Capitalist And Patriarchal Elements Of Popular Culture

Popular Culture I

Öğr. Gör. Gülbin Kıranoğlu

The Capitalist and Patriarchal Elements in the Products of Popular Culture

Betül Kılıç

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The Capitalist and Patriarchal Elements in the Products of Popular Culture The humans are gregarious living beings. So, throughout history, they have lived as communities because they need communities. And also, they are in communication and interaction with each other. Every society makes its own culture based on their language, religion, science, conventions, eating, wearing customs and social life. The culture also takes shape and undergoes change in time. This development can be in a short or long period. When the effects on cultures are taken into consideration, classifications

These elements can be seen in the movies which class distinctions are shown and the characters give importance on only money, material world in terms of life styles. As the famous director Michael Moore criticizes capitalism in his documental movie whose name is Capitalism: A Love Story, capitalism is the huge difference between the life of people have everyting in one side and the life of people have nothing in other side. Thus, there are many elements in movies that it can be noticed thanks to the point of view of popular culture. In this respect, the producers of these movies sell people an imaginary life which they can never have in fact. The Wolf of Wall Street directed and produced by Martin Scorsese is certainly one of these movies. It is based on the life of a stockbroker whose name is Jordan Belfort in New York. Even at the beginning, the character says that "money makes you invincible" not only in his words but also in his life always the importance of money is emphasised. While Jordan Belfort is a naive stockbroker at first, suddenly he starts to become rich day by day. So, the movie dreams up myths that everyone can be rich if they work enough as İrfan Erdoğan says just like the words of Jordan Belfort. He also says "If you use your mind and elequence, you can have the opportunities I have". On the other hand, his arguement is very capitalist because in fact he says that "if

As Bell Hooks discriminates, "patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females... through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence". Therefore, it is insulting for women to be shown the patriarchal concerns in media devices. On the other hand, just like other unfavorable sides of popular culture, these acts also become effective on society. For example, in the film The Wolf of Wall Street, the woman figure is in the background. Most of the characters are male at first. To exemplify specifically, the main character, Jordan Belfort makes a speech at the opening scene of the movie, and he tells about what you can buy with money, he orders many things a luxurious car, a good life style, and also a better "girlfriend". Thus, he commoditises the woman. Furthermore, the character whose name is Donnie says that he gets married to her cousin because she became a very sexy woman when she grew up. So this means that the most important side of a woman is her body not her thoughts, ideas and esteem. At this stage, Prof. Talip Küçükcan mentions the feminist film theory. According to this theory, in the products of popular culture, women are shown as only sex objects so they object to pornography. However, in The Wolf of Wall Street, there are many scenes which insult and humiliate the woman figure.