Feminist Theories and Contemporary Popular Culture - Coursework Example

Introduction- Contemporary Popular Culture Before going into the niceties of the matter, let’s first get to know what popular culture truly means. Also known as pop culture, its studies have seen a drastic drift for the last decades, as Mukerji and Schudson (1991, p. 1) say, “from an academic backwater to a swift intellectual river where expansive currents from different disciplines meet”. There have been seriously intellectual developments toward the study of popular forms which have totally changed the facet of old conformist and traditional disciplines. Contemporary popular culture is being widely taught in universities today and is being researched upon by scholars far more seriously today than it has ever been. It is a major part of today’s humanities and social sciences studies. Popular culture does not have a clear cut definition. Mukerji and Schudson (1991, p. 3) second this and define pop culture as “beliefs and practices, and the objects through which they are organized, that are widely shared among a population”. They state that these beliefs, practices and material stuff may be local customs upholding folk material, or these may be customs and traditions on a massive scale involving beliefs and practices taken up in, say, political centers or at a commercial scale. So, it may be folk culture or mass culture where the former is generated by people and is authentic and the latter is generated commercially and is relatively unauthentic. According to Fiske (1989, p. 41), popular culture come into existence as a reaction to dominant forces; however, dominant social groups also participate in the formation of pop culture. He gives a very good example. A business, when he is amusing his colleagues separately during a football match is not part of pop culture; but, when he sits among the spectators and bucks up his local team, then he is a part of the pop culture. Thus, the popular culture forms as a reaction to, not as a part of, the forces of domination. When the cultural resources, that are responsible for the origination of popular culture, come face to face with the everyday lives of common people, then this is the point where that pop culture is formed and followed. Contemporary popular culture means the pop cultures that exist at the same period of time. For example, nose piercing, wearing jeans, some special TV show like Opera, Mr. Bean and Tom and Jerry cartoon series for kids, iPod music libraries, Laptops, teenagers going out on movies, movie 2012 and new moon, tattoos, youtube, facebook, chat messengers, skype live chat, so on and so forth. Discussed below are examples of two of the most popular contemporary popular cultures today. American Idol American Idol: The Search for a Superstar is a talent-hunt program conducted to search for young musical talent. It is a competition show which was originally proposed by the television producer, Simon Fuller. This show has become hype among the American youth. Auditions are held in order to find out good voices. Talented singers are then given a chance to enter into a competition and show their singing talent. They get voted by the public through phone and text messaging. People in America and all around the world watch this reality competition show with much interest. Americans keep on voting for their favorite contestants and people from other countries keep on guessing and discussing who will be the winner for the on-going season. People like to comment and opine about the contestants and the show. Rob Diana (2009, May 21) says, “My wife watches American Idol. I try not to, but invariably I get sucked in because I like music and singing.” People keep on getting addicted to this show. Chritmann (2008) says, “I enjoy a good reality TV show as much as the next bored college student but this years season of American Idol is getting on my nerves.” A house wife, Sarah Jones (personal communication, December 7, 2009) says that this reality show is so much addicting that she has to adjust her tough routine in order to take out time to watch the show and her favorite contestants. The show is a hot topic of discussion among college students and teens. They like to talk about who is going to lose and who is going to be the winner. There are a number of colleges and universities in America where the students, who have good voices, are encouraged to go for an audition for this show. The show is “a very good headstart for singing talent” (Jansky, 2009). iTunes iTunes is another popular culture topic that is getting famous day by day among people all over the globe. It is a media player application first introduced by Apply Inc. in 2001, and is used to play, manage and arrange music and video files on a personal computer, and also runs as an interface for Apple’s iPod. iTunes application can be downloaded gratis for Mac OS X, Windows Vista and Windows XP (CrunchBase, 2009). Consumers have the option to connect the iTunes application to the iTunes Store over the internet where they can download their favorite music libraries, videos, ringtones, and so on. They have the option of arranging their music files into playlists and burn them on to a compact disk. They can make backups of their files and can edit the file’s content and information whenever they want. They can download movies and podcasts and arrange them on their PCs. iTunes software “is also available for non-iPod owners as a free download, and can be used to manage podcasting feeds, as well as to purchase music from the iTunes online music store” (Podlab, 2009). People love using iTunes when it comes to downloading and managing music, podcasts and videos on their PCs. “A lot better than Windows Media Player and WinAmp because iTunes sound quality is superb”, says Stellar (2006). People opine that iTunes is the best for absolute beginners who may have very little knowledge about managing playlists and libraries. Jake Browne (personal communication, December 7, 2009) says that he would recommend that people must try this cool application because it has got a user-friendly interface and features are good enough.” iTunes is a very popular application in all age groups, may it be young teens or oldies sitting in front of their PCs with headsets. Among other cool and easy-to-use digital media applications, iTunes has won the hearts of a lot of population and is rapidly becoming one of increasingly demanded softwares. Feminist Theories and Contemporary Popular Culture Humm (1997, p. 58) asserts the fact that since the main aim of contemporary popular culture is to refigure the body, hence issues regarding the body such as its shape, age and other requirements are what become the hot subject matter for magazines, books, journals, TV shows and even popular science. He states that these issues regarding the body raise questions about body frailty which creates concerns about gender differences, women being treated differently from men and the inferiority they experience as a result. For this reason, the issues regarding body and the gender differences encompassing the popular culture are the main concern of current feminist theories. Haraway (as cited in Humm, 1997) states that “in the contemporary world it is women’s bodies in particular which are bounded by common misconceptions about sexual differences and the reproductive technologies which keep such differences in place and in which feminist