Epistemology (I love that word.)
- We learn how to “be” in our culture through interpersonal communication
- We “see” our experiences interpreted in the mass media
- We then “redefine” our experience based on the media we take into our lives = the maintenance of culture.
- Communication is the process of creating shared meaning – when we agree on the meaning of things we become a culture. (Think about what your artifact is conveying?)
Every one of your artifacts is a response to something. You need to use critical culture theory to help you figure it out.
What is critical culture theory?
Cultural studies and critical theory combine sociology, literary theory, film/video studies, and cultural anthropology to study cultural phenomena in industrial societies. Cultural studies researchers often concentrate on how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, race, social class, and/or gender.
Cultural studies concerns itself with the meaning and practices of everyday life. Cultural practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television, or eating out) in a given culture. Particular meanings attach to the ways people in particular cultures do things.
Critical Theory
- Traditional theory is oriented only to understanding or explaining society
- Critical theory, in contrast, is social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole.
- A critical theory provides the descriptive and normative bases for social inquiry aimed at decreasing domination and increasing freedom in all their forms
Looking at a text through a Critical Theory Lens
Here are three of many . . .
- Semiotics
- Marxism
- Psychoanalysis
- All media have these three interpretations present in them.
Let's look at Semiotics
Semiotic analysis – the science of “signs” is concerned with how meaning is generated in media. We learn to read the signs to determine the meaning of the “text.” All media can be called a text.
- Sign and Signifier (Know this!)
- The sign stand for something more than what it is
- Why is she wearing red?
- Why is it raining out?
- What is she drinking?
- Why does he have a mustache?
- What is the music in the background (or foreground)?
Let's start with Marx
One can be a Marxist without being a communist. What Marx is saying is that everything is shaped, ultimately, by the economic system of the society.
Marxist Analysis – looks at issues of power, alienation, class conflict, materialism, and money, money, money.
- Who has the power and how are they portrayed in this text?
- What idea is being left out of this text?
- Who gains from the proposing of this idea in this text?
- The ideas of a given age are promulgated and popularized by the ruling class for its own interests. The masses are being manipulated by the ruling class. The Bourgeoisie (ruling class) and the Proletariat (working class). When you live in a bourgeois society, you are constantly under “attack” (growing old in a youth-obsessed culture, being fat in a thin-obsessed culture, being a person of color in a white-dominated culture, being a woman in a male-dominated culture – always being told that we are suffering from deprivations of some kind.
- There is also the notion of alienation. When you are at the opposite end of the obsessions listed above, you can feel alienated from society. Media can distract the alienated (remember opiate of the masses . . .)
- So Marx says work in a capitalist society alienates people, the more people work, the more they become alienated. In order to escape being alienated (which they do not recognize) they engage in various forms of consumption, all of which costs money, so that they are forced to work more in order to escape the effects of work … whew.
Psychoanalysis Analysis – looks at issues of our desires and our unconscious conflicts give rise to three areas of the mind that wrestle for dominance.
- How can characters' behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example, fear or fascination with death, sexuality - which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior - as a primary indicator of psychological identity or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
- What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
- What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader?
- Are there prominent words in the piece that could have different or hidden meanings? Could there be a subconscious reason for the author using these "problem words"?
Not just about the artifact itself but the world around it.
1. What social, political, and economic arrangements characterize the society in which the media are being analyzed?
2. Who owns, controls, and operates the media?
3. What roles do various media play in the society where the media are being analyzed? And what are the functions of the ex.. various popular art forms carried by the media?
4. What ideas, values, notions, concepts, beliefs, and so on are spread by the media, and what ideas, values, and so on are neglected by the media? Why?
5. How are writers, artists, actors, and other creative people affected.by the patterns of ownership and control of the media?
Using critical theory to look at football
Semiotics
- Football stadium (becomes a mecca)
- We do it on Sundays (Saturday is Sunday school)
- The uniforms (officials, fans, players) all symbolize different activities on the field and of different organizations.
- The game is based on deception of the signs showing
Marxist
- Where you sit reflects your status
- Works of the Roman principle of bread and circuses
- Professional football treats players as commodities
- Million Dollar Slaves
- Make more money to see another game and go to work to do it all again.
- Fight Club
Psychoanalysis
- We love violence
- The team sport teaches us how to work together
- We love violence
- Violence has a sexual dimension (metaphorically)
- We love sex
- We love violence
- What’s mine is mine – what’s yours is mine. If you want this you are going to have to come and take it.
