John Storey

CULTURAL STUDIES

AND THE STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE

 

AN INTRODUCTION

The aim of this book is twofold: first, to introduce students and other interested readers to the study of contemporary popular culture; and second, to suggest a map of the development of cultural studies through a discussion of a range of theories and methods for the study of popular culture. I have not attempted an elaborate mapping of the field. Rather, my aim has been to bring together under discussion a range of approaches which have made a significant contribution to the development of the cultural studies approach to the study of contemporary popular culture. It is hoped the book will provide a useful introduction - and range of usable theories and methods -for students new to the field, and a critical overview for those more familiar with the procedures and politics of cultural studies.

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CULTURAL STUDIES AND POPULAR CULTURE

Cultural studies is not a monolithic body of theories and methods. Stuart Hall (1992) makes this very clear:

Cultural Studies has multiple discourses; it has a number of different histories. It is a whole set of formations; it has its own different conjunctures and moments in the past. It included many different kinds of work ... It always was a set of unstable formations ... It had many trajectories; many people had and have different theoretical positions, all of them in contention. (278)

Cultural studies has always been an unfolding discourse, responding to changing historical and political conditions and always marked by debate, disagreement and intervention. For example, in the late 1970s the centrality of class in cultural studies was disrupted first by feminism's insistence on the importance of gender, and then by black students raising questions about the invisibility of race in much cultural studies analysis. It is simply not possible now to think of cultural studies and popular culture, for example, without also thinking about the enormous contribution to the study of popular culture made by feminism. In the early 1970s, such a connection would have been far from obvious.

Although it is misleading - and probably not desirable - to limit cultural studies to an academic orthodoxy, it is possible to present, for the purposes of an introduction, some of its basic assumptions.

'Culture' in cultural studies is defined politically rather than aesthetically. The object of study in cultural studies is not culture defined in the narrow sense, as the objects of aesthetic excellence ('high art'); nor culture defined in an equally narrow sense, as a process of aesthetic, intellectual and spiritual development; but culture understood as the texts and practices of everyday life. This is a definition of culture which can embrace the first two definitions; but also, and crucially, it can range beyond the social exclusivity and narrowness of these, to include the study of popular culture. Although cultural studies cannot (and should not) be reduced to the study of popular culture, it is certainly the case that the study of popular culture is central to the project of cultural studies.

Cultural studies also regards culture as political in a quite specific sense - as a terrain of conflict and contestation. It is seen as a key site for the production and reproduction of the social relations of everyday life. Perhaps the best-known elaboration of this way of seeing culture comes from Stuart Hall (in Storey 1994). He describes popular culture, for example, as an arena of consent and resistance. It is partly where hegemony arises, and where it is secured. It is not a sphere where socialism, a socialist culture - already fully formed - might be simply 'expressed'. But it is one of the places where socialism might be constituted. That is why 'popular culture' matters. (466)

Others within cultural studies might not express their attitude to popular culture quite in these terms, but they would certainly share Hall's concern to think culture politically.

Cultural studies is grounded in Marxism. Marxism informs cultural studies in two fundamental ways. First, to understand the meaning(s) of a cultural text or practice, we .must analyse it in its social and historical conditions of production and consumption. However, although constituted by a particular social structure with a particular history, culture is not studied as a reflection of this structure and history. History and culture are not separate entities. It is never a question of reading a text or practice against its historical background or using a text or practice to illustrate an already formulated account of an historical moment - history and text/practice are inscribed in each other and are embedded together as a part of the same process. Cultural studies insists that culture's importance derives from the fact that it helps constitute the structure and shape the history. As Hall (in Storey 1996) explains, what cultural studies has helped me to understand is that the media [for example] play a part in the formation, in the constitution, of the things that they reflect. It is not that there is a world outside, 'out there', which exists free of the discourses of representation. What is 'out there' is, in part, constituted by how it is represented.

In other words, cultural texts, for example, do not simply reflect history, they make history and are part of its processes and practices and should, therefore, be studied for the (ideological) work that they do, rather than for the (ideological) work (always happening elsewhere) that they reflect. The second assumption taken from Marxism is the recognition that capitalist industrial societies are societies divided unequally along, for example, ethnic, gender, generational and class lines. Cultural studies contends that culture is one of the principal sites where this division is established and contested: culture is a terrain on which there takes place a continual struggle over meaning, in which subordinate groups attempt to resist the imposition of meanings which bear the interests of dominant groups. It is this which makes culture ideological.

