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’ .
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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.
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