Matthew Arnold 1

As Chapter 2 suggests, Matthew Arnold’s work inaugurates a tradition or a way of seeing popular culture that focuses on it being seen in the context of what he refers to as ‘civilization’. The key text in this part of Chapter 2 is Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy. You can read excerpts from this work in the Reader, pp. 6–11.

So, if you were a follower of Matthew Arnold, would you be more likely (answer True) or less likely (answer False) to endorse the following claims? Remember, you are a playing the role of a committed Arnoldian scholar.

Matthew Arnold 2

Arnold’s division of society was split between the Barbarians, Philistines and Populace. Check your understanding of these terms by answering the multiple-choice questions below. For each question, provide one answer.

Matthew Arnold 3

Let’s have a closer look at what else Arnold thought.

Chapter 2 notes how he bases some of his ideas on the earlier Romantic critique of industrialization. In doing so, Arnold is probably the first to document and theorize the emergence of popular culture in the mid-nineteenth century and, in a quite specific sense then, his work is significant.

Arnold’s work charts the changes that took place about this time: industrialization; urbanization; the rise of towns, cities and factories, and attendant concerns about poverty, poor public housing and social welfare systems. Although Arnold’s theorization of culture expresses what proved to be mainly unfounded fears about the effects of industrialization and urbanization, his legacy is, nevertheless, figured in different ways today.

For example, glancing through newspapers or listening to news bulletins, or noting party-political speeches, consider the denotation and connotation of the following terms:

hooligan; layabout; scrounger; civilised; cultured; illiterate; well-read; intelligent; anarchist; militant; uneducated; graduate; working-class; yob; football fan; chav.

Are the connotations of some of these terms indebted to a view that Arnold seems to have had? Do the terms assume binary opposites that point to ‘civilized-uncivilized’ or ‘cultured-uncultured’? Consider the representation of different social classes in televisual culture (e.g. in soap operas, docusoaps and reality TV shows).

You may like to think, as well, of how ‘the past’ is reconstructed by your local art gallery or museum. Does it represent a past that is cultured, violent, anarchic, divided, romanticized? In what ways do they specifically do this? Are some cultures represented in ways that suggest that Britain, Europe or North America are more civilized than others? Are indigenous cultures portrayed positively or negatively? Again, try and be specific about your observations. Who decides how to represent the past and from where do they draw their information?

Continue to check your understanding and knowledge of Matthew Arnold’s work below by choosing one answer for each question.

Leavisism 1

You have moved on a little now from your Arnoldian phase and have decided to embrace Leavisism. Accordingly, complete each sentence below as a committed Leavisite.

Leavisism 2

Of course, that was then (the 1930s and 1940s). Surely, these days, we don’t think the masses should receive their ‘amusement’ from above? We wouldn’t subscribe to the belief that the masses should be told what’s best for them – by their ‘betters’, would we? But wait! Let’s just think about this for a moment. Just as Arnold’s influence is still in evidence – perhaps Leavisism continues to inflect the ways in which so-called ‘popular culture’ is configured and represented in our everyday lives too?

Identify the key bookstores in your local town or city. What is the availability of the following texts?

• Plays by Shakespeare
• The complete works of Catherine Cookson
• Mills & Boon (or any popular romantic novels)
• The lyrics of songs by Dusty Springfield
• The rise and fall of the Roman Empire
• A history of the shipyard industry
• Hello magazine
• Graphic novels
• The Communist Manifesto

Do you think studying culture is as much about what you read as about why we read something and what we do with reading? In other words, what is the function of reading? What does it mean to you?

Consider if the plays of Shakespeare were written to be read or performed ? Discuss who engaged with these plays in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? What does this tell you about how culture is defined and evaluated across different periods of time?

Clearly, Leavisism is more than about what’s available in your local bookstore. The significance that the Leavisites attached to literature and reading is highlighted in Chapter 2. Perhaps what we mean by ‘literature’ is as contentious as what we mean by ‘culture’. Both terms compel and excite certain debates and controversies.

For the following quiz on claims and counter-claims, highlight the item which most fits your continuing adherence to Leavisite principles.

Leavisism 3

Some further considerations

Although the Leavisite tradition has been questioned, Chapter 2 notes how their analytical tools (closer reading, textual scrutiny, attention to form) was taken up and subsequently applied to popular culture texts across a number of disciplines. One significant effect then of the Leaviste tradition was that popular culture was given space and, as such, became a part of the study of culture, even though Leavis himself might well have been horrified by this.

Chapter 2 of Cultural Theory and Popular Culture gives an example of how a Leavisite approach was adopted (both implicitly and explicitly) in school curricula in the past. Perhaps it is worth recalling your English lessons/lectures and examinations at school or college.

Think about:

• What literary texts were you encouraged to value?
• What literary texts were the set texts and why were they set? What texts weren’t set?
• Did you feel you ought to take pleasure from some kinds of texts and not others? Can the pleasure a text gives you be circumscribed by someone else?
• What sorts of questions were asked about the literary texts? For example, was plot more important than form, or content, or style, genre and audience/readership? Did you gain pleasure by analysing it in this way? Or did it detract from your enjoyment?
• Did the author’s name make all the difference? Who decided that some names were included as the important texts to read?
• Should the text remind you of a better, more golden past? Should the text reflect society or question society? 