Ideology is without doubt the central concept in cultural studies. There are a number of competing definitions of ideology, but it is the formulation established by Hall (1985) which is generally accepted as the dominant definition within cultural studies. Working within a framework of Antonio Gramsci's (1971: see Storey 1993) concept of 'hegemony', Hall developed a theory of 'articulation' to explain the processes of ideological struggle (Hall's use of 'articulation' plays on the term's double meaning: to express and to join together). He argues that cultural texts and practices are not inscribed with meaning, guaranteed once and for all by the intentions of production; meaning is always the result of an act of 'articulation' (an active process of 'production in use'). The process is called 'articulation' because meaning has to be expressed, but it is always expressed in a specific context, a specific historical moment, within a specific discourse(s). Thus expression is always connected to and conditioned by context. Hall also draws on the work of the Russian theorist Valentin Volosinov (1973). Volosinov argues that meaning is always determined by context of articulation. Cultural texts and practices are 'multiaccentual'; that is, they can be articulated with different 'accents' by different people in different contexts for different politics. Meaning is therefore a social production; the world has to be made to mean. A text or practice or event is not the issuing source of meaning, but a site where the articulation of meaning - variable meaning(s) - can take place. And because different meanings can be ascribed to the same text or practice or event, meaning is always a potential site of conflict. Thus the field of culture is for cultural studies a major site of ideological struggle; a terrain of 'incorporation' and 'resistance'; one of the sites where hegemony is to be won or lost.

In response to the dual challenge represented by the undermining of the Marxist paradigm, both by the events in Eastern Europe and the attacks of postmodern critics (see McRobbie 1992,1994 and Stoнrey 1996), many in cultural studies have begun to rethink its political project. Angela McRobbie's (1994) response to the 'crisis' in cultural studies is to argue for a return to neo-Gramscian hegemony theory. She accepts that cultural studies has been radically transformed as debates about postmodernism and postmodernity have replaced the more familiar debates about ideology and hegemony. Cultural studies, she claims, has responded in two ways. On the one hand, it has prompted a return to economic reductive forms of analysis; and on the other, it has given rise to an uncritical celebration of consumerism, in which consumption is understood too exclusively in terms of pleasure and meaning-making. McRobbie rejects a return 'to a crude and mechanical base-superstructure model, and also the dangers of pursuing a kind of cultural populism to a point at which anything which is consumed and is popular is also seen as oppositional' (39). Instead, she calls for 'an extension of Gramscian cultural analysis' (39), and for a return to ethnographic cultural analysis which takes as its object of study '[t]he lived experience which breathes life into [the] . . . inanimate objects [of popular culture]' (27).

The cultural studies use of hegemony theory - what Hall (1992) calls 'the enormously productive metaphor of hegemony' (280) -at its best insists that there is a dialectic between the processes of production and the activities of consumption. The consumer always confronts a text or practice in its material existence as a result of determinate conditions of production. But in the same way, the text or practice is confronted by a consumer who in effect produces in use the range of possible meaning(s), which cannot just be read off from the materiality of the text or practice, or the means or relations of its production.

Cultural studies would also insist that making popular culture ('production in use') can be empowering to subordinate and resistant to dominant understandings of the world. But this is not to say that Popular culture is always empowering and resistant. To deny the Passivity of consumption is not to deny that sometimes consumption is passive; to deny that the consumers of popular culture are not cultural dupes is not to deny that at times we can all be duped. But it is to deny that popular culture is little more than a degraded culture, successfully imposed from above, to make profit and secure ideological control. The best of cultural studies insists that to decide these matters requires vigilance and attention to the details of the production, distribution and consumption of culture. These arej not matters that can be decided once and for all (outside the, contingencies of history and politics) with an elitist glance and a condescending sneer. Nor can they be read off from the moment of production (locating meaning, pleasure, ideological effect, etc. in, variously, the intention, the means of production or the production itself): these are only aspects of the contexts for 'production in use', and it is, ultimately, in 'production in use' that questions of meaning, pleasure, ideological effect, etc. can be (contingently) decided. Moreover, it is important to distinguish between the power of the culture industries and the power of their influence. Too often the two are conflated, but they are not necessarily the same.

Let me conclude these introductory remarks with a long, but rewarding, quotation from the American cultural studies theorist Lawrence Grossberg (1992b). In so many ways, it sums up what I have been trying to say.

