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CULTURAL STUDIES, , AND MEDIA

◆ Douglas Kellner

adio, television, , and the other products of Rprovide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of “us” and “them.” Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. Media stories provide the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture. Media spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and vio- lence, and who is not. They dramatize and legitimate the power of the forces that be and show the powerless that they must stay in their places or be oppressed. We are immersed from cradle to grave in a media and consumer soci- ety and thus it is important to learn how to understand, interpret, and criti- cize its meanings and messages. The media are a profound and often misperceived source of cultural pedagogy: They contribute to educating us how to behave and what to think, feel, believe, fear, and desire—and what not to. The media are forms of pedagogy that teach us how to be men and women. They show us how to dress, look, and consume; how to react to

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10 ◆ A Approach

members of different social groups; how to conforming to the dominant fashion, be popular and successful and how to avoid values, and behavior. Yet cultural studies is failure; and how to conform to the domi- also interested in how subcultural groups nant system of norms, values, practices, and and individuals resist dominant forms of . Consequently, the gaining of culture and identity, creating their own critical media literacy is an important style and identities. Those who obey ruling resource for individuals and citizens in dress and fashion codes, behavior, and learning how to cope with a seductive cul- political ideologies thus produce their iden- tural environment. Learning how to read, tities within the mainstream group, as criticize, and resist socio-cultural manipula- members of specific social groupings tion can help empower oneself in relation to (such as white, middle-class conservative dominant forms of media and culture. It Americans). Persons who identify with sub- can enhance individual sovereignty vis-à-vis , like punk culture, or black nation- media culture and give people more power alist , look and act differently over their cultural environment. from those in the mainstream, and thus cre- In this chapter, I will discuss the poten- ate oppositional identities, defining them- tial contributions of a cultural studies per- selves against standard models. spective to media critique and literacy. In Cultural studies insists that culture must recent years, cultural studies has emerged as be studied within the social relations and a set of approaches to the study of culture system through which it is produced and and society. The project was inaugurated consumed and that thus study of culture is by the University of Birmingham Centre for intimately bound up with the study of soci- Contemporary Cultural Studies, which ety, politics, and economics. Cultural stud- developed a variety of critical methods for ies shows how media culture articulates the the analysis, interpretation, and criticism of dominant values, political ideologies, and cultural artifacts.1 Through a set of internal social developments and novelties of the debates, and responding to social struggles era. It conceives of U.S. culture and society and movements of the 1960s and the as a contested terrain with various groups 1970s, the Birmingham group came to and ideologies struggling for dominance focus on the interplay of representations (Kellner, 1995). Television, film, music, and and ideologies of class, gender, race, ethnic- other popular cultural forms are thus often ity, and nationality in cultural texts, includ- liberal or conservative, although they occa- ing media culture. They were among the sionally articulate more radical or opposi- first to study the effects of newspapers, tional positions and are often ideologically radio, television, film, and other popular ambiguous, combining various political cultural forms on audiences. They also positions. focused on how various audiences inter- Cultural studies is valuable because it preted and used media culture differently, provides some tools that enable one to read analyzing the factors that made different and interpret one’s culture critically. It also audiences respond in contrasting ways to subverts distinctions between “high” and various media texts. “low” culture by considering a wide con- Through studies of youth subcultures, tinuum of cultural artifacts ranging from British cultural studies demonstrated how novels to television and by refusing to erect culture came to constitute distinct forms of any specific cultural hierarchies or canons. identity and group membership. For cul- Previous approaches to culture tended to be tural studies, media culture provides the primarily literary and elitist, dismissing materials for constructing views of the media culture as banal, trashy, and not world, behavior, and even identities. Those worthy of serious attention. The project of who uncritically follow the dictates of media cultural studies, by contrast, avoids cutting culture tend to “mainstream” themselves, the field of culture into high and low, or Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 11

Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture ◆ 11

popular against elite. Such distinctions are domination and resistance in order to aid difficult to maintain and generally serve as the process of political struggle and emanci- a front for normative aesthetic valuations pation from oppression and domination. and, often, a political program (i.e., either For cultural studies, the concept of ideo- dismissing mass culture for , or logy is of central importance, for dominant celebrating what is deemed “popular” ideologies serve to reproduce social rela- while scorning “elitist” high culture). tions of domination and subordination.2 Cultural studies allows us to examine Ideologies of class, for instance, celebrate and critically scrutinize the whole range of upper-class life and denigrate the working culture without prior prejudices toward one class. Ideologies of gender promote sexist or another sort of cultural text, , representations of women and ideologies of or practice. It also opens the way toward race utilize racist representations of people more differentiated political, rather than of color and various minority groups. aesthetic, valuations of cultural artifacts in Ideologies make inequalities and subordi- which one attempts to distinguish critical nation appear natural and just, and thus and oppositional from conformist and con- induce consent to relations of domination. servative moments in a cultural . For Contemporary societies are structured by instance, studies of Hollywood film show opposing groups who have different politi- how key 1960s promoted the views of cal ideologies (liberal, conservative, radical, radicals and the counterculture and how etc.) and cultural studies specifies what, if film in the 1970s was a battleground any, ideologies are operative in a given cul- between liberal and conservative positions; tural artifact (which could involve, of late 1970s films, however, tended toward course, the specification of ideological con- conservative positions that helped elect tradictions). In the course of this study, I Ronald Reagan as president (see Kellner & will provide some examples of how differ- Ryan, 1988). ent ideologies are operative in media cul- There is an intrinsically critical and polit- tural texts and will accordingly provide ical dimension to the project of cultural examples of ideological analysis and studies that distinguishes it from objectivist critique. and apolitical academic approaches to the Because of its focus on representations study of culture and society. British cultural of race, gender, and class, and its critique of studies, for example, analyzed culture ideologies that promote various forms of historically in the context of its societal ori- oppression, cultural studies lends itself to a gins and effects. It situated culture within a multiculturalist program that demonstrates theory of social production and reproduc- how culture reproduces certain forms of tion, specifying the ways that cultural forms racism, sexism, and biases against members served either to further social domination of subordinate classes, social groups, or or to enable people to resist and struggle alternative lifestyles. Multiculturalism against domination. It analyzed society as a affirms the worth of different types of cul- hierarchical and antagonistic set of social ture and cultural groups, claiming, for relations characterized by the oppression of instance, that black, Latino, Asian, Native subordinate class, gender, race, ethnic, and American, gay and lesbian, and other national strata. Employing Gramsci’s oppressed and marginal voices have their (1971) of hegemony and counter- own validity and importance. An insurgent hegemony, it sought to analyze “hege- multiculturalism attempts to show how monic,” or ruling, social and cultural forces various people’s voices and experiences are of domination and to seek “counterhege- silenced and omitted from mainstream cul- monic” forces of resistance and struggle. ture and struggles to aid in the articulation The project was aimed at social transfor- of diverse views, experiences, and cultural mation and attempted to specify forces of forms, from groups excluded from the Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 12

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mainstream. This makes it a target of and political economy of culture, cultural conservative forces who wish to preserve texts, and the audience reception of those the existing canons of white male, texts and their effects. This comprehensive Eurocentric privilege and thus attack multi- approach avoids too narrowly focusing on in cultural wars raging from the one dimension of the project to the exclu- 1960s to the present over education, the sion of others. To avoid such limitations, I arts, and the limits of free expression. would thus propose a multiperspectival Cultural studies thus promotes a multi- approach that (a) discusses production and culturalist politics and media pedagogy that political economy, (b) engages in textual aims to make people sensitive to how rela- analysis, and (c) studies the reception and tions of power and domination are use of cultural texts.3 “encoded” in cultural texts, such as those of television or film. But it also specifies how people can resist the dominant encoded PRODUCTION AND meanings and produce their own critical POLITICAL ECONOMY and alternative readings. Cultural studies can show how media culture manipulates Because it has been neglected in many and indoctrinates us, and thus can empower modes of recent cultural studies, it is impor- individuals to resist the dominant meanings tant to stress the importance of analyzing in media cultural products and to produce cultural texts within their system of pro- their own meanings. It can also point to duction and distribution, often referred to moments of resistance and criticism within as the political economy of culture.4 media culture and thus help promote devel- Inserting texts into the system of culture opment of more critical consciousness. within which they are produced and dis- A critical cultural studies—embodied in tributed can help elucidate features and many of the chapters collected in this effects of the texts that textual analysis reader—thus develops concepts and analy- alone might miss or downplay. Rather than ses that will enable readers to analytically being antithetical approaches to culture, dissect the artifacts of contemporary media political economy can actually contribute culture and to gain power over their cul- to textual analysis and critique. The system tural environment. By exposing the entire of production often determines what sort of field of culture to knowledgeable scrutiny, artifacts will be produced, what structural cultural studies provides a broad, compre- limits there will be as to what can and can- hensive framework to undertake studies not be said and shown, and what sort of of culture, politics, and society for the pur- audience effects the text may generate. poses of individual empowerment and Study of the codes of television, film, or social and political struggle and transfor- popular music, for instance, is enhanced by mation. In the following pages, I will studying the formulas and conventions of therefore indicate some of the chief production. These cultural forms are struc- components of the type of cultural studies tured by well-defined rules and conven- that I find most useful. tions, and the study of the production of culture can help elucidate the codes actually in play. Because of the demands of the for- ◆ Components of a mat of radio or music television, for instance, most popular songs are three to Critical Cultural Studies five minutes, fitting into the frames of the distribution system. Because of their control by giant corporations oriented primarily At its strongest, cultural studies contains a toward profit, film and television produc- threefold project of analyzing the production tion in the United States is dominated by Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 13