If you are now, as an adult, a member of a book group, what texts are selected to be read? On what basis? How does discussion of these ensue? Next time you meet, analyse the discussion in relation to what you critically now know about Leavism.

Mass culture in America

The final section of Chapter 2 makes important links between debates about America and debates about mass culture. Read the final section of Chapter 2 closely to get a sense of the intricacies of the differing perspectives, particularly in relation to popular culture and the United States. 

Perhaps America is an example of a culture and society whose consumption of texts and practices is much more plural than mass culture critics seem to suggest. Consider the views expressed within the statements below and highlight one answer for each question.

The culture of other people

As John Storey suggests in the conclusion to Chapter 2, it is easy to be critical of the culture and civilization tradition but its significance in laying key foundations for the study of popular culture within British cultural studies cannot be ignored. Moreover, its legacy continues in some form today – within certain areas of both academic and non-academic life. Ultimately, for us, it raises some interesting questions about the role that popular culture plays in the inclusion and exclusion of members of society. Inevitably, this links to issues around power.

This website chapter will now conclude by posing some final questions which, hopefully, will provoke further debate and discussion. Answer True or False to the following statements.

Hoggart and the 1930s

The Uses of Literacy documents Hoggart’s views of working-class life in the 1930s and the 1950s although his perspective on these eras differs quite significantly. After reading these accounts, choose one answer for each question below. In completing the quiz, imagine now that you have abandoned your Leavisite idea of an ‘organic community’ rooted in the seventeenth century, and instead are sat with Hoggart on a charabanc bus trip to the seaside in 1935, living the ‘the rich full life’, looking forward to fish and chips and singing Oh I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside.

Some further considerations

Hoggart’s account of the 1930s draws on a range of evidence such as popular aesthetics, popular song, holiday excursions, people’s reading habits, and so on. There is a strong autobiographical element to his work in that he invokes his memories of having heard oral recitations of personal stories and local histories. What you might like to question here is how reliable is this sort of evidence? Or, does reliability even matter? If a number of people recount similar memories, does this make the evidence stronger? If people narrate varying accounts, does this make the evidence weaker? – or does it represent how complex and multiple the meanings of popular culture are?

One way of undertaking research of this kind is under the rubric of ethnography (see Glossary). Ask members of your extended family or other friends to recount their experiences of the past – what they read and where they socialized. Ask them to recall events from photographs, holidays and outings, the music they listened to and the music which was popular at that time. Begin to document specific details and get a sense of how their stories and their way of life is simultaneously personal, local, national and global.

Then, compare your notes of their accounts with official history texts or with Hoggart’s own accounts of the period he documents. Are there similarities or differences? How can you explain these?

Hoggart and the 1950s

We’ve time-travelled and found ourselves in the 1950s, still accompanying Hoggart. Things have changed, though, and according to our companion, not for the better. Music is blaring out from some new-fangled machine called ‘the jukebox’, filling the whole room with its dreadful noise. Hoggart is sat there, depressed. This is an ominous a sign of things to come, he warns. Try to work out what his problem is.

Listen to a radio programme that plays music from the 1950s (e.g. www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/bestyear/1950s.shtml) and consider the following:

• What was Hoggart worrying about? – the songs, the producers, the consumers or something else?
• Have any of these songs or the music been re-worked, re-played, re-used in other different contexts at a later time?
• If this is the case, does this suggest that meanings are more complex than Hoggart assumes? Can one song have different meanings depending on when it is played, who is singing it, in what context and who its audience is?
• Who is your favourite artist? Nicki Minaj? Taylor Swift? – or Janelle Monáe? Ed Sheeran or MewithoutYou? Meghan Trainor or Young Fathers? Charles Hamilton or Kanye West? Adele or Of Monsters and Men? Alabama Shakes? How do you defend your own musical preferences? What is the meaning of these musical tastes for you?

Chapter 3 additionally offers a fairly detailed summary of the second part of Hoggart’s book, which focuses on the 1950s.

In terms of Hoggart’s account of this era, are the following statements True or False?

Raymond Williams

Having read Chapter 3, you will now appreciate the enormity of Raymond Williams’s influence on cultural studies. There are at least three of Williams’s works which you should read: Culture and Society; The Long Revolution (see the Reader, pp. 34–40) and Keywords.

Identify the missing words in the questions below.

In his social definition of culture, Williams suggests new ways of thinking about culture and cultural analysis.

Identify which statements speak to Williams’s view (mark True) and which don’t (mark False).

For Williams, culture is complex. There is no one single way of life. Cultural analysis is therefore involved in addressing all three aspects of the social definition above. Cultural analysis aims to understand what Williams refers to as a ‘structure of feeling’. Having read the section on Raymond Williams in the textbook (pp. 45–50), test your understanding below of one of his key definitions.

