Gramsci's Cultural Hegemony Analysis

In Gramsci’s (1937) cultural hegemony, he describes the way cultural institutions manage to gain and maintain power in capitalist societies. According to Gramsci’s point of view, the dominant classes see to incorporate all thought and behavior within their own terms and conditions, acting as if their values are common-sense. On the other side there are the dominated ones who try to create and maintain their own definitions of reality. Understanding these two scenarios, we see that there is a continued fight for dominance to understand which ideology of reality best serve the interests of the ruling class and those who are under their influence. In this aspect, culture takes a more vigorous position, because cultural domination comes

“In general, sociological interest in the move to mass consumption in the second half of the nineteenth century was restricted to indicating the limitations of strictly economic or market explanations of human behavior.” (Featherstone, 2010: 16)
By contrast the British cultural studies reject any high/low culture distinction created by the Frankfurt School, instead taking seriously the artifacts of media culture “thus surpassing the elitism of dominant literary approaches to culture.” (Kellner). British cultural studies overcame the limitations created by the Frankfurt School notion of a passive audience, completely numb by the cultural products fed to them and created the concept of an active audience that creates their meanings and what is popular. “It is of the people, and the people’s interests are not those of the industry – as is evidence by the number of films, records and, other products (…) the people make into expensive failures.” (Fiskey, 1989: 24) Employing Gramsci 's model of hegemony and counter hegemony, British cultural studies aimed to analyze

A number of products are massified and distributed in trough media, but within those we can still find niche sections. I believe the real distinction should be, within mass culture, is it if something is “kitsch” or not. Although, I watch television on a regular basis it doesn’t mean that I watch every single reality TV, soap opera that is on. I may choose, instead, to watch other shows like a documentary on the History channel, a poker game or renowned TV series. In a sense, we can say that reality TV is a mass culture product – kitsch - but watching Breaking Bad or The Wire or even House of Cards, can be seen as way to challenge that same mass culture. It’s almost as if there is high culture, within mass culture, despite those designations are associated with elitist behavior. The same applies to much, I could listen to all the major pop artist of today, but if I choose to listen to an alternative music style, I escape the claws of pop culture. It doesn’t mean I stop consuming anything and resume to living in complete blindness and deafness, when it comes to culture goods. Instead, I choose what I want to listen/see and what don’t want to listen/see. I can still feeling the impact of a mass product that are television shows, but I choose not to be numbed and influenced by it, but watching something else that can help me create my