ethics and modifies the already existing ways of life. Culture, a set of beliefs, norms and ways of doing things has also changed a lot. What used to hold true for older generations does not hold true for the people of contemporary people. Creative industries like music and fashion have largely been affected by the cultural shift. There is a shift from kind of music, books and literary works produced altogether. This paper discusses whether this shift has proven to be negative or positive. The objective of this paper is to analyse the effect of contemporary culture in our lives. The benefits and costs of contemporary culture have been analysed thoroughly and it is seen whether contemporary culture has given what was expected of it. Adopting contemporary culture has affected lives both in a positive as well as negative manner. It has made our lives fast and more technology oriented but if specifically seen from the view of creative industry, it has not given what it should. The following essay is based on the stance that contemporary culture has not given what it should, and this stance is supported by the evidences of different researches. Jim McGuigan explains this cultural shift and its impact on creative industries in his book ‘Cool Capitalism’. According to him, culture and commerce have formed an uneasy relationship because of which culture is being badly affected. This book is divided into six chapters about the deterioration of creative industries in modern era. He explains how consumer culture is being transformed and how are the requirements for the creative industries changing. According to him ‘creative people need to be entrepreneurs in order to be successful’. According to him, free market economy has attracted more people and everyone who has resources can start producing music and such creative stuff. There is less space for quality control available and more and more people are being attracted by modern capitalism (McGuigan, Cool Capitalism) Different researchers analyse the affect of contemporary culture on music industry. Gilbert is one of those authors who have discussed music with respect to modern culture. According to Gilbert, only a few studies emerged on the subject of music itself. There were lots of researches on relationship of youth with media but less work on the understanding of music. The dance culture and music culture have also changed. Contemporary culture has posed problems for both dance culture. The music is also no longer a source of sensory pleasure because of excessive modernization. There is more focus on production of more music without understanding the true essence (Jeremy Gilbert). Cultural theory has an assumption that it is the consumption pattern which determines production and not the other way round. It means that the lifestyle of consumers is very important and it shapes the pattern of production. In other words, identity of a person is more important than the work life a person has. A person has to sell himself in society to be acceptable and starts earning. These differences in society’s classes tend to divide and segment the society but also foster the competition between workforces. This priority of culture over class has gained the form of self evident fact. Also this assumption that consumption is more important than production has shaped the cultural theory and contemporary lifestyles. Neo liberalism is the most important and dominant school of thought of contemporary culture. It apparently seems to be a very democratic system but this system is self harming in view of certain researchers (Gilbert, Anticapitalism and Culture: Radical theory and Popular Politics). Neoliberals need not to forget the importance of social and mutual cooperation and they have to recognize the importance of co existing with each other for the betterment of society. Neo liberal culture can limit a person to his own cocoon and extra individualistic. Contemporary culture needs to address the neo liberals about importance of mutual collaboration rather than making people selfish. This culture was adopted so that people can flourish depending upon their own capabilities but it has created a partition between those who have power and resources and those who do not have power. Roland Barthes came up with the term ‘birth of the reader’, which represents the hyperactive consumer who is very much dependent on social networking media and very active member of the audience. It means that consumer is so powerful that giant corporations have given up their mastery over the market and are more dependent upon the need of ordinary man. If a man knows what he needs and he is fully aware of his need he dictates supply. It is because of this consumer oriented culture that companies spend a lot in advertising and come up ith the creative promotinal campaigns. We can take the example of companiies like Vodafone, Tata, Apple etc. These companies adopt a customer centric approach and that is why they are successful. However, too many companies with great ideas also confuse a consumer’s mind. Sometimes the companies promise and cannot keep the claims they do in ads. Similarly, such companies have made people more brand conscious and created some products a status symbol. Because of this, consumers of low income group can get inferiority complexes and that is one of the main reasons of tremendously increasing number of psychological diseases. So, contemporary culture has created some kind of health hazards because of the excessive technology. Now there is a decreasing trend of exersice and walk, because people are lost in the world of humongous entertainment. Contemporary culture focuses more on achieving more resources than other so it ignores the collective goals aof societites and focuses more on the differencesd and competiton. This competition is healthy but if world totally works through Marx’s point of viewe, there will be no relationships, no fraternity in socities. It will minimise the social interaction between people. We cannot ignore this fact that world that life is not possible in complete isolation. Social needs do exist and they need to be fulfilled. Even the key words have been changed in last 25 years. There has been a drastic change in use of language and way of speaking