Popular Culture in a

Theoretical Lens
Group II
 Dubria, Jea
 Laxamana, Marlon
 Lim, John Clarence
 Lopez, Jerry
 Nogalo, Cristine
 Pasibe, Jerson
 Revellame, John Jerill
 Tejones, Kyle Zyrah
 TEJONES
The Psychology of Popular Culture

 Psychology is defined as the scientific study of the mind and behavior, actively involved in
studying and understanding the various mental processes, brain functions, and behavior of humans.

 The study of psychology has ubiquitous applications, meaning its researches can be applied to
anyone regardless of culture.

 popular culture is often the primary source of information people have whenever they need to learn
more about certain cultures.

 popular culture is the accumulation of all its elements capable of sustaining and perpetuating itself
based on the endorsement and participation of the people through their own volition.

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The Psychology of Popular

TEJONES
Culture
The Mentality of Popular Culture

Three (3) major players behind the psychological effects

of popular culture in its aspects:

 The different psychological and sociological theories

that dissect the mind;

 The different theories critical to the dissemination of

popular culture; and

 The success of symbols as means of spreading popular

culture (semiotics).

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 TEJONES
The Psychology of Popular Culture

The Psychological and Sociological Theories surrounding

Popular Culture
• Theories for Self (Psychological theories)
• Queer Theory
• A new theory where ideas and identity categories that are considered as “hard set”
in established fields are constantly being scrutinized and challenged.
• Films such as Brokeback Mountain, Die Beautiful, and The Panti Sisters reflect
queer theory in different approaches to challenge the ever-changing norms in our
society.

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 DUBRIA
Archetypes Jungian Archetypes (by Carl Jung)- which are Images and
themes that come from the collective unconscious. Archetypes
are things that have the same meanings in different cultures.
They may show up in dreams, literature, art, or religion.

Archetypes In Jung’s words, “Definite mythological images

of motifs … are nothing more than conscious representations;
it would be absurd to think that such variable representations
could be inherited.”

“Archaic remnants” are the source of the archetypal images,

not the conscious representations.

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In popular culture,

DUBRIA
The Father archetype represents authority figure- stem
however, archetypes and powerful. Its moral alignment shall dictate how
(particularly the others perceive him
character archetypes)
help us quickly identify
motives and general If the father is morally positive, then he is considered a
personalities of capable and protective leader. Ex: Joe West (The
different icons, Flash), Odin All father (MCU’s Thor) and Gregory
Peck (To kill a Mockingbird).
especially in TV
shows, games and
films. Some common If the father is morally negative, then he is considered a
archetype identifiers in dictator – a man that us manipulative, cold, and with a
grandiose vision of transcending beyond the material
popular culture are as world. Ex: Darth Vader (Star Wars), Wilson Fisk
follows: (MCU’s Daredevil), and Marlon Brando (The
Godfather).
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 DUBRIA
Archetypes

2. The Mother represents the well-known maternal instincts – nurturing and

comforting. Its moral alignment shall dictate how others perceive her.

If the mother is morally positive, then she is considered a caring mother, full of
love and acceptance. She will defend anyone who hurt her loved ones with equal
ferocity, if not more, as the morally good Father. Ex: Mine-a (Encantadia), Katara
(The legend of Aang), and Melina Vostokoff (MCU’s Black Widow).

If the mother is morally negative, then she is the wicked mother, neglectful and
conceited. She is stubborn and obsessive and will think of nothing else but to
satisfy her own agendas. Ex: Lady Tremaine (Cinderella), Mother Gothel
(Rapunzel and Tangled), and Cersei Lannister (Game of Thrones and A song of
Ice and Fire).

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 DUBRIA
Archetypes

3. The Child represents a person’s views of children– full of innocence,

renewed life, and salvation. Its moral alignment shall dictate how others
perceive them.

If the child is morally positive then they are considered innocent, playful,
and vivacious. They bring sunshine to someone’s life because of their
infectious cheerfulness. Ex: Hyūga Hinata (Naruto), Scott Lang (MCU’s
Ant-man), Santino (May bukas pa)

If the Child is morally negative, then they are considered naïve, ignorant,
and over-dependent. They will never act on their own because they know
someone else will provide for them. Ex: Dudley Dursley (The Wizarding
World), Joffrey Baratheon (Game of Thrones and A song of Ice and
Fire), and Jane(Twilight series).

