The Value of Commercial Arts and Culture: A comparative mixed-methods approach to the reception of popular culture

本项目探讨商业文化和艺术的文化和审美价值，重点关注当代流行文化的六个主要领域：电影、电视、流行音乐、电子游戏、流行文学和喜剧。审美和文化价值是非常重要的。在我们的日常生活中，我们不断地决定我们参与哪种形式的文化、艺术和娱乐；我们喜欢什么样的文本、作品和体裁，我们看重哪些。其中绝大多数是商业生产的。反过来，艺术和人文学科的许多学者的任务是评估艺术和文化的不同作品和对象的相对价值。然而，评估文化价值的方法（更不用说量化了）仍然存在很大争议，通常只关注艺术和文化（艺术家、作家和行业）的生产过程，或者相反，只研究用户对流行文化和艺术的使用。我们没有客观的标准来确定给定对象、作品或流派的审美价值——而且，正如一些社会学研究所证明的那样，支撑我们许多流行文化和艺术体验的文化等级反映了社会中现有的等级和不平等，有时还使其合法化。因此，该项目试图理解审美价值，而不是与给定的艺术作品或文本联系在一起，而是位于文化/艺术与接受者之间的相互作用中。利用“经验视界”的概念，该项目探讨了该项目研究的六个不同商业流行文化领域的文本和作品在多大程度上挑战了观众以前的经验、偏好和期望，并促成了一种“横向变化”，丰富和拓宽了以前的经验。对流行商业艺术和文化接受过程中的内在文化价值的研究是对外在社会价值研究的补充：用户、爱好者和粉丝在多大程度上体验电影、电视、流行音乐、视频游戏、流行文学和喜剧是愉快和愉快的，成为我们身份的情感部分，并为我们更广泛地参与文化、艺术和社会做出贡献。我们采用了两种不同于社会科学研究的方法：首先，在分析以往调查的基础上，我们将设计并开展一项跨商业流行文化艺术主要领域的调查。这项调查将揭示商业艺术和文化中不同领域和类型的受众的一些特征，包括他们的年龄，性别和职业，他们的价值观，文化偏好，消费模式和媒体使用。其次，在调查中确定的不同群体的基础上，我们将选择总共24名参与者，分别来自电影，电视，流行音乐，电子游戏，流行文学和喜剧领域的四人，进行深入的后续访谈，我们探索受访者的热情和参与的历史，以及流行商业文化音乐的特定领域在他们的日常生活和认同感中所起的作用。同时运用这两种方法，我们可以达到以下目的：-厘清商业文化艺术如何及在何种情况下，丰富及拓展使用者及读者的体验。-揭示不同商业文化艺术领域丰富和拓宽用户和读者体验的显著差异。-探索和记录商业文化和价值如何成为享受、幸福、归属感和更广泛参与文化生活的重要来源。-制定和评估研究策略，成功地结合使用调查和访谈方法，特别适合商业艺术和文化中的文化价值。

This project explores the cultural and aesthetic value of commercial culture and arts, focusing on six main areas of contemporary popular culture: film, television, popular music, video gaming, popular literature and comedy. Aesthetic and cultural value are of great importance. In our daily live we constantly make decisions about which forms of culture, art and entertainment we engage with; what texts, works and genres we enjoy, and which ones we value. The vast majority of these are commercial produced. Scholars of many disciplines across arts and humanities, in turn, are tasked to assess the relative worth of different works and objects of art and culture.Yet, methods to evaluate, let alone quantify, cultural value have remained highly controversial, often either focusing solely on process of the production of arts and culture (artists, authors and industries) or conversely only studying uses of popular culture and arts by users alone. There are no objective criteria by which we can determine the aesthetic value of a given object, work or genre - and, as some sociological research has demonstrated, the cultural hierarchies that underpin many of our experiences of popular culture and arts reflect and sometimes legitimise existing hierarchies and inequalities in society.This project therefore seeks to understand aesthetic value not as something that is bound up with a given work of art or text, but that is located in the interaction between culture/art and recipient. Drawing on the notion of 'horizon of experience' the project explores to what extent texts and works in the six different fields of commercial popular culture studied in this project challenge audiences' previous experiences, preferences and expectations and facilities a 'horizontal change' that enriches and broadens previous experiences. This study of intrinsic cultural value in the reception of popular commercial art and culture is supplement by the study of extrinsic social value: the degree to which users, enthusiast and fans experience film, television, popular music, video gaming, popular literature and comedy as pleasurable and enjoyable, becoming an affective part of our identities, and contributing to our wider engagement with culture, arts and society. We do so by employing two different methods from social science research: firstly, based on the analysis of past surveys, we will design and conduct a survey across the main fields of commercial popular culture and arts. This survey will reveal a number of characteristics about the audiences for different fields and genres in commercial arts and culture, including their age, sex and occupation, their values, cultural preferences, consumption patterns, and media usage. Secondly, on the basis of different groups identified in the survey we will select a total of 24 participants, four each from the fields of film, television, popular music, video gaming, popular literature and comedy, for in-depth follow-up interviews in which we explore the history of interviewees' enthusiasm and engagements, and the role that particular fields of popular commercial culture music plays in their everyday life and their sense of identity. Using both methods in parallel will allow us to achieve the following aims:- To identify how and under what circumstances commercial culture and arts enriches and broadens the experiences of users and readers.- To reveal significant variations in the degrees that different fields of commercial culture and arts enrich and broaden the experiences of users and readers.- To explore and document how commercial culture and value become important sources of enjoyment, well-being, belonging and wider participation in cultural life. - To develop and assess research strategies that successfully use a combination of surveying and interviewing methods which are particularly suited to cultural value in commercial arts and culture.