Theodore Koutsobinas Notes

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF STATUS
Superstars, Markets and Culture Change
Theodore Koutsobinas

Definitions highlighted in yellow 
Own thoughts/sidenotes in blue

Notes/Important info:
p/88
- Used as an escape from 'normal' routine
- From 1960s, 'served as sites of ordered disorder or packaged dreams'
- 'fantastic world' using imagery and simulation of 'exotic locations'
- 'Edutainment' -'developed by the aid of signature architects, leading-edge artists, marketeers of branding chain stores and footloose performers. these synergies are necessary because they manage to offer maximum economic and cultural capital returns.'

p/89
- the gap between art and popular culture has been closed during the last decades - used in industrial design and advertising
- 'new cultural intermediaries' - professionals who work in that craft

p/90
- 'Culture becomes the 'very element of consumer society itself, no society has ever been saturated with signs and images like this one'. - this statement leads to the destruction of high culture and expansion of popular culture
- Integration of social life and culture due to the increase in signs and senses within hyperreality.
- 'the real and the imaginary have become mixed'
- 'aesthetic fascination has become a major force'
- 'what in fact individuals internalise is a sort of simulational post-modern culture.' - MTV being the first form of simulational culture.
- films and art movements also like to 'blur the boundaries'

p/91
- Being figural is a major quality of simulational culture.
figural
-adjective
-another term for figurative.
> (in postmodernist writing) relating to or denoting a form of signification which relies on imagery and association rather than on rational and linguistic concepts.

(Basically simulational culture relies heavily on imagery and association)

- 'Spectators get lost, or live in the object as distances collapse' 

(This linking to suspended belief) 

The term suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief has been defined as a willingness to suspend one's critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment.

- 'Medium is images rather than words'