A Day of Pop-Culture Perpetuation – A True Story

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What is popular culture? How can we define it and, more importantly, how does it come to play such an integral role in our daily lives? With these questions in mind, I decided to take matters into my own hands: I would go out into the world as I do each and every day, but on this particular day, I would document the role of popular culture in the context of my individual, personal, daily life.

Is popular culture a “culture made by the people for themselves?” (Storey 5) This is what sent me out on my pop-culture mission. Cultural theorist Fredric Jameson marks the twenty-first century as a “hopelessly commercial culture” in which society “replicates, reproduces [and] reinforces” capitalist ideologies at an exhaustive pace (195). If this is in fact true, that I (as a consumer) am playing a part in reinforcing the capitalist system, then I want to know just how I am doing this. Having always prided myself in staying away from all forms of social media, and stay clear from following popular trends, I now realize (based on my findings) that I am a part of this system whether I want to believe it or not. After tracking a day’s worth of popular culture, here are my findings:

Starbucks: I start every morning with coffee. And, that coffee comes from Starbucks. I could brew it at home, yes, but there is something ‘exciting’ about the hustle and bustle of the coffee shop, which is always full of people and energy, far more exciting than brewing boring, old coffee at home. But I realize, now, that Starbucks is very much a part of 21st century popular culture: all of our favorite celebrities wearing sunglasses and baseball caps, going for a casual stroll on their off-days away from the set and on the street like us ‘normal’ people. They are going to Starbucks to order their favorite coffee, the normal thing to do on a normal day. That in itself is an ideology created by mass media and distributed in all those tabloid magazines.I found on Starbucks’ official website a whole page dedicated to “Diversity and Inclusion” in which Cliff Burrows, the president of Starbucks has not only written a letter to viewers regarding the diversity at Starbucks, but has a whole video of himself: click play so you can hear Burrows go on and on about how dedicated Starbucks is to promoting inclusion.

Irving K Barber: I love studying at school because I often tell my family: it’s just so comfortable and there’s access to everything I need in the library. I love the convenience of being close to all the resources and for this reason I spend a lot of time at Irving. But, with a critical eye, I walked in today looking for how a university library functions as a space of popular culture, a space where ideologies are produced by its creators and reproduced by its inhabitants. There were the obvious things I noticed and will not discuss, such as the way we, students, dress and how tech-obsessed we are (and it shows, with every students eyes fixated on the screen of their Mac laptop, switching robotically from the impending assignment to facebook – so as not to miss a single beat). But what I wanted to share was the way every student expressed the stress and anxiety of being a student. I overheard conversations in the narrow corridors leading in and out of silent study areas, where students hurriedly eat their meals to re-energize and resume their studies, of the feeling of anxiety that was eating away at students. But what was interesting was that some students were laughing about it, talking about it excitedly, while others seemed to be expressing despair. I felt as though, some were in actually stressed and feeling depressed about the pressures of university life, and others felt that they had to share the stress and anxiety of their fellow classmates even if they weren’t actually stressed because this was part of being a university student. I really did find it odd, why say you are stressed if you are happy? Well, it seems that we are not being conditioned on fashion and brands, but rather we are conditioned to feel the ‘appropriate’ feelings when we assume particular roles in our lives.

Steven Nash Sports Club: the final place of my pop culture day, was the gym. I had already examined the gym with a critical eye, and have reported on it. So I thought I’d focus not on the signage and the brands worn by the gym-goers but rather, on the social element: are people here for a workout, or have we been taught by visual and textual popular culture that this is a social setting where exciting things can happen, such as meeting a future boyfriend/girlfriend? It was actually quite fascinating to see how many people were there, but not working out. The gym industry, then, seemed not only to be successful in selling a way to achieve personal fitness, to be your supposed better self, but also that this is a place of social interaction. Come to the gym, become fit and a ‘better version of yourself’ AND meet attractive friends (or more-than friends?)

I remember hearing somewhere that if it’s not popular, it’s not culture. And I feel that all day these words have been resounding in my head: most of the interactions I observed, at Starbucks, Irving, and Steve Nash, were almost redundant in that they replicated the each other, as though scripted. They were all the ‘popular’ forms of communication, the ‘popular’ forms of being. And that seems to be 21st century’s idea of culture: that which is popular and trending.
References:

Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Sixth ed. Harlow, England: Pearson, 2012. Print.

Encircling Fear as a means of Perpetuating the Race-Narrative in Richard Wright’s Native Son

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Richard Wright’s Native Son captures how race-narrative written and enforced by white supremacists in the twentieth century American South. Wright’s protest novel deliberately exploits the white ideologies that were written in order to evoke fear from both blacks and whites in Americas. In order for the race-narrative to function not only would the blacks have to fear the whites but the whites would also have to fear the blacks. The black folk had to live in racial terror so that they would not compromise the power relations through a political uprising. They must stay dormant and obedient: the white supremacist ideologies made sure of this by disempowering and degrading black identity through their carefully constructed definition. The white ideologies also wrote fear into the white dominant classes. White people had to stay afraid of the blacks, as long as they were terrified by a black person transgressing the racial boundaries, then they would continue their resistance towards black folk and, thus, ensure that the power relations constructed upon race perpetuate.