We have to acknowledge that, for the most part, the relationнship between the audience and popular texts is an active and productive one. The meaning of a text is not given in some independently available set of codes which we can consult at our own convenience. A text does not carry its own meaning or politics already inside of itself; no text is able to guarantee what its effects will be. People are constantly struggling, not merely to figure out what a text means, but to make it mean something that connects to their own lives, experiences, needs and desires. The same text will mean different things to different people, depending on how it is interpreted. And different people have different interpretive resources, just as they have different needs. A text can only mean something in the context of the experience and situation of its particular audience. Equally important, texts do not define ahead of time how they are to be used or what functions they can serve. They can have different uses for different people in different contexts . .. How a specific text is used, how it is interpreted, how it functions for its audience - all of these are inseparably connected through the audience's constant struggle to make sense of itself and its world, even more, to make a slightly better place for itself in the world. (52-3)

 

MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

My aim, as stated earlier, is to present a range of theories and methods which have been used within cultural studies to study contemporary popular culture. In the main, I have tried to keep criticisms of the theories and methods to a minimum. I have, thereнfore, tried to avoid 'opinion writing', where, instead of explaining a theory or method, the author continually clutters his or her account with talk of problems and how he or she would solve them or would do the whole thing differently. There is of course a place for such an approach, but I am not convinced that the appropriate place is an introductory text. I would like the reader to take from this book an understanding of a range of significant theories and methods, rather than an understanding of what I think about them. Now it may, at times, become obvious what I think, but this should not be the primary knowledge that the reader takes from the book. For much the same reasons, I have quoted more than would be appropriate in a more 'advanced' text. But I feel quite strongly that introductory texts work best when they give their readers reasonable access to the theories and theorists under discussion.

I am also aware that I have simplified the field. Selection always means exclusion; and I know that my selection will not meet with universal approval. There are other valuable theories and methods which I have not discussed. In my defence, I can say only that it is not possible in a book of this size to cover all the theories and methods which have influenced cultural studies or which form part of its very structure. I have, however, selected the approaches which I believe are most significant.

In conclusion, it is difficult to do full justice to the complexities of the theories and methods that I have discussed. To really do justice' to the range and diversity of the study of contemporary popular culture within cultural studies would be the work of more than one book. Finally, whatever else this book is, it is certainly not intended as a substitute for reading first-hand the theories and methods discussed.

 

NOTES

1. For a fuller version of this history, with particular reference to popular culture, see Storey 1993, 1994 and 1996.

 

 

TELEVISION

Television is the popular cultural form of the late twentieth century. It is without doubt the world's most popular leisure activity. On the day you are reading this book, there will be around the world in excess of 3.5 billion hours spent watching1 television (Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi 1990: 1). British audiences, for example, spend on average more than one-third of their waking hours watching television. In the USA, average time spent viewing is about twice as much (Allen 1992: 13). The 'average' American will spend in excess of seven years watching television (Kubey and Csikszentimhalyi 1990: xi).

 

ENCODING AND DECODING TELEVISUAL DISCOURSE

If we are in search of a founding moment when cultural studies first emerges from left-Leavisism, 'pessimistic' versions of Marxism, American mass communication models, culturalism and structuralнism, the publication of Stuart Hall's 'Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse' (Hall 1973) is perhaps it. 2

In Hall's model of televisual communication (see Figure 1), the circulation of 'meaning' in televisual discourse passes through three distinctive moments: 'each has its specific modality and conditions of existence' (128). First, media professionals put into meaningful

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televisual discourse their particular account of, for example, a 'raw' social event. At this moment in the circuit, a range of ways of looking at the world ('ideologies') are 'in dominance'.

 

programme as 'meaningful' discourse

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relations of productionааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааа relations of productionааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааа ааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааааа

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Figure I

 

 

[The moment of media production] is framed throughout by meanings and ideas; knowledge-in-use concerning the routines of production, historically defined technical skills, professional ideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions and assumpнtions, assumptions about the audience and so on frame the constitution of the programme through this production strucнture. Further, though the production structures of television originate the television discourse, they do not constitute a closed system. They draw topics, treatments, agendas, events, personnel, images of the audience, 'definitions of the situation' from other sources and other discursive formations within the wider socio-cultural and political structure of which they are a differentiated part. (129)

Thus the media professionals involved determine how the 'raw' social event will be encoded in discourse. However, in the second moment, once the meanings and messages are in meaningful discourse, that is, once they have taken the form of televisual

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discourse, the formal rules of language and discourse are 'in dominance'; the message is now open, for example, to the play of polysemy.

