Post a Comment On: Cultural Studies

Bill Schnupp

Abstract: John Storey’s Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture

Summary: Chapter 2: Television

I. The Cycle of Televisual Discourse

The widespread popularity of television as a cultural form led to Stuart Hall’s “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse,” a piece in which the author posits a three-part model of televisual communication:

1. Media professionals convert a “raw” social event into televisual discourse

2. Once the event has taken the form of televisual discourse, formal rules of language and discourse are in play.

3. The audience must decode not the actual event, but the media’s translation. The act of decoding—of making meaning from the translation—is itself a social act, open to encoding in another distinct discourse, This begets a cycle in which production moves to consumption, and back to production, a self-perpetuating cycle that feeds upon itself.

Main ideas: “The circuit starts in the social and ends, to begin again, in the social.”
-“Meanings and messages are not simply transmitted, they are always produced” (11).

II. Decoding and Misunderstandings

Hall assumes two difficulties in the decoding process: first, “misunderstandings of a literal kind. . .[in which] the viewer does not know the terms employed, cannot follow the complex logic of argument or exposition. . .but more often, broadcasters are concerned. . .that viewers are not operating within the dominant of preferred code” (12). Hall’s primary concern is with this second type of misunderstanding, an occurrence directly linked with the engagement of formal language and discourse structures that form the second stage in his model of televisual discourse.

Hall outlines three primary decoding positions:

1. Dominant-hegemonic position, in which the viewer interprets the message
within the confines of the power structure and professional code out forth by the
broadcaster.

2. Negotiated code or position, likely the most common, in which viewers
recognize the authority and legitimacy of the broadcast discourse, but blend often
oppositional elements that have more direct bearing on their personal life.

3.Oppositional code, adopted by viewers who recognize the validity of the
discursive mode, but nonetheless chooses to operated from an opposing frame of
reference.

Hall’s hypothetical decoding positions sparked David Morley’s Nationwide Audience project, an undertaking concerned with how social class influenced decoding, and explored such ideas as:

1. “how and why certain production practices and structures tend to produce certain
messages, which embody their meanings in certain recurring forms”

2. “The message in social communication is always complex in structure and form. It
always contains more than one potential reading”

3. “Messages encoded in one way can always be read in a different way” (14).

In his project, Morley’s population was a collection of twenty-nine different groups, socially stratified to include students, apprentices, schoolboys, shop stewards, middle-class bank managers, and public officials. Each was asked to watch two episodes of the BBC’s Nationwide news program. Morley analyzed each group’s reading, confirming many of Hall’s prior ideas. Morley’s ultimate findings, however, indicated that “decodings are not determined directly from social class position. Rather, it is always a question of how social position plus particular discourse positions produce specific readings; readings which are structured because the structure of access to different discourses is determined by social position” (15).

Main ideas: “When we are interpellated by a text, this is always in a context of other
interpellations”(16).

-“The text reader encounter does not occur in a moment isolated from other discourses, but always in a field of many discourses, some in harmony with the text, some of which are in contradiction with it”(16).

-“decodings are not determined directly from social class position. Rather, it is always a question of how social position plus particular discourse positions produce specific readings; readings which are structured because the structure of access to different discourses is determined by social position” (15).

III. Television and Family

Morley’s Nationwide endeavor led to his Family Television project, an undertaking limited by a lack of time and money, but nonetheless concerned with television practices within the home. Practice—though perhaps not an obvious choice of terms—is accurate regardless, as Morley concern here was “how television is interpreted (literary/semiological approaches) and how television is used (sociological approaches)” (18). Issues of audience decoding and choice as they relate to family leisure were paramount here. In this context, television is a social practice—both a means of interaction and isolation, as well as a valuable and common discursive currency in everyday cultural economy.

Morley’s ideas led to Dorothy Hobson’s Crossroads: The Drama of a Soap Opera. In her study, Hobson viewed the program Crossroads, and conducted open-ended follow-up interviews with, participants (predominantly women). Though light on theory, Hobson’s ethnographic study nonetheless provided some interesting observations.

1. The circumstances of viewing are highly varied: Some viewers sit and watch the program,
while many conduct daily domestic activities.

2. The interpretation—the reading—of the program is ongoing and adaptive, stretching far
beyond the initial moment of consumption.

3. The program serves as a platform for social interaction; a place from which viewers could
actively transition from “program discourse” to personal, domestic, and professional
discourse.

4. Viewers rely on their own experience to judge events on television programs.

5. Soap operas allow viewers a means of interpreting and coping with their problems, shared
both by actual people, as well as characters on the program. Thus, Hobson posits that
innumerable interpretations of a program exist.

6. Discussion of events in a program leads to discussion of events in viewers’ lives, events
otherwise too painful to speak about elsewhere.

7. Interweaving actual events with program fiction leads to the creation of a culture of
viewers.

On the fifth point, Storey disagrees, arguing that that are definite material and contextual limitations on the possible number of interpretations of a specific program. On the final point, however, Mary Ellen Brown echoes Hobson’s point, and furthers it with the contention that viewers undertake a “carnivalesque sense of play in the crossing opf boundaries between fiction and reality. Furthermore, Brown maintains that women’s talk about soap operas is best understood as a fundamental part of the long tradition of women’s oral culture” (24).

