MEDIA CULTURAL THEORIES

CRITICAL CULTURAL THEORY

Neo-Marxist Theory

Neo-Marxist Theory is the contemporary incarnation of Marxist Theory focusing attention on the superstructure issues of ideology and culture rather than on the base. Many Neo-Marxists assume that useful change can begin with peaceful, ideological reforms rather than violent revolution in which working class seizes control of the means of production.

The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School  refers to the group of Neo-Marxist Scholars like  Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, who worked together during the 1930s at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. The Frankfurt School combined Marxist critical theory with hermeneutics (the interpretation of religious and literary texts to identify their actual or real meaning. Its writings identified and promoted various forms of high culture such as symphony music, great literature, and art. Like most secular humanists, members of the Frankfurt School viewed high culture as something that had its own integrity, had inherent value, and could not be used by elites to enhance their personal power. Though high culture was extolled by the Frankfurt School, mass culture was denigrated. Horkheimer and Adorno were openly skeptical that high culture could or should be communicated through mass media.

The British Cultural Studies

The British Cultural Studies was one of the important schools of Neo-Marxist Theories that emerged in Great Britain during the 1960s. Pioneered at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham and led by

Stuart Hall,  the British Cultural Studies combines Neo-Marxist Theory with ideas and research methods derived from diverse sources including literary criticism, linguistics, anthropology, and history. This theory has attempted to trace historic elite domination over culture, to criticize the social consequences of this domination, and to demonstrate how it continues to be exercised over specific minority groups or subcultures.

The British Cultural Studies criticizes and contrasts elite notions of culture including high culture, with popular, everyday forms practiced by minorities. The superiority of all forms of elite culture including high culture is challenged and compared with useful, valuable forms of popular culture. The British Cultural Studies critique of high culture and ideology was an explicit rejection of what its proponents saw as alien forms of culture imposed on minorities. They defended indigeneous forms of popular culture as legitimate expressions of minority groups.

Inspired by a dominant early theorist Raymond Williams, a literary scholar who achieved notoriety with his reappraisals of cultural development in England, and building on ideas developed by Jurgen Habermas, Stuart Hall argued that mass media in liberal democracies can best be understood as a plural public form (the idea that media may provide a place where the power of dominant elites can be challenged), in which various forces struggle to shape popular notions about social reality. In this forum, new concepts of social reality are negotiated and new boundary lines between various social worlds are drawn.

Unlike traditional Marxists, Hall did not argue that elites can maintain complete control over this forum. In his view, elites don’t need that power to advance their interests. The culture expressed in this forum is not a mere superficial reflection of the superstructure but is instead a dynamic creation of opposing groups. Elites, however do retain many advantages in the struggle to define social reality. Counter-elite groups must work hard to overcome them. Hall acknowledged that heavy-handed efforts to promote alternative perspectives can succeed even against great odds. Nevertheless, the advantages enjoyed by elites enable them to retain a long term hold on power.

POPULAR CULTURE THEORY

It is assumed that ‘mass media’ are largely responsible for generating the ‘mass culture’ , which is regarded as the most widely disseminated, accepted, and enjoyed symbolic culture of the modern times abundantly available in the forms of movies, television shows/programs, newspaper contents, phonogram, videos, etc. The transmission of such contents cannot be stopped nor minimized. ‘Mass Culture’ will always remain in circulation and on account of its popularity will be enjoyed much and preferred by the mass audience. Popularity is a measure of a cultural form’s ability to satisfy  the desires of its customers. For a cultural commodity to become popular it must be able to meet the various interests of the people amongst whom it is popular as well as the interests of the producers. Popular Culture must be relevant and responsive to the mass audience’s needs or it will fail, and success in the market may be the best test to indicate the ‘popularity’ of that culture.

It can be concluded that Popular Culture is a hybrid product of numerous and never ending efforts for expression in a contemporary idiom aimed at reaching people and capturing a market, and an equally active demand by people for ‘meanings’ and ‘pleasures’ .

12.

The Cultural Text and its Meanings

Semiology or Semiotics is the science of signs, established by three scholars C.S. Peirce, C. K. Ogden, & I. A. Richards. One of the purposes of this field was to signification, the giving of meanings by  means of language. In human communication, we use signs to convey meanings about objects in the world of experience to others,who interpret the signs we use on the basis of sharing the same language or knowledge of the sign system we are using. Semiology has sought to explore the nature of the sign systems that go beyond the rules of grammar and syntax and regulate complex, latent and culturally dependent meanings of texts. 

As per J. Fiske,  the term ‘text’ should refer to the meaningful outcome of the encounter between content and reader. He states that a television programme becomes a ‘text’ at the moment of reading, that is, when its interaction with one of its many audiences activates some of the meanings/pleasures that it is capable of provoking. It follows from this same definition that the same television program can produce many different texts in the sense of accomplished meanings. Fiske tells us that a program is produced by the media industry, a text by its readers.

The application of semiology analysis opens the possibility of revealing more of the underlying meaning of a text, taken as a whole, than would be possible by simply following the grammatical rules of the language or consulting the dictionary meaning of separate words. It has the special advantage of being applicable to texts that involve more than one sign system and to signs such as visual images and sounds for which there is no established ‘grammar’ and no available dictionary.

A  text has its own immanent, intrinsic, more or less given and thus objective meaning apart from the overt intention of the sender or the selective interpretation of the receiver. This theory supplies us with an approach for helping to establish the ‘cultural meaning’ of media content. The same cultural content can be read in different ways by different members of the mass audience, even if a certain dominant meaning may seem to be built in.

COMMERCIALIZATION THEORY

Commercialization of Culture refers to the act of mass producing culture as a media content and then marketing it as a commodity to the mass audience. It also implies the competitive pursuit of large markets by the media. It is assumed that commercialization of media contents leads to decline in their quality. It can be thus concluded that “Popular Culture’ which is mass produced and successfully marketed to the mass audience by the media is a very good example of Commodification or Commercialization of Culture.

Media which are industries specializing in the production and distribution of cultural commodities have begun to develop subversive forms of mass culture capable of intruding into and disrupting everyday life culture. These new forms can function as very subtle but effective ideologies, leading people to misinterpret their experiences and then act against their own self interest. Media is capable of turning culture into a commodity with serious consequences. 

Some of the major negative consequences experienced through the Commodification of Culture can be cited as follows:

·                     When elements of everyday culture are selected for repackaging, only a very limited range is chosen and important elements are overlooked or consciously ignored.

·                     The repackaging process involves dramatization of those elements of culture that have been selected to make the commodity more attractive and appealing to the mass.

·                     The marketing of cultural commodity is done in a way that maximizes the likelihood that they will intrude into and ultimately disrupt everyday life.

·                     The elites who operate the cultural industries generally are ignorant of the consequences of their work.

·                     Disruptions of everyday life takes many forms – some are obviously linked to consumptions of especially deleterious content, but other forms of disruption are very subtle and occur over long time periods.

Advertising: The Ultimate Cultural Commodity

Advertising is viewed as the ultimate cultural commodity. Advertising packages promote messages so that they will be attended to and acted on by people who often have little interest in and no real need for most of the advertised products or services. Consumption of specific products is routinely portrayed as the best way to construct a worthwhile personal identity, have fun, make friends and influence people, or solve problems.

Compared with other forms of mass media content, advertising comes closest to fitting older Marxist notions of ideology. It is intended to encourage consumption that serves the interest of product manufacturers but may not be in the interest of individual consumers. Advertising is clearly designed to intrude into and disrupt routine buying habits and purchase decisions. It attempts to stimulate and reinforce consumption even if it might be detrimental to the long term health of the individuals.