After reading Immigration and Popular Culture: An Introduction I have a million thoughts about how America, media, popular culture and immigrants intersect. It’s like going on wikipedia – you have one impetus or thought prompting you to look something up and it usually leads you on a wild goose chase of knowledge-seeking. It’s hard not to click on those devious little links even though you may want to finish the article you started with! I find that especially in the last few years of being in grad school and doing a lot of reading (good reading) layers start to appear. By that I mean that last week I was asked to read Thoreau and Emerson for a class on democracy, community, and learning. It just so happened that it was brought up that Thoreau was a major influence on Ghandi. Now this week I read about that same connection in a piece about eastern culture’s relationship to America. Crazy.
We can learn about a decade say-- the 60’s from the point of view of the Vietnam war, counter-culture, the economy, immigration, media, etc. and the list goes on and on. Each account would be unique and interesting, but it’s the connections, how each part of culture influences the other that I find so fascinating.
In a sort of “stream of consciousness” fashion I want to revisit 3 chapters from Immigration and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Here are the thoughts, questions, ideas that I had…
The first chapter about Jews and the masks they wore in the 1930's gangster films was something new to me. I must admit being of Scandinavian descent and living primarily in the Midwest, connections to the idea of the mob or gangsters is limited to “The Godfather.” My idea of a gangster was Italian or Sicilian. Edward G. Robinson was Edward G. Robinson not Emmanuel Goldberg. It’s one of those revelations that makes me wonder how much of my “picture” of popular culture is untrue. My guess is a lot of it! This is disappointing and daunting at the same time, because if I want to know the truth I’ll always need to dig deeper. Thoreau talked about the mind being an organ to “burrow” with so I guess this makes sense. I was struck by the idea that even then journalists were reporting on gangster-life because of America’s interest in the gangster movies. Entertainment and news were already intertwining in ways setting up the “E! Channel” long ago. Even our local news today will report on a homicide and the latest antics of Brittany Spears in the same breath.
The gangster movies proved to be a way for Jews trying to find an identity in America to play out feelings about masculinity and fitting in through performance. The gangsters always "got it" in the end even though for many they seemed to be heroic figures. I found it fascinating that when movie-goers were asked about the gangsters dying, many felt the on-screen death “ saved them from the “dangerous” parts of their own fantasy.”
The chapter on Puerto Rican migration in relationship to Bernstein’s West Side Story gave me the most pause to think. I’ve played the score for West Side Story on a number of occasions. Bernstein is one of my favorite composers and his music was brilliant in the way it blended into films. I’m glad I’ve got the music because I can’t watch the movie the same away again! It’s really unfortunate that the opportunity to do ground-breaking work regarding the relationships between Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and Whites was right there and the creators of West Side Story chose to ignore them. I admit even seeing it as a young person I thought that no one really looked Puerto Rican and I knew Natalie Wood wasn’t even close! The make-up is so exaggerated and offensive. I never thought about the fact that the Jets we’re portrayed as a “family” and had their own song while the Sharks came off menacing and unruly. LAME. I think there’s somewhat of a lamenting process because I can’t ever love watching it again. I can’t go back to the naïve version I’ve known. However, I think part of becoming a self-aware, productive, enlightened member of society means facing the injustices and untruths that are part of our cultural history. It’s sad how West Side Story almost single-handedly made Puerto Rican youth synonymous with danger. The “love can conquer all” theme really sounds like crap after understanding the real story.
Although it wasn’t quite as engaging to me as the first two chapters I enjoyed “Monterey 1967: The Hippies meet Ravi Shankar.” My father-in-law came from India (because of fleeing Pakistan earlier) in the late 60’s. He met my mother-in-law in Champagne-Urbana while she was taking an East Asian studies course. This was right after she decided not to take her final vows as a nun. I’ve seen pictures of their very 1970’s-looking wedding with him in an American suit and she in a full sari. I never thought a lot of that picture until now and what was happening in the world at the time.
Knowing what I know about the sitar, it’s funny to me that American rockers wanted to just “pick it up” as a new instrument. Not only is it an incredibly complicated instrument to learn, but the history behind ragas and how they are constructed is so important and embedded in East Indian culture. I think it’s impossible to just extract a piece of music out of thousands of years of history and religion, but America is good at trying to do that to most cultures. “The idea that you could just pick up the sitar and play it was anathema to Shankar.” Along with music, all aspects of East Indian culture were being sucked in by Americans and spit out into meaningless commercial junk. “My karma ran over your dogma” may be the best example of how much it’s possible for Americans to dumb down a culture. Gita Mehta wrote, “America has taken our most complicated philosophical concepts as part of its everyday slang.” I guess why go through the trouble to learn about and experience the beauty and mystery of Hinduism, Buddhism, and East Indian philosophy when you can wear some dumb ass t-shirt?
My only real conclusion after digging in to this material is that I want to read more. For me, books like this open up and break apart existing (often incorrect) notions I’ve held about the past. I am surprised at how well the pop culture lens allows us to look critically at history.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Cultural Capital, Mass Culture & Opportunity
Questions about meaning and value when it comes to culture can be especially difficult to answer these days. What one may view as mass or low culture another may see as avant-garde high culture. Because we live in a world where technology has made communication so fast and knowledge so accessible, we are bombarded with new images and ideas about culture everyday.
