In his book, Will Brooker offers a number of ways to explore how Star Wars matters in the lives of fans. What methods did he use that struck you as particularly insightful? What theoretical models do you feel motivate his study and how? And what does this book teach us beyond the case study of Star Wars?
(First, check out this article for a parody extension of the “new masculinity” of Obama from The Onion.)
Barbie Nation, The Simpsons, Superstar, and Spigel’s article all offer examples of Barbie as a site of cultural negotiation. What links do you see between these cultural practices and the theoretical approaches we’ve explored this semester? How do your own experiences with Barbie fit into these theoretical models? (Everyone has a Barbie story – share it!)
One of the major influences on cultural studies has been feminist theory, foregrounding how gender operates within popular culture, especially concerning audience practices. What key insights come from this work (as summarized by Storey and excerpted in our Reader) that strike you as particularly useful? Choose one of the articles in the reader and highlight what arguments this article brings to the study of popular culture that might augment or shift what we’ve discussed thus far.
What insights does Bakthin’s concept of the carnivalesque provide to help better understand Animal House and its cultural functions? What do you see as the politics of such seemingly “transgressive” examples of popular culture? How might this approach offer different perspectives than psychoanalysis?
How do psychoanalytic theories, as offered by Freud, Lacan, and Zizek, add to our understanding of popular culture? Do you see any of their arguments contributing new insights into films or videos we’ve viewed this semester? What drawbacks are there to this mode of theory?
Today’s readings apply Hall’s encoding/decoding model to popular culture texts and their viewers. How do you see these examples of “applied theory” helping explain this approach to cultural studies? How does Fiske & Dawson account of the Die Hard and its reception fit with your own take on the film?
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?
Bennett and Hall offer a revision of ideological approaches to popular culture as inspired by the writings of Gramsci and the concept of hegemony. What new perspectives strike you as most interesting from these discussions, and how might they offer answers to the social role of popular culture? How do these ideas fit with the debates over ideology we discussed in Tuesday’s class? Do other questions linger from their accounts?
Althusser offers a revision of Marx’s theory of ideology. What aspects of Althusser’s theory do you fine particularly useful to understanding popular culture, and what aspects remain unclear? How might such ideas augment concepts argued by Adorno and the Frankfurt School? And how do these various approaches resonate in Wood and Ray’s takes on It’s a Wonderful Life or your own thoughts on Tootsie?
Today’s readings explore the concept of the relationship between economics and culture as developed through Marxist theory. What facets of cultural & social analysis from Marx and Adorno do you find most useful for studying popular culture? And how might this mode of Marxist critique fit within the Culture & Civilization vs. Culturalism debates?