Angela McRobbie
Cultural Studies for the 1990s
Abstract
This article engages with the future of Cultural Studies as an interdisciplinary field. First, there are what could be perceived as some of the costs of gaining academic respectability. While it is gratifying to see so many universities developing cultural studies programmes, there is also the danger that this critical and sometimes "undisciplined' area of study will lose the social and political urgency of the early work. Second, there is the impact which postmodernism has had on Cultural Studies and with this the eclipsing of the centrality of the paradigms of Marxism. The final part of the papers suggests that Cultural Studies can retain their critical edge by developing programmes of research which consider the culture industries and their place in post-industrial society.
John Street
Musicologists, Sociologists and Madonna
Abstract
The study of popular music has been dominated largely by sociology, rather than musicology. This article reviews the contribution of both disciplines, and looks at the ways at which other subject areas and methodologies contribute to the analysis of music and its effects. The discussion focuses on three case studies which highlight the problems entailed in understanding popular music: censorship and rap music; Madonna's relationship to feminism; and the political radicalism attributed to punk. The article concludes with the argument that an interdisciplinarity, extending beyond sociology and musicology to include political philosophy and history, holds the key to understanding popular music.
Ron Scapp
Education and Popular Culture. Identities in Conflict
Abstract
The present articles discusses the role popular culture plays in the politics of education, and education, in general, in contemporary America.
Beverly Skeggs
Two Minute Brother. Contestation through Gender, 'Race' and Sexuality
Abstract
This article shows how a group of American Black female musicians are rapping themselves into existence against the powerless positions (both economic and cultural) that are offered to them. They "talk back talk Black' (bell hooks, 1984) to colonialism. Firstly, they ridicule and undermine the strutting, bragging form of masculinity that wants to keep women firmly located as sexual objects. The chapter shows how this form of Black masculinity is itself a product of Black male cultural resistance to the racist myths that were used to legitimate slavery. Nevertheless, it operates to control and contain women and the expression of their sexuality. Secondly, the female rappers "defiantly speak' to the traditional feminine discourses of maternalism, and its accompanying duties and obligations. Unlike many Black women who are able to use motherhood and the family to resist racism, these female rappers locate themselves firmly against tradition. They use rap music as the form in which to voice these challenges, investing the explicit sexual language of rap with new meanings. They use a "demand' discourse to celebrate female sexuality and autonomy, articulating what is usually perniciously silenced sexuality. Drawing upon a long tradition in Black female music (see Carby, 1986) the female rappers turn themselves from sexual objects into sexual subjects. In so doing they challenge the basis of the social order which seeks to contain them.
Rosalind Gill
Ideology, Gender and Popular Radio. A Discourse Analytic Approach
Abstract
This paper outlines a new approach for the analysis of radio, and for studies of the media and popular culture more generally. It argues that the study of radio has been eclipsed by research on television, film and the press, and that more research on radio - and pop radio, in particular - is necessary. Studies of radio broadcasts direct our attention towards the need for developing coherent ways of analyzing talk, and this paper sets out just such an approach. Drawing on two case studies concerned with British pop radio, it attempts to show the value of a discourse analytic approach which takes naturally occurring discourse seriously in all its messiness and variability. More specifically, the paper examines the implications of discourse analysis for how we conceptualize ideology, a key concept in media research. It argues that it is important to maintain a critical definition of ideology, but suggests that we need to move beyond approaches which see ideology as residing in particular syntactic structures, forms of language or single images. The case studies discussed highlight the fact that ideology is far more complex, inconsistent and flexible than is traditionally assumed. They also show that sexism - as a particular ideological discursive practice - remains a pervasive force, shaping British pop radio both on and off air.
Garry Whannel
Sport and Popular Culture: The Temporary Triumph of Process over Product
Abstract
This article examines the question of pleasure in popular culture. Specifically it discusses the pleasures involved in the consumption of sport, and the role heroes, as figures for identification, play. The analysis draws on three separate elements; Richard Dyer's concept of utopian sensibility, Roland Barthe's concept of jouissance and Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque. It is argued that because it is a form of performance rather than an artefact, the sport event, at its best represents the temporary triumph of process over product, the moment when the spontaneous inspiration of performance escapes, fleetingly, the tendency of capitalist commodity production to transform all such cultural processes into calculated packaged objects for consumption. Sport holds out the possibility of remaining playful, of grasping pleasure and of holding reality at bay.
Gill Branston
Infotainment: A Twilight Zone
Abstract
The article considers current uses of the terms "infotainment' and "tabloid TV' in relation to contemporary British media and debates or panics around its Americanization; British Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) traditions; the relationship of information and entertainment in formal education, and postmodernist celebrations of the collapsing of such categories. It tries to separate and understand historically what have so far been three major areas designated by these terms in British debates: (1) "faction' dramatizations (eg. Crimewatch), (2) high-tech early evening youth programmes, and (3) news centred forms (such as breakfast TV) seen as bringing information and entertainment into too close, or inappropriate a relationship. Blurring of such boundaries in contemporary and in older PSB TV, as well as in formal education is taken as context for a reconsideration of how PSB and broader "Enlightenment' agendas might be defended; how well the tabloid comparison works for contemporary TV, and what might be said in favour of "infotainment' as well as against it in the present destabilized conditions of TV journalism.
Dominic Strinati
The Big Nothing? Contemporary Culture and the Emergence of Postmodernism
Abstract
This paper is concerned with a critical assessment of postmodernism as an empirical phenomenon. It strives to examine the claims of postmodern theory by investigating whether it is possible to claim that postmodernism is emerging in contemporary industrial, capitalist societies and, in particular, whether it can be found in the sphere of popular media culture. To do so, it will first be apposite to give an outline of the basic features which define postmodernism, illustrate them with reference to examples from architecture, cinema, advertising, television and popular music, and give an outline of some of the reasons that have been proposed to account for the emergence of postmodernism. Some trends towards postmodernism are claimed to be apparent in the examples of popular media culture that have been selected for discussion. However, the paper should finally demonstrate why - if a specific example, i.e. cinema, is assessed more critically and studied in depth - the arguments of postmodern theory appear less novel and original and are open up to doubt and contention. It is suggested that postmodernism cannot be taken for granted nor considered in a purely conceptual manner, but rather needs to be subject to both theoretical and empirical criticism.
