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

该项目探讨商业文化艺术的文化和美学价值，重点关注当代流行文化的六大领域：电影、电视、流行音乐、电子游戏、流行文学和喜剧。审美和文化价值非常重要。在我们的日常生活中，我们不断地决定我们参与哪些形式的文化，艺术和娱乐;我们喜欢哪些文本，作品和流派，以及我们重视哪些。其中绝大多数是商业生产的。艺术和人文学科的学者们承担着评估艺术和文化的不同作品和物品的相对价值的任务。然而，评估文化价值的方法，更不用说量化了，仍然存在很大的争议，通常要么只关注艺术和文化的生产过程（艺术家，作者和行业），要么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一件特定的物品、作品或流派的美学价值--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经验的文化等级制度反映了社会中现有的等级制度和不平等，有时甚至使其合法化。因此，本项目试图理解美学价值，而不是与特定作品联系在一起的东西艺术与文本的关系，但它又处于文化/艺术与接受者的互动之中。借鉴“经验视野”的概念，该项目探讨了在这个项目中研究的商业流行文化的六个不同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，并提供了一个“横向变化”，丰富和拓宽了以前的经验。这种对流行商业艺术和文化接受的内在文化价值的研究是对外在社会价值的研究的补充：用户，爱好者和粉丝体验电影，电视，流行音乐，视频游戏，流行文学和喜剧的程度，成为我们身份的情感部分，并有助于我们更广泛地参与文化，艺术和社会。我们采用了两种不同的社会科学研究方法：首先，在分析以往调查的基础上，我们将设计并进行一项涵盖商业流行文化艺术主要领域的调查。本调查将揭示商业文化艺术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，根据调查中确定的不同群体，我们将从电影、电视、流行音乐、电子游戏、流行文学和喜剧领域各挑选四名参与者，进行深入的跟踪采访，探索受访者的热情和参与历史，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扮演的角色。同时使用这两种方法将使我们能够实现以下目标：-确定商业文化和艺术如何以及在什么情况下丰富和扩大用户和读者的体验。揭示商业文化和艺术的不同领域丰富和拓宽用户和读者体验的程度的显着差异。探索和记录商业文化和价值如何成为享受、福祉、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，成功地使用调查和访谈方法，特别适合商业艺术和文化的文化价值。

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.