Williams vs. Leavis

Chapter 3 explores Williams’s work in some detail. It also suggests that his work perhaps marks the beginnings of what we now call ‘cultural studies’.

The following quiz asks you to contrast Williams’s and Leavis’s views. Which of the following claims are more likely to have been made by Leavis and which by Williams?

Summarizing Williams

Reading Williams’s work, it becomes clear that his writings reveal a commitment to debates and issues that still resonate in cultural studies today. As a reminder of the importance of Williams’s work and his contribution to cultural studies, try this final short quiz.

Classical Marxism

Marxists argue for an understanding of all cultural practices in relation to history and changes in the economy. With that in mind, adopt a classical Marxist approach and answer the True or False questions below

William Morris

William Morris, a committed Marxist, helped form the Socialist League (along with Eleanor Marx, the daughter of Karl Marx) and contributed significantly to the critique of capitalism, art and alienation. Read ‘The English Marxism of William Morris’ in the textbook (pp. 64–65) and check your appreciation of his position by completing correctly the following statements.

The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School began their work in Germany in the 1930s. Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Benjamin are some of the key names. These theorists developed Marx’s thinking in several ways.

Test yourself to assess how well you know their views.

Names and claims

Chapter 4 outlines some key concepts as well as some of the important names in the type of Marxism espoused by the Frankfurt School. You may also note some similarities in relation to the ‘culture and civilization tradition’ which we have discussed in Chapter 2.

Match the answer to the statements.

The Frankfurt School and twenty-first-century popular culture

Having taken on board what the Frankfurt School were arguing, what is your own view regarding their perspectives on popular culture? How convincing are their claims that it is formulaic and predictable?

Before you consider this, check out the link below (The Axis of Awesome’s 4 Chords):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ

But isn’t the meaning of popular culture more complex than the Frankfurt School would have us believe? Think about your own engagement with the popular culture that you access, use or even generate. What does it mean to you? Where does its meaning lie? Are you on the side of Adorno or Benjamin? Use the examples below to help you decide:

• Television comedy programmes (e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxB1gB6K-2A)

• Clothes (e.g. what was the meaning of the safety pin used by punks?)
• User-generated content on YouTube
• Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tinder
• Music remix apps (such as ‘Tunepacks’ by Ninja Jamm which allow users to creatively mix artist tracks, turn instruments on or off, add their own effects and upload to SoundCloud)
• Photography (check out Bliphoto)
• Graffiti (you may like to read John Storey’s account of graffiti in Tarragona on pp. 243–244 of Cultural Theory and Popular Culture)

Louis Althusser

Althusser’s work was very influential on the early work undertaken by members of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, and in this regard, his contributions to the discipline, particularly with regard to developing Marxist thought, have been significant.

Totally subjected, interpellated and ready to proceed, you agree to demonstrate the length and breadth of your subjectivity in the following exercise on the work of Louis Althusser, who you now believe has the most convincing explanation of how ideology works.

This quiz requires you to answer True or False.

Althusser, interpellation and you

Select your favourite magazine with its fictions, adverts, personal columns, holiday stories, and so on. Identify something that you want or desire from whatever these texts are promoting.

Now, there is no doubt that this magazine is speaking specifically to you, is there? Or at least, that’s how you feel. Try to detail the ways in which it does this. How, exactly (in words, images, textual arrangements and so on) does this text speak to you?

But wait! Isn’t the text you’ve chosen also speaking to lots of other people? How can this be? You’re a unique individual, aren’t you? Does this strike you as odd, clever, confusing, compelling? The ‘you’ is no longer singular because once the text begins to speak to others, then surely it detracts from making you feel individually and uniquely connected? Or does it?

Try designing a text that aims to speak just to one person. How easy is this to do?

Now think about some other cultural practices that interpellate us in specific ways such as a Royal wedding or the birth of a Royal heir; the World Cup or the Olympics. In what ways and to what extent are we interpellated by the texts and practices around these? If you chose, for instance, to attend a street party celebration to commemorate Prince William and Kate Middleton’s marriage, are you, at that very moment, ‘royalist’? How would Althusser explain kitsch?

Hegemony

Gramsci’s influence on the study of popular culture and cultural theory is profound. There is little doubt about the diverse ways in which his work (written against the background of the context of Europe during the early part of the twentieth century) continues to motivate and shape how theory is used today. In particular, Gramsci’s idea of hegemony has had a significant impact within cultural studies in its explanatory value of why capitalism is still prevalent in Western democracies.

Check your understanding of this concept by answering True or False to the following questions.

