Cultural Studies 1st Year Lecture 2

Cultural Studies Lecture 2 : Cultural Studies Lecture 2


‘High’ culture & ‘popular’ culture : ‘High’ culture & ‘popular’ culture ‘Culture & Civilization’ tradition assumes that there is ‘something wrong’ with popular culture Mass culture represents the degeneration of both culture and humanity ‘High’ culture requires deference and recognises difference


Responses to ‘Leavisism’: Culturalism : Responses to ‘Leavisism’: Culturalism Culture as ‘textual forms and documented practices’ Understanding patterned behaviour and ideas shared by people at a given time Stresses human agency and the active production of culture over passive consumption


Richard Hoggart: The uses of literacy (1958) : Richard Hoggart: The uses of literacy (1958) …working class people have traditionally, or at least for several generations, regarded art as escape as something enjoyed but not assumed to have much connexion with the matter of daily life. Art is marginal, ‘fun’…real life goes on elsewhere…Art is for you to use.


Richard Hoggart: The uses of literacy (1958) : Richard Hoggart: The uses of literacy (1958) Identifies ‘working class’ culture as both different from and equivalent in its significance to ‘high culture’ Contrasts working class culture of the 1930s with that of the 1950s Presents a ‘rebuke’ to Leavis Rejects Leavisite cultural judgement but uses a similar methodology to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ culture Fears a decline in ‘moral seriousness’ in the working class response to mass culture typified by 1950s youth culture


Mass culture in the 1950s : Mass culture in the 1950s Mass entertainment as ‘anti-life’ ‘Corrupt brightness’ and ‘moral evasions’ Pleasures of mass culture are ‘irresponsible’ and ‘evasive’ Mass culture destroys the ‘culture of the people’


Working class aesthetics : Working class aesthetics Overriding interest in close detail Profound interest in the ‘already known’ Culture that ‘shows’ rather than ‘explores’ Ordinary life as ‘intrinsically interesting’ Concerned with the intensification of ordinary life and experience


Barbarians in wonderland : Barbarians in wonderland Post-war British popular culture (especially youth culture) based on passive consumption of mass culture rather than the active production of distinct working class cultural activity ‘Having a good time’ becomes the principal goal of cultural practice


Commercial culture : Commercial culture The strongest argument against modern mass entertainment is not that they debase taste- debasement can be alive and active- but that they over excite it, eventually dull it, and finally kill it… The uses of literacy (1958 p169)


‘A trickle of tinned milk and water’ : ‘A trickle of tinned milk and water’ ‘Milk bars’ and juke box boys typify the decline of organic working class culture The ‘myth world’ of Americana Retreat of collectivism Cultural subordination replacing economic subordination


Raymond Williams: The Long Revolution : Raymond Williams: The Long Revolution Culture as ‘ideal’ reference to human condition Culture as ‘documentary record’ Culture as the description of particular ways of life


The social definition of cultural analysis : The social definition of cultural analysis Describe the way of life Identify the meanings and values expressed in it Clarify meanings and values both explicit and implicit


A theory of culture : A theory of culture I would then define the theory of culture as the study of the relationships between elements in a whole way of life. The analysis of culture is the attempt to discover the nature of the organization which is the complex of these relationships Raymond Williams The Long Revolution (1962)


A cultural methodology : A cultural methodology Culture exists on 3 levels The lived culture of a particular time The recorded culture The culture of the ‘selected tradition’ Each historical period re-orders the documentary record of past periods


Cultural hegemony : Cultural hegemony The power to re-order the documentary record can induce ‘cultural amnesia’ These in turn can facilitate subordination and domination