In the past, high culture was a more universal concept. Everyone “knew” it included Shakespeare, Mozart, and Rembrandt. People that were familiar with these pieces of high culture held the cultural capital of the time. The flow of ideas about what constituted high culture was a much slower process and the “canon” of culture was constructed over time. At a certain point around the time when television was becoming increasingly popular a sort of new emerging mass-culture began. In all reality there’s probably always been a mass-culture, but sociologists started to take notice and coin some of the phrases we’re still using today to talk about culture. At the time (1950’s) for authors like Dwight Macdonald it seemed almost a moral issue. In his book, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, Macdonald considers mass culture to be vulgar and insipid. In his mind, there are only two cultures and the high one is the one to aspire to. “Mass culture began as, and to some extent still is, a parasitic, a cancerous growth on High Culture” (Macdonald, p. 23). Macdonald tells us what makes up mass culture – comic books, television, and any cheaply-made product, to let us know what is bad. The theory seems to be that because of its “mass-ness” it is evil. He calls the people who make products in order to profit form the masses- “The Lords of kitsch.” His arguments can feel stuffy and overly dramatic at times, “There is slowly emerging a tepid, Middlebrow Culture that threatens to engulf everything in its spreading ooze”(Macdonald, p. 27), however I would argue his real fear is our loss of integrity around expectations. He is concerned with “…the passivity of the public itself, which doesn’t insist on better Mass Cultural products”(Macdonald, p. 34). He goes on to say:
The Lords of kitsch sell culture to the masses. It is a debased trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure, tragedy) and also the simple, spontaneous pleasures, since realities would be too real and the pleasures to lively to induce what Mr. Seldes calls ‘the mood of consent’ i.e. a narcotized acceptance of Mass Culture and of the commodities it sells as a substitute for the unsettling and unpredictable (hence unsaleable) joy, tragedy, wit, change, originality, and beauty of real life. The masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial and comfortable cultural products. Which came first, the chicken or the egg, the mass demand or its satisfaction (and further stimulation) is a question as academic as it is unanswerable. The engine is reciprocating and shows no signs of running down.
It would be hard to argue that his prediction has not come true, but what do we do with it?
Today we have an opportunity to look at mass-culture differently. We have the opportunity to critique each piece of popular culture as is. We can create a framework that considers “high” and “low” all in the same space without sweeping generalizations. We don’t have to box ourselves into thinking like “Shakespeare is good” and “Myspace is bad.” We can challenge ourselves to think about what might be helpful to learning and education in both.
I recognize that many people would be uncomfortable with the idea of judging Shakespeare and Myspace in the same space, but if we can create a framework with integrity why not? I would argue that we as educators have an exciting open road ahead of us because we’re in a place and time where all culture and learning is fair game.
In the past, high culture was a more universal concept. Everyone “knew” it included Shakespeare, Mozart, and Rembrandt. People that were familiar with these pieces of high culture held the cultural capital of the time. The flow of ideas about what constituted high culture was a much slower process and the “canon” of culture was constructed over time. At a certain point around the time when television was becoming increasingly popular a sort of new emerging mass-culture began. In all reality there’s probably always been a mass-culture, but sociologists started to take notice and coin some of the phrases we’re still using today to talk about culture. At the time (1950’s) for authors like Dwight Macdonald it seemed almost a moral issue. In his book, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, Macdonald considers mass culture to be vulgar and insipid. In his mind, there are only two cultures and the high one is the one to aspire to. “Mass culture began as, and to some extent still is, a parasitic, a cancerous growth on High Culture” (Macdonald, p. 23). Macdonald tells us what makes up mass culture – comic books, television, and any cheaply-made product, to let us know what is bad. The theory seems to be that because of its “mass-ness” it is evil. He calls the people who make products in order to profit form the masses- “The Lords of kitsch.” His arguments can feel stuffy and overly dramatic at times, “There is slowly emerging a tepid, Middlebrow Culture that threatens to engulf everything in its spreading ooze”(Macdonald, p. 27), however I would argue his real fear is our loss of integrity around expectations. He is concerned with “…the passivity of the public itself, which doesn’t insist on better Mass Cultural products”(Macdonald, p. 34). He goes on to say:
The Lords of kitsch sell culture to the masses. It is a debased trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure, tragedy) and also the simple, spontaneous pleasures, since realities would be too real and the pleasures to lively to induce what Mr. Seldes calls ‘the mood of consent’ i.e. a narcotized acceptance of Mass Culture and of the commodities it sells as a substitute for the unsettling and unpredictable (hence unsaleable) joy, tragedy, wit, change, originality, and beauty of real life. The masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial and comfortable cultural products. Which came first, the chicken or the egg, the mass demand or its satisfaction (and further stimulation) is a question as academic as it is unanswerable. The engine is reciprocating and shows no signs of running down.
It would be hard to argue that his prediction has not come true, but what do we do with it?