Marxist cultural analysis, politics and pleasure

Marxist perspectives continue to inform much popular culture analysis today. In order to get a sense of how political texts are, consider some of the following activities:

• Tune-in to your favourite music radio station – popular or classical or somewhere in-between. During the course of your listening, begin to consider the degree to which the music challenges you to think about the way the economy is run or whether the songs/music are about questioning divisions based on social class.
• Are there any musicians or performers whose work you would describe as political today? How do you define the politics of the work?
• Do you think that some people think that music is never political? Should music not be political? Is culture never political? Are all texts and practices simply produced and that is the end of it? Do we consume texts and practices for political or pleasurable reasons? Or, is pleasure itself political?
• Alternatively, listen to music from the recent past. Are you aware of the politics and historical context of Bob Dylan, Queen, or Dusty Springfield’s South Africa Tour, Bob Marley, The Blues, folk songs, Billy Bragg, Johnny Cash and so on? Compare their work with other musicians and performers.
• Visit your local museum or library and check if there is an archives section. Does the archives section have old newspapers, pamphlets, and so on? Does it contain material that gives you some idea about the political past of your local area? For instance, how many differing political groupings and opinions are recorded in archives from the 1930s?

Some further considerations

We don’t live in a society whose culture is without conflict, without any questions being asked, where we all move along quite happily, dancing to the same tune and wearing identical clothes. So, how do people mark difference and resistance? In thinking about this, consider the following:

• How many subcultures can you name?
• Are these demonstrating resistance to mainstream values? If so, how do they communicate this?
• Look at their media representation and interview your family and friends to see how they view various subcultures. Do they find them interesting? Threatening? Why?
• What might gear the appropriation of difference by the mainstream? Crucially, what happens to its meaning once appropriated?
• Or, do you think that, with new media technologies, alternative ways of demonstrating resistance have emerged? Is the idea of an anti-mainstream subculture a little outdated given online interaction across multiple forums and connections to a range of interest groups? Do we have a concept of ‘self’ which is far more multiple and complex these days? Can a Gramscian approach explain this or does this approach fail to adequately account for twenty-first-century identities?

Sigmund Freud

You are now a student of Freud’s and being tested on your knowledge of his work. With respect to the following statements, to what extent do they reflect his thinking? Answer True or False.

Some further considerations: Popular music videos and Freud

Freudian thinking is very much evident in contemporary popular culture texts today. Open the link below and look at the following music video of DJ Snake, Lil Jon Turn Down for What (2014). What Freudian themes are exploited here?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMUDVMiITOU

Now, find some examples of your own to demonstrate the pervasiveness of Freudian psychoanalysis in popular music texts.

Jacques Lacan

Now, subject yourself to Lacanian thinking. Complete the statements by choosing the answer for each question that best fits Lacanian theory. Remember, the answers are based on your reading of Lacan rather than what you might want to think.

Mulvey

Although there were considerable critiques of Mulvey’s perspectives, her work on visual and film narrative has certainly been very influential, and for this reason, cannot be dismissed. It is important then to be able to understand what her arguments were and their impact on cultural studies.

To this end, select the most appropriate response to the following quiz questions.

Mulvey’s work inspired further questions. While some feminists urge students of cultural studies to endorse her work, Mulvey has also been critiqued, revised and modified by others. Having studied Chapters 5 and 8 (pp. 153–157), how would you answer the following questions in terms of being True or False?

Popular film and psychoanalysis

Consider films like Psycho (1960; 1998), Alien (1979 and its sequels), Fight Club (1999), Black Swan (2010), Inception (2010), Night Crawler (2014) and Birdman (2014), amongst others. Analyse these texts from a psychoanalytical standpoint. What themes are foregrounded?

Following this, on the basis of reading some of the revisions and expansions of Mulvey’s work, decide what you think about films, movie stars and cinema-going. To help you, choose an example of a film from the classic film-noir genre. Firstly, watch it for evidence to support Mulvey’s position. Be as specific as you can. Then, consider critics’ views on her perspective. Which are you convinced by the most? Why?

Žižek

Žižek’s work develops Lacanian ideas around fantasy .

In relation to Žižek’s view, answer True or False to the following statements.

Signs

This first exercise is designed to get you thinking about some of the basic concepts and terms. Check your understanding of these by answering the following questions.

Popular culture and structuralism: Some further considerations

Structuralist methods have had a profound impact on how cultural studies is thought about and practised. For example, the work of Saussure was taken up by two key figures that set about expanding and developing his structuralist methodology. Claude Levi-Strauss worked within the field of anthropology, examining the importance of myths. Will Wright, applying the work of Saussure and Levi-Strauss to Western film, demonstrated how structuralist methods can be used to explain how we read such texts.

In thinking about how Levi-Strauss claimed that myths are often structured around binary oppositions, for example culture/nature; man/woman; good/bad; us/them, try this exercise:

Analyse a number of adverts from television, magazines and newspapers, leaflets and promotional material (you can use online versions of these if you wish). Select your chosen text and work through the following:

• Identify the theme/product/aim of the advert.
• Begin to observe the ways in which the advert relies on binary opposites to construct meaning.
• List some of the ways in which these binary opposites constrain or enable how meaning is produced.

You could also explore the above scenario in relation to the cultural texts and practices around political broadcasts or national events and religious celebrations such as Mawlid-al-Nabi, Christmas, Vikram Samvat, Easter and Rosh Hashanah.

