Module 1. Cultural Studies and Popular Culture.pdf
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Lesson 1. Cultural Studies & Popular Culture: An Introduction OBJECTIVES: At the end of the lesson, students should be able to: 1. Define cultural studies and popular culture; 2. Explain the relationship between Cultural Studies & the study of Popular Culture; 3. Diffe...
Lesson 1. Cultural Studies & Popular Culture: An Introduction OBJECTIVES: At the end of the lesson, students should be able to: 1. Define cultural studies and popular culture; 2. Explain the relationship between Cultural Studies & the study of Popular Culture; 3. Differentiate the “popular” from high-brow culture; and 4. Appreciate the importance of popular culture alongside other types of culture. DISCUSSION. I. What is CULTURAL STUDIES? Cultural Studies is a field of inquiry that is not ‘monolithic’ in terms of theories and methods. Rather, as Stuart Hall (1992) pointed out, Cultural Studies has multiple discourses; it has a number of different histories. It is a whole set of formations; it has its own different conjunctures and moments of the past. It included many different kinds of work...It always was a set of unstable formations...It had many trajectories, many people had and have different theoretical positions, all of them in contention. (Storey 2010, 2) In other words, Cultural Studies offer an avenue for academic discourses that obtain concepts and arguments from different domains: anthropology, history, literary studies, philosophy, political economy, and sociology (George Mason University, para. 1) It strives to comprehend, analyze, and revolutionize certain cultural practices (George Mason University, para. 5). Researches within Cultural Studies places cultural objects under circumstances that account for power, conflict, and change (George Mason University, para. 1). II. CULTURE & CULTURAL STUDIES Cultural Studies is concerned not only with one definition of culture. Instead, it encompasses Culture and culture. The former pertains to what Matthew Arnold (2009) called ‘the best which has been thought and said.’ Hence, written with the capital letter “C.” On the other hand, the latter is culture that is not classifiable in the former. To simplify, Cultural Studies recognize all types of culture (but most studies have greatly focused on the ‘popular’). For this field of study, it treats culture as a meaning-making entity. It pertains to how people live within nature (including people’s own biology); it is the ‘shared meanings’ people develop and come across in their everyday lives. Furthermore, the meaning-making process happens with the texts and from the texts that people encounter. In this manner, cultures are derived from the ‘production, circulation, and consumption of meanings.’ Therefore, ‘to share a culture is to interpret the world in recognizably similar ways’ (Storey 2011, pp. 2-3). However, this does not mean that Cultural Studies treat culture as a harmonious and organic whole. Instead, it recognizes that meanings across cultures are negotiated, meaning, they can mean different things. It is in this negotiation between cultures and the role of power where the core of Cultural Studies lies (Storey 2011, p. 3). III. What is POPULAR CULTURE? Before dealing with the definition of popular culture, it is important to define first concepts related to it that are essential in the discussion of the ‘popular.’ The first key concept is culture. Some definitions of culture have already been discussed earlier. The following are additional definitions of the word by Raymond Williams (1983): a. Culture can be used to refer to ‘a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development.’ Notes: _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ b. Culture suggests ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group.’ Notes: _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ c. Culture can be used to refer to ‘the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity.’ Notes: _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ Another key concept is ideology. Ideology is another essential term in popular culture studies. Graeme Turner (1996) proclaims it to be ‘the most important conceptual category in cultural studies’ (Storey, p. 2). Just like culture, the term also has competing definitions. Examine the following meanings of ideology and try to understand each. a. Ideology can refer to a systematic body of ideas articulated by a particular group of people. Notes: _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ b. A second definition suggests a certain masking, distortion, or concealment (as in the capitalist ideology). Ideology is used here to indicate how some texts and practices present distorted images of reality. They produce what is sometimes called ‘false consciousness.’ Such distortions, it is argued, work in the interests of the powerful against the interests of the powerless. Notes: _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ c. A third definition of ideology (closely related to, and in some ways dependent on, the second definition) uses the term to refer to ‘ideological forms.’ This usage is intended to draw attention to the way in which texts (television fiction, pop songs, novels, feature films, etc.) always present a particular image of the world. This definition depends on a notion of society as conflicting rather than consensual, structured around inequality, exploitation and oppression. Texts are said to take sides, consciously or unconsciously, in this conflict. Notes: _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ d. A fourth definition of ideology is one associated with the early work of the French cultural theorist Roland Barthes. Barthes argues that ideology (or ‘myth’ as Barthes himself calls it) operates mainly at the level of connotations, often unconscious meanings that texts and practices carry, or can be made to carry. e. A fifth definition is one that was very influential in the 1970s and early 1980s. It is the definition of ideology developed by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. For him, ideology not simply a body of ideas, but a material practice. Principally, what Althusser has in mind is the way in which certain rituals and customs have the effect of binding us to the social order: a social order that is marked by enormous inequalities of wealth, status and power. Notes: _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ Exercise: Before proceeding below, write on the blank words that you can relate to the term ‘popular.’ You may write down as many as you like. _____________________________________________________________________________ Now that the meanings of the key concepts have been laid out, we can now establish how to interpret the term popular in Popular Culture. Williams (1983) suggests four current meanings: ‘well-liked by many people’; ‘inferior kinds of work’; ‘work deliberately setting out to win favour with the people’; and ‘culture actually made by the people for themselves’ (Storey, p.5). Examine the following definitions of Popular Culture. What can you say about them? a. Popular culture is simply culture that is widely favoured or well-liked by many people. b. It is the culture that is left over after we have decided what is high culture. This definition of popular culture is often supported by claims that popular culture is mass-produced commercial culture, whereas high culture is the result of an individual act of creation. Popular Culture Defined Popular culture is the set of practices, beliefs, and objects that embody the most broadly shared meanings of a social system. It includes media objects, entertainment and leisure, fashion and trends, and linguistic conventions, among other things. Popular culture is usually associated with either mass culture or folk culture and differentiated from high culture and various institutional cultures (political culture, educational culture, legal culture, etc.). Therefore, the term ‘popular culture’ holds different meanings depending on who’s defining it and the context of use. It is generally recognized as the vernacular or people’s culture that predominates in a society at a point in time. As Brummett explains in Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture, pop culture involves the aspects of social life most actively involved by the public. As the ‘culture of the people’, popular culture is determined by the interactions between people in their everyday activities: styles of dress, the use of slang, greeting rituals, and the foods that people eat are all examples of popular culture. Popular culture is also informed by the mass media. There are a number of generally agreed elements comprising popular culture. For example, popular culture encompasses the most immediate and contemporary aspects of our lives. These aspects are often subject to rapid change, especially in a highly technological world in which people are brought closer and closer by omnipresent media. Certain standards and commonly held beliefs are reflected in pop culture. Because of its commonality, pop culture both reflects and influences people’s everyday life (see eg Petracca and Sorapure, Common Culture). Furthermore, brands can attain pop iconic status (eg the Nike swoosh or McDonald’s golden arches). However, iconic brands, as other aspects of popular culture, may rise and fall. With these fundamental aspects in mind, popular culture may be defined as the products and forms of expression and identity that are frequently encountered or widely accepted, commonly liked or approved, and characteristic of a particular society at a given time. Ray Browne in his essay ‘Folklore to Populore’ offers a similar definition: “Popular culture consists of the aspects of attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, customs, and tastes that define the people of any society. Popular culture is, in the historic use of term, the culture of the people.” Popular culture allows large heterogeneous masses of people to identify collectively. It serves an inclusionary role in society as it unites the masses on ideals of acceptable forms of behavior. Along with forging a sense of identity that binds individuals to the greater society, consuming pop culture items often enhances an individual’s prestige in their peer group. Further, popular culture, unlike folk or high culture, provides individuals with a chance to change the prevailing sentiments and norms of behavior, as we shall see. So popular culture appeals to people because it provides opportunities for both individual happiness and communal bonding. Urbanization is a key ingredient in the formation of popular culture. People who once lived in homogeneous small villages or farms found themselves in crowded cities marked by great cultural diversity. These diverse people would come to see themselves as a ‘collectivity’ as a result of common, or popular, forms of expression. Thus, many scholars trace the beginning of the popular culture phenomenon to the rise of the middle class brought on by the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization also brought with it mass production; developments in transportation, such as the steam locomotive and the steamship; advancements in building technology; increased literacy; improvements in education and public health; and the emergence of efficient forms of commercial printing, representing the first step in the formation of a mass media (eg the penny press, magazines, and pamphlets). All of these factors contributed to the blossoming of popular culture. References: George Mason University. 2019. About cultural studies. In culturalstudies.gmu.edu/about. Storey, John. 2011. Cultural studies and the study of popular culture. 3rd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Press. Storey, John. n.d. Critical theory and popular culture. 5th ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman. This module is adapted from the works of Ms. Melissa Grace P. Nacino.
