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The Study Of The Politics In Popular Culture

Posted on:2008-01-04Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y XuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360215456751Subject:Literature and art
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
After ten years' development, popular culture study in China has entered a mature stage, with many in-depth questions coming out, one of which being the political problem in popular culture. "Politics", whether explicitly or implicitly has always been an issue in popular culture study, which deals with the following questions: For what purpose popular culture study become political? What is its connotation? And how should we understand it and evaluate its connotation? In a certain way, political study in popular culture is not only a theoretic matter, but also a matter of idealistic liberation. Yet, at present there is scarcely any systematic study on this issue. Therefore, this paper approaches this issue from three dimensions of commodity, language, and aesthetics, in order to make breakthrough both in theoretic discussion and practical analysis. This paper consists of four parts.Chapter one sorts out the basic concepts and theoretic paradigms of popular culture study. "Popular culture" is a concept in western context, but Chinese scholars have often used it as a self-evident concept since Cultural Studies became a trend in china. However, no social word is entirely neutral and objective knowledge, behind which hides political interests and power struggles. The choice of whether commendatory wording "popular culture" or derogatory "mass culture"depends on the user's standpoint and evaluation of it. For instance, Adorno uses mass culture or culture industry; Lowenthal, a combination of mass culture and popular culture; Fiske and others, only popular culture. The change of the wording indicates the change of attitudes towards popular culture , ie. from negetive attitude of frankfurt school to positive attitude of British and American criticism. When the concept "popular culture" was introduced into China, it entangled with other concepts as folk culture, popular culture, revolutionary mass cultur. In order to main the autocephaly of popular culture and affirm its positive political potential, some scholas distinguished it from other concepts and gave it a modern definition. Then this chaper goes on to sort out the shifting history of the paradigms of popular culture study, which changed from social analysis focusing on political and economical criticism to cultural studies centered aroud semeiotic explaination. The different paradigms of study correspond to different political positions. At present, one of the difficulties facing popular culture study is the weakening of criticism and the emptiness of political concern, which according to some scholars, was caused by the absence of social analysis, and the rising up of semeiotic study. As political and economical paradigm carries out a thorough analysis of culture and society which is based on the solid social practice, it can make up to the deficiency of the current cultural study. While this view hits the point, it does not mean the recovery of social analysis requires the refuse of semeiotic explanation. On the contrary, to solve the present problem, we must realize the unification of both political economics and semeiotics in disciplinary, and the unification of social analysis and semiotic study in paradigm. According to this paradigm, the end of this chapter analyzes the corresponding relation between the social structure and the function of popular culture study based on the case study of China after the reform and opening policy: if the middle sphere of a modern society is the regulator of the whole society, then popular culture which is the representative culture of the middle sphere will be the regulator of cultural ideology. Hence, popular culture is against both conservative and blindfold radicalists.Chapter two analyzes the politics in popular culture from the perspective of commodity. It is undeniable that the nature of popular culture is to make the most benefits by mass production of cultural products, just like other commodities, which distinguishes popular culture from traditional forms of culture. In this sense, the merchandisation of culture is one of the priorities for popular culture study. Whether the merchandisation of culture leads to the degeneration of art and the autocratic domination or promotes popularity of culture and freedom and democracy remains the focus of argumentation for scholars. One of the important reasons for us to put emphasis first on the historical survey of the merchandisation of culture is that the criticism of the merchandisation of culture by Frankfurt school has had such great influence upon Chinese scholars that it resulted in their negative judgment about popular culture. However, the history of cultural development shows that the merchandisation of culture promotes the publicity of culture, which includes the birth of public intellectuals as cultural producers the birth of mass media as cultural transmitter and the birth of middle class as cultural consumers. While the publicity of culture promotes the birth of political publicity, the merchandisation of culture faces the danger of falling into the trap of capital. To well understand the relation between critical spirit and consumption consciousness, and balance public sphere with private space requires a deep understanding and a thorough investigation of semiotic political economics.Chapter three studies the politics in popular culture from the perspective of language. The feature of post-modern society is not only "economy becoming culture and culture becoming economy", but also "media becoming culture and culture becoming media". Every leap of science and technology has resulted in great development of media, whose profound influence upon popular culture in turn has led to better understanding of media and culture, in which the change of linguistic theory always plays the background. Based on Lukacs's collectivity and Freud's psychoanalysis, Fromm and other scholars of Frankfurt School defined language as the filter of ideology which implies language's one-dimensional feature. Marcus pointed out that the secrete of one-dimensional language is its breaking away from history and its objection against abstraction, hence the only way to fight one-dimensional language is to restore history and dialectics in language. One-dimensional language has spread over everyday life and mass media, the latter was one of the critical topics of Adorno's. This is the first era of media with the structural linguistics as its background. Then as linguistic theory shifted from structuralism to post-structuralism, inter-textuality began to exert great influence upon the study of mass media. Consequently, reception study became popular. The theorists represented by Hall realized that the meaning of text is not decided by the encoder alone, but it also depends on the communication between the encoder and the decoder, and hence culture and media is an activity, a process and an arena for ideological struggle. Later after that, the invention of internet, which marked the beginning of the second media era, helped the realization of inter-textuality in cultural practice, and text turned into hyper text, which deconstructed Logos and provided more discourse space for the mass to express their political views. Although there are disputes over the democracy of mass media, the fact which cannot be denied is that the mass gain more rights to know and speak as the result of the development of media technology, therefore, we should not be too critical towards mass media because absolute democracy and equality is just a Utopia.Chapter four studies popular culture from the perspective of aesthetics. Aesthetics, which was the knowledge about feeling when it came into being, has been taken as the way into life by philosophy since enlightenment movement. As aesthetics has been defined as the field for the struggle between the universal and the particular, reason and physical impulse, it has to be involved with ideology, in which sense, modern aesthetics is involved with politics. The pleasure of body as opposed to artistic beauty is in some way the aesthetics of popular culture. AS the rise of physical aesthetics, pleasure is becoming a political issue in an era of popular culture. Under what circumstances pleasure will be considered as "revolutionary" by intellectuals? If, under the spell of commodities, pleasure as aesthetics joins politics hand in hand, i.e. so-called "aesthetication of politics", then pleasure will overflow and turn into the instrument of domination. On the other hand, if in a society of dictatorship, pleasure is oppressed or even denied, i.e. "politicalization of art", then pleasure becomes the tool of revolution. From the perspective of gender, is popular culture the arena for women's revolt against men's authority or the new field for men's ruling of women? Or in other words, does women's entire exposure of their sexual features speak for women's rights or only meet men's desire to peep into women's privacy? However hot the debate is , the key of this issue is outside it because any gender politics must concern the nation and the class politics.Up till now the development of popular culture in china, the problems facing it is not becoming fewer, but more. To solve these problems, we must pay enough attention to the history and the locality of cultural and intellectual production, and only in specific time and space, can popular culture be properly assessed. In a sense, the analysis of the politics in popular culture will not only deepen popular culture study, but also open a window to the study of modernity.
Keywords/Search Tags:popular culture, politics, publicity, commodity, media, pleasure
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