Using a structuralist approach, try analysing recently released films that draw on the Western genre. You may like to consider, for instance, True Grit (2010); Cowboys and Aliens (2011)and Django Unchained (2012). How are the meanings of these films specifically accounted for by structuralism? Following this, you may like to undertake a structuralist analysis of other film genres such as romance, horror or comedy.

Barthes

Like other structuralists’ work, the contribution of Barthes can never be underestimated regarding what it brought to cultural studies as a discipline. In many ways, he remains a key figure in the study of popular culture and you are advised to read his Mythologies.

This short exercise checks your understanding of Barthes’s analysis of French myths and draws attention to its political power. Note especially how culture is often represented as ‘natural’, and therefore unquestioned. You might like to consider if Barthes's work is as relevant now as it was in 1957. What myths circulate today within popular culture?

Deconstruction and Derrida

Structuralism argues that myths, signs and texts all combine to produce a system within which meanings are constructed and generated.

Deconstruction now comes along to unsettle this stability. For instance, political broadcasts or political advertising put signs together to represent ‘the nation’. Is this how you would signify the nation? What things do you think of when you consider this concept? In a structuralist reading, the signifiers of the nation are thought to produce and generate meanings (signifieds) with some degree of reliability. In post-structuralist readings, signifiers produce more signifiers. For them, as Storey notes (p. 131), meaning is always in process.

Along with ‘nation’, think of the following signifiers and then try to work out the signified and the referent: sadness; empire; colonization; poverty; wealth; social welfare; joy.

Share your ideas with others. Do they think of the same meanings that you do?

Read Storey’s discussion on Jacques Derrida (pp.131–133), who is a key figure in deconstruction and check your understanding of his ideas by answering True or False to the following quiz questions.

Foucault

Like Derrida and Lacan, so Michel Foucault is associated with approaches to cultural analysis which are described as post-structuralist. Foucault was a Marxist in the 1960s and early 1970s and was to have a key influence on debates about power, knowledge, and sexuality.

One of the key terms in Foucault’s work is ‘discourse’ – conceptual frameworks which enable some modes of thought and constrain others. Foucault is keen to stress how language is used and how language use is always articulated with other social and cultural practices. Language and discourse are never outside of the exercise of power.

Having been excited by the compelling discourse of Foucault, you have entered his world. Are the following claims True or False?

Revisiting Lacan: Subjectivity

We have already come across some of Jacques Lacan’s work in Chapter 5 but he is relevant in terms of our discussion here on post-structuralism. The post-structuralism of both Derrida and Lacan has often been viewed as obscure, difficult, and over-complicated. However, as John Storey makes clear, both theorists can be used to explain how we might read cultural texts and practices. A key concept used by Lacan and Derrida is that of ‘the subject’– a central tenet of post-structuralist thinking with regard to how individual identity is constructed through discourse.

You might like to think of the markers, signs and texts which come to stand for your own identity. If you use Facebook, how do you construct your subjectivity? What markers in the photographs and texts you post make up who you are? Is this different for different audiences? (do you use privacy controls to manipulate the identity seen by different people?) Has your ‘self’ changed over the years or is it fixed and permanent? How do others think of your identity?

You might now like to try and theorize your discussion of these questions with reference to Foucault’s ideas about the panoptican and surveillance.

Some further considerations

One of the benefits of you getting to grips with structuralist and post-structuralist theories is that it requires you to appreciate the importance of language and discourse in how we think about culture and identity.

Consider further then some popular culture texts and practices in terms of the theoretical ideas you have just engaged with. Undertake, for instance, a post-structuralist analysis of reality makeover shows on television such as How to Look Good Naked (Channel 4, UK); 10 Years Younger (Channel 4, UK) and Extreme Makeover (ABC, US). What do you think Foucault may say about these programmes in terms of self-surveillance? What are the discourses that pervade these texts? And, interestingly, for the next chapter, do you think they are gendered in any way?

Class in cultural studies

The concept of ‘class’ plays a key role in cultural studies and is indispensable for understanding the cultural condition of modern life. For the last decade, however, it has seen a gradual exclusion from the cultural debate and has been considered too obsolete for theorizing post-modern, deindustrialized, neoliberal, and increasingly global, societies. Anita Biressi and Heather Nunn describe this problem in their book, Class and Contemporary British Culture,showing how debased and rejected, the theoretical validity of class division has looped back, returning ‘class’ to the vocabulary of the cultural debate.

With the True or False quiz below, assess your knowledge on the position of class in cultural studies.

Class struggle

The concept of class struggle as a cultural problem reflects the tension between economic systems and peoples’ lived experience. Almost all aspects of life are bound by social hierarchies and the imbalances they entail. Class as a concept and ‘a way of living’ incorporates struggle to mark the friction between the top-down (imposed) and bottom-up (cultivated) ways of integrating class into the social practice and individual experience.

With questions related to the problem of class struggle, revise your understanding of social divisions that come from the deployment of economic power and daily life materialism.

