Matt Hills - Fan Cultures Reading

Matt Hills' 'Fan Cultures Between Knowledge and Justification' explores the idea of individuals identity through the concept of 'fandom'.

Hills concentrates on four individuals that have written about their own personal interactions with 'fandom' and being a fan. He outlines and analyses what each one says about their own experiences before conducting his own analysis of his 'fandoms'. The individuals, including their accounts, he uses to explain the context of 'fandom' and the idea that within a fan base individuals can form a sense of identity, are John Fiske, Scott Bukatman, Sue Wise and Janet Wolff.

He looks at individuals experiences with being a fan in an attempt to explore the idea that fan 'justification's are accepted cultural facts by ethnographers when they are different for everyone. Their are similarities and crossovers between individuals experiences of 'fandom' but they are mostly unique to the person involved and when looked at in a wider and more analytical context are rudimentary forms and aspects of individuals personalities. Instead of becoming 'home-truths' about a particular type of fan they are more narratives of the self.

In conclusions Hills explores the many different aspects of being a fan and concludes that 'fandom' is a way of exploring who you are as a individual and getting to know yourself, often helping to shape your identity because sometimes 'fandom' doesn't last forever. What we once were fans of, we often grow out of or move on to other interests that then become our new 'fandom'.

Post-Postmodernism Theories - Hypermodernity

So what exactly comes after postmodernism in cultural theory? Why post-postmodernism of course...
So out of three possible new ideas in which to explore, hypermodernity/supermodernity, performatism or new sincerity, I decided to choose the first one.
So what's it all about....

Key features/ideas:
- Hypermodernity explores a stage of society that reflects an intensification of modernity.
- It's a theory that's big on looking at the way we understand, control and manipulate the aspects of our existence.
- It's used to explain how we regard technology and biology as factors that contribute to the above.
- Hypermodernity places emphasis on how highly we value technology within society and the notion that 'yesterday's knowledge is always less than today's'.
- It differs from postmodernism that rejects the idea of 'reasonable change'. Hypermodernity is a term that relies on change, in a technological sense, in order to exist as a way of analysing how society has changed.

Key Theorists:
The main two that I could find and after numerous google searches kept popping up are:
- Sebastian Charles
- Gilles Lipovetsky

Reading List:
- 'Hypermodern Times' - S. Charles and G. Lipovetsky
- 'The Empire of Fashion: Dressing a Democracy' - G. Lipovetsky
- 'Development as Modernity, Modernity as Development' - L.S. Lushaba
- 'Space and Social Theory: Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity' - G. Benko and U. Strohmayer

How it could be used:
I don't feel hypermodernity would be a theory that would really fit with the media text I've chosen for my research repost but I can see where the ideas behind the theory have come from. We appear to live in a very consumer driven society these days and
we go nuts for anything and everything technology. We can never seem to get enough of the stuff and are constantly developing it. When the term hypermodernity comes down to explaining our behaviour then I might be able to relate it to my media text. The way of thinking for one of my media text's, BBC drama 'Small Island', character's isn't really postmodern as that's a theory that isn't big on the whole idea that society can actually change but a truly hypermodern way of thinking for the era the drama's set in. In a time where different ethnicities weren't treated equally, the character dismisses her societies values and believes we are all the same no matter the colour of your skin and that societies way of thinking really can change.

'Postmodernism And 'The Other side' - Dick Hebdige

This week's reading, by Dick Hebdige, looks at the term 'postmodernism' and what exactly the term means. Hebdige applies postmodernism to several different cultural aspects, including different cultural events, as examples to reinforce the points he makes about postmodernism. The main point Hebdige makes is that the term is had to define or pinpoint because used in the many different contexts that are described as 'postmodern' it means different things.

To try and put some of the various ways postmodernism is used to describe things, to put it in context, he relates it to people describing the decor of a room, the design of a building, an arts documentary, a TV commercial etc. In a cultural context, as in society, these types of things can be described as postmodern.

Hebdige explains that no matter what perspective you view postmodernism, it's hard to deny that it doesn't carry some remnants of Marxist ideas. Postmodernism is sort of 'follow on' or progression of earlier, more dominant theories. Hebdige says that you can't 'move back from or go beyond' modernity as the terms of postmodernism are too generally defined, the meaning just isn't specific enough.

I agree with Hebdige because from first studying Postmodernism at college and now re-visiting it at University, it still doesn't seem clear what exactly Postmodernism is. It's a very ambiguous term, with no clear definition, what's postmodern to one person isn't postmodern to another. Postmodernism and our understanding of it is different to everyone.

Useful Quotes and Their Meanings:

'It becomes more and more difficult as the 1980s wear on to specify exactly what it is that 'postmodernism' is supposed to refer to as the term gets stretched in all directions across different debates, different disciplinary and discursive boundaries, as different fractions seek to make it their own, using it to designate a plethora of incom-measurable objects, tendencies, emergencies'. - Postmodernism is such an ambiguous term and applies to a wide variety of different things, it's hard to define.

'A Marxism of whatever kind could never move back from or go beyond 'modernity' in the very general terms in which it is defined with the Post, which is not to say that Marxism is necessarily bound to a 'dynamic' and destructive model of technological 'advance'. - Postmodernism has been built on Marxist ideas and is one of the theories that has evolved against Marxism as times have progressed, but the ideas are still there, and it wouldn't be right to say that Marxism was totally against advances in society, culturally, in terms of technology which we see as a very postmodern thing, but is it really?

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.