and expressing it. Even the world’culture’ is so mis used and confused in the modern era. These changes in words are a representation of hugre changes in culture and use of those words (Bennet). The book ‘new keywords’ is an updated version of the classic words which had different meanings and different interpretations in older times but in contemporary culture, they have been given different meanings. Modern english is less focused on tenses and grammatical free english and it is more used just to explain the basic meaning of the thing being communicated. There has been enough work on post modernism. There is a great difference between attitudes and lifestyles of people of pre and post modernism. It has not only facilitated our lives, it has changed our overall approach of seeing life and our attitudes. The feelings of care, love, respect have also been affected by contemporary culture (McRobbie). For example in old times it was seen a good practice if somebody gave time to elders at home and care for them. But if we see this situation in today’s culture, we, being youngsters do not have time to sit with the parents and we are too busy to care for each other. This shift in cultural trends is a result of industrialization and excessive penetration of technology in modern lives. Even in education field, laptops, smart phones and World Wide Web has made our lives easier and more exposure in less time. But on the same time we cannot ignore the negative aspects which the technology is having on our health, social patterns, crimes, wastage of time because of too much dependence on social communities and isolation from our own families. So, in my view contemporary culture is giving us what it should give but at the expense of our social lives and our values. People make things and form connections with each other to basically get happiness and contentment. Gauntlett gave much emphasis to term ‘Do it Yourself’. He says that this phenomenon of self depending is a source of happiness for people and they are more interested in making things rather than depending on others. He says the dependence on making things has changed to depending on Web (Gauntlett). Things have changed and now people are more willing to depend on others. Although web has ensured availability of more information, it has also made people unaware of creativity and less willing to depend on themselves. Contemporary culture involves socializing and adjusting according to the modern fads of society rather than thinking creatively. A term used for the differentiation of thinking and non thinking people is ‘A body without organs’ given by Deleuze and Guattari. They say that a human body is composed of physical features as well as some virtual dimensions. It is on the human being to experiment with himself and find out those virtual dimensions (Guattari). It means that a human being needs to give time to himself to explore his virtual dimension and the things he does not know about himself. In contemporary culture, there is almost no concept of thinking and reflection. Everyone is so busy in his life that he does not get time to explore himself. So rather than giving a more clear idea of self concept, contemporary culture has taken this attribute away from youngsters. Contemporary culture needs to get rid of ‘a body without organs’ and should give the message of thinking about oneself. The means of acquiring education has changed a lot in contemporary culture. Now a reader is more focused on getting information from the text rather than absorbing its meanings. Pleasures of reading are only absorbed by that person who gives thorough attention to text rather than just acquiring the knowledge (Miller) . This is the reason why online search is becoming an alternative of reading books. Nowadays we do not have time to read books we are more superficial about gathering information. We have confused the term information and knowledge. Contemporary culture has made us more interested in online searches and less attracted to books. Conclusion In contemporary culture, people are being built and shaped by society. Their social interactions are defining their ways of living life. Demands of market dictate them what they must do. However, there is a need to build youth from inside, incorporate personal characteristics in tem and learning to make a balance between this huge overlap of technology and daily life. Contemporary culture has really facilitated people lives but also has confused them. It has made them over dependent on the social and superficial relationships where bonds of relationships are fragile. It was adopted to facilitate people and to make their lives easier. But it has further complicated a person’s life and has masked the imp9ortance of personal characteristics. Everyone is in a race to defeat others in terms of resources, yet they are forgetting the collective objectives of a society which should have been the main focus of contemporary culture. Creative industries of music, fashion, fine arts and theatre have been largely affected by contemporary culture and they have lost their own true essence. Nowadays, consumers are defining the production patterns. It means that they are only getting and seeing what they want to get and see. Multinational giants are not only creating a sense of urgency in their potential customers to buy the product, but they are also discouraging and hurting those people who are less socially privileged and cannot afford to have funky branded products. There needs to be a balance of adoption of contemporary culture, importance of personal characteristics and need to stick to original values and culture. Bibliography Bennet, Grossberg, Morris. New keywords. Blackwell, 2005. Gauntlett, David. Making is Connecting: The social meaning of creativity from DiY and knitting to YouTube and Web. 2011. Gilbert, Jeremy. Anticapitalism and Culture: Radical theory and Popular Politics. 2008. Guattari, Deleuze and. The Autonomy of Affect. 1987. Jeremy Gilbert, Ewan Pearson. Dance Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound. 1999. McGuigan, Jim. Cool Capitalism. Pluto press, 2009. McRobbie, Angela. The Uses of Cultural Studies. Sage, 2011. Miller, Roland Barthes trans Richard. Pleasures of the text. 1973. Read More