Consumption as class distinction

The problem of class struggle requires an understanding of several concepts that define many processes and phenomena related to social division, and how they have been described in cultural studies. Among them is a concept of class distinction theorized by Pierre Bourdieu in his 1979 seminal work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Bourdieu’s theory exposes a relationship between consumption and seemingly ‘innocent’ ideas like taste. Showing how taste has been hierarchized, Bourdieu explains the working of class struggle with regard to the organized deployment of consumption for social distinction.

To comprehend Bourdieu’s theory, revise some of his central concepts by completing the following statements. Then compare your solutions with answers provided in the answer section. Please bear in mind that some of them may require additional reading.

Popular culture and class struggle

Popular culture is a space (or a field) where class struggle shows itself through the constant re-evaluation of popular practices (holidays, sports, pastimes, but also forms of narratives and genres). It is a space that hosts a never-ending tug-of-war between the authentic (coming from within a live experience) and the economic (coming from the need of domination) that remains from the impact of the cultural meanings of the popular itself and class identification that follows.

With the questions provided below, recap the problems related to class struggle in relation to important markers of popular culture.

Meritocracy

Meritocracy is one of those phenomena through which the problem of class and social stratification show itself in a less explicit and direct way. Like taste formation, meritocracy is the symbolic practice that uses high ideals to promote unfavourable conditions for those seeking their chances outside their social background. In Against Meritocracy (2017), Jo Litter describes five assumptions that support the development of meritocratic societies.

With the quiz below, check how many of these assumptions you understand. For each statement select True or False.

Feminisms

This first exercise introduces you to some of the key debates in feminist cultural studies. Part historical and part theoretical, this exercise aims to encourage your thinking in relation to some of the important issues.

Select True or False according to your reading of this section of Chapter 8.

Reading the romance

In documenting some of the classic studies within the area of feminist cultural studies, such as Ang’s research on Dallas; Winship’s and Hermes’s work on magazines and Radway’s and Coward’s work on women reading fiction, John Storey discusses how they mapped romance as a key area of analysis. Such studies made an enormously significant contribution to the understanding and conceptualization of the meaning of popular culture texts.

You are now firmly convinced of a feminist position on popular culture texts and practices. Accordingly, answer True or False to the statements about reading romance.

Post-feminism

In this section, we look at post-feminism, some of its basic tenets and perhaps more importantly, academic critiques of it.

Answer the following questions to check your understanding.

Men’s studies and masculinities

In a chapter discussing gender, it is useful for you to consider how the study of men and masculinity can cross-cut that of feminisms. As you complete this exercise, reflect on the pluralities of masculinity.

Below, identify the correct theorist with the perspectives and/or quotes stated.

Queer theory

One significant contribution to debates in feminist, gender and cultural studies has been from the intervention of a perspective broadly labelled ‘queer’.

John Storey provides a summary of the work of important theorists in this area, including that of Judith Butler’s research taken from her book, Gender Trouble.

Once more, you are asked to associate the key name with their statement or perspective.

Some further considerations on queerness

This final exercise attempts to scrutinize further some of the details of Judith Butler’s observations. Also, be prepared to think more about the work of Creekmur and Doty.

Answer True or False to the statements below.

Reflections on the gendering of lives

This section encourages you to think more about women, men and culture in relation to gender. To start with, it might be useful to discuss how women and men view themselves, drawing on information provided by extended family and/or friends.

For instance, you might consider roles and responsibilities in the home or at work, drawing on evidence as far back as possible. Ask older family members to recount their experiences. The following questions can serve as a guide to your research but you may like to edit these or add more of your own.

• When did women get the vote in your country?
• Do you think people take female politicians seriously these days? Has this changed in your lifetime? Why/why not?
• Was your own education gendered? Was the history you studied centred on the achievements of men or women?
• When women appear in history, is it the case that they are often related to the fields of caring, family or the domestic sphere?
• Is education today more alert to the issues raised by women, do you think?
• Does having a female Prime Minister, President or First Minister necessarily mean women are treated in equal terms?
• Can men be feminists?

Representations

• Do you think television is gendered in what it produces? Do people consume television differently according to whether they are female or male?
• Is advertising gendered? Do women’s magazines differ from men’s magazines? If so, how?
• Is children’s TV gendered? In what ways?
• Is language gendered? Do women speak differently from men, do you think? If so, how?
• Are some narratives, fictions and stories gendered?
• How many women hold senior office in local government, your educational institution, where you work?
• Would having women in senior positions make any difference to decisions which are made?

Advertising gender

For this exercise, collect a number of magazines aimed at females and an equal number aimed at males. Take into account the target readership, price range, sub-genre and so on.

For both ‘male’ and ‘female’ magazines, undertake the following:

1. Begin to piece together an identity which the magazine has constructed, particularly in relation to the adverts.
2. Subject adverts to a reading which demonstrates how they would be read by:
3. Althusser
4. A Marxist feminist
5. A post-feminist
6. Someone who critiques post-Feminism
7. Review the work of either Winship or Hermes. What do their observations add to the readings you have already obtained?
8. Can you apply a queer theory perspective to your analysis in any way?

‘Race’ and Racism

This first exercise introduces you to some of the key concepts and debates within the study of 'race' and racism.