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specific genres such as talk and game corporations helps explain mainstream shows, soap operas, situation comedies, media support of the Bush administration action/adventure series, TV, and so and their policies, such as the 2000 U.S. on. This economic factor explains why presidential election (Kellner, 2001). there are cycles of certain genres and sub- Looking toward entertainment, one can- genres, sequelmania in the film industry, not fully grasp the Madonna phenomenon crossovers of popular films into television without analyzing her marketing strategies, series, and a certain homogeneity in prod- her political environment, her cultural arti- ucts constituted within systems of produc- facts, and their effects (Kellner, 1995). In a tion marked by rigid generic codes, similar fashion, younger female pop music formulaic conventions, and well-defined stars and groups such as Mariah Carey, ideological boundaries. Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, or N’Sync Likewise, study of political economy can also deploy the tools of the glamour indus- help determine the limits and range of polit- try and media spectacle to make certain ical and ideological discourses and effects. stars the icons of fashion, beauty, style, and My study of television in the United States, sexuality, as well as purveyors of music. for instance, disclosed that takeover of the And in appraising the full social impact of television networks by major transnational pornography, one needs to be aware of the corporations and communications con- sex industry and the production process of, glomerates was part of a “right turn” say, pornographic films, and not just dwell within U.S. society in the 1980s whereby on the texts themselves and their effects on powerful corporate groups won control of audiences. the state and the mainstream media Furthermore, in an era of globalization, (Kellner, 1990). For example, during the one must be aware of the global networks 1980s all three networks were taken over that produce and distribute media culture in by major corporate conglomerates: ABC the interests of profit and corporate hege- was bought out in 1985 by Capital Cities, mony. Yet political economy alone does not NBC was absorbed by GE, and CBS was hold the key to cultural studies and impor- purchased by the Tisch Financial Group. tant as it is, it has limitations as a single Both ABC and NBC sought corporate approach. Some political economy analyses mergers and this motivation, along with reduce the meanings and effects of texts to other benefits derived from Reaganism, rather circumscribed and reductive ideologi- might well have influenced them to down- cal functions, arguing that media culture play criticisms of Reagan and to generally merely reflects the ideology of the ruling eco- support his conservative programs, military nomic elite that controls the culture indus- adventures, and simulated presidency. tries and is nothing more than a vehicle for Corporate conglomeratization has inten- capitalist ideology. It is true that media cul- sified further and today AOL and Time ture overwhelmingly supports capitalist val- Warner, Disney, and other global media ues, but it is also a site of intense struggle conglomerates control ever more domains between different races, classes, gender, and of the production and distribution of cul- social groups. Thus, in order to fully grasp ture (McChesney, 2000). In this global con- the nature and effects of media culture, one text, one cannot really analyze the role of needs to develop methods to analyze the full the media in the Gulf war, for instance, range of its meanings and effects. without analyzing the production and polit- ical economy of news and , as well as the actual text of the Gulf war and TEXTUAL ANALYSIS its reception by its audience (see Kellner, 1992). Likewise, the ownership by conserv- The products of media culture require ative corporations of dominant media multidimensional close textual readings to Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 14