theory has a fundamental interest.” Similarly, if we talk about film, women’s bodies are very often represented as weaker or corrupt figure. Their fears, reproductive powers and maternal body descriptions become the focal points of the current feminist theories. All feminist theories share some basic issues regarding the contemporary popular culture. These all talk about women being treated differently than men, that is, gender discrimination that is favored basically by male domination. Feminist theories talk about women’s understanding about sexuality, their experience at the workplace and how they manage their families along side work. Feminist theories are also connected with disciplines like history, social sciences, philosophy, arts and anthropology. The other important thing these theories have to say is that women can tend to change the whole scenario by using their practical and empirical knowledge. This would help construct “a future non-sexist society” (Humm, 1997, p. 5) which is the focus of attention of feminism. There are some feminists who characterize women as slaves in their houses doing work for their families without getting paid and thus their houses become a sort of prison for them. This is often referred to as domesticity. Feminist theories say that this domesticity has to be ruled out from women’s lives if they want themselves to be treated at an equal status with men and considered as modern. The issues of domesticity and gender discrimination define how feminist theories look at the contemporary popular culture. According to Tuchman (as cited in Gillis & Hollows, 2009, p. 1), “many early second wave feminists focused on how ‘false’ images of women were created within popular culture, socializing girls into restricted definitions of femininity that were based around ‘hearth and home’”. This imagery of women was very well shown through advertisements, movies, TV shows, magazines, literature, and etcetera, and this is what defines the point of view of feminism toward popular culture. Gillis and Hollows (2009) also suggest that critics and feminist theory researchers have studied women’s role in popular culture like soap operas and melodramas to find how much women have changed their relationship with domesticity. There were critics who held women, shown in these popular forms, solely responsible for their being captured by domesticity; but later on, critics began appreciated these genres and were pleased about the power of women about being capable enough of running a home and becoming a source of inspiration for young women. The decade of 1990 brought forward a blacklash thesis that focused mainly on family values and attracted many critics who said that this thesis aimed to bring back the women from the workplace into the pre-feminist times. These critics suggested that emphasizing on family values was totally against the aim of the feminist theories. Gillis and Hollows (2009) cite the example of the movie Fatal Attraction released in 1987 which showed that the correct place of women was at home doing domestic chores. Thus, the release of such popular culture reduced the chances of the spread of feminism by the feminist theories. If we talk about periodization, McRobbie (2004, p. 256) asserts that “the year 1990 also marked the moment at which the concept of popular feminism found expression”. He cites Andrea Stuart in his journal who very well defined the relationship between the feminist values and the contemporary popular culture. In pop culture such as magazines and television shows, “issues which had been central to the formation of the women’s movement like domestic violence, equal pay, and workplace harassment, were now addressed to a vast readership”. This was where the feminist or female success took its start and the feminist theories started bearing fruit through portraying the feminine imagery through popular media. This period shows a clear cut social change in institution of education, law, medicine and the like with major contribution from women’s side. The consistent opposition of feminism is also responsible for it being so powerful as to sustain. However, this is also true that feminism is also portrayed negatively through the popular media which has always been the guide for people to consider and judge the sexual dealings of women which can be easily shown in a negative way to the general public. This has made the slightest shades of feminist theories to be so frightful for young women that they are always hesitant to give them a proper consideration, McRobbie (2004, p. 258) says. This is what lessens down the power of feminist theories and count for it being considered as out-dated. We come to know this when we, as he suggests, “…trace a pattern in media from popular feminism (or “prime time feminism” including TV programmes like L.A. Law) in the early 1990s, to niche feminism (BBC Radio 4, Women’s Hour, and the Women’s Page of The Guardian newspaper), in the mid-1990s, and then to overtly unpopular feminism (new century)”. There have been advertisements showing women as sex symbols that hold responsible for the unpopularity of the feminist theories. Women have been casted and portrayed as a sex object rather than a respectable human being and this counts for the undoing feminism which held the domestic women back from coming out of their houses. Conclusion To sum up, feminist theories have tried to change the social status of women who were always considered to be responsible just for domestic duties, doing chores and looking after their families. Feminists have done their best to take women out of their homes and have a better look at the world around them through the use of popular culture. Popular media has played a very big role in changing women’s status and trying to bring them at an equal status with men. However, critics have also asserted that feminist theories have sometimes over- or mis-used the popular media in negatively portraying the imagery of women which has done harm to the real aim of feminist theories. References Christmann, K. (2008). American idol. Opinion Articles. Retrieved December 7, 2009 from http://media.www.crusaderonline.com/media/paper990/sections/20080403Opinion.html CrunchBase. (2009). iTunes. Retrieved December 7, 2009 from http://www.crunchbase.com/product/itunes.html Diana, R. (2009, May 21). American idol, crowdsourcing and what startups can learn from it. Regular Geek. Retrieved December 7, 2009 from http://regulargeek.com/2009/05/21/american-idol-crowdsourcing-and-what-startups-can-learn-from-it.html Fiske, J. (1989). Defining the popular. Understanding Popular Culture. USA: Routledge. Gillis, S. & Hollows, J. (2009). Feminism, Domesticity and Popular Culture. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. Humm, M. (1997). Cronenberg’s films and feminist theories of mothering. Feminism and Film. USA: Edinburgh University Press. Jansky. (2009). American idol. Viewpoints. Retrieved December 7, 2009 from http://www.viewpoints.com/American-Idol-review-305d1.html McRobbie, A. (2004). Feminist Media Studies, 4(3), pp. 256-264. Mukerji, C & Schudson, M. (1991). Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. USA: University of California Press. Podlab. (2009). iTunes. Retrieved December 7, 2009 from http://www.podlab.co.uk/glossary.htm Stellar, S. (2006). User reviews: iTunes. SnapFiles. Retrieved December 7, 2009 from http://www.snapfiles.com/opinions/itunes/itunes.html Read More