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 Affect theory

LOPEZ
• Affect theory is a way to think about culture,
history, and politics that looks at things that
aren't words. Affects make us who we are, but
they aren't always under our control or even in
our awareness. They can only sometimes be
expressed in words. Michel Foucault's "analytics
of power," the study of animal rights and
secularism, and my own field, religious studies,
are all topics that can be linked to affect theory. In
order to better understand power, Affect Theory
tells people that they should think of power as a
play.

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 LOPEZ
Popular psychology

 Term that describes any and all psychological ideologies,

therapies, and other techniques that gained traction
through media .This is characterized by placing emphasis on
personal feelings, the latest trends, testimonials, and self-
help techniques. Despite lacking any scientific validations,
people flock to these because of the reasons stated above.
Popularized by authors such as Erich Fromm and John Gray
popular psychology allows a person to explore their mind
and emotions.

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 LOPEZ
Identity Erosion

 Self-erosion occurs because when a person is busy with something

in their life, their sense of self begins to identify with the ones they
poured themselves in which, in the case of popular culture, is being
the “number one” fan of something. Should the icon fade, either
the self-eroded fan would either lose their sense of purpose or
move on to the “next big thing.”

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 Theories for Society (Sociological

PA S I B E
theories)
Tribalism
Tribalism, which is a popular trend that is mostly
based on false, stereotypical ideas about indigenous
people, has become a big thing in pop culture
Culturalism
Individuals are shaped by their culture, and these
cultures make up closed organic wholes. The
individual can't leave his or her culture but can only
see himself or herself in it, not outside of it.

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 PA S I B E
Theories for Society (Sociological theories)

 Marxism
Marxists have divided popular culture into two (2) groups:
those that people have made themselves, like folk art or
stories, and those that were made for them, like commercial
TV, advertising, arcade video games, and music.
 Postmodernism
Postmodernism (also known as post-structuralism) rejects
universal explanations and instead focuses on the relative
truths of each individual (i.e., postmodernism Equals
relativism). Postmodernism is all about interpretation;
reality is merely what we make of it.

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 R AV E L L A M E
The Critical Theories regarding Popular Culture

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The Critical Theories regarding

REVELLAME
Popular Culture

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 REVELLAME
The Critical Theories regarding Popular Culture

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 The Semiotic Approaches to Popular Culture

LIM
Semiotics by Saussure

• Semiotics is simply defined as the • A Swiss linguist and semiotician, Ferdinand de Saussure,
offered a dyadic or two-part model of the study of signs.
study of signs. Since there are Saussure argued that sign is composed of:

several concepts in the study of • A signifier (signifiant) which is a form that the sign takes; and,

• The signified (signifi) is the concept the sign represents

signs, depending on the tradition,
• Today, the signifier is commonly construed to be the material
it may be called semiology in the form of the sign. For example, if a shop has a sign with words

Saussurean tradition and semiotics written as closed, the signifier will be the letters c-los-e-d, and
the signified concept is that the shop is closed for business.
in Peircean tradition.

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 The Semiotic During the same time that Saussure was formulating his

LIM
model of sign, American pragmatist philosopher and
Approaches to logician Charles Sanders Peirce was working with his

Popular Culture own model of sign, 'semiotic or semiosis, and the

taxonomies of signs.
Semiotics by Peirce
While Saussure offers a dyadic model, Peirce offered a
triadic model.
In Peirce's model of signs, he gave an example of which
the traffic sign for 'stop' would consist of:
Representamen red-light facing traffic at an intersection
Interpretant the idea that the red light indicates that the
vehicles must stop.
Object vehicles halting

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 LIM
He is a French writer, literary theory, philosopher, critic, and also
The Semiotic semiotician Roland Barthes proposed the idea that there are distinct
Approaches to Popular levels of signification (levels of meaning). The first level of
Culture signification is the denotation, where a sign is made up of a signifier
and a signified. Connotation is a second-order signification that
Semiotics by Barthes employs the initial sign (signifier and signified) as its signifier and adds
an extra signified to it.

Simply, denotation refers to the definitional (dictionary definition) or

literary meaning of a sign, while connotation refers to the socio cultural
and personal association of the sign.

