Week 3: 22 September What is Popular Culture?

Reading: Storey, ‘Chapter 1: What is popular culture?’ Hartley, ‘Culture’ & ‘Popular/popular culture’ (pp. 51-53; 178-180) Raymond Williams, ‘Culture’ and ‘Popular’ (Coursepack)

Popular culture is a site where the construction of everyday life may be examined. The point of doing this is not only academic—that is, an attempt to understand a process or practice—it is also political, to examine the power relations that constitute this form of everyday life and thus reveal the configurations of interests its construction serves. (Graeme Turner)

Key Themes and Concepts 1) Culture 2) Culture and the nation-state 3) Popular 4) Ideology

1) Culture

Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. (Raymond Williams, Keywords)

Culture as:

a) intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic dvlpmt b) a way of life c) intellectual and artistic activity

The latter definition entails two key factors: i) it is a ‘signifying practice’; and, ii) it produces cultural commodities/products

a) earlier historical uses of ‘culture’ Cultura (Latin): to inhabit (colony); honour with worship (cult) • cultivation or tending (crops or animals) • in the 16th c. (as early capitalism was developing) this notion of cultivation

was first addressed to humans b) political-economic influences Francis Bacon in 1605 wrote about “the culture and manurance of minds” • like many social and political theorist of the 17th c., Bacon was very

concerned about ‘the cultivation of minds’ Why did ‘culture’ become such an important word (and one whose meaning continued to change?

A short answer: European culture was beginning to undergo significant cultural change Under feudalism, society was ordered around ‘the Great Chain of Being’ From the mid-1600s onward, there is a general shift in the ‘mode of production’ form feudalism to capitalism Those in the dominant classes (landowning aristocracy) were troubled by the change in the social order of things Where there were once ‘grateful peasants’ there were now ‘surly and aggressive factory workers’—which the aristocracy now considered to be a ‘dangerous class’ Bacon identified the new urban poor ‘working class’ as part of ‘Many-Headed Hydra’ (drawing on Greek mythology (claiming they were ‘subhuman’) Bacon seems to be saying that if their minds could not be ‘cultivated’ then their heads should be cut off c) culture and social control? • there are specific material reasons why the meaning of the word ‘culture’

became so important—a means to control and mold this new ‘dangerous class’

• the link b/n culture and civilization can thus be historically situated • and this is another example of the interconnectedness of the material and

the symbolic Williams also notes that culture is both a material process (cultural anthropology) and a symbolic process (Cultural Studies) • we cannot meaningfully separate those processes

2) Culture as colonus: the nation-state In the 18th c. the modern nation-state was beginning to take form (N.B. European countries like Germany and Italy were not formed until about 130 years ago Thus culture came to be identified with nation This notion of culture was deployed in two ways: • 1) internally to strengthen the idea of a nation • 2) externally to justify colonialism and inscribe racial hierarchy

Once again, we can see how culture is used in situations of power and conflict in order to support and justify the claims of one side However, culture also is important in the context of postcolonial nations • i.e. most former colonies redefine or reclaim national culture This reminds us of a basic truism: the usage of words is always contested For example, the German (Herder) who helped introduce the notion of culture as ‘becoming civilized’ wrote the following in 1791:

Men of all the quarters of the globe, who have perished over the years, you have not lived solely to manure the earth with your ashes, so that at the end of your time your posterity should be made happy by European culture. The very thought of a superior European culture is a blatant insult to the majesty of nature.

3) Popular culture

There are six definitions put forward in the Storey article, as follows: i) favoured or preferred by many people • a quantitative definition which can be measured by sales, box office,

ratings, etc. • the actual content is irrelevant to this definition • actual popularity as the only marker ii) not high culture • a qualitative definition (value judgment) • but high culture can sometimes be popular (e.g. Pavarotti, ‘Nessun Dorma’) • also, sometimes low culture becomes high culture (i.e. Shakespeare) • we will talk more about this next week (C.F. Matthew Arnold) iii) as mass culture • signifies popular culture as hopelessly commercial, for a non-discriminating

audience • typically laments the loss of a ‘golden age’ of popular culture

In capitalist societies there is no so-called authentic folk culture against which to measure the ‘inauthenticity’ of mass culture, so bemoaning the loss of the authentic is a fruitless exercise in romantic nostalgia. (John Fiske)

• in Europe, especially, mass culture is also a code word for Americanization

of culture

iv) originates from ‘the people’ • as opposed to being imposed upon the people • but who, exactly, comprises ‘the people’? v) as a political concept (C.F. ideology and hegemony) • popular culture as a site of struggle b/n subordinate and dominant groups • popular culture as a terrain of negotiation and exchange • a site of ideological struggle • based not only on class, but gender, race, ethnicity, etc. • thus popular culture unfolds in a process that is both a) diachronic

(historical): something ‘unpopular’ or of ‘high’ culture becomes popular over time; and, b) synchronic: moves from resistance to incorporation at a given moment

vi) as postmodern culture • no distinction made b/n a) high and low culture; b) culture and commodity;

and c) authentic and commercial • this position states that we are beyond ideology, that there is no alternative

(TINA), and are at ‘the end of history’ • in short, the market economy is the only and inevitable place for all culture

4) Ideology We already talked a bit about ideology last week and will do so again later in the semester Today let’s consider ideology specifically in r/n to culture Ideology is often used interchangeably with culture • it is a key concept in Cultural Studies What is ideology? a) a systematic body of ideas articulated by a particular group of people b) texts, discourses, and practices that distort reality • specifically, distorting the reality of domination and subordination • e.g. the Marxist critique of capitalist ideology A Basic Question?: Are cultural texts and practices reflections/expressions of the mode of production (the power r/s and economic base of society? • i.e. society is unequally structured in a manner that corresponds to the

economy • to what degree is this inequality directly reflected in ‘ideology’?

It is not the consciousness of people that determine their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. (Karl Marx)

c) ideological forms • all cultural texts are ideological (i.e. politically charged and reflective of

unequal and contested power r/ns • in short, all texts are political

Popular culture as a site where ‘collective social understandings are created’ (Stuart Hall)

d) ideology = myth • Barthes suggests that ideology functions on a deeper, unconscious level • in short, the most important aspect of meaning happens at the secondary

level of connotation e) ideology as material practices • everyday life • certain rituals, customs, and institutions reproduce the social order of

things