Cultural Studies - Assignment Example

Scholars within the cultural studies tradition often describe media audiences as being active. Within this definition is the understanding that media is at all times open to interpretation. While there is a message meant to be delivered from the respective television network, internet source, radio station, newspaper etc..., it is still, at all times, up to the individual audience or reader to interpret and respond. This unavoidable process in the communication between the media and the audience keeps the audience active, because each individual involved in a never ending cycle of interpretation. Culture and Representation Stuart Hall defines culture as, "actual grounded terrain of practices, representations, languages and customs of any specified society (Hall, 1996)." By this definition, western culture is its own society, but when referred to, the regions most commonly thought of as embodying western culture are Europe and the United States. The most significant aspect of western culture has to do with the ideology of the hegemony in charge. In western culture this would be the business moguls especially those that own media companies, majority members of government Hall defines representation as "How the world is socially constructed and represented to and by us (Hall, 1996)." The representation is key because it dictates how a group of people will interact with their culture and also how other cultures will preconceive and then receive members of a certain society. Highly acclaimed French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has done much work on culture and its influence on decision making. He finds that the public has no genuine representation in democratic societies. When people tend to watch media coverage of certain events and they see the results of polls and statistics, they perceive the information from the perspective of a rational choice theorist. Most people based their decisions on the grounds of believing this theory, but Bourdieu is in opposition to it. Rational Choice theory is the belief that human beings naturally choose a given path dependant on whether it is the best means to achieve their goals. It is a belief in methodological individualism; this meaning it adopts the belief that social situations, and group behavior is solely the result of individual action. Within this theory, corporations and national governments are viewed as individual operators as well. The problem that arises with this theory are the certain assumptions. This theory assumes human beings are aware of certain information, of which they aren't always aware, and it assumes that individuals consistently make mental calculations to determine their next decision. He points out how this belief contributes to the human tendency to conform when he argues that, Doing one's duty as a man means conforming to the social order, and this is a fundamentally a question of respecting rhythms, keeping pace, not falling out of line. 'Don't we all eat the same wheat cake Don't we all get up at the same time These various ways of reasserting solidarity contain an implicit definition of the fundamental virtue of conformity. (Bourdieu, 1977) He later goes on to show that conformities only other opposition is eccentricity, which becomes natural for those intrigued by it irregularity. the opposite of which is the desire to stand apart from others. Working while the others are resting, staying in the house while the others are working in the fields, traveling on deserted roads, wandering round the streets of the village while the others are asleep or at the market - these are all suspicious forms of behavior. The eccentric who does everything differently... (Bourdieu, 1977) Bourdieu believes that society cannot just be analyzed in terms of economic classes and ideologies, but that individual education and culture must be applied as well. Bourdieu does not separate people based on class and then analyze them, but groups everyone into what he calls a field/ social arena. This contradicts classic Marxism, as well as the common 'representation' of western society. In this field people compete and struggle to attain their desires. It is a system of social positions organized by terms of power relationships. This idea of terms of power is most easily defined as the differential between a judge and a lawyer. Within this field the social agents fight over monetary gain, or whatever holds symbolic significance. Public Opinion The position Bourdieu is most acclaimed for is his view that public opinion doesn't exist. in his book, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, he talks about how there is a different level of class taste between the ruling class and popular culture. there is no public, only a media mediating between the two and a culture to which they often cater to do so. Jon Simons addresses this concept in his essay, Governing the Public: Technologies of Mediation and Popular Culture, when he says, technologies constitute the people as a mediated public. The public is only amenable to representation in the form of an electorate which is an effect of technical organization that can mediate between people at a distance from each other. The key point of this analysis is that the public does not exist prior to or outside of its constitution. (Simons, 2002) Bourdieu equates cultural capital with control over media outlets and having a direct influence on popular culture (1984). This is a privilege only shared by the utmost elite of society. This is why television programming will only sway so far from the status quo, media moguls encode their programming so that it appears on the surface as a rebellion against the status quo, when infact it is just another promotion of the ideals shared by the media elite. The goal is to appear as though one sympathizes with the consumer to exploit their wants and needs. Encoding and Decoding Encoding is basically the procedure through which media texts are created. No matter the views of the individual producing the material, they are confined within the relationship between encoding and decoding of media text. Their work is either for the hegemony, against it, or in negotiation with it. The work is weighed and measured against the dominant ideology and found to either be a piece of preferred reading or not. The irony is that very often At clear take on interpretation, as well as reader response theory can be found in Fiske's view that meaning is not in the text but in the readers, as he puts it "A text is the site of struggles for meaning that reproduce the conflicts of interest between the producers and consumers of the cultural commodity. A program is produced by the industry, a text by its