14 ◆ A Cultural Studies Approach

analyze their various forms of discourses, generating positive and negative models of ideological positions, narrative strategies, social behavior. And advertising shows image construction, and effects. There have how commodity solutions solve problems been a wide range of types of textual criti- of popularity, acceptance, success, and the cism of media culture, ranging from quanti- like. tative content analysis that dissects the A semiotic and genre analysis of the film number of, say, episodes of violence in a Rambo (1982) for instance, would show text, to qualitative study that examines how it follows the conventions of the images of women, blacks, or other groups, Hollywood genre of the war film that dra- or that applies various critical theories to matizes conflicts between the United States unpack the meanings of the texts or to and its “enemies” (see Kellner, 1995). explicate how texts function to produce Semiotics describes how the images of meaning. Traditionally, the qualitative the villains are constructed according to the analysis of texts has been the task of for- codes of World War II movies and how the malist literary criticism, which explicates resolution of the conflict and happy ending the central meanings, values, symbols, and follows the traditional Hollywood classical ideologies in cultural artifacts by attending cinema, which portrays the victory of good to the formal properties of imaginative over evil. Semiotic analysis would also literature texts—such as style, verbal include study of the strictly cinematic and imagery, characterization, narrative struc- formal elements of a film like Rambo, dis- ture and point of view, and other formal secting the ways that camera angles present elements of the artifact. From the 1960s on, Rambo as a god, or slow-motion images of however, literary-formalist textual analysis him gliding through the jungle code him as has been enhanced by methods derived a force of nature. Semiotic analysis of the from semiotics, a critical approach for 2001 film Vanilla Sky could engage how investigating the creation of meaning not Cameron Crowe’s film presents a remake only in written languages but also in other, of a 1997 Spanish film, and how the use of nonverbal codes, such as the visual and celebrity stars Tom Cruise and Penelope auditory languages of film and TV. Cruz, involved in a real-life romance, pro- Semiotics analyzes how linguistic and vides a spectacle of modern icons of beauty, nonlinguistic cultural “signs” form systems desire, sexuality, and power. The science of meanings, as when giving someone a fiction theme and images present semiotic rose is interpreted as a sign of love, or get- depictions of a future in which techno- ting an A on a college paper is a sign science can make everyone beautiful and of mastery of the rules of the specific assign- we can live out our culture’s dreams and ment. Semiotic analysis can be connected nightmares. with genre criticism (the study of conven- The textual analysis of cultural studies tions governing established types of cultural thus combines formalist analysis with cri- forms, such as soap operas) to reveal how tique of how cultural meanings convey spe- the codes and forms of particular genres cific ideologies of gender, race, class, follow certain meanings. Situation come- sexuality, nation, and other ideological dies, for instance, classically follow a con- dimensions. Ideological textual analysis flict/resolution model that demonstrates should deploy a wide range of methods to how to solve certain social problems by cor- fully explicate each dimension and to show rect actions and values, and thus provide how they fit into textual systems. Each criti- morality tales of proper and improper cal method focuses on certain features of a behavior. Soap operas, by contrast, prolif- text from a specific perspective: The per- erate problems and provide messages con- spective spotlights some features of a text cerning the endurance and suffering needed while ignoring others. Marxist methods to get through life’s endless miseries, while tend to focus on class, for instance, while Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 15