Select True or False according to your reading of Chapter 9.

Ideology of racism: Historical emergence

This exercise, although focusing on historical events, raises up for discussion whether the same assumptions and values are being peddled today in the twenty-first century.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, sitcoms such as Mind Your Language and It Ain't Half Hot Mum reinforced racial stereotypes. During the UK Election 2015, UKIP (the UK Independence Party) secured primetime televisual space to present their views on how ‘immigrants’ were to blame for the failing economy, pressure on the National Health Service and high unemployment. Moreover, certainly in Britain, Islamophobia continues to be articulated by some of the tabloid British press.

Answer the following questions to assess your knowledge and understanding of racist ideology.

Orientalism

This quiz is based on the work of Edward Said and his groundbreaking post-colonial theoretical work, Orientalism. Said’s contribution to the field is significant in understanding how and why racism evolves as he deconstructs the ideological nature of how ‘the West’ represents ‘the East’. Interestingly, John Storey uses Said to discuss the wider issues of Hollywood’s portrayal of the Vietnam War. Much of Said’s work can also be applied to the representation of the Middle East in recent years, especially in popular culture filmic texts.

Select the most appropriate response to answer the following questions.

Names and claims

This next section draws on the work of a number of key theorists and historical commentators in the area of ‘race’ and racism. Try to see where these words of wisdom have sprung from. Be warned, some of these statements are intentionally provocative.

Who made the following claims? (Choose just one answer for each claim.)

Whiteness

This exercise tests your understanding of problematizing ‘whiteness’.

Select the most appropriate response.

Some further considerations

You should now have taken on board the main theoretical principles outlined in the chapter. Next, try some analysis yourself.

Choose a popular culture text such as a book or a film and attempt to engage with Orientalism and the West’s way of representing other cultures. For instance, you could choose to deconstruct Disney’s Aladdin and analyse the representations of Arab people. Or, look at some of the James Bond movies, Rules of Engagement (2000) or The Kingdom (2007) and identify, specifically, how other customs, places and rituals are portrayed. Are they celebrated, demonized or altered in any way? Watch and interrogate Lost in Translation (2003) for the construction of ‘othering’ Japanese culture. Whose point of view is being articulated in the film? In what ways do you think this is undertaken? How are East and West represented? Is this filmic text an example of clichéd cultural stereotyping or a critique of the comedy of cultural difference? Is its meaning just one of pleasure, as a film to be enjoyed?

Now, survey some travel brochures and see if you can identify Orientalist representations of holiday destinations. Are places ‘exoticized’ at all? Are Westerners sold, for instance, ‘India’ as a place to ‘find themselves’? Is it represented as a destination free from stress and pressure?; a mystical and spiritual space where truth will prevail? If so, how exactly does it do this? Do photographs depict wide, open spaces to be explored and ‘conquered’? What clothes are native people seen as wearing? Do the promotions offer ‘real’ contact with ‘real’ people through a schedule of carefully managed excursions (for a price)? Are you being sold a construction of the ‘real’ India, Africa, Egypt? And, are other (perhaps old, colonialist) discourses intertextually drawn upon to do this? Do you agree with Thurlow and Jaworski (2012: 236) that much of contemporary tourism is ‘a reaction to the discomfort experienced as a result of the gradual decentring and de-privileging of the old power bases’?

Having analysed carefully these texts, continue to explore meaning further. You may well have identified an Orientalist theme gearing some of the above but try to think more carefully about how meanings are made. Do you as a reader have any involvement in this? How are you processing these texts? As someone who is planning a holiday, say – or as a student wanting to write an essay about racism? Does this influence how you interpret and feel about the holiday brochures?

Reference

Crispin Thurlow and Adam Jaworski (2012) ‘Elite mobilities: the semiotic landscapes of luxury and privilege’, Social Semiotics 22 (5), pp. 487–516.

Early beginnings and some key issues

This first exercise gets you to think through some of the key issues involved in introductory debates about postmodernism.

Answer True or False to the questions below.

Names and claims

To consolidate your knowledge a little more, this exercise encourages you to identify some of the key theorists of postmodernism with their claims.  Later exercises will focus on these in more detail but the quiz below checks your understanding of some of the significant figures in postmodernism and their general perspectives.

Choose one answer for each question.

Lyotard meets Baudrillard

For this exercise you have agreed to follow two theorists – Lyotard and Baudrillard. Having abandoned all modernist pretensions, you are prepared to give postmodernism (Pomo) a chance.

Now test yourself on how well you understand the principles of postmodernism and the ideas of these key theorists.

Answer True or False according to your newly acquired postmodernist beliefs.

Frederic Jameson

Jameson’s work is grounded in Marxist analysis and stands to question some of the work of Baudrillard and Lyotard. He is thus an influential figure whose output cannot be ignored in the attempt to understand the debates which cohere around postmodernism.

For this exercise, you have decided to take on board Jameson’s ideas. In the quiz below, identify which claims are True and which are False.

