How does the concept of ‘negotiation’ as developed by Hall, Storey and Gledhill alter our analysis of the politics of popular culture? What aspects do you find particularly useful or what are the limitations? And how might it help us understand some of the films we’ve viewed?
Theories of Popular Culture
Class blog for AMST0355, Spring 09, Middlebury College
Hall’s and Gledhill’s arguments about negotiation change our understanding of popular culture because these theorists argue that popular culture can exist as a site of resistance of dominant ideology. A degree of this resistance occurs through negotiation. Hall talks about negotiation as one of the ways television messages can be decoded. In this process, a viewer or consumer accepts the legitimacy of the dominant encodings while incorporating his or her own definitions on a local or personal level.
Gledhill argues that negotiation is possible through institutions, texts and audiences. She explains that a product may be used, consumed or interpreted by an audience differently than the institution that created it originally intended. Every text can have multiple meanings. In terms of negotiation and identity within media culture, Gledhill explains that identities in the media can be unrealistically rigid, lacking the actual contradictions of human lives. Gledhill argues that identities in the media should be created through socioeconomic, cultural and linguistic “struggle” (Storey, Reader, page 118). This word “struggle” really evokes the essence of negotiation to me. Even observing shows like Will & Grace, which appear subversive and novel (especially in their early years), one can see that the identities of the gay lead males are reduced to typified constructions for the purpose of consumption. Their identities are relatable for all viewers and, therefore, easy to consume. Gledhill argues that identities in the media should be more complicated than this, that there should be more apparent negotiation taking place.
As for the films we have watched, I thought about negotiation with respect to Tootsie, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Die Hard. Though Tootsie reinforces the dominant ideas of gender, as we discussed in class, it is possible to view the film as a subversion of these ideas. In my last response I chose to believe that Michael Dorsey’s career as a woman taught him to have more respect for women, though the film really does more to assert that a man is more qualified for a woman’s job than a woman is. Thinking about It’s a Wonderful Life, a viewer can perceive that the film does not in fact promote capitalism, as represented by Mr. Potter, but embraces a more socialist approach of concentration on the family and the community. After watching Die Hard, the dominant ideology promoted by the film is that a strong, white male is needed to save the world. But a negotiated reading suggested that a common, everyday man, epitomized by the laid back and unsophisticated John McClane, is able to be a hero. Interpretations in these ways are examples of how audiences negotiate with texts of popular culture.
Negotiation enhances our understanding of popular culture in that it exposes us to the struggle taking place within a particular work. Linked to the concept of hegemony in which both consent and force are involved, negotiation involves “an ongoing process of give and take” (114). Negotiation consists of the point of contact between differing sides. Within a cultural text, meaning is negotiated through different frames. Negotiation is an effective means of cultural analysis for it provides room for various subjectivities and identities. This is particularly important in terms of audiences may alter subjectivities of a text as they relate them to their social situations (118). Thus, it is critical that there are various identifications within a text. In addition, negotiation provides the opportunity for a younger generation to revise dominant readings and come up with their own alternative ones.
A limitation of negotiation is one that is similar to an argument against hegemony. Similar to the idea that no progress can actually be made with small reforms but no revolution, one may argue that negotiation is not productive. For even if there is a shift with regards to domination, this movement will always be unequal. That being said, is it really a site of struggle if the dominant group is always able to maintain its dominance?
Negotiation helps us to better understand Die Hard because it shows various sites of negotiation. For example, it demonstrates the workplace as a site of struggle in which women are gaining power. Holly is a successful business women that is respected and looked up to even by male coworkers. She has the next highest position under the president of the company. Although she still is under a man, her high-level position is a commentary on the progress in terms of opportunities and successes for women in the workforce. In addition, her taking the leadership position after her boss is killed could suggest the next step for women. Her willingness to tell her requests to Hans shows that she is fully capable of having the highest position of leadership.
Very true, but let’s not forget the final scene when the Sarg finally meets McClean and his wife. Remember what the sarg says to Holly – “you’ve got a good man there, you take care of him. Further more, when John introduces her as Holly Genero, she makes a point of mentioning that she has taken back her husband’s last name. So while Gledhill would probably see this text as “negotiating a space within, and sometimes resists, patriarchal domination,” (Reader, 121) the traditional role of a woman as subordinate to her husband is reinforced. After her husband does what she cannot – that is, be brave and take out the strong, scary men with guns – she essentially allows herself to be dominated by her husband.
Man, isn’t Die Hard great? There’s one point where I think there’s about a minute of almost uninterrupted explosions, it’s fantastic! But it always makes me want to watch something more ridiculous, which usually ends up to be True Lies and then I move on to Snakes on a Plane and then I get the same feeling you get after eating too much junk food…
Anyway, on to negotiation. I really like Halls work, it seems almost post-structuralist with the idea that signs, or the signifier part of signs (like the word ‘cow’), produce more signifiers (the image of a cow). Its more complicated than some of the earlier semiology we looked at and I like this, it relates so well to modern medium such as television.
I also like how he then goes on to talk about negotiation in relation to hegemony and audience readings. I love the idea that once something has been made it has an inherent meaning but that meaning isn’t fixed and it is ultimately the viewer who can decide on their own meaning, it looks like Hall is hinting at populism. He talks about how the reader is still influenced by the dominant ideology, an idea that I can see the relevance of, but personally could live without (in my idealistic world anway).
Die Hard enforces patriarchal structure, it also invokes the importance of the nuclear family, foreign as other and threatening, and the stereotype of the black fool. All of which I don’t like very much, but the film also has this great fight the system, mess with authority attitude where anyone who has higher status than McClane within the workforce is incompetent thus unlikable, and I like that! Die Hard acknowledges power structures within American law enforcement (“Authorization? How about the United States fucking government? Lose the grid, or you lose your job”) but also allows for the reader to negotiate with this power structure and creates a ‘people’s hero’ and invokes the American myth of hero as individual; a white man operating in his own system.
