Welcome reader! As a gender studies student, this blog will explore notions of gender, race and sexuality in the context of popular culture. I will be drawing on various theorists in order to extend upon ideas surrounding the relationship between popular culture and the media today.
One of our assigned readings for this week’s discussion on cultural theory was Raymond Williams 1958 essay ‘Culture is Ordinary’. Despite it being written nearly half a century ago, I found many of Raymond’s contentions surrounding popular culture applicable to contemporary ideologies in popular culture today. When we hear the word ‘culture’ we tend to think of it as a collective experience. In contrast, Raymond argues that culture is experienced and created on an individual level. I believe this to be an accurate interpretation of how we experience popular culture historically and in contemporary society today.
All of our experiences are an engagement with our own imagination of something. An interesting point brought up in class this week was how popular culture phenomenon’s such as Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ are experienced differently throughout time and location. This same story is explored throughout history in various different art forms, and is thus experienced as a popular cultural phenomenon differently by the individual. Personally, I have experienced Romeo and Juliet through the original text during high school education, and through Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film adaptation (young Leo DiCaprio, ah!) In contrast, young children today will have likely experienced this story through cartoon adaptations, most notably the 2011 Smurf film ‘Gnomeo and Juliet.’ Thus, the same iconic and historic story of love and of course, tragedy, is experienced differently by individuals throughout time.
In addition to being a gender studies student, I also study film and therefore I find it very interesting to examine how films as an art form in popular culture are so effective in touching on deep structures embedded in ideology. As was discussed in the very opening of this week’s class, how many times do we experience something that is ‘like it but not it’? Films are uniquely successful in achieving this experience, due to the fact that they tap into popular culture and reflect historical or contemporary attitudes and behaviours of society. Popular film series such as ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’ are made wildly popular given that they reflect certain attitudes and nostalgias of society and are consequently endorsed by specific audiences who loyally follow the series’ progression. In turn, they transform into popular culture phenomenons which can historically timestamp a specific period of cultural attitudes and events.
In returning back to Raymond Williams, I believe that films work as a perfect example in relation to how culture is experienced differently by the individual. By merely taking into account ethnicity, race, gender, class, age and sexuality, it is nonsensical to suggest that culture can be experienced collectively given that every person is unique, and will bring their own experiences in their engagement with popular culture.
– Aimee