PCUL1F92 Section 1: Thursday, October-20-11

** Watched video on the Durham Cathedral – relating to notions of cultural hegemony. The building was meant to reinforce the power of the monarchy over the citizens.

Moral Panics • Taking popular culture into their own hands. • Caused because people are acting outside of existing allowable social paradigms. • This requires (by society) some form of regulation (laws/bylaws) or commercialization to impose and control meaning. What the Power Bloc perceives as a threat to societal values and interests. Notion that you can regulate it and commercialize it in order to diffuse the threat. (it – being the movement that is causing a moral panic, e.g. punk) • Graffiti is a good example of this – it is both regulated against, and also ‘sold’ as art.

Graffiti? ** Image of cave art discovered in the south of France, depicted thousands of years ago. **

Why is this treated so reverentially, and graffiti so negatively? Are they both not simply drawings on the wall?

Exit Through the Gift Shop • Graffiti as part of mass culture. o In the movie, we also see that graffiti is something saleable, marketable, with economic value. o Society tries to explain moral panic (media coverage), modify and control these panics in order to restore the power balance. In essence, to allow the Power Bloc to have control again. • Banksy makes Mr. Brainwash look ridiculous. – Do we focus on style and cost? • Media coverage doesn’t cover the meaning of the art, but rather treats it as a “crazy, Banksy stunt” – how did he get that art there? • Is it at the expense of meaning? ** Replays opening of the Banksy film. Upbeat, ‘light’ music played accompanying images of street artists graffiti-ing and tagging public spaces. Music and editing present a positive slant on graffiti. He is using style against itself.

John Fiske • Notes the political aspects of resistance. Heterogeneity vs. homogeneity concerns define this kind of battle. PCUL1F92 Section 1: Thursday, October-20-11

• We have moments of freedom or escape from dominant hegemony. Cites the lives of surfers or video gamers who can “lose themselves” in their activities. • These just end up being individual moments.

Personal Resistance • Doesn’t lead to any form of social resistance/political upheaval. • Fiske suggests that it can potentially lead to wide resistance. • Even though systems – especially economic, work – try to keep us ‘in our place’. • We may find ‘escape’ in video games, but we still have to go through the economic system of buying the console, games, etc. • Fiske argues that how we use the texts does open up some possibility for change. In these small personal victories, there is an element of social change, which he refers to as progressive rather than radical. **Image of Lady Gaga** • Simply commercial or inspiration for personal empowerment? • On one hand, “Lady Gaga” is very much still a commercial product within the capitalist system. However… • As Fiske suggests for Madonna, she also reaches out to marginalized groups. Offers them a means of empowerment through her music. Offers a form of progressive change.

Semiotic Resistance • The power to make meaning. As the slide says “Power over making meaning” • Hegemony suggests that dominant culture creates and enforces its meaning, as well as our acceptance of them. • If we resist the meanings that are offered and create our own, or new ones, is it a means of asserting power? • Fiske refers to this a thinking differently, not just refusing the meaning, but also creating oppositional meaning. • Does Banksy’s film create an oppositional meaning – a new way of thinking about graffiti? PCUL1F92 Section 1: Thursday, October-20-11

**New slideshow presentation Textual Analysis in Popular Culture Aesthetics • Control over the nature of representation is part of the controls held by the power bloc. o If I get to show you the world and tell you this is how it is, that’s a lot of power. In this sense, news organizations have a lot of power. • Tied very much to economic control as fewer big companies control media globally. o e.g. Bell Globe Media owns CTV, TSN, a satellite system, internet system. • Control over representation is therefore that of the economically powerful. o Big corporations control how we see things, therefore they have a lot of economic power. o e.g. NBC was once owned by General Electric. • Of course, that doesn’t mean that’s the only group that can make anything.

