Note on Deconstructing the Popular by Stuart Hall - Article Example

Analysis of Note on Deconstructing the Popular by Stuart Hall. Introduction. Culture is a basis upon which a group of people interpret their experience of the world and order their coherent way of life. Popular culture are all those cultural texts that are proposed by the media, media culture is proposed to us by the media texts that we identify with, after they are proposed we interpret them differently. Popular culture was used to distinguish between the elite and mass culture, an example of elite culture would be going to the operas and that of the mass culture example would be cock fighting. Stuart Hall was born in the year 1932 in Kingston Jamaica and he has contributed in his work on culture and media studies. In 1980 he wrote an article and proposed the encoding decoding model in reference to media messages. This model helps us understand how cultural texts are produced and transmitted by the industry. He has also contributed to the discussion on hegemony. Notes on Deconstructing the Popular. Stuart defines popular culture as all those things that people do or have, Stuart starts his discussion by discussing periodisation, periodisation is the attempt to divide time in discrete new blocks, popular culture can be dated back in the agrarian society to the industrial society therefore the study of popular culture can be studied in different periods. He says that in the period 1880-1920 there was an increased interest in the study of popular culture. In 1930s this study declined and this was the time there was a decline in Chartism. In his discussion of periodisation he argues that the proper periodisation of popular culture is the profound transformation which was in 1880s and 1920s, this period was a period of deep structural changes. Social change can be defined as the alterations that occur in social system which occur in both the structure and the functions; causes of social change include advancement in technology, ideology, conflict and growth in population. Stuart acknowledges the existence of social change, he says that in the beginning of the 20th century there was the development of a working class audience and this as a result led to the development of a commercial press. In this period there was also the development of new technologies, distribution process and labour processes and this led to a change in the relationship between the dominant and the dominated classes. Stuart says that there has been a struggle over the forms of culture and way of life of the popular class which is evident in this periods of history, conflict is one source of change and according to Stuart the struggle has caused cultural changes, throughout the ages there has been active destruction of particular ways of life and this can be viewed as cultural change. This changes include honour to certain people in the society, He says that magistrates and police were in the past being accorded honour in the past than they are in the present he also argues that people in the present time understand struggle and resistant more than they understand reform and transformation, transformation is the key cause of the process of moralization and demoralization of the people. In his discussion on popular culture, popularity means manipulation and debasements of the culture of the people, people who consume the popular cultures changes them or are put in a state of false consciousness. These means that popular culture plays a major role in shaping peoples culture, the proposed culture provides an alternative culture and this means that the culture industry has the power to reshape what they create. He also says that cultural domination has an effect on people’s culture, there is a continuous struggle by the dominant culture to reorganise popular culture and there are cases of resistance and acceptance. Cultural resistance involves cultural struggle which takes many forms. Cultural struggle takes the form of incorporation, distortion, resistance, negotiation and recuperation, this struggle continues to exist. The existence of culture power depends on the first instance of drawing the line and education and cultural institutions helps in the formation of these boundaries. These boundaries are drawn to resist change. He also argues that tradition is an important element in culture, culture resistance is high at the point where opposing tradition meet, the seek to detach one cultural form implanted by tradition. Traditions are not fixed forever and they change from time to time. Hall argues that class cultures tend to intersect and overlap in the field of struggle. Social change will occur at different rates in different societies due to cultural lags, this lags are due to resistance to change. His discussion has various strengths and weaknesses, some of the strengths are that he analyses popular culture from early years, from the year 1880 to date and discussing the trend on this study, this is evident where he argues that in the 1930s the study of popular culture declined. Another strength is that he analysis popular culture using two classes as Karl Marx had done, he considers the existence of the dominant and dominated or in other words bourgeoisies and proletariats in our society. Another strength in his study is that he acknowledges the existence of the power of the media in class domination, the media is there to cause change to the society in favour of the ruling class. The popular culture change the people who are in contact with them or find themselves in a state of false consciousness, these means that the person may be dominated by these forces but he may not be aware of the domination. This is the same as hegemony where the dominant group in the society wins the consent of the less dominant group. He also takes into consideration the existence of struggle in the society, according to Marx the history of human life is a history of struggle, this means that both the dominant and the dominated class are always struggling with each other, the dominated class is struggling against oppression by the dominant class which makes decisions for their own benefit. His argument that education and cultural institution help in strengthening boundaries, this is in accordance with the argument that social institutions help in legitimising the domination in society. He has also taken into consideration the influence of tradition on the culture of a society; he argues that when two traditions intersect they result into a struggle. His study also suffers some weaknesses and this is evident when he argues that there has been an active destruction of peoples way of life, this may not be true because all cultural changes that occur cannot be seen as destructive. The development of media prints and the television that are used in the diffusion of symbolic goods are not viewed today as negative; these developments are seen to lead to stimulating a society’s economy through advertising and as a mode of communication. Another weakness is seen when he does not take into consideration the effect of popular culture on the other members of society, he only consider the effect of popular culture on the working class and does not analyse the effect on young members of the society. In other words his analysis is based on only the two classes that Karl Marx did ignoring those who are neither workers nor capitalist like students. Although he talks about cultural struggle he does not give a remedy for the struggle or the end of the struggle, if we view Marx work he analysed the end of the struggle where the capitalist society will be replaced by the socialist form of society. Domination in society now has been legitimated in then present society. There has been formation of laws that protect property owners and in the society we are in today there are no evidences of struggle between societies. In his argument that certain people in society were accorded more respect in the past than they are in the present times is not a clear statement, the world is changing and people are becoming more civilised and each and every day new laws are formed and due to education people have come to know their rights, therefore by saying that the present period people do not accord respect to magistrates and police is not appropriate. His analysis is based on past and his analysis is outdated and it does not explain the present, it only analysis the past and does not give future changes in popular culture. He could have given a better prediction in to the future of popular culture. He does not analyse different cultures, societies are not the same and each culture is different from another. Therefore by analysing only one culture that is the European culture this does not mean that the other cultures of the world will be the same. We have many cultures in the world which are not the same as the European one. It is evident that when two different cultures intersect there should not necessarily be a struggle as he earlier stated but in our current period the two cultures will diffuse and they will adjust to accommodate one another. Conclusion. According to Stuart popular culture has played a major role in shaping peoples culture, it is evident that the media also has played a role in the development of hegemony a situation where a group of people win the consent of the others. Although his study is based on the past to the present he fails to acknowledge the existence of different cultures which are different from the European society. He also has helped us understand our society today and this is seen where there are too much resistance by cultures to change, in this case the media therefore has played a major role in formulating change whereby change occurs when there is proposed texts by the media. Finally Stuart has contributed much in understanding popular culture and domination of culture by the dominant. References. Thane P and Sutcliffe A (2002) Essays in Social History, Oxford University Press, New York. Samuel R (1981) Peoples History and Socialist Theory, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. White D M (1975) Popular Culture, Arno Press, New York Read More