Also as oppositional readings go, Hall reminded me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAeqRWNM6xk
Hall says that the negotiated position both acknowledges the hegemonic “dominant definitions of events” but leaves room for situational exceptions. As a result, we end up looking for both reinforcement of and resistance to dominant ideology in texts, which, as Hall says, is “shot through with contradictions.”
Die Hard is riddled with these contradictions, especially regarding topics that have been mentioned above. For the film’s portrayal of femininity, as Alana notes, Holly is portrayed as a powerful, successful business woman; but, as Kyle points out, she is ultimately subordinate to her white male hero husband. There are several other instances of reinforcing the dominant patriarchal view of women – in the airplane and in the airport when John McClane blatantly stares at two women. The camera follows his eyeline, reinforcing male dominance through what Gledhill calls the male “gaze.”
Let’s hop in the time machine and travel back to the year DIE HARD is released, 1988. Microsoft has recently released its 2nd version of the O.S. Windows, Macintosh just released its 2nd PC (Mac Plus. Personal computing is on the rise and computer technology are becoming more and more commonplace in people’s lives.
Gledhill writes, “Pop culture draws on a melodramatic framework…at the same time such conflicts have power only on the premise of a recognizable, socially constructed world.” Though DIE HARD is not a sci-fi film or one that really focuses on technology, the producers are clearly aware of the need to stay relevant with the times.
Take for example the computer controlled security system – all the locks in the building can be controlled remotely through a tiny computer. The vault is no longer protected just by traditional metal locks, but by some sort of computer controlled, electro-magnetic shield. My favorite example is the touch-screen computer that houses the building’s directory. McClean remarks how “That’s a cute little toy,” to which the guard cheekishly responds, “Yeah, it’ll even wipe for you.” For me the attitude towards technology in the film seems like it would be fairly consistent with the attitude in the real world context of the time. That is to say, there doesn’t seem to any limit on how far technology can go and what it can do. However, people are still skeptical or, rather, perhaps reluctant to give up the old and accept the new. McClean sort of strikes me as one of those guys who likes to keep it old school – the kind of guy who would rather just talk face to face than communicate through a computer. So not only does this text conform to the “ever-shifting criteria of relevance and credibility” (121) of the late 80s, but it also offers several sides or attitudes towards computers. As Gledhill puts it, “a range of positions of identification may exist.” (121)
While I speak in regards to the computer and technology, the instances in which this text tries to be contemporary as well as present a variety positions of identification are many (the role of women in society, role of blacks in society, foreign immigrants – such as the housemaid – and even sexuality, just to name a few).
Like Sarah, I find Hall’s framework regarding encoding and decoding especially useful in approaching Tootsie, for I think it fairly obvious that the producers intended one interpretation of the text even though there exist many potential readings. Hall breaks down the process of communication between the producers and consumers into five stages – the most important of which for the purpose of this discussion being “encoding” and “decoding.” The former refers to the process wherein the authors infuse their texts with signs, symbols, and contextual detail meant to invoke certain interpretations and values; the latter indicates the consumers’ attempts at deciphering and articulating that intended meaning, at placing the symbols in their own relative contexts. Unlike strictly Marxist conceptions of Pop culture – which would allege the passive role the masses have in receiving cultural texts – Hall’s notion of encoding/decoding leave room for consumers to develop independent opinions regarding the text’s actual meaning. For example, in the context of Tootsie, we have what Hall terms the dominant hegemonic narrative, the negotiated position, and the oppositional code. The first – dominant hegemonic narrative – is what the authors intend the text to mean; and when the consumer interprets the text as intended, they overlap with the authors. For Tootsie, this would occur if the audience interpreted the text as attempting to redefine the boundaries between masculinity and femininity, and that true (heterosexual) love will surmount all obstacles while making everyone a better person. The second – negotiated position – occurs when the consumer’s perception does not line up with the authors, though there still exists some overlap. A negotiated position on Tootsie may be acknowledging that while Michael Dorsey’s character ends up solidifying gender stereotypes in his purported attempt to transcend them, his was ultimately a worthwhile endeavor from which everyone benefited. We see the opposition code when the consumer completely misreads the authors intended message. An example of this vis-à-vis Tootsie would be one similar (or more extreme) to the discussion we had in class – that in assuming a female persona, Michael actually perpetuates patriarchy by insinuating that men are inherently more talented then women, etc..
After reading Gledhill, what I find most interesting about negotiation is her take on ‘Negotiation and Textual Criticism.’ She states that the “critical act is not finished with the reading or evaluation of a text. It generates new cycles of meaning production and negotiation” such as “critical responses.” She further adds that “in this way, traditions are broken and remade.” (119) It’s amazing how every movie I’ve seen for class since coming to Middlebury has transformed from what I first perceived as simple mainstream entertainment to texts worthy of sophisticated analysis. Different viewings of many films, along with discussions following the films, have caused me to “provoke social negotiation of meanings, definitions and identities.” I watch these films with the same enjoyment, but I look at them in a new light.
Die Hard, for example, was always a popcorn-filled blockbuster of an action movie for me. For some theorists of popular culture, like Arnold, it could be considered low-brow entertainment with all the violence and language. It could be considered something passively consumed, more or less. And yet, thanks to negotiation, such a text has even deeper meaning. After reading much of the blog postings, I can tell that one example of this deeper meaning is the issue of the struggle between feminism and dominant male patriarchal ideology, seen with Holly McClane, in her representation as a successful business woman not yet strong enough to take on male terrorists.
Therefore, through critical analysis and negotiation, films and other textual arts can go from something uninteresting to something significant.