YouTube • We have the opportunity to create media. o How will it reach the same wide audience that a major network will? • But this is often blocked by other controls. o It is becoming increasingly commercialized, not as folk as we would have hoped. • “Charlie Bit my Finger” once dominated the charts on YouTube, now commercialized music videos have immensely passed that. Discourses (of Representation) • Representation that allows for power – how the world is spoken for, how we are told about things. • At times it is literal in economic terms. o Netflix – offers $8/month movies, Internet providers (also TV providers) provide data cap so that it costs a lot if you watch too many Netflix movies. They want to control what you watch, not what Netflix is allowing you to watch. • Social and cultural ins haping how we see or hear or interact with the world.

** Clip of Nirvana song ** Is it just the music and lyrics we listen to? PCUL1F92 Section 1: Thursday, October-20-11

The King: “Come As You Are” – cover of a Nirvana song by the same name. Premise: If Elvis hadn’t didn’t die, and all of these other rockers did die, what would Elvis’ song be on their tribute album?

How do we make sense of this text? The meaning relies on more than just the structures of the song itself (music/lyrics) Cover songs force us to consider the clash between the original version and the cover version. PCUL1F92 Section 1: Thursday, October-20-11

Cultural Codes • John Fiske: “sense-making process” • We have to rely on our other cultural knowledge in order to make sense of this particular version of the Elvis song. • We need to know who Elvis is (how do we recognize him? what cues are we given?), Kurt Cobain, Elvis death myths and Elvis impersonators. • The album name “Graveland” – we need to recognize that a.) the concept album is a tribute album to dead rock stars b.) “Graveland” plays on the name of Elvis’ home “Graceland”. • kitsch we relate to Elvis versus supposed seriousness of Cobain. • Idea of a clash that Elvis and Cobain stand for two different things – this unexpected juxtaposition is amusing to us.

* * Images of Elvis and Kurt Cobain * * Icons of Youth Culture for different generations • Therefore, audiences need to bring their own knowledge and influences when interacting with the text. • This points to the complexity involved in the analytical process.

Encoding and Decoding Stuart Hall

Production } { Viewer’s Side } { Side

(Also in textbook)

Audiences • Are not free to make their own meaning. • Limits, based on how the original text is coded – “there is only so much we can get out of it”. “You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole” • Various levels of response identified by Hall. PCUL1F92 Section 1: Thursday, October-20-11

Continued…

Dominant Hegemonic Opppositional We accept the codes (Counter Hegemonic) offered by the text Negotiated Position We reject the given codes We acknowledge intent but offered by the text and possibly modify it to our need. create alternatives. e.g. “Lady Gaga’s music speaks Still requires an understanding to me, despite its of the Dominant Hegemonic commercialized aspect.” Codes.

How do we know how to respond to potentially problematic image in F**k S**t Stack? * * Image of Regi Watts with girl in bikini. * * If we simply listed the aspects of content, we would possibly end up with a very different perception.

We still respond to the dominant codes that are out there.

Dominant Codes • All responses still recognize that these exist. o A counter response must know what exactly they’re oppositional to. • We are interpolated as subjects o Essentially, our place as a subject is created for us – built in a way that imagines us listening or watching it. How we are to listen/interact with the text. • Hollywood film does this in creating an idealized, privileged subject position. • Editing, camera angles, types of shots – all of these work on our behalf to add meaning and allow us to seamlessly understand events. o If it controls how we see the world, is it then able to control how we think about the world? Aesthetics and Hegemony • Style then helps to reinforce the dominant values. • Along with the dominant ways of perceiving the world. o All of this works to enforce hegemony. • This does not apply to every cultural texts – some are meant to be open to interpretation. • Also more than one reading/use of a text that is possible. PCUL1F92 Section 1: Thursday, October-20-11 o e.g. James Bond – one hand you can do a feminist analysis and see something very problematic with the text. Equally, James Bond may be an exemplar of a movie that fits to genre conventions. PCUL1F92 Section 1: Thursday, October-20-11

Audience Responds to Existing Codes • “Gang Fight” – video parody of “Friday” by Rebecca Black.

Friday (by Rebecca Black) • “Gang Fight” requires us to recognize codes of pop music and video. • We need to know this in order to get the joke. • With this in mind, it allows for possible critique. • Does “Gang Fight” point out the banality and superficiality of the pop music industry? • It relies on those codes in order to convey its message.