Why do I bring up this fictional account of the race-narrative? Because, Wright does something very interesting in his novel: he exploits the white supremacist ideologies by filling the stereotypical stigmatized dangerous and violent black man. The anti-hero of Wright’s novel is not a victim, he is the aggressor who victimizes both whites and blacks. By inverting the expectations of his time (the novel was written in 1940) Wright is using racial rhetoric to alert the world of how dangerous racial narratives can be, how when they are depicted fictionally they evoke fear so, what happens when these fictions occur in lived reality?

Wright’s novel uses the narratives employed by white ideologies unto society in his fiction in order to show just how dangerous these means of hegemonic control are. In other words, Wright makes it very clear that the black man’s story has been writ by a white author – a white author who does so in order to remain in social and economic power over black folk. Wright’s novel, though very controversial, became widely read (and continues to be read to the present); Native Son was relevant to its time and a popular culture text of the forties. And, in my reading of it, I saw that a literary text can not only produce the ideologies of its culture through its representation of them BUT that a literary text can challenge the ideologies of its culture through its representation of them. Wright’s Native Son does the latter.

References:

Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Sixth ed. Harlow, England:     Pearson, 2012. Print.

Wright, Richard. Native Son: The Restored Text Established by the Library of America. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.

 

HBO’s Girls Re-writing the Sexuality Narrative

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For anyone who has seen HBO’s Girls, the idea of what constitutes normative sexual behavior in today’s society has certainly come into question. The series, which traces the lives of four twenty-something girls living in New York City, has written (or, re-written) the narrative of sexuality as something natural and almost primitive, devoid of romance and love. Lena Dunham, the writer, producer, and star of the Girls, acknowledges the fictionalized narratives of sexuality on television and film and says:

“I do think that kids have been mis-educated about what sex is by films. I think that films have white-washed sex in many ways and sort of tried to hide what is messy and what is challenging about it” (Gross, NPR).

Dunham has expressed that the series tries to represent this natural ‘messiness’ of sexuality. Further, she is trying to depict her generation’s views on sexuality in a realistic way. One of the episodes that attracted a lot of media and blog attention traced the lead character, (played by Dunham), Hannah, having a spontaneous two-day fling with an older, attractive man. Dunham, who is not model-skinny nor considered classically beautiful (something which she constantly is forced to address in interviews), faced a lot of controversy after this episode, where bloggers felt that a ‘girl like that’ would never get a ‘man like that’ in real life. Dunham responded: “Can you not imagine a world in which a girl who’s sexually down for anything and oddly gregarious pulls a guy out of his shell for two days? They’re not getting married. They’re spending two days [having sex] , which is something that people do.” (Mobley)

I found this very interesting: that in re-writing the narrative of what she claims to be “white-washed sex” which she states is a “destructive […] depiction of sex” into a narrative where it is natural and ‘what people do’ to just have two days of casual sex, because the “girl is down” the show is doing precisely the same thing it claims to be countering(Gross, NPR). Sure, Girls does not write the narrative of sexuality as overly romanticized, but it certainly writes a narrative of sexuality. And, further, tries to sell this narrative as the ‘right one’ the one which is ‘real’ and ought to be distinguished from the fictional version of romanticized love-obsessed sexuality. By representing sex as a human urge without the glitz and glamour of romance, is this show doing precisely what it claims to be repudiating? Is Girls not representing a narrative of normative sex?

Michel Foucault contends that “the Victorians did not repress sexuality, they actually invented it” in The History of Sexuality (Storey 130). According to Foucault, by constructing the narrative of sexual repression and producing the discourse of sexuality, the Victorian invention of sexuality sought to “produce power over sexuality” (130). Considering Foucault’s claims about sexual discourse and the motivations behind constructing particular narratives of sexuality – Girls representation of sexuality is reinventing the discourse of sexuality through a newly constructed narrative which it claims to be the ‘right’ one, the ‘normative’ one, and the ‘natural’ one. By representing its sexuality narrative as natural, viewers are told what constitutes normative sexual behavior and this, sadly, is how ideologies are fed to societies and how ascriptions of social conduct are taught. One narrative takes the place of another, naturalizing its depiction of what constitutes normal, and we, the viewers, are told to replicate and reinforce these behaviors.

References:

Gross, Terry.”Lena Dunham On Sex, Oversharing And Writing About Lost ‘Girls'” NPR.org.  National Public Radio, 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.