Today we have an opportunity to look at mass-culture differently. We have the opportunity to critique each piece of popular culture as is. We can create a framework that considers “high” and “low” all in the same space without sweeping generalizations. We don’t have to box ourselves into thinking like “Shakespeare is good” and “Myspace is bad.” We can challenge ourselves to think about what might be helpful to learning and education in both.
I recognize that many people would be uncomfortable with the idea of judging Shakespeare and Myspace in the same space, but if we can create a framework with integrity why not? I would argue that we as educators have an exciting open road ahead of us because we’re in a place and time where all culture and learning is fair game.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Barbies, Babes, Objects and Art
Reading Lynn Spiegel's "Barbies without Ken: Femininity, Feminism, and the Art-Culture System" from Welcome to the Dreamhouse challenged many notions I've held about Barbie or those who collect Barbies. Coupled with watching three videos by Fiona Apple, Avril Lavigne, and Lil' Kim my notions about femininty, feminism, and female empowerment we challenged further.
Speigel has a nice way of setting up her ideas without moralizing too much or spending time stereotyping so that she can get at the "...more interesting problems regarding the relationship between object relationships and social relationships in postmodern culture"(318). She is able to think about Barbie from feminine and feminsit points of view. Deconstructing this piece would be a long endeavor, but what I gained from a first reading is that people that collect Barbies, use Barbie's image to create art or craft clothes, houses etc. for Barbie have complex relationships to the object. Women who were "traditionally disempowered in the sphere of production" were able to have some power in the economy through their creative endeavors. If your idea of feminism is anti-housewife then housewives finding creative ways to be part of the economy through re-imagining craft might change your perception.
Barbie has an interesting combination of being "wholesome" yet sexual in nature. Her body proportions are rather unhuman yet have set a standard to which many women have compared themsleves to since her inception. Thinking about this wholesome/sexual combination leads me to the three videos I mentioned earlier. In Fiona Apple's "Criminal" she leads us on a dreamy journey through a 70's porn-esque basement with her lyrics of "being a bad bad girl" are juxtaposed with her being watched. This sort of girlish tease with sexual images is almost hard to reconcile and one almost feels dirty after watching it. Oddly, Lil' Kim's "How Many Licks?" is blatantly sexual, yet I didn't feel bad for watching it. As risque as someone might see this video you get the feeling she is in charge for better or worse. Now is she really in charge in an MTV market that plays on super sexual videos exploiting women? It would be interesting to know how much financial control Kim has over her music. Finally Lavigne's "My Happy Ending" didn't really appeal or offend on any level, but that's why I probably found it the most uninteresting piece to watch. Girl and Boy happy. Girl gets mad. Girl sad. Boy apparently didn't mean anything. No happy ending. Boo hoo. It's a typical story of love/loss coupled with a lot of black eyeliner and angst. Of the three videos it also had the least artistic vision sandwiched bewteen a stylish if dirty Fiona and a super-slick "edible doll" come to life Lil' Kim.
My guess is we'll be trying to reconcile all these images and more in the future trying to understand women and how they are portrayed...
Speigel has a nice way of setting up her ideas without moralizing too much or spending time stereotyping so that she can get at the "...more interesting problems regarding the relationship between object relationships and social relationships in postmodern culture"(318). She is able to think about Barbie from feminine and feminsit points of view. Deconstructing this piece would be a long endeavor, but what I gained from a first reading is that people that collect Barbies, use Barbie's image to create art or craft clothes, houses etc. for Barbie have complex relationships to the object. Women who were "traditionally disempowered in the sphere of production" were able to have some power in the economy through their creative endeavors. If your idea of feminism is anti-housewife then housewives finding creative ways to be part of the economy through re-imagining craft might change your perception.
Barbie has an interesting combination of being "wholesome" yet sexual in nature. Her body proportions are rather unhuman yet have set a standard to which many women have compared themsleves to since her inception. Thinking about this wholesome/sexual combination leads me to the three videos I mentioned earlier. In Fiona Apple's "Criminal" she leads us on a dreamy journey through a 70's porn-esque basement with her lyrics of "being a bad bad girl" are juxtaposed with her being watched. This sort of girlish tease with sexual images is almost hard to reconcile and one almost feels dirty after watching it. Oddly, Lil' Kim's "How Many Licks?" is blatantly sexual, yet I didn't feel bad for watching it. As risque as someone might see this video you get the feeling she is in charge for better or worse. Now is she really in charge in an MTV market that plays on super sexual videos exploiting women? It would be interesting to know how much financial control Kim has over her music. Finally Lavigne's "My Happy Ending" didn't really appeal or offend on any level, but that's why I probably found it the most uninteresting piece to watch. Girl and Boy happy. Girl gets mad. Girl sad. Boy apparently didn't mean anything. No happy ending. Boo hoo. It's a typical story of love/loss coupled with a lot of black eyeliner and angst. Of the three videos it also had the least artistic vision sandwiched bewteen a stylish if dirty Fiona and a super-slick "edible doll" come to life Lil' Kim.
My guess is we'll be trying to reconcile all these images and more in the future trying to understand women and how they are portrayed...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
