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Cultural Criticism. Terms and Methods. Cultural C riticism. You will be participating in the larger genre of “cultural criticism” detailed analysis and/or evaluation of popular culture (groups, events, trends/developments, people, places, artifacts, texts)
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Cultural Criticism Terms and Methods
Cultural Criticism • You will be participating in the larger genre of“cultural criticism” detailed analysis and/or evaluation of popular culture (groups, events, trends/developments, people, places, artifacts,texts) • How it is produced, disseminated, and consumed, as well as how and what it presents and represents • Helps us understand, promote, question, or resist culture’s impacts • Investigates beliefs and assumptions we hold in common, contradictions and conflicts that exist between individuals and social groups, and norms/rules believed or imposed by society • Investigates images as well as messages that influence and reflect who we are, have been, want to be, don’t want to be • Reflects on the way culture shapes our sense of reality and our identity (Culture affects us, and we affect culture)
Kinds of Cultural Criticism • Even within criticism, there is a divide based on audience and medium, which affects style: • Popular cultural criticism: speaks to general/mass audience, found in magazines, newspapers, and popular books, often written in response to topical issues, reflect perspectives of wide groups of people. • Academic cultural criticism: written for students, teachers, and scholars, found in academic journals and books, more complication, more sources and quotes from experts, more serious tone, often theoretical.
Why study it? • George Lipsitz: “[P]erhaps the most important facts about people have always been encoded within the ordinary and the commonplace.” • Ray Browne: “Popular culture is a very important segment of our society. The contemporary scene is holding us up to ourselves to see; it can tell us who we are, what we are, and why.” • It doesn’t take for granted the world we live in. It actively participates by thinking about it, and possibly even influences our previously held beliefs or future actions.
Semiotics • Semiotics: practice of decoding and analyzing any sign/collection of signs as message and meaning; depends on believing that culture and texts are systems of signs • Sign: anything that carries meaning (images, words, objects), something that makes you think of something else, sometimes conceal interests—whether personal, political, or commercial, sometimes are ideological (example: ring on left hand) • The meaning(s) of a sign usually lies in its relation—both similarities and differences—to other signs. This is often related to context, as well. • Artifact: a sign or series of signs that is socially grounded (example: ring as artifact for dominant American culture and its views on weddings) • Text: any set of interrelated signs and artifacts that contribute to a unified message. May sometimes confirm or disconfirm an ideology.
Values or Beliefs • You can also use semiotics and analysis to look closer at values—not only texts and signs. • Values also belong to systems from which they take their meaning. • Some people use the term “cultural mythologies”to describe these systems. • Another frequently used term—although usually connoted negative—is ideology: worldviews that express the values and opinions of those who hold them. • Another definition of ideology is a “cultural group’s perceptions about the way things are and assumptions about how they ought to be”—not a factual description of objects and events but instead a perception shared by members of a particular group. • May also be called “value systems” or “worldview” • One more term is “social script”—a set of usually implicit behavioral instructions reinforced by norms and rules.
All of these guide behavior, are subject to change, and are a way we view the world. Some are truth, while others are just accepted norms. • According to Massik and Solomon, “from a semiotic perspective, how you interpret something is very much a product of who you are, for culture is just another name for the frames that shape our values and perceptions” (19). • In texts, as well as arguments or debates, myths often challenge myths, value systems challenge value systems.