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feminist approaches will highlight gender, the parameters of possible readings and critical race theory spotlights race and eth- delineate perspectives that aim at illuminat- nicity, and gay and lesbian theories expli- ing the text and its cultural and ideological cate sexuality. effects. Such analysis also provides the mate- More sophisticated critical Marxism, rials for criticizing misreadings, or readings feminisms, or semiotics articulate their that are one-sided and incomplete. Yet to own method with the other approaches to further carry through a cultural studies develop multiperspectivist positions. Yet analysis, one must also examine how diverse each critical methods on its own has audiences actually read media texts, and its particular strengths and limitations, attempt to determine what effects they have with specific optics and blindspots. on audience thought and behavior. Traditionally, Marxian ideology critiques have been strong on class and historical contextualization and weak on formal ◆ analysis, while some versions are highly Audience Reception “reductionist,” reducing textual analysis and Use of Media Culture to denunciation of ruling class ideology. Feminism excels in gender analysis and in some versions is formally sophisticated, All texts are subject to multiple readings on such methods as psychoanaly- depending on the perspectives and subject sis and semiotics, although some versions positions of the reader. Members of distinct are reductive and early feminism often genders, classes, races, nations, regions, limited itself to analysis of images of gen- sexual preferences, and political ideologies der. Psychoanalysis in turn calls for the are going to read texts differently, and cul- interpretation of unconscious contents tural studies can illuminate why diverse and meaning, which can articulate latent audiences interpret texts in various, some- meanings in a text, as when Alfred times conflicting, ways. It is indeed one of Hitchcock’s dream sequences in films like the merits of cultural studies to have Spellbound (1945) or Vertigo (1958) focused on audience reception in recent project cinematic symbols that illuminate years and this focus provides one of its his characters’ dilemmas, or when the major contributions, though there are also image of the female character in Bonnie some limitations and problems with the and Clyde (1967) framed against the bars standard cultural studies approaches to the of her bed suggests her sexual frustration, audience.5 imprisonment in lower-middle-class family A standard way to discover how life, and need for revolt. audiences read texts is to engage in ethno- Of course, each reading of a text is only graphic research, in an attempt to deter- one possible reading from one critic’s sub- mine how texts affect audiences and shape ject position, no matter how multiperspecti- their beliefs and behavior. Ethnographic val, and may or may not be the reading cultural studies have indicated some of the preferred by audiences (which themselves various ways that audiences use and will be significantly different according to appropriate texts, often to empower them- their class, race, gender, ethnicity, ideolo- selves. Radway’s (1983; see also her gies, and so on). Because there is a split chapter in this volume) study of women’s between textual encoding and audience use of Harlequin novels, for example, decoding, there is always the possibility of a shows how these books provide escapism multiplicity of readings of any text of media for women and could be understood as culture (Hall, 1980b). There are limits to the reproducing traditional women’s roles, openness or polysemic nature of any text, of behavior, and attitudes. Yet they can also course, and textual analysis can explicate empower women by promoting fantasies of Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 16

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a different life and may thus inspire revolt qualitative research, new reception studies, against male domination. Or they may including some of the essays in this reader, enforce, in other audiences, female submis- are providing important contributions into sion to male domination and trap women how audiences actually interact with cul- in ideologies of romance, in which sub- tural texts (see the studies in Lewis, 1992, mission to Prince Charming is seen as the and Ang, 1996, and Lee and Cho in this alpha and omega of happiness for women. volume for further elaboration of decoding Media culture provides materials for and audience reception). individuals to create identities and mean- Yet there are several problems that I see ings and cultural studies detects specific with reception studies as they have been ways that individuals use cultural forms. constituted within cultural studies, particu- Teenagers use video games and music tele- larly in the United States. First, there is a vision as an escape from the demands of a danger that class will be downplayed as a disciplinary society. Males use sports as a significant variable that structures audience terrain of fantasy identification, in which decoding and use of cultural texts. Cultural they feel empowered as “their” team or star studies in England were particularly sensi- triumphs. Such sports events also generate a tive to class differences—as well as subcul- form of community, currently being lost in tural differences—in the use and reception the privatized media and consumer culture of cultural texts, but I have noted many dis- of our time. Indeed, fandoms of all sorts, sertations, books, and articles in cultural ranging from Star Trek fans (“Trekkies”) to studies in the United States where attention devotees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or to class has been downplayed or is missing various soap operas, also form communi- altogether. This is not surprising as a neglect ties that enable people to relate to others of class as a constitutive feature of culture who share their interests and hobbies. Some and society is an endemic deficiency in the fans, in fact, actively recreate their favorite American academy in most disciplines. cultural forms, such as rewriting the scripts There is also the reverse danger, how- of preferred shows, sometimes in the forms ever, of exaggerating the constitutive force of “slash,” which redefine characters’ sexu- of class, and downplaying, or ignoring, ality, or in the forms of music poaching or such other variables as gender or ethnicity. remaking such as “filking” (see examples in Staiger (1992) notes that Fiske (1989a, Lewis, 1992, and Jenkins, 1992). 1989b), building on Hartley, lists seven This emphasis on audience reception and “subjectivity positions” that are important appropriation helps cultural studies over- in cultural reception, “self, gender, age- come the previous one-sided textualist ori- group, family, class, nation, ethnicity,” and entations to culture. It also directs focus on proposes adding sexual orientation. All of the actual political effects that texts have these factors, and no doubt more, interact and how audiences use texts. In fact, some- in shaping how audiences receive and use times audiences subvert the intentions of texts and must be taken into account the producers or managers of the cultural in studying cultural reception, for audiences industries that supply them, as when astute decode and use texts according to the young media users laugh at obvious specific constituents of their class, race or attempts to hype certain characters, shows, ethnicity, gender, sexual preferences, and or products (see de Certeau, 1984, for more so on. examples of audiences constructing meaning Furthermore, I would warn against a ten- and engaging in practices in critical and sub- dency to romanticize the “active audience,” versive ways). Audience research can reveal by claiming that all audiences produce their how people are actually using cultural texts own meanings and denying that media cul- and what sort of effects they are having on ture may have powerful manipulative everyday life. Combining quantitative and effects. Some individuals who do cultural Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 17

