ABSTRACT
Popular culture is a fixture of social life; and its artifacts are culture incarnate. The key to grasping the popular culture process of corporate capitalism, in all its dynamism and ornery self-contradiction, lies with Gramsci's concept of hegemony. Hegemony encompasses the terms through which the alliances of domination are cemented. The dialectic of cultural assertion and hegemonic incorporation is well illustrated by the production of American network television entertainment. The conventions of television entertainment are flexible precisely because they operate under limited but real market constraints. Just as prevailing television genres shift in historical time, so do the settings and character types associated with them. Shifting market tolerances and producer interests make for noticeable changes. All narratives set out problems and point toward solutions. The technologies of mass culture do not stand still, and they are imprinted by the structure and strategies of the political-economic system at the moment.
