While I was looking for something else....

While I was looking on the internet for interesting conservation stories as part of my Online Journalism module. I came across this on The Birmingham Post website about how close Birmingham is to becoming the 'City of Culture'.

I thought it was quite fitting with the culture debate and the events that Birmingham would get to hold if it we're named the 'City of Culture' well, can they really be classed as cultural? I think any of The Frankfurt School theorists, if they were still alive, would have a heart attack....

Pierre Bourdieu: 'Distinction and the Aristocracy of Culture'

Bourdieu talks about the values of cultural goods and their consumers. He talks about how consumers 'tastes' for the goods that they consume are produced to convey general meanings of culture and that to fully understand 'culture' it needs to be refined.

He argues that 'legitimate culture' and the scientific observations it brings show certain cultural needs and based on the consumers upbringing determines their understanding. Bourdieu's point is over complicated, but in a nutshell he believes that an individual's understanding of culture and its art is very dependent on the consumers education, upbringing and often their social position and class.

One of Bourdieu's method's of explaining consumers understanding of culture and cultural goods are to compare consumers' tastes to that of food and that refining their taste will somehow help them to understand the culture they consume better and widen the variety of culture they consume.

I don't think I really agree with his conclusions because, if I use myself as an easy example, I'm from an average background and have an interest in high, middlebrow and low culture and understand them for what they are, particularly low culture, I tend to take it at face value and not read too much into its products. I don't feel people's tastes necessarily need to be 'refined' to better their understanding of cultural goods or culture itself because culture is different to everyone. We don't and can't all think the same, we're too opinionated and thats one of the ways we learn, we simply create our own definitions of culture and I don't think that's a bad thing.

Useful Quote....

'[but] one cannot fully understand cultural practices unless 'culture', in the restricted, normative sense of ordinary usage, is brought back into 'culture' in the anthropological sense, and the elaborated taste for the most refined objects is reconnected with the elementary taste for the flavours of food'. - Useful because it sums up the beginning of his justification that to understand culture we need to consider social roles and backgrounds and 'refine our taste'.

A Frankfurt School Critique Of A Culture Industry

This week's challenge, as the title on this post suggests, is to form a Frankfurt School style critique of a culture industry of our choosing. So I thought I'd stick to an area I can critique fairly well as it's an industry I'm interested in. The culture I've chosen is film culture but the industry i've decided to focus on is something we all know and love, Disney....

Disney is a prime example of an industry within film culture that is, in the words of Walter Benjamin, 'Mechanically Reproduced'. Disney makes several films a year and no matter what the story, they all have the same principal message to them. Now I'm not trying to completely diss Disney because after all, we all have our favourite Disney classic and they have made some good films, but if you pay to see a Disney movie at the cinema, you know what you're getting. Disney have taken the fairy tale format, put a different spin on it every time and made a shed load of money out of it. We can sit and enjoy them while being amused without having to put any thought into the watching process at all. Disney films are truly for the passive audience.

Because we have learnt to expect specific genres and products from Disney, Disney's culture has become standardised. There isn't really anything they can offer to the 'individual' and the products they make don't present any material that is challenging or particularly cultural for consumers. They do kind of offer a small sense of pseudo individualisation to some consumers in the way of minority groups but even they aren't really buying into something that offers them a voice for individuality and they often almost become the 'token piece' of the film.

Disney's main aim is to make money and they have succeed on a grand scale. It's a corporation that is ever growing and a franchise that's already been going for 87 years and one that I'm sure will continue for another 87 and beyond.

A media text I think communicates values...

Okay, I thought this was difficult and I don't think i'd really say this specific media text offers 'sweetness and light' or is 'the best that's thought or said' but I do think it communicates values especially social and cultural ones.