Some further considerations

As far as popular culture is concerned, Storey focuses on pop music and television as examples where postmodernism is clearly evident, particularly in relation to the intertextual referencing to previous songs or programmes. But what are their meanings? Is this merely a practice of ‘blank parody’, as Jameson would have us believe?

Pop music

In citing Goodwin (1991: 173), Storey points out that, often, ‘contemporary pop opposes, celebrates and promotes the texts it comes from’. Moreover, the practice of sampling, for instance, is ‘used to involve history and authenticity’ (Goodwin, 1991: 175) and rap is used as an example in terms of its incorporation of a black music tradition and preaching.

In Chapter 4, you were asked to consider music remix apps (such as ‘Tunepacks’ by Ninja Jamm which allow users to creatively mix artist tracks, turn instruments on or off, add their own effects and upload to SoundCloud). Consider this practice in the light of what you have learnt in Chapter 10 and try to explain this by reference to postmodernist theory and its critique.

Now, undertake a postmodern analysis of the texts below.

• www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniaB0xchTY (UK 2015 entry for the Eurovision Song Contest: ‘Still In Love With You’ by Electro Velvet)
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwQZQygg3Lk (‘The Time – Dirty Bit’ by The Black-Eyed Peas)
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXSv6TOOHv4 (‘Why Don’t You?’ by Gramaphonedzie)

Can you think of other music artists who reference other styles or genres in their contemporary work?

Television

Think back to what Jameson says about postmodern film and consider televisual texts in terms of similar themes. Storey discusses how programmes like Twin Peaks, The Killing, Mad Men, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, amongst others, involve the audience’s pleasure in the oscillating narrative of the text. With this in mind, questions around agency and structure come to the fore. And relatedly, of course, this complicates the debates around the meanings of these texts.

To kickstart your thinking, analyse televisual texts such as Doctor Who, The Simpsons, Modern Family, Survivor, Lost, Family Guy or Glee. To what extent do these evidence postmodernist themes?

Film

Alternatively, if your particular interest is film, which movie have you seen recently that exploits some of the strategies talked about in Chapter 10? Watch, for instance, Her (2013) or Birdman (2014) and try a postmodernist analysis of these.

Materiality

Chapter 11 introduces some fairly complex ideas about materiality. Test your understanding by completing the following quiz. Choose one answer for each question.

Materiality without meaning

Having got to grips with the basic points underlying materiality and popular culture, let us now try to develop our thinking a little more and consider further how meaning is made. For the following quiz, choose either True or False for each question.

Thinking globally

To understand further the complex interrelationship between materiality, meaning and signification, let’s turn to how material texts, objects and practices are made to mean in various global contexts. For the following quiz, choose either True or False for each question.

Some further considerations

Having now taken on board the importance of recognizing the entanglement of meaning, materiality and social practice, consider five objects in your own life that have signification. Specifically analyse how they signify what they mean.

Think about the Western contemporary cultural practice of ‘ear stretching’. What does it mean to you? Do ‘flesh tunnels’ and flesh plugs have materiality in the same way as traditionally worn earrings? Does the signification change if worn by celebrities or music artists (for instance, Dougie Poynter from the British band McFly or American rapper, Travie McCoy)? What about other body modification practices such as tattooing or piercing?

Names and claims

This quiz is designed to test your knowledge of the various, sometimes competing, perspectives on cultural studies as a discipline.

Match the name to each of the statements below.

Fan cultures

This next exercise examines the ways in which fans engage with texts. Drawing predominantly on Henry Jenkins’s (1992) seminal work, Textual Poachers, it discusses the move away from textual determinism and highlights the many ways in which fan groups engage with texts. For this quiz, position yourself as fully aligned with Jenkins’s perspective on popular culture.

Answer True or False to the following statements.

Some further considerations

Do fans strike you as socially inept ‘fanatics’? Why is dressing up as the twelfth or thirteenth Doctor, Clara Oswald, Missy or a Cyberman any different or worse than wearing the football kit of your favourite team and screaming your support for them every Saturday? How do traditional Doctor Who fans engage with the new series online? Do they see themselves differently to the casual viewer? The BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales went on tour (www.doctorwho.tv/events/doctor-who-symphonic-spectacular/ ), presenting the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular (2015), complete with on-stage performances of The Silence, Oods and Daleks. How do you think this mediates the meaning of this popular culture text and practice for the different types of fans?

After considering the way in which fans are multiply positioned and categorized in terms of their consumption of a particular text, go online and witness how fans themselves really engage with a TV programme or film. You yourself may be part of a specific fan culture. Are there layers of cultural fandom? Where are you situated with respect to these? Are they marked in particular ways?

A final assessment

Well done! You have now arrived at the end of your journey, tracing the development of cultural studies. Yet this should not signal the end of your interest and enthusiasm for the topic, given its ever-changing nature. However, for the moment, you are allowed to momentarily inhabit the role of a cultural theory ‘expert’ – once, that is, you have successfully passed these two final quizzes. The first quiz asks you to match each claim with a theorist. The second quiz requires you to answer True or False to the statements provided.