5. Proposing a Multiplicity of Meanings

SHIRLEY R. STEINBERG

5. PROPOSING A MULTIPLICITY OF MEANINGS

Research Bricolage and Cultural Pedagogy

In the contemporary information environment of the twenty-first century-so aptly named hyperreality by Jean Baudrillard, knowledge takes on a different shape and quality. What appears to be commonsense dissipates slowly into the ether, as electronic media refract the world in ways that benefit the purveyors of power. We have never seen anything like this before, a new world – new forms of social regulation, new forms of disinformation, and new modes of hegemony and ideology. In such a cyber/mediated jungle new modes of research are absolutely necessary. This chapter proposes a form of critical cultural studies research that explores what I refer to as cultural pedagogy. Cultural pedagogy is the educational dimension of hyperreality, as learning migrates into new socio-cultural and political spaces. In these pages, I will focus my attention on my research with film, specifically on doing educational research with a bricolage of methods leading to tentative interpretations. Relating to the hyperreality of the times, I am asserting that the notion of one orthodox methodology cannot achieve a rich text and present a multiplicity of meanings: essential components in contemporary research.

CRITICAL CULTURAL STUDIES Observing that the study of culture can be fragmented between the disciplines, those who advocate cultural studies look at an interdisciplinary approach, that which transcends any one field. Additionally, a critical cultural studies does not commit a qualitative evaluation of culture by a definition of “high” or “low” culture, and culture may be the most ambiguous and complex term to define in the domain of the social sciences and humanities. Arthur Asa Berger (1995) estimates that anthropologists alone have offered more than one hundred definitions of culture. At the risk of great reductionism, I use the term in this chapter to signify behavior patterns socially acquired and transmitted by the use of social symbols such as language, art, science, morals, values, belief systems, politics, and many more. Educators are directly implicated in the analysis of culture (or should be) in that culture is transmitted by the processes of teaching and learning, whether formally (schools) or informally (by wider social processes, e.g., popular culture). This pedagogical dynamic within all culture is a central concern of this chapter. Indeed, culture is inseparable from the human ability to be acculturated, to learn, to employ language and symbols.

Culture, in this chapter, involves specifically its deployment in connection with the arts. This is where we move into the social territory traditionally referred to as elite or high culture, and popular culture. Individuals who attend symphonies, read the “great books,” enjoy the ballet, are steeped in elite culture – or as it is often phrased, “are cultured.” Referring to “low” culture, many scholars assert that the artifacts that grew within a local or regional movement are indeed low. Fitting neither into a category of low or high culture is mass culture. Cultural theorists do not agree on any one definition for each type of culture. However, Dwight MacDonald summarizes the difference between the three, and the propensity of all types of culture to become political: Folk art grew from below. It was a spontaneous, autochthonous expression of the people, shaped by themselves, pretty much without the benefit of High Culture, to suit their own needs. Mass Culture is imposed from above. It is fabricated by technicians hired by businessmen; its audiences are passive consumers, their participation limited to the choice between buying and not buying …. Folk Art was the people’s own institution, their private little garden walled off from the great formal park of their master’s High Culture. But Mass Culture breaks down the wall, integrating the masses into a debased form of High Culture and thus becoming an instrument of political domination. (MacDonald 1957, p. 60) Within critical cultural studies it is maintained that the boundary between elite/high culture and popular/low culture is blurring. Such occurrence holds important ramifications for those interested in pedagogy (Berger 1995). The study of culture, for the purpose of this chapter, is not to delineate the “level” or “type” of culture invoked by popular films, but to discuss the pedagogical, sociological and political themes within the films. Consequently, a debate as to the “quality” of popular culture or its place in the light of elite culture will not be undertaken. I will use the term popular culture to define what is readily available to the public as a form of enjoyment and consumption. Popular culture defies easy definition. It can be defined as the culture of ordinary people – TV shows, movies, records, radio, foods, fashions, magazines, and other artifacts that figure in our everyday lives (Berger 1995). Often analysts maintain that such artifacts are mass-mediated and consumed by large numbers of individuals on a continuing basis. Such phenomena are often viewed condescendingly by academicians as unworthy of scholarly analysis. As addressed in this chapter, the aesthetic dynamics of popular culture are not the focus; rather the social, political, and pedagogical messages contained in popular culture and their effects are viewed as some of the most important influences in the contemporary era. In this context the study of popular culture is connected with the sociology of everyday life and the interaction and interconnection of this micro- domain with macro-socio-political and structural forces. Thus, the popular domain – as ambiguous and ever-shifting as it may be – takes on unprecedented importance in the electronically-saturated contemporary era.

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