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studies (tradition of) reception research oppositional reading, or pleasure in a given distinguish between dominant and opposi- experience is progressive or reactionary, tional readings (Hall, 1980b), a dichotomy emancipatory or destructive. that structures much of Fiske’s work. Thus, while emphasis on the audience “Dominant” readings are those in which and reception was an excellent correction audiences appropriate texts in line with the to the one-sidedness of purely textual interests of the hegemonic culture and the analysis, I believe that in recent years cul- ideological intentions of a text, as when tural studies has overemphasized reception audiences feel pleasure in the restoration of and textual analysis, while underemphasiz- male power, law and order, and social sta- ing the production of culture and its politi- bility at the end of a film like Die Hard, cal economy. This type of cultural studies after the hero and representatives of fetishizes audience reception studies and authority eliminate the terrorists who had neglects both production and textual analy- taken over a high-rise corporate headquar- sis, thus producing populist celebrations of ters. An “oppositional” reading, by con- the text and audience pleasure in its use of trast, celebrates the resistance to this cultural artifacts. This approach, taken to reading in audience appropriation of a an extreme, would lose its critical perspec- text; for example, Fiske (1993) observes tive and would lead to a positive gloss on resistance to dominant readings when audience experience of whatever is being homeless individuals in a shelter cheered studied. Such studies also might lose sight the destruction of police and authority fig- of the manipulative and conservative effects ures, during repeated viewings of a video- of certain types of media culture and thus tape of Die Hard. serve the interests of the cultural industries Although this can be a useful distinction, as they are presently constituted. there is a tendency in cultural studies to cel- A new way, in fact, to research media ebrate resistance per se without distinguish- effects is to use the databases that collect ing between types and forms of resistance (a media texts such as Nexis/Lexis, or search similar problem resides with indiscriminate engines like Google, and to trace the effects celebration of audience pleasure in certain of media artifacts like The X-Files, Buffy reception studies). For example, resistance the Vampire Slayer, or advertising corpora- to social authority by the homeless evi- tions like Nike and McDonald’s, through denced in their viewing of Die Hard could analysis of references to them in the media. serve to strengthen brutal masculist behav- Likewise, there is a new terrain of Internet ior and encourage manifestations of physi- audience research that studies how fans act cal violence to solve social problems. in chat rooms devoted to their favorite arti- Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, and facts of media culture, create their own fan- Herbert Marcuse, among others, have sites, or construct artifacts that disclose argued that violence can be either emanci- how they are living out the fantasies and patory, when directed at forces of oppres- scripts of the culture industries. Previous sion, or reactionary, when directed at studies of the audience and the reception of popular forces struggling against oppres- media privileged ethnographic studies that sion. Many feminists, by contrast, or those selected slices of the vast media audiences, in the Gandhian tradition, see all violence usually from the site where researchers as forms of brute masculist behavior and themselves lived. Such studies are invariably many people see it as a problematical form limited and broader effects research can of conflict resolution. Resistance and plea- indicate how the most popular artifacts of sure cannot therefore be valorized per se as media culture have a wide range of effects. progressive elements of the appropriation of In my book Media Culture (1995), I studied cultural texts, but difficult discriminations some examples of popular cultural artifacts must be made as to whether the resistance, that clearly influenced behavior in audiences Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 18