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 LAXAMANA
Multimodality
 Reading Images (1996) and Multimodal Discourse
(2001) by Kress and Van Leeuwen marked the
beginning of multimodality in Linguistics
Multimodality- is an interdisciplinary app roach to
communication and representation that recognizes that it
is about more than just words. Every communication is
multimodal in some ways since meaning is produced not
only via words but also through fonts, pictures, page
design, and so on. Multimodality has grown even more
important in the digital era, particularly for language
learners who rely on many channels to “pick up”
meaning in a target language

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  Machine and Mayr (2012) defined that
“recontextualization always involves transformation, and

LAXAMANA
Recontextualization what exactly gets transformed depends on the interests,
goals, and values of the context into which the practice is
recontextualized.”
 This indicates that transformation is always a part of
recontextualization, and what gets transformed in some
texts, when some elements are changed, replaced,
removed, or simplified, there is a presumed idea that
recontextualization has taken place. In
recontextualization, these elements can be described using
the classical types of transformation:
➢ Deletion: This is the process wherein some aspects are
deleted in any social practice (such as people, action, setting,
etc.) as no representations in social practice can represent all
the aspects of it.
E.g., On war monuments of World War, I, the monuments
erected in Europe mention ‘giving’ and ‘sacrifice’and do not
mention pain, suffering, or insanity.

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 LAXAMANA
Recontextualization
➢ Addition: This is the process where elements were added to represent the text even
further.
E.g., On the war monuments mentioned earlier, the materials used to add meanings such as
solidity and timelessness.
➢ Substitution: This is the process wherein there are changes or rearrangements by
abstractions and generalizations in order to represent events or texts accordingly.
E.g., On war monuments, the soldiers are not life-like figures but often larger than usual.
The acts of killing were substituted by the act of slowly walking forward or standing solidly
on guard.
➢ Evaluation: This is the process where the events and people are generalized in the text.
E.g., On war monuments, people find their poses in high ideals and values. The monuments
can also imply that the country will not forget the heroism of those who sacrificed during
WWI.

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  Pop psychology feels true, but truth and fact are not the

The Rise of

NOGALO
same. It is a false antidote.

Filipino Pop  Our growing worship of self-styled psychology gurus is

alarming.
Psychology  In our wish to understand and explain difficult feelings and
thoughts in a culture that largely prefers to silence them.

 Popular Western labels and powerful metaphors for relief

and validation.

 It is not enough to feel sad. Let’s call it depression.

 It is not enough to worry. Anxiety is sexier.

 Thinking of death or dying? You must be suicidal.

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 NOGALO
Pop psychology
o Psychology then becomes the tool. It dramatizes our life.

o The advice of local professionals might reveal aspects of our inner lives that feel true systematic way of
exploring and discovering our feelings, thoughts, and behavior.
o Pop psychology differs from psychological science in that it has a vaguely academic aspect to it but is more
oriented with self-help ideology.
o “Positive thinking” and “self-care” are elevated into incomprehension and are repackaged as wellness. This
is as helpful as Efficascent oil for every ailment. The pop psychology guru is a modern albularyo.
o The word “toxic” oversimplifies our experience whilst simultaneously complicating it. This is the hallmark
of pop psychology.
o Exposure to social media does not help. Filipinos are among the savviest in the churn of likes, posts, and
tweets.
o But the sheer volume of information and blatantly fabricated misinformation makes us vulnerable to the
illusory truth effect.
o The more we see the information, the more we tend to believe it to be true. It is then wildly flung around on
social media and claimed as fact. Pop psychology incubates this believability.
o This breeds resentment and distrust against the so-called elite. Psychology is a science for the privilege.

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 o The guru fills this gap.

RISK o So-called influencers, people with the conceit to call themselves “public figures,” and

NOGALO
anyone with sufficient self-regard to claim their “issues” as credentials to dole out advise
high-jack the narrative at a time when we want Filipinos to regain their trust in science.

o We should not mistake sharing our own personal struggles from the nonsense of pop
psychology. Sharing stories builds empathy.

o And our rich oral tradition means that we can re-story mental health as the protagonist
against stigma.

o The challenge for psychology is that its jargon does not easily fit into the world of sound
bites and opinions valued by posts, shares, and links. Yet Gestalt Therapy or “holistic care”
rolls off the tongues of local professionals as easily as “healing” and “closure.”

o The dangers are real. It can lead us to postpone effective care. It can invalidate our genuine
feelings and thoughts. You cannot positively think your way out of a suicide attempt. This
ought to be an exciting time for mental health specific to our worldview and way of life.

o This ought to be a time when sikolohiyang Pilipino leaps forward. Instead, indigenous
psychology is being pushed further back. We are losing a chance to self-correct decades of
missed opportunities and to avoid the mistakes of the past.

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 END
THANK
YOU!
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