The context i've chosen is TV dramas but specifically the channel 4 drama 'Shameless' and this is why. Even though it's not based on or about real people I think it reflects what a lot of today's modern society and culture is like especially the state of Britain's council estates and their often colourful inhabitants. Naturally the character's are larger than life because after all it is a TV drama, it's not meant to be real, but some of the values it communicates ring true to the lifestyle choices and living situations of a fairly large majority of British citizens. Because believe it or not there really are people out there like Frank Gallagher, scary huh? And children having to look after one another because their parents just aren't capable is at times a very real situation. Even though these situations aren't necessarily 'happy' ones, 'Shameless' manages to make light of some pretty heavy situations without completely dulling their seriousness and well, it's down right rude but horrendously funny and it's hard to find people who don't like it.

The types of cultural values it communicates surrounding Britain's poorer areas and how some of our society act and live is something I think we can all relate to in some way or other and we more than likely know or know of someone in situations like those in the drama. 'Shameless' doesn't try to put a glossy finish on what it portrays, it simply puts it out there for the world to see in all its gloriously shocking technicolour, and that's why I think dramas like this one are media texts that offer us a slice of culture that at times can be the best, and worst, that's thought or said.

A Leavis style analysis of a media text

When we got given this task, I though yippie, this will be fun. We get to pick something we dislike, be mean about it and tell everyone why we should be mean about it. So here goes...

I'm afraid what i've chosen isn't new and well they're mentioned a lot because they're like marmite you either love them or you hate them but for me my pet hate is reality TV shows. Even after being bombarded with them solidly for like the last 10 years, they still seem to pop up every now and again and well they bother me, ALOT! I can honestly say I've never liked them or sat down and watched them for even one series, I think I actually inwardly rejoiced and threw a little party when I heard the news that this year's BIg Brother would be the last ever and they weren't lying to us.

Even though I believe them to be pointless and just another waste of time, money and people's efforts I realise that many people love them and no matter how hard they try and convince themselves otherwise will actually miss BB and the what seems like an endlessly pregnant Davina. So this leads me to consider the reasons why people are fascinated by these animal like observations of humans as that's what they remind me of, people staring at animals in the zoo and getting amused when they start on each other because animals don't like to be caged, and secretly or not so secretly humans don't either....
I guess in some ways it's morbid curiosity, we want to know what'll happen if they feel threatened or others push them, how they'll react and at the centre of it many of us are willing something to kick off and for the situation to become a messy one because after all it makes it more entertaining, right?

So, even though people don't want to admit to it, I guess that's really why these reality programmes are so popular because I really doubt it's because of their content. As sad as it sounds there's truth in the fact that we as human beings like chaos, we just love it when things go wrong, particularly when it's not happening to us. It doesn't make us bad people, it's just in our nature.

Reality TV is something that's accessible to everyone and appeals to our culture, particularly as many of them are around ordinary people often but in extraordinary situations, they're humanised more than celebrities and we can relate to them in some ways. I think it's a bad part of modern culture and I don't really agree with it and even though it's dying down I think it'll still be around for some time to come.

So, I've not really been that Leavis like about this analysis but in a Leavis style nutshell, I think Reality TV is the epitome of bad culture and well it reflects areas of today's society that don't necessarily need highlighting. I also think it brings out the worst in people and shows that some will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame.

Because I forgot about it last week...

I do believe we were meant to post if we'd done something deemed cultural in our spare time such as go to the theatre or pay a visit to the cinema. Well, like a nonce, I forgot and thought I should add some more to my sorry looking blog.

Last monday, the 8th feb, I went to the theatre something I class as fairly middlebrow culture depending on what you see. well what I went to see, essentially isn't usually classed as middlebrow culture, I went to see the Ballet, however what I saw was a 'reworking' if you like of the classic, Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake'. This newer version is the brain-child of Matthew Bourne and is more contemporary ballet meaning it's not all leaps, straight lines and lady's in tutu's, than classical ballet. Some puritans may think it sacrilege to go about changing something so well known and loved into something that will appeal to and feel more accessible to the 'masses' but I don't care because to put it simply, it was awesome. It was clever, had some well placed comedic moments that were still in keeping with the tone of an essentially tragic tale and had some social comment moments that reflect the times we live in. A truly modern take on an old masterpiece that works as it keeps bringing audiences back after making the rounds for the last 15 years so it must be doing something right. Anywho, that's a cultural experience of mine....