readers" (Fiske,1987: 14) This brings up the concept that texts are polysemiotic in that they have can have multiple meaning, but this does not mean that the text can just be interpreted however one likes. The multiple meanings that one can take from the reading stem directly from the subject matter. For example, a news story about a prochoice bill if read by someone who works at an abortion clinic might be viewed differently than if read by a pastor at a cathedral. Both readers take different meanings away from the article based on the bias with which they approached the article from the beginning. This is largely the reason why hit television shows tend to lack bias and are open to a vast number of interpretation through the exstensive use of polysemiotic symbols and metaphors. In John Fiske's critique on television, Television Culture he analyzes the nature of what makes popular television. He concludes that the shows that succeed in gaining popularity tend to have many symbols and plot lines containing multiple meanings. He also states that remain within a duality of containment and resistance (1987). This idea basically revolves around the fact that television producers, who are viewed as the upper class and political elite, are expected to produce material that correspond with popular culture. This material that the elite minority culture produces for the popular culture contradicts elitist ideals but allows the status quo to remain intact. This means the political elite can only remain the elite so long as they humor the beliefs and ideals of their less powerful but more dominant counterparts. The rules Fiske establishes for television shows can very easily be applied to the media. They present the media as a tool being used to prey on the wants and needs of different cultures. Reader response theory augments the importance of the role of the reader in interpreting texts. It disagrees that there is a solitary, fixed meaning integral to every literary work. This theory embraces that an individual creates his or her own meaning through a "transaction" with the text based on personal associations. Because all readers bring their own emotions, concerns, life experiences, and knowledge to their reading, each interpretation is subjective and unique. It is common that many people trace the foundation of reader-response theory to scholar Louise Rosenblatt's influential 1938 work Literature as Exploration. She believed, close readings of literature should practice impassiveness in the study of texts and should reject all forms of personal interpretation by the reader. The text is an independent entity that could be objectively analyzed using unambiguous methodological criteria (Rosenblatt's, 1938). Nan Johnson is a professor at the University of British Columbia. In his essay Reader-Response and the' Pathos'Principle, he analyses reader response theory and its cognitive use. He argues that meaning in reader response is subjective and based entirely on the reader's intuitive perception of what he is reading (Johnson, 1988). He connects this ideal to the experience of the reader, claiming that one's experiences will determine their response to a particular literary work. He cites other reader response theorist, such as Louise Rosenblatt, Norman Holland, David Bleich and Stanley Fish contrasting their theories from one another until he's come to his own take on the conflict. The main similarity he acknowledges between all of their arguments is that they all feel a reader's response is subjective to their individual emotional and psychological process. Johnson also points out the level of interaction coherent with reader interpretation, stating that we interact with the work, making it part of our own psychic economy and making ourselves part of the literary work as we interpret it (Johnson, 1988). This concept of interaction with the work is very similar to John Harker's views dealing with cognition. In John Harkers' article Reader Response and Cognition: Is There a Mind in This Class, Harker analyses the history of reader-response theory and its origin. He points out that it first originated as a reaction to the hegemony of the 1930's through the 1960's, which was to isolate the literary work from the value of the author and the reader (Harker, 1992). This concept basically revolves around the ideal that the author's emotional experiences as well as the readers are going to both have an outcome on work's interpretation. Harker identifies this rise in a need for understanding and a new value in reader-response as a rebellious occurrence of the 60's and 70's. He points this rebellion as being a new value in introspection, relativism and a predominant concern with the individual (pg28). Harker's view eliminates the possibility for a false meaning in literary work. By the reader being the sole source of interpretation, he becomes the creator of meaning. This is a very powerful idea when it is put in the hands of each next generation. If students are deprived the skills necessary for clear and concise literary interpretation, they will construct inaccurate literary meanings and pond them off as truths for generations to come. To combat this initial decline in literary understanding, there are many reader-response theorists applying these theories to the classroom. Reader response, which is closely allied with constructivism, has been widely publicized as a model for teaching literary works. It is Readers Response Theory that provides a profound ground for its acceptance in educational system because of it's wide range of different mechanism that can be adopted according to need and demand. It is also important to establish and reestablish an alternative vision for what reading and literature instruction can represent in our society. Conclusion Work Cited Bourdieu, Pierre. (1984) Distinction, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dickinson, R., Harindranath, R., & Linn, O (eds) (1998) Approaches to Audiences: A Reader, London: Arnold. Ruddock, A. (2001) Understanding Audiences: Theory and Method, London: Sage. Brooker, W. & Jermyn, D. (eds.) (2003) The Audience Studies Reader, London: Routledge. Boyd-Barrett, O., & Newbold, C. (1995) Approaches to Media: A Reader, London: Arnold. Fiske, John (1987) Television Culture, London: Methuen. Fiske, John (1992) Popularity and the Politics of Information in P. Dahlgren and C. Sparkes (eds) Journalism and Popular Culture, London: Sage. Simons, Jon (1997) The Dialectics of Diana as Empty Signifier , Theory & Event, 1(4). http: //muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event Simons, Jon (2000) Ideology, Imagology, and Critical Thought: The Impoverishment of Politics, Journal of Political Ideology, 5(1), 81 103 Read More