Since the visual discourse translates a three-dimensional world into two-dimensional planes, it cannot, of course, be the referнent or concept it signifies . .. Reality exists outside language, but it is constantly mediated by and through language: and what we can know and say has to be produced in and through discourse. Discursive 'knowledge' is the product not of the transparent representation of the 'real' in language but of the articulation of language on real relations and conditions. Thus there is no intelligible discourse without the operation of a code. (131)

Finally, in the third moment, the moment of audience decoding, another range of ways of looking at the world ('ideologies') are 'in dominance'. An audience is confronted not by a 'raw' social event, but by a discursive translation of the event. If the event is to become 'meaningful' to the audience, it must decode and make sense of the discourse. 'If no "meaning" is taken, there can be no "consumption". If the meaning is not articulated in practice, it has no effect' (128). If an audience acts upon its decoding, this then becomes itself a social practice, a 'raw' social event, available to be encoded in another discourse. Thus, through the circulation of discourse, 'production' becomes 'reproduction' to become 'production' again. The circuit starts in the 'social' and ends, to begin again, in the 'social'.

In other words, meanings and messages are not simply 'transнmitted', they are always produced: first by the encoder from the 'raw' material of everyday life; second, by the audience in relation to its location in other discourses. Each moment is 'determinate', operating in its own conditions of production. Moreover, as Hall makes clear, the moments of encoding and decoding may not be perfectly symmetrical. There is nothing inevitable about the outcome of the process - what is intended and what is taken may not coincide. Media professionals may wish decoding to correspond with encoding, but they cannot prescribe or guarantee this. Governed by different conditions of existence, encoding and decoding are

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open to variable reciprocity. There is always the possibility of misunderstanding.

 

No doubt misunderstandings of a literal kind do exist. The viewer does not know the terms employed, cannot follow the complex logic of argument or exposition, is unfamiliar with the language, finds the concepts too alien or difficult or is foxed by the expository narrative. But more often broadcasters are concerned that the audience has failed to take the meaning as they - the broadcasters - intended. What they really mean to say is that viewнers are not operating within the 'dominant' or 'preferred' code. (135)

 

It is this second 'misunderstanding' which interests Hall. Drawing on the work of sociologist Frank Parkin (1971), he suggests 'three hypothetical positions from which decodings of a televisual discourse may be constructed' (136). The first position he calls 'the dominant-hegemonic position' (136). This occurs '[w]hen the viewer takes the connoted meaning from, say, a television newscast or current affairs programme full and straight, and decodes the message in terms of the reference code in which it has been encoded, we might say that the viewer is operating inside the dominant code' (136). To decode a television discourse in this way is to be in harmony with the 'professional code' of the broadcasters.

 

The professional code is 'relatively independent' of the domiнnant code, in that it applies criteria and transformational operations of its own, especially those of a technico-practical nature. The professional code, however, operates within the 'hegemony' of the dominant code. Indeed, it serves to reproduce the dominant definitions precisely by bracketing their hegemonic quality and operating instead with dis-i placed professional codings which foreground such apparently neutral-technical questions as visual quality, news and presнentational values, televisual quality, 'professionalism' and so on. (136)

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The dominant code is always articulated through the profesнsional code. David Morley (1980) gives the example of the way in which Nationwide reported the release of Patrick Meehan in 1976.

 

What is 'not relevant' as far as they are concerned is the whole political background to the case. Now that is not to say that this is a straightforwardly ideologiнcal decision to block out the political implications of the case. It's much more, in their terms, a communicative decision, as it appears to them; that is their notion of 'good television', to deal in that kind of 'personal drama'. (152)

 

The second decoding position is 'the negotiated code or position' (137). This is probably the majority position.

 

Decoding within the negotiated version contains a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations (abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its own ground rules - it operates with exceptions to the rule. It accords the privileged position to the dominant definitions of events while reserving the right to make a more negotiated application to 'local conditions', to its own corporate positions. This negotiated version of the dominant ideology is thus shot through with contradictions, though these are only on certain occasions brought to full visibility. (137)

An example of the negotiated code might be a worker who agrees in general terms with the news report's claim that increased wages cause inflation, while insisting on his or her right to strike for better pay and conditions.

Finally, the third position identified by Hall is 'the opposiнtional code'. This is the position occupied by the viewer who recognises the preferred code of the televisual discourse but who nonetheless chooses to decode within an alternative frame of reference. 'This is the case [for example] of the viewer who

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listens to a debate on the need to limit wages but "reads" every mention of the "national interest" as "class interest"" (138).

Hall acknowledges that his hypothetical decoding positions 'need to be empirically tested and refined' (136). This in part is the project of David Morley's The 'Nationwide' Audience (1980) - to test Hall's model, to see how individual interpreнtations of televisual texts relate to socio-cultural background. Morley provides a useful summary (and clarification of) his own working understanding of Hall's encoding/decoding model as follows:

 

1.ааааааааааааааааааааааааа The production of a meaningful message in the TV discourse is always problematic 'work'. The same event can be encoded in more than one way. The study here is, then, of how and why certain production practices and structures tend to produce certain messages, which embody their meanings in certain recurring forms.