Mobley, Jennifer-Scott. “Dangerous Curves.” Female Bodies on the American Stage: Enter Fat Actress. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print.

Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Sixth ed. Harlow, England: Pearson, 2012. Print.

 

 

 

 

 

Facing the reality of ‘fictionalized reality’

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Zizek’s ‘fictionalized reality’ confronts the debilitating forces employed by hegemonic systems on consuming subjects (us!) as a means of perpetuating ideologies. Zizek’s idea, that what we perceive as being reality is, in fact, a socially constructed falsity; an artificial representation of ‘reality’ seeking to paralyze personal choice, resonates with the cautionary rhetoric of Richard Hoggart discussed in chapter three of our text, “Culturalism” (38-44).

Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy dichotomizes the “traditional lived culture of the 1930’s” with the “cultural decline of the 1950’s” brought on by new mass entertainment (Storey 38). The romanticized portrait of the working-class before the “manipulative power of the culture industries” got their hands on them, renders a historic moment in which he regards popular culture as “communal and self-made” (40). Moving into the 1950’s, this portrait turns bleak, in a sense that mass entertainment producers usurp this agency from the working-class. Hoggart’s description of the 1950’s consumer explicates the absence, or lack, of agency: “Many of the customers – their clothes, their hair styles, their facial expressions all indicate – are living to a large extent in a myth world” (42).  This consumer subject is a representation of hegemonic systems seeking to create (and recreate) in an effort to perpetuate a popular culture which is vested in the self-interest of the large commercial bodies producing such ideologies. The image renders a sense of void and absence; a lack which is associated with Zizek’s theories of choice within a fictionalized reality. Innovatively relating the lack of choice, as a carefully socially-constructed mechanism, to The Matrix, Zizek asks for a ‘third pill’: there is a fiction, and a fictionalized reality – where is the choice for reality in and of itself?

Caught in a web of capitalistic domination, personal choice is anything but personal: it is, as depicted in Renata Salecl’s “Paradox of Choice”, a social matter. So, if the socio-economic replication of ‘reality’ is void of individual choice and designed to sell this idea of ‘choice’ where, in actuality, the choice has already been made for us as consumers, then where is the hope of achieving the agency that Hoggart claims once existed? How can we, as subjects caught in a manipulative structure of a capitalist world, resist the system? Possibility of achieving agency and perhaps coming closer to that ‘third pill’, according to Zizek, begins with confronting the illusion and understanding that this ‘reality’ we are living in is ‘fiction’. Perhaps there is hope after all?

 

References:

Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Sixth ed. Harlow, England: Pearson, 2012. Print.

Paradox of Choice video from class/ Zizek’s “The Third Pill” from class

Bright Nikes: The Answer to your Gym Woes

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I always thought of the gym as a sanctuary: a place where I could release the day’s tensions and leave feeling stronger than the day before. I had never thought of the gym as a ‘fitness industry’ – that is, until I looked at it from a cultural theorist’s perspective.

Chapter seven of our text, “Gender and Sexuality,” discusses how popular culture liturgies targeted at female readers (such as fashion magazines and romance novels) ultimately generate a desire “for something more than the everyday” (Storey 154). These popular culture texts represent the ideal “better” version of what the reader could be, if she were to “follow this practical advice or buy this product” (154). Femininity is defined through the fictional representations of these texts and, furthermore, the possibility of becoming the ideal female is promised. Chapter seven, however, does not offer an in-depth study of how the notions of gender are constructed through socio-cultural ideologies and I found myself wanting to know more.

I began to think about a domain I spend a lot of my time in (the gym) and wondered how fitness culture fits into all of this: what types of narratives are written into fitness culture? How much are gym-goers invested in the constructed narratives of the fitness industry? Approaching questions such as these, I walked into the gym with a critical eye.

The first thing I noticed were the posters plastered on the walls of the women-only section of the gym: they told individual weight loss stories of actual club members. Before and after images were juxtaposed: in the before image, the member was heavy set (which one would expect in this context) but what caught my attention were the face expressions: in the before image, the member’s face expressions were almost always sad, frowning and some were almost expressionless. The after images, however, captured the member posing, flexing toned biceps and smiling from ear to ear. The before and after photos, thus, did not only represent a weight transformation, but rather, an emotional transformation: after becoming a member of this gym and working with one of their trainers, this member dropped all their weight and achieved happiness. There it was, a narrative of the fitness industry right there: work out here, and you will not only be this fit, but you will be this happy!

The next thing I noticed was that almost every woman in this section, with the exception of two ladies, wore the Lululemon logo: either on their pants, tops, headbands – some even had Lululemon water bottles and gym bags. The logo was EVERYWHERE. Then I looked at their shoes and noticed the neon greens, oranges, pinks, and blues: Nike Frees were worn by almost everyone! A lot of the members were even wearing identical Nike sneakers. This made me think of a friend of mine who had recently told me that he had had the best workout because he had just bought a new Nike T-shirt and matching runners: “You know when you buy new workout clothes, you work out so much better!” In her study of culture and fitness, Sarah Hentges says:

Nike and Reebok became major players and an entire industry rose to the challenge of not simply supplying the needed goods and services but creating an industry that produces goods and services that make us think we need such things to be fit (33).

