SO YOU WANT TO STUDY POPULAR CULTURE?FOUR APPROACHES

PRE-POPULAR CULTURE

“The highly instructed few, and not the scantily clad many, will ever be the organ to the human race of knowledge and truth. Knowledge and truth . . . are not attainable by the great mass of the human race at all.”

“Culture is the best that has been thought and said in the world."

Hi, I’m Matthew Arnold, a snobby elitist jerk.

1. THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

Founded in 1923 by German thinkers

Marxist-based Revolutionary

potential of working class

Economics as the center of social analysis

Hi, I’m Karl Marx. I’ve been known to make people no fun at parties if they read too much of me.

ADORNO AND HORKHEIMER

Turned school’s emphasis to: Domination of the

masses by politics, dictators, and of course, mass media

Coined the term “culture industry” to demonstrate their sympathies for the masses

Hi, I’m Theodor Adorno. Ladies through their panties at me to get me flustered during campus talks. True story.

BASIC PRINCIPLES

Pop culture is the mindless consumption of mass produced commodities (entertainment) for the sole purpose of entrenching capitalism

Pop culture deals in sameness, repetition, homogeneity, and no imagination These texts are not art; rather, nothing but product

This sameness keeps people in-line, structures their leisure time, and keeps them happy to go back to work with the illusion of being free

BASIC PRINCIPLES

People do not interact or resist these texts; they simply absorb the values of the men in suits who create them

False needs are created through advertising and keep people buying

IMPORTANT NUANCE

Matthew Arnold found people themselves deficient. The Frankfurts had hopes for people; the people were just in a losing battle

This was the dawn of media. There really wasn’t a lot of diversity and intellectual depth.

Frankfurts witnessed Hitler take power through propaganda that resembled pop culture

Right or wrong, they were the first to acknowledge cultural texts may have deeper ideological effects

2. BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL OF CULTURAL STUDIES

Hey, Maybe People Aren’t Zombies . . . Sometimes

You’re a Disney Princess now; come on, fix your hair and goofy eyes. Hegemonic beauty standards demand it!

FOUNDED IN 1964

Moved from literary/moral theory of culture (seen in Arnold and Frankfurts) to an anthropological view– i.e., how do people make meaning from cultural messages

Dropped emphasis on high/low culture to look at the process of how all texts are produced, disseminated, and interpreted

All people are born with the potential to be an intellectual (both consumer and producer)

Popular texts are the most important texts to look at precisely because of the power they hold

GOALS

To educate and liberate people from the dominant messages of pop culture– foster resistance and critical awareness

To move towards this liberation through active resistance to culture’s dominant codes, which can only be achieved through close reading

Hi, I’m Stuart Hall and I don’t think people are mindless zombies . . . at least, not all the time!

IN THE SHORTEST OF SHORT

While Frankfurts focused solely on the capitalistic and consumer affects of pop culture en masse (cause the content was too bland to be relevant), the Birmingham school focused on the potential messages and meanings of individual pop culture texts (they turned to content) to understand their effects on people.

SO WE’RE USED TO THIS

The Birmingham school essentially adopted the techniques of literary criticism (especially New Criticism) and applied them to popular culture

These textual effects were fundamental for exploration because of pop culture’s prevalence in people’s lives

LIBERATION

From society’s dominant codes about gender roles

LIBERATION

From society’s dominant codes about race and racial/cultural appropriation

RESISTANCE

• Fetishized the notion of resistance- i.e., oppositional reads, going against society’s dominant codes (we’ll see this in Hepdige)

• Believed that only through education and close reading could people be trained to resist the dominant codes

• Unlike Frankfurts, believed this was possible– to get outside of the system and peer back it at critically

THE PROBLEM?

Analysis of the text (solely for its semiotic meanings, representations, messages, etc.) is short-sighted, a preference of the analyzer’s values, and missing so much about the complexity of what makes a text valuable or pleasurable to actual audiences.

3. FANDOM STUDIES

FANDOM STUDIES

No true founding date or founding leader, but started happening in 1970s

Scholars got the “crazy” ideas: People DO stuff with pop culture texts There’s more to liking a text than the text–

there’s identity, community, and a whole social life

K/S

PROBLEMS?

Even fandom studies falters for privileging a specific form of active/creative engagement over any other kind of pleasure. By praising the subcultural or these super-producers, there is an implication that their “resistant” behaviors are somehow more politically worthy than other consumption practices of popular culture.

4. GROSSBERG & AFFECT

Empowered & disempowered

Active & passive Relating to others &

disengaging with others Resisting & incorporating Being logical and

contradictory

WE ARE BOTH:

When engaging with popular culture

INCORPORATION & EXCORPORATION

INCORPORATION & EXCORPORATION

INCORPORATION & EXCORPORATION

INCORPORATION & EXCORPORATION

The possible practices of loving, hating, being

outraged by Miley Cyrus

are dependent on countless connections

that make those positions emergently possible

“A cultural formation describes the lines that distribute, place, and connect cultural practices, effects, and social groups.

Different social groups have differential access to specific clusters of practices and those relations are themselves part of the determination or articulation of the formation.

Such articulations create a series of ‘alliances’ each representing a particular selective appropriation of the formulation itself; no alliance includes every element of the formulation” (“Mapping” 71)

MATTERING MAPS