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Images are subject to judgment about their qualities and their capacity to have an impact on viewers
Interpreting criteria depends upon cultural codes which are shared concepts
Qualities depend upon the contexts in which it is viewed
Aesthetics are not universal or innate but culturally specific |
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Informed by experiences relating to one’s:
Class
Cultural Background
Education
Other Aspects of Identity
Natural taste is a myth and it is not inherent, it is learned
Taste enforces class boundaries |
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Authority on Beauty and Aesthetics
More Capable than others to pass judgment on the quality of cultural objects
Cultural Distinctions:
High and Low |
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| An economic system characterized by private or corporation ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision rather than by state control, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly in a free market |
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| Marx: those who own the means of production are also in control of the ideas and viewpoints produced and circulated in a society’s media venues |
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| Defines those aspects of human individuals that individuals are not in control of and that are actually shared by humans. To speak of individuals as subjects is to indicate that they are split between the conscious and the unconscious, that they are produced by the structures of society, and that they are both active forces (subjects of) history but also acted upon (subjected to) all the social forces of their moment in time |
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| The process by which the real economic imbalances of the dominant social system get hidden and ordinary citizens come to believe in the perfection of the system that oppresses them |
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Freudian Theory (Sigmund Freud)
Emphasizes the role of the unconscious and desire in shaping a subject’s actions, feelings, and motives
Emphasizes bringing the repressed materials of the unconscious to surface through what was called the talking cure
Focuses on the construction of the self through various mechanisms and processes of the unconscious
Psychoanalytic Theory is the application of many of these ideas to analyze systems of representation (Jacques Lacan) |
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Refers to the viewer of visual arts
Early theory did not refer to specific individual or an actual member of the audience, but was imagined to be an ideal viewer, separate from all defining social, sexual, and racial influences
This abstract concept allowed scholars to generalize about certain types of viewing relationships and the role of the unconscious and desire in shaping film meanings
In the 1980-90’s, film theory began emphasizing specific identity groups of spectators, away from the universal to include more culturally specific aspects of identity
Female spectators
Working-class spectators
Queer spectators
Black spectators |
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Althusser describes the process in which ideological systems call out to or “hail” social subject and tell them their place in the system
In popular culture interpellation refers to the ways that cultural products address their consumers and recruit them to a particular ideological position
Images can be said to designate the kind of viewer they intend us to be, and in speaking to us as that kind of viewer help to shape us as particular ideological subjects |
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A concept most associated with Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci
Rethought traditional Marxist theories of ideology away from ideas about false consciousness and passive social subjects
Two central aspects of hegemony
Dominant ideologies are offered as “common sense”
Dominant ideologies are in tension with other forces and hence constantly in flux
Indicates how ideological meaning is an object of struggle rather than an oppressive force that fully dominates subjects from above |
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| In the context of popular culture, resistance refers to the techniques used by viewers/consumers to not participate in or to stand in opposition to the messages of dominant culture |
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| Forces in a given society that work against dominant meaning and power systems, and keep in constant tension and flux those dominant meanings |
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In cultural consumption, the production of meaning in cultural products
Used by Stuart Hall to describe the work done by cultural producers in encoding cultural products with preferred meaning that will then be decoded by viewers
television shows
films
ads
Factors that influence the process of encoding
Frameworks of knowledge
class status
cultural knowledge
Relations of production
viewing context
Technical infrastructure
the technological medium in which one is viewing |
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In cultural consumption, the process of interpreting and giving meaning to cultural products in conformity with shared cultural codes.
Used by Stuart Hall to describe the work done by cultural consumers when they view and interpret cultural products, that have been encoded by producers
television shows
films
ads
Factors that influence the process of decoding
Frameworks of knowledge
class status
cultural knowledge
Relations of production
viewing context
Technical infrastructure
the technological medium in which one is viewing |
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| Dominant-Hegemonic Reading |
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Definition
Consumers unquestioningly accept the message that the producers are transmitting to them
Few viewers occupy this position at any time because mass culture cannot satisfy all viewers’ culturally specific experiences, memories, and desires, since viewers are not passive recipients of the messages of mass media and popular culture |
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Consumers accept some aspects of the dominant reading and reject others
Most readings are negotiated readings, in which viewers actively struggle with dominant meanings and modify them in numerous ways because of their own social status, beliefs, and values |
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Consumers fully reject the dominant meaning of a cultural product
This can take the form of not only disagreeing with a message but also of deliberately ignoring it |
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The act of borrowing, stealing, or taking over others’ meanings to one’s own ends
Cultural appropriation is the process of “borrowing” and changing the meaning of commodities, cultural products, slogans, images, or elements of fashion
One of the primary forms of oppositional production and reading |
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| The practice of taking terms and meanings and re-appropriating them to create new meanings. Positive term for identity and theoretical positioning |
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| Distinct social groups within wider cultural formations that define themselves in opposition to mainstream culture. Groups that use style and fashion to signify resistance to dominant culture |
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| construction or creation of a work |
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Practices deployed by people who are not in positions of power to gain some control over the spaces of their daily lives (TV Remote)
DeCerteau defined tactics as the acts of the weak which do not have lasting effect |
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| Practices by which dominant institutions seek to structure time, place, and actions of their social subjects (TV Schedule) |
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| The practice used by advertisers and marketers of manufacturing and selling as commodities aspects of bricolage style |
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