This quote resonates not only with what my friend had exclaimed about his workout, but with my entire experience that night at the gym. I realized that the gym represents its own culture and with it comes an entire set of ideologies constructed to support the fitness industry. This demonstrated how we are being ‘taught’ these ideologies everywhere we go and we ought to open a critical eye in order to see just how we are being affected by these narratives.

References:
Hentges, Sarah. Women and Fitness in American Culture. North Carolina: McFarland,                        2014. Print.
Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Sixth ed. Harlow,                       England: Pearson, 2012. Print.

Representing Reproduction: Popular and Political Narratives

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Moments before beginning the module I had set aside a novel for my Jewish-Canadian literature class: Glen Rotchin’s The Rent Collector. Unbeknownst to me at that moment was that I had just put down a textual representation of reproductive politics. The Rent Collector follows the life of an orthodox Jew whose life is anchored by his religion. Gershon Stein struggles to maintain stability in his life without stepping outside the bounds of his faith; Gershon’s inability to perform his various roles (businessman, son, husband, father, etc.) render him a failure. Where does the reproductive narrative fit into Gershon’s story? Well, as I said, he is represented as a failure in virtually every aspect of his life, particularly as a husband. Gershon’s wife wants a third child: she connects their single beds at night, wears a fresh nightgown and sits up, waiting for her husband to ‘perform his obligation’. But Gershon, for whatever reason, does not comply with his wife’s wishes. Their marriage falls apart, solely because he fails to comply with his wife’s wishes to have another child.

Why does his wife begin to resent him for not wanting a third child? They already have two young daughters, barely grown, and she has her hands full (something she makes very clear throughout the novel), so why push so hard for another child? The reproductive narrative in this text represents the purpose of womanhood in terms of procreation: by not having more children, his wife feels as though her husband is taking away her one and only purpose on earth. This is a novel written and published in the twenty-first century, not back in the Victorian period and, yet, there is that antiquated notion of femininity and reproductive value. The novel’s representation of the reproductive narrative is romanticized. Reproduction is described as a mystical blend of spirituality and biology. The female as a reproductive being yearns to carry a child in order to feel connected to God and become personally empowered:

Having children was more than a Commandment from God. A desire for babies flowed through her body with the force of chemistry. This was His gift. At a certain time of the month, Ruhama felt the onset of an overwhelming, irresistible power. The veins in her arms and arteries of her legs channeled energy. The whole of her flesh was a receptacle into which the Divine poured forth. Divinity circulated, coursed through her body and took shape to form His image. A baby. As long as Gershon abstained Ruhama felt incomplete.                                                                                                                                         (Rotchin 76)

The reproductive narrative as depicted in the above passage defines reproduction as an intrinsic, physiological need – an uncontrollable “desire for babies” which is both “overwhelming [and] irresistible”(76). I found this passage resonated with the module in offering a fictional reproductive narrative in a contemporary text and, in doing so, defining the worth, value and purpose of a woman in terms of reproduction.

As the module demonstrates, unraveling the tightly wound ideology in which reproduction and marriage are unified as though inextricable is difficult to do. What exacerbates the concepts of proper reproduction and proper marriage is that they are not being told once, by one particular group: they are being retold and the tale is multi-voiced. The constant retelling of the same constructed narrative is what makes it so difficult to transgress, even we can see through the fiction. Reading the reproductive narrative in The Rent Collector, I felt that the restricted female figure – as a procreator – was a dangerous narrative, but yet it appears in all types of films and texts and the story endures because it continues to be told.

Another thing that really caught my attention as I went through the module was the slide with the tabloid magazines featuring the stars of the reality show Teen Mom. It’s interesting because as soon as I got started on the module I kept thinking of this show, and then there it was and for obvious reasons, as it is a prime example of a teen-pregnancy narrative represented in popular culture. Documenting the difficulties and dangers of teen pregnancy, the show certainly has constructed a frightening narrative. Or, has it? The interesting thing about this show in the context of popular culture is that it has, to an extent, glamorized teen pregnancy. The teenage girls plastered on these celebrity tabloid magazines, followed by paparazzi and featuring in their own reality TV series has a dual effect: if the show is supposed to caution teens to be safe and thus avoid teen pregnancy, does it not simultaneously offer an opportunity for teen moms to capitalize on doing precisely that which it cautions against?

 

 

Rotchin, Glen. The Rent Collector: A Novel. Montréal, Québec: Esplanade, 2005. Print.