Tamar Liebs and Elihu Katz further this strand of argument, and put forth that
soap operas are not escapist, but are instead a forum for social, family, political, and other discussions, as a result of the agenda set between program producers and consumers.

Main ideas: “television talk provides cultural studies with an important bridge between the social and the textual” (25).

-television is a social practice—both a means of interaction and isolation, as well as a valuable and common discursive currency in everyday cultural economy.

-soap operas are not escapist, but are instead a forum for social, family, political, and other discussions, as a result of the agenda set between program producers and consumers.

-the interpretation—the reading—of the program is ongoing and adaptive, stretching far beyond the initial moment of consumption.

-the program serves as a platform for social interaction; a place from which viewers could actively transition from “program discourse” to personal and professional discourse.

-discussion of events in a program leads to discussion of events in viewers’ lives, events otherwise too painful to speak about elsewhere.

-interweaving actual events with program fiction leads to the creation of a culture of viewers.

IV. Television and Mass Culture

Dutch cultural critic Ien Ang took up the soap opera idea in a study in which she placed an add in a popular magazine soliciting viewer opinion about the television series Dallas. Forty-two responses, both from critics and supporters of the program led Ang to the conclusion that the program was popular for its “emotional realism,” and that the degree to which viewers found Dallas good or bad was based on their perception of its realism (good) or lack of authenticity (bad). Interestingly, Ang found that elements of Dallas that were unreal and regarded as such at the denotative level were not considered unrealistic at the connotative level.

Much of the program’s popularity was based on the ease with which viewers could transition between the fiction of the program and the everyday lives. It gives rise to the “melodramatic imagination.” Essentially, Ang found that Dallas “is not a compensation for the presumed drabness of everyday life, nor a flight from it, but a dimension of it” (27).

From these findings, Ang posits “the ideology of mass culture,” the idea that “popular culture is the result of capitalist commodity production and is therefore subject to the laws of the capitalist market economy; the result of which is the seemingly endless circulation of degraded commodities, whose only real significance is that they make a profit for their producers” (28). This theory enabled Ang to lump viewers into four categories: those who strongly dislike the program because it is an example of mass culture; those who give the program an ironical viewing, in which the program is mocked for its melodrama and transformed into a comedic program—the pleasure of viewing results from the fact that the program is, in fact, bad and worthy of mockery; fans, who internalize the ideology of mass culture and appreciate the program for what it is; and the populist, who views with the contention that it is pointless to pass aesthetic judgment on the tastes of others. The first three positions signify an unequal struggle between those who argue from within the security of mass culture, and those who resist it.

Ang concludes that the popularity of such programs lie in their ability to “construct imaginary solutions for real contradictions. . .which in their fictional simplicity and their simple fictionality step outside the tedious complexity of social relations of dominance and subordination” (31).

Main ideas: “popular culture is the result of capitalist commodity production and is therefore subject to the laws of the capitalist market economy; the result of which is the seemingly endless circulation of degraded commodities, whose only real significance is that they make a profit for their producers” (28).

-there is an unequal struggle between those who argue from within the security of mass culture, and those who resist it.

- the popularity of such programs lie in their ability to “construct imaginary solutions for real contradictions. . .which in their fictional simplicity and their simple fictionality step outside the tedious complexity of social relations of dominance and subordination” (31).

V. Fiske’s Two Economies

Chapter two concludes with John Fiske’s argument that television inhabits two economies: financial, concerned with exchange values; and cultural, centered around “meanings, pleasures, and social identities” (32). Resistance to the power of the powerful in Western societies takes two forms: semiotic, concerned with meanings, pleasures and social identities; and social, dealing with transformations of the socio-economic system. The concepts are related, though autonomous. Popular culture is thus involved in the struggle between consensus and conflict, a place where the “hegemonic forces of homogeneity are always met by the resistance of heterogeneity” (33)

Fiske recognizes popular culture as a site of struggle between dominant forces, and diverts attention to how theses forces are coped with, resisted, or evaded.

Main ideas: Resistance to the power of the powerful in Western societies takes two forms: semiotic, concerned with meanings, pleasures and social identities; and social, dealing with transformations of the socio-economic system. The concepts are related, though autonomous.

- Popular culture is thus involved in the struggle between consensus and conflict, a place where the “hegemonic forces of homogeneity are always met by the resistance of heterogeneity” (33).

Key Terms:

Ideology of Mass Culture
Cultural Economy
Discourse
Encoding
Decoding:
Dominant-hegemonic
Negotiated
Oppositional

People:

John Storey
Stuart Hall
David Morley
Dorothy Hobson
Mary Ellen Brown
Tamar Liebs
Elihu Katz
Ien Ang
John Fiske

Questions:

1. What do you make of Storey’s objection to Hobson’s notion of infinite readings? (23)

2. Do you agree with Hobson’s idea that television programs can lead to discussion of events in viewers’ lives, events otherwise too painful to speak about elsewhere? Why or why not?