Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between The
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Media Culture Media Culture develops methods and analyses of contemporary film, television, music, and other artifacts to discern their nature and effects. The book argues that media culture is now the dominant form of culture which socializes us and provides materials for identity in terms of both social reproduction and change. Through studies of Reagan and Rambo, horror films and youth films, rap music and African- American culture, Madonna, fashion, television news and entertainment, MTV, Beavis and Butt-Head, the Gulf War as cultural text, cyberpunk fiction and postmodern theory, Kellner provides a series of lively studies that both illuminate contemporary culture and provide methods of analysis and critique. Many people today talk about cultural studies, but Kellner actually does it, carrying through a unique mixture of theoretical analysis and concrete discussions of some of the most popular and influential forms of contemporary media culture. Criticizing social context, political struggle, and the system of cultural production, Kellner develops a multidimensional approach to cultural studies that broadens the field and opens it to a variety of disciplines. He also provides new approaches to the vexed question of the effects of culture and offers new perspectives for cultural studies. Anyone interested in the nature and effects of contemporary society and culture should read this book. Kellner argues that we are in a state of transition between the modern era and a new postmodern era and that media culture offers a privileged field of study and one that is vital if we are to grasp the full import of the changes currently shaking us. Douglas Kellner is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and author (with Michael Ryan) of Camera Politica: The politics and ideology of Hollywood films and (with Steven Best) of Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. Kellner has also published Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism; Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity; Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond; Television and the Crisis of Democracy; The Persian Gulf TV War. He has edited Jameson/Marxism/Critique and Baudrillard: A Critical Reader and co-edited (with Stephen Bronner) Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Media Culture Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern Douglas Kellner London and New York First published 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 1995 Douglas Kellner All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-203-20580-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-26667-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-10569-2 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-10570-6 (pbk) FOR THE VELVET HAMMER Contents INTRODUCTION 1 Media culture and society 2 Cultural studies and social theory 8 Acknowledgements 10 Part I Theory/context/methods 1 THEORY WARS AND CULTURAL STUDIES 15 Theory wars 20 Approaches to cultural studies 27 The Frankfurt School 28 British cultural studies and its legacy 31 A postmodern cultural studies? 43 Notes 49 2 MEDIA CULTURE, POLITICS, AND IDEOLOGY: FROM REAGAN TO RAMBO 55 Ideology and media culture: critical methods 57 Rambo and Reagan 62 Top Gun: Reaganite wet dream 75 To the Gulf War! 83 Notes 89 3 FOR A CULTURAL STUDIES THAT IS CRITICAL, MULTICULTURAL, AND MULTIPERSPECTIVAL 93 For a critical multiculturalism 94 Toward a multiperspectival cultural studies 98 Toward a contextual cultural studies 101 Ideology and utopia 108 Hegemony, counterhegemony, and deconstruction 112 Platoon: a diagnostic critique 117 Notes 122 vii viii Contents Part II Diagnostic critique and cultural studies 4 SOCIAL ANXIETY, CLASS, AND DISAFFECTED YOUTH 125 Poltergeists, gender, and class in the Age of Reagan and Bush 125 Diagnostic critique: from Poltergeist to Slackers and Beavis and 138 Butt-Head Notes 152 5 BLACK VOICES FROM SPIKE LEE TO RAP 157 The films of Spike Lee 157 Rap and black radical discourse 174 Resistance, counterhegemony, and everyday life 188 Notes 192 6 READING THE GULF WAR: 198 PRODUCTION/TEXT/RECEPTION Disinformation and the production of news 199 The media propaganda war 210 Warrior nation 214 Some concluding reflections 223 Notes 226 Part III Media culture/identities/politics 7 TELEVISION, ADVERTISING, AND THE CONSTRUCTION 231 OF POSTMODERN IDENTITIES Identity in postmodern theory 233 Advertising images 247 Situating the postmodern 255 Notes 260 8 MADONNA, FASHION, AND IMAGE 263 Fashion and identity 264 The Madonna phenomenon 266 Madonna between the modern and the postmodern 285 Notes 292 9 MAPPING THE PRESENT FROM THE FUTURE: FROM 297 BAUDRILLARD TO CYBERPUNK From Baudrillard to cyberpunk 299 Neuromancer and the Baudrillardian vision 305 Mapping the future; illuminating the present 314 Literature, social theory, and politics 323 Notes 327 CONCLUSION: FROM THE FUTURE BACK TO THE PRESENT 331 Critical media pedagogy 335 Media and cultural activism 336 Contents ix Media and cultural politics 337 Notes 340 References 342 Index 352 Introduction A media culture has emerged in which images, sounds, and spectacles help produce the fabric of everyday life, dominating leisure time, shaping political views and social behavior, and providing the materials out of which people forge their very identities. Radio, television, film, and the other products of the culture industries provide the models of what it means to be male or female, successful or a failure, powerful or powerless. Media culture also provides the materials out of which many people construct their sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality, of “us” and “them.” Media culture helps shape the prevalent view of the world and deepest values: it defines what is considered good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. Media stories and images provide the symbols, myths, and resources which help constitute a common culture for the majority of individuals in many parts of the world today. Media culture provides the materials to create identities whereby individuals insert themselves into contemporary techno-capitalist socieities and which is producing a new form of global culture. Media culture consists of systems of radio and the reproduction of sound (albums, cassettes, CDs, and their instruments of dissemination such as radios, cassette recorders, and so on); of film and its modes of distribution (theatrical playing, video-cassette rental, TV showings); of print media ranging from newspapers to magazines; and to the system of television which stands at the center of media culture. Media culture is a culture of the image and often deploys sight and sound. The various media—radio, film, television, music, and print media such as magazines, newspapers, and comic books—privilege either sight or sound, or mix the two senses, playing as well on a broad range of emotions, feelings, and ideas. Media culture is industrial culture, organized on the model of mass production and is produced for a mass audience according to types (genres), following conventional formulas, codes, and rules. It is thus a form of commercial culture and its products are commodities that attempt to attract private profit produced by giant corporations interested in the accumulation of capital. Media culture aims at a large audience, thus it must resonate to current themes and concerns, and is highly topical, providing hieroglyphics of contemporary social life. But media culture is also a high-tech culture, deploying the most advanced technologies. It is a vibrant sector of the economy, one of the most profitable 1 2 Introduction sectors and one that is attaining global prominence. Media culture is thus a form of techno-culture that merges culture and technology in new forms and configurations, producing new types of societies in which media and technology become organizing principles. Media culture spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence, and who is not. They dramatize and legitimate the power of the forces that be and demonstrate to the powerless that if they fail to conform, they risk incarceration or death. For those immersed from cradle to grave in a media and consumer society, it is therefore important to learn how to understand, interpret, and criticize its meanings and messages. In a contemporary media culture, the dominant media of information and entertainment 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. Consequently, the gaining of critical media literacy is an important resource for individuals and citizens in learning how to cope with this seductive cultural environment. Learning how to read, criticize, and resist media manipulation can help individuals empower themselves in relation to dominant media and culture. It can enhance individual sovereignty vis-à-vis media culture and give individuals more power over their cultural environment and the necessary literacy to produce new forms of culture. MEDIA CULTURE AND SOCIETY The following studies help provide an understanding of media culture and suggest ways that it can be understood, used, and appreciated. I want to provide each reader with resources to learn to study, analyze, interpret, and criticize the texts of media culture and to appraise their effects.