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throughout the globe. Examples include of the 1980s (“Material Girl”). She also groups of kids and adults who imitated appeared in a time of dramatic image pro- Rambo in various forms of asocial behav- liferation, associated with MTV, fashion ior, or fans of Beavis and Butt-Head who fever, and intense marketing of products. started fires or tortured animals in the Madonna was one of the first MTV music modes practiced by the popular MTV video superstars who consciously crafted cartoon characters. Media effects are com- images to attract a mass audience. Her early plex and controversial and it is the merit of music videos were aimed at teenage girls cultural studies to make their study an (the Madonna wanna-be’s), but she soon important part of its agenda. incorporated black, Hispanic, and minority audiences with her images of interracial sex and multicultural “family” in her concerts. ◆ Toward a Cultural Madonna also appealed to gay and lesbian Studies Approach That audiences, as well as to feminist and aca- demic audiences, as her videos became Is Critical, Multicultural, more complex and political (i.e., “Like a and Multiperspectival Prayer,” “Express Yourself,” “Vogue,” and so on). Thus, Madonna’s popularity was in To avoid the one-sidedness of textual large part a function of her marketing analysis approaches, or audience and recep- strategies and her production of music tion studies, I propose that cultural studies videos and images that appealed to diverse itself be multiperspectival, getting at culture audiences. To conceptualize the meanings from the perspectives of political economy, and effects in her music, films, concerts, text analysis, and audience reception, as and public relations stunts requires that her outlined above. Textual analysis should uti- artifacts be interpreted within the context lize a multiplicity of perspectives and criti- of their production and reception, which cal methods, and audience reception involves discussion of MTV, the music studies should delineate the wide range of industry, concerts, marketing, and the pro- subject positions, or perspectives, through duction of images (see Kellner, 1995). which audiences appropriate culture. This Understanding Madonna’s popularity also requires a multicultural approach that sees requires focus on audiences, not just as the importance of analyzing the dimensions individuals but as members of specific of class, race and ethnicity, and gender and groups, such as teenage girls, who were sexual preference within the texts of media empowered in their struggles for individual culture, while studying as well their impact identity by Madonna, or gays, who were on how audiences read and interpret media also empowered by her incorporation of culture. alternative images of sexuality within pop- In addition, a critical cultural studies ular mainstream cultural artifacts. Yet attacks sexism, racism, or bias against spe- appraising the politics and effects of cific social groups (i.e., gays, intellectuals, Madonna also requires analysis of how her and so on), and criticizes texts that promote work might merely reproduce a consumer any kind of domination or oppression. As culture that defines identity in terms of an example of how considerations of pro- images and consumption. It would make an duction, textual analysis, and audience interesting project to examine how former readings can fruitfully intersect in cultural Madonna fans view the evolution and studies, let us reflect on the Madonna phe- recent incarnations of the superstar, such as nomenon. Madonna first appeared in the her second marriage and 2001 Drowned moment of Reaganism and embodied the World tour, as well as to examine how con- materialistic and consumer-oriented ethos temporary fans view Madonna in an age Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 19

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that embraces younger teen pop singers like 3. This model was adumbrated in Hall Britney Spears or Mariah Carey. (1980a) and Johnson (1986/1987) and guided In short, a cultural studies that is critical much of the early Birmingham work. Around and multicultural provides comprehen- the mid-1980s, however, the Birmingham group sive approaches to culture that can be began to increasingly neglect the production and applied to a wide variety of artifacts from political economy of culture (some believe that pornography to Madonna, from MTV to this was always a problem with their work) and TV news, or to specific events like the much of their studies became more academic, 2000 U.S. presidential election (Kellner, cut off from political struggle. I am thus trying 2001), or media representations of the to recapture the spirit of the early Birmingham 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States project, reconstructed for our contemporary and the U.S. response. Its comprehensive moment. For a fuller development of my con- perspectives encompass political economy, ception of cultural studies, see Kellner (1992, textual analysis, and audience research 1995, 2001). and provide critical and political perspec- 4. The term political economy calls atten- tives that enable individuals to dissect the tion to the fact that the production and distribu- meanings, messages, and effects of domi- tion of culture take place within a specific nant cultural forms. Cultural studies is economic system, constituted by relations thus part of a critical media pedagogy that between the state and economy. For instance, in enables individuals to resist media mani- the United States a capitalist economy dictates pulation and to increase their freedom and that cultural production is governed by laws of individuality. It can empower people to the market, but the democratic imperatives of gain sovereignty over their culture and to be the system mean that there is some regulation able to struggle for alternative cultures and of culture by the state. There are often tensions political change. Cultural studies is thus not within a given society concerning how many just another academic fad, but can be part activities should be governed by the imperatives of a struggle for a better society and a of the market, or economics, alone and how better life. much state regulation or intervention is desir- able, to assure a wider diversity of broadcast programming, for instance, or the prohibition of ◆ Notes phenomena agreed to be harmful, such as ciga- rette advertising or pornography (see Kellner, 1990). 1. For more information on British cultural 5. Cultural studies that have focused on studies, see Hall (1980b), Hall et al. (1980), audience reception include Brunsdon and Johnson (1986/1987), Fiske (1986), O’Conner Morley (1978), Radway (1983), Ang (1985, (1989), Turner (1990), Grossberg (1989), Agger 1996), Morley (1986), Fiske (1989a, 1989b), (1992), and the articles collected in Grossberg, Jenkins (1992), and Lewis (1992). Nelson, and Triechler (1992), During (1992, 1998), and Durham and Kellner (2000). I might note that the Frankfurt school also provided References ◆ much material for a critical cultural studies in their works on mass culture from the 1930s through the present; on the relation between the Agger, B. (1992). Cultural studies. London: Frankfurt school and British cultural studies, see Falmer. Kellner (1997). Ang, I. (1985). Watching Dallas. New York: 2. On the concept of ideology, see Kellner Methuen. (1978, 1979), Centre for Contemporary Ang, I. (1996). Living room wars: Rethinking Cultural Studies (1980), Kellner and Ryan media audiences for a postmodern world. (1988), and Thompson (1990). London and New York: Routledge. Dines01.qxd 7/26/02 2:28 PM Page 20

