Bibliographic record
Abstract
The dissertation addresses the operation of authenticity within contemporary Canadian popular culture. Specifically, it attempts to understand how this Romantic ideal, proffered by the likes of Rousseau and others, fares under post-modern conditions. Three case studies are examined: The Late Show with David Letterman, the musical genre of Gangsta rap, and the I AM Canadian promotional campaign by Molson Breweries.The literature review has two essential functions: to reconsider the effectiveness of using the resistance-incorporation distinction to evaluate the political dimensions of popular culture. Second, to consider the present and emerging conditions in which the ideology of authenticity operates. I pay special attention to those theories that either (a) discount the value of authenticity as a means of evaluating and relating to popular culture, (b) question the possibility of authenticity in post-modern popular culture, or (c) contend that the value of authenticity is no longer relevant to contemporary consumers.It is the argument of this dissertation that post-modern conditions do pose a challenge to the status and operation of this essential value of modernity. However, I argue that these conditions in no way displace the value or social status of ‘the authentic.’Three contemporary forms of authenticity within popular culture are addressed. Seamless authenticity refers to those instances in which the value of the cultural text lies less in its social and political content (its ideas, values, and so forth) than in the coherency of the text. Here, authenticity transcends all other concerns. Seamless culture is celebrated on the basis of its capacity to be ‘exactly what it claims to be’ - a collapse, then, of reality and representation. The second form, authenticity mining, refers to the process by consumer capital of cultivating or ‘mining’ symbols that resonate with the market. To adequately cater to the demands of the contemporary markets, capital is forced to mine culture previously untouched by commercial culture. The third form of authenticity appears as its antithesis. Ironic authenticity establishes a critical stance in relation to the inauthentic, and through this process, provides the consumer with an opportunity to define him or herself as an aware and autonomous figure. All three varieties are considered in terms of their role in expanding the legitimacy of consumption as a way of life.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.025 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".