Also, I've no idea if this counts too, but yesterday, tuesday 16th feb, I visited Stratford-Upon-Avon, a lovely place if you've ever been, and well was generally nerdy along with my mother of all people and spent the day being a bit of a tourist and a culture vulture visiting the many sites around the area associated with Shakespeare himself. Again something that I suppose is middlebrow culture as well, Shakespeare's works are know, loved, admired and studied by people of all academic, cultural, social and class backgrounds. All I know is that it was fun and we made a little girl stare at us in a funny manor by giggling at the audio/visual piece about his life and when being asked if we'd like to take a walk through the 'Shakespeare Hall of Fame' stating 'Does anyone else feel like they should do the 'Monty Python' gallop down said hall of fame?' I guess you never grow up no matter how old you are = ]

'Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture' - F.R. Leavis All Summed Up...

My interpretations of this reading is that Leavis talks about how at the time of the theorist Matthew Arnold's work, culture and where certain classes of people fit into it, was more clearly defined. There were certain segregations between cultures and clear boundaries as to what was High culture and what was Low culture. However in a more modern society, it's much harder to pinpoint and categorise.

Leavis bases his argument more around literacy and language aspects to explain his conclusions about cultural divides in a 'modern society', this might have something to do with his academic literacy background, and he uses famous writers and their works to justify the points he makes about different levels of cultural understanding and cultural backgrounds.

He argues that it is wrong to view 'mass culture' as completely wrong but it shouldn't be viewed as 'utterly new', because then it 'surrenders everything that can interest us'. He believes we can't deny the future. We can't hang on to traditionalist ideas of what culture and we should 'keep open our communications with the future'.

A Text That Screams 'My Culture'

Now, I found this quite hard and I really have racked my brains trying to think of all the things I could possibly write about. Even as I write this John, it still feels a bit like a trick question....

Anyhow, I finally thought of something and how it didn't jump up and slap me in the face to begin with I've no idea but it hit me, what pretty much consumes my spare time? What do I do when I'm not stressing over pointless things and trying to avoid Uni work at all costs? And the answer is... films. Watching them, reading about them and talking and boring others about them is a big part of what I do and helps to define me. Not only as what would be my ultimate job, working for a film magazine, but as the bit of a nerd I am who often would prefer to be holed up inside watching a film than actually having to talk to people.

Instead of picking a single film that I think really stands out as part of my culture, because I wouldn't be able to do that there's simply too many, I thought I'd choose my 'bible' or Empire magazine as the text that I think best fits the bill. Every month I religiously spend a little of my hard earned cash and read the thing cover to cover, even the films, film stars and other things I don't care about because the writing draws me in. I find the writers witty, informative, opinionated but fair not like some film critics, but most of all when I read the articles I feel like they're actually bothered about what they're writing. That they're not just about dropping names and getting all of the personal facts drawn from an interview with an actor/actress/director into their piece but that they actually want to help tell you about a film and the bigger picture in which it sits in and relates to. They sure as hell know their stuff however their style is relaxed, but not condescending, and is truly enjoyable to read. You feel that they're just ordinary people who were lucky enough to land themselves a not so ordinary job but they don't necessarily take advantage of it and if you're ever lucky enough to meet any of them, they live up to your expectations because they're all genuinely lovely people who, even though they're Journalists, still take an interest in others.

This is why I aspire to work for a magazine like this one someday. Empire magazine and it's lovely bunch writers helped to restore and maintain my faith that Journalism isn't just about personal gain and that no matter how small, there is still a corner of the magazine industry that provides publications that are written by people who are as equally passionate about they're writing as their readers are about reading it.