20 ◆ A Cultural Studies Approach

Brunsdon, C., & Morley, D. (1978). Everyday Kellner, D. (1978, November-December). television: “Nationwide.” London: British Ideology, Marxism, and advanced capital- Film Institute. ism. Socialist Review, 42, 37-65. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Kellner, D. (1979, May-June). TV, ideology, and (1980). On ideology. London: Hutchinson. emancipatory . Socialist de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday Review, 45, 13-53. life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kellner, D. (1990). Television and the crisis of Durham, M. G., & Kellner, D. (Eds.). (2001). democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview. Media and cultural studies: Keyworks. Kellner, D. (1992). The Persian Gulf TV war. Malden, MA, and Oxford, UK: Basil Boulder, CO: Westview. Blackwell. Kellner, D. (1995). Media culture. Cultural stud- During, S. (1992). Cultural studies. London and ies, identity, and politics between the mod- New York: Routledge. ern and the postmodern. London and New During, S. (1998). Cultural studies (2nd ed.). York: Routledge. London and New York: Routledge. Kellner, D. (1997). Critical theory and British Fiske, J. (1986). British cultural studies and tele- cultural studies: The missed articulation. In vision. In R. C. Allen (Ed.), Channels of J. McGuigan (Ed.), Cultural methodologies discourse (pp. 254-289). Chapel Hill: (pp. 12-41). London: Sage. University of North Carolina Press. Kellner, D. (2001). Grand theft 2000. Lanham, Fiske, J. (1987). Television culture. New York MD: Rowman & Littlefield. and London: Routledge. Kellner, D., & Ryan, M. (1988). Camera polit- Fiske, J. (1989a). Reading the popular. Boston: ica: The politics and ideology of contempo- Unwin Hyman. rary Hollywood film. Bloomington: Indiana Fiske, J. (1989b). Understanding popular University Press. culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Lewis, L. A. (1992). Adoring audience: Fan Fiske, J. (1993). Power plays, power works. culture and popular media. New York: London: Verso. Routledge. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison McChesney, R. (2000). Rich media, poor notebooks. New York: International. democracy: Communications politics in Grossberg, L. (1989). The formations of cultural dubious times. New York: New Press. studies: An American in Birmingham. Morley, D. (1986). Family television. London: Strategies, 22, 114-149. Comedia. Grossberg, L., Nelson, C., & Treichler, P. O’Connor, A. (1989, December). The problem (1992). Cultural studies. New York: of American cultural studies. Critical Studies Routledge. in Mass Communication, pp. 405-413. Hall, S. (1980a). Cultural studies and the Radway, J. (1983). Reading the romance. Centre: Some problematics and problems. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina In S. Hall et al., Culture, media, language Press. (pp. 15-47). London: Hutchinson. Staiger, J. (1992). Film, reception, and cultural Hall, S. (1980b). Encoding/decoding. In studies. Centennial Review, 26(1), 89-104. S. Hall et al., Culture, media, language Thompson, J. (1990). Ideology and modern cul- (pp. 128-138). London: Hutchinson. ture. Cambridge, UK, and Stanford, CA: Hall, S. et al. (1980). Culture, media, language. Polity Press and Stanford University Press. London: Hutchinson. Turner, G. (1990). British cultural studies: An Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual poachers. introduction. New York: Unwin Hyman. New York: Routledge. Johnson, R. (1986/1987). What is cultural studies anyway? Social Text, 16, 38-80.