Monday, 5. December 2005, 21:45:54
My very good friend Gaau has adviced me to use the oppurtunity of this blog to do some thinking around my upcoming exams, consequently, comes the following little passage of thoughts and conceptualizations.
Firstly, I will address cultural theories concerning televison. Stuart Hall is probably the most important theorist in this area. He presented three stages of meaning; a mediums account of a raw social event, then creating a discourse open to polysemi etc. and at last the decoding through ideological filters made by the recipient of the discourse. The meaning is therefore not a one time produced entity but a continuingly developing concept, first by the producers, then by the recievers. Hall said that the audience decodes the discourse in several different ways depending on their social status. Another theorist set Halls theories into reality and found that the concept of different interpretations not only depended on social class but on cultural thoughts and context in relation to preconcieved ideas and thoughts. Halls three classes of interpretation were the dominant hegemonic code, the negotiated code and the oppositional code. I am fairly well aware of the content of each code and will therefore countinue without elaborating these issues in order to save time.
Other issues concerning TV is that it has a social context as well as an individual function. TV can be used as a way of cutting yourself away from the world, or socializing together with family and friends while all watching and talking about the same TV show.
Some theorists have also argued that meaning is an ongoing process, even after the show in question is over. This was tested through interviews with women watching the TV series "Crossroads". Another study on women watching "Dallas" showed that there was a clear dennotation and a connotation. The fans identified with the show emotionally, others declined it as ideologically immoral and therefore not worth watching, another group found it entertaining to watch because it was mass-produced and therefore of low quality.
One last aspect of TV is the aspect of financial(incorporation and homogenization) vs. cultural(resistance and difference) economy.
Now on to fiction in popular culture. Fiction developed as part of the american popular culture with the emergance of self help novels in the 1920's. Prior to this fiction was considered part of high culture and not as part of the popular culture. The self-help books was naturally set in the light of the econimic and cultural sprit of the era and presented financial success through a life devoted to christian values. More technically and theoritically fiction is seen trough different eyes. Some theorists view fiction symtomatically. That is that they do a double reading, the text itself and then the meaning in between the lines of the text. That is representation and figuration.
Another way of viewing fiction is to see it through reception theory. That is that meaning is ALWAYS produced when reading a text. Predjudices and beliefs contribute to the interpretation of any discourse. Historic settings also influnce the meaning. The meaning is therefore constructed through interpretations.
A third view concerning fiction is the view of reading formations. That is the belief in inter-textuality. Text and Context always creating the meaning together.
One last part is about romance reading, that is crap! So I will ignore it with pleasure:)
My third area of focus is film. Structuralism is the most important part of film in popular culture. That is the idea of a signifier and a signified making a sign. ("cat"+concept cat=hairy four-legged animal.) This form of structuralism can also be extended into a secondary signification. That is the connotation of cat, "female super-gossiper". Link this to cultural studies and you can understand denotation and connotation of a text. That is exactly what stuctruralists does, they link laguage to cultural studies as an analogy. (Fun istn't it? I bet nobody will ever read this far, so goncratulations if you ever read this, please let me know:)
Hollywood as a mythmaker: Myths are created to make reality easier to understand by discrediting contradictions in society. Ex. The Am. dream, money=happiness, The cowboy etc. They are often created on binary oppositions Ex. Evil/Good, Hot/Cold, Dark/Light etc.
I'm sorry to have to mentions this, but I guess it is important. The "male gaze" was an invention made populr by the feminist movement. It is the main theory of the concept of sex-objects etc. (crap)...
Meanings is to some theorists produced through negotiations; Escapism, Identification and Consumerism. blablabla...
Newspapers and Magazines: Weee, fun fun...
Well you can devide them into three parts, official press, popular press and alternative press.
offical press writes in a analytical code while the popular press writes in a storytelling code.
Official press is said to uphold the stuctures of society while popular press is progressive and often accusing to the power-bloc. The alternative press is the only part of the press that usually can talk about radical issues.
Relavance and demand controls this part of popular culture.
I will not talk about the womens magazines, because I don't give a rats ass...
Popular Music:
Now this is interesting, but with the lack of time I will be very brief. Important isuues: standardization and passive listening. Political economy - fails to see that music is consumer controled in the way that cunsomers make the cultural value. It also neglects the textuality and the consumption of music.weee...
Music now represents subgroups in society. Why? Historical context? Only I know...
Globalization:
Oh happy day. Here comes the day of wierd terminology: Indigenization, Americanization, creolization, deterritorialization and globalization. And in addition lets throw on some other terms that I havn't menitioned allready: Hegemony, stucture and agency, High and low culture, Rockwell, Koon and Warhol, star trek, I Love Lucy, Amos and Andy, negero spirituals, minstral shows, jazz, blues, smooth jazz, swing, bebop, rocknroll, elvis, youth culture, feminism, gap between culture and society, civil rights movement, sencorship, vogville, radio, Film Noir, Victorian values, drugs, rolling stones, bruce springsteen, eric clapton and so on....
I hope my exam tomorrow morning turn out better than this outburst of thoughts:)
Have a nice day!
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