2.аааааааааааааааааааааааааа The message in social communication is always comнplex in structure and form. It always contains more than one potential 'reading'. Messages propose and preнfer certain readings over others, but they can never become wholly closed around one reading. They remain polysemic.

3.ааааааааааааааааааааааааа The activity of 'getting meaning' from the message is also a problematic practice, however transparent and 'natural' it may seem. Messages encoded one way can always be read in a different way. (10)

 

Morley arranged for twenty-nine different groups to view two episodes (from 1976 and 1977) of the BBC's early-evening maga-zine/news programme Nationwide. The first programme was shown to eighteen groups, the second to eleven. Each group consisted of five to ten people. The groups were selected on the basis that they might be expected to differ in their decodings from 'dominant' to 'negotiated' to 'oppositional'.

 

 

Figure 2

Figure 2

 

Morley analysed the different readings produced by each group. Much of what he found seemed to confirm Hall's model (see Figure 2 for Morley's diagrammatic presentation of his findings). For example, a group of university arts students and a group of teacher-training-college students produced readings which moved between 'negotiated' and 'dominant', while the group of shop stewards produced an 'oppositional reading'.3 However, when the middle-class bank managers and the working-class apprentices both produced dominant readings, the correlation between class and reading position looked less secure, forcing Morley to

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acknowledge that decodings are not determined 'directly from social class position'. Rather, as he reformulates it: 'it is always a question of how social position plus particular discourse positions produce specific readings; readings which are structured because the structure of access to different discourses is determined by social position' (134).

In this way, Morley is able to explain the similarity in decodings between the working-class apprentices and the middle-class bank managers in terms of the formulation: determination of class plus other discourses (bodies of ideas and shared socio-cultural practices which help constitute us as social subjects and thus shape how we see and think about the world). Thus when we are interpellated by a text, this is always in a context of other interpellations. The text-reader encounter does not occur in a moment isolated from other discourses, but always in a field of many discourses, some in harmony with the text, some which are in contradiction with it. One reads, for example, as a student, a Catholic, a socialist and a member of a youth subculture. Each discourse may pull us in a different direction. Each may assume a different level of importance in any given social setting. The response of the black Further Education students and other predominantly black groups to Nationwide -their 'critique of silence' - is therefore not to be explained as a failure of communication (the technical inability of the encoders to get their message across). Rather, what it demonstrates is the discourses of the text coming into conflict with the discourses of the reader. 'Here', as Morley explains 'the action of the cultures and discourses which these groups are involved in acts to block or inflect their interpellation by the discourse of Nationwide' (143). The converse is also evident in the decodings made by the working-class apprentices. 'Here it is not simply a case of the absence of "contradictory" discourses; rather it is the presence of other discourses which work in parallel with those of the programme -enabling these groups to produce "corresponding" representations' (143). Other discourses are always in play, 'although their action is more visible when it is a case of negative-contradictory rather than positive-reinforcing effect' (144). As Morley explains:

[T]he social subject is always interpellated by a number of discourses, some of which are in parallel and reinforce each other, some of which are contradictory and block or inflect the successful interpellation of the subject by other discourses. Positively or negatively, other discourses are always involved in the relation of text and subject, although their action is simply more visible when it is a negative and contradictory rather than a positive and reinforcing effect. (162)

However, despite these other determinations (these other disнcourses), Morley still stresses the importance of class in that it determines access (or the nature of access) to different discourses. As he explains, 'the subject's position in the social formation structures his or her range of access to various discourses and ideological codes' (158). This then explains the correlation between the readings made by the bank managers and the apprentices. The bank managers produced a dominant reading because of their political commitment to the conservatism of Nationwide's discourse, while the apprentices accepted it uncritically because of a lack (unlike the shop stewards) of an alternative political discourse. Class was the key to both readings. The first was made on the basis of 'class interest', the second on the basis of the 'class interest' of the British education system (the working-class apprentices were schooled to be politically uncritical).

In the 'Afterword' to The 'Nationwide' Audience, Morley sums up (rather too modestly, in my opinion) the achievements of his research:

I have been able to do no more than to indicate some of the ways in which social position and (sub)cultural frameworks may be related to individual readings. To claim more than that, on the basis of such a small sample, would be misleading. Similarly, I would claim only to have shown the viability of an approach which treats the audience as a set of cultural groupings rather than as a mass of individuals or as a set of rigid socio-demographic categories. Clearly, more work needs to be done on the relation between group and individual readings. (163)

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Regretting the absence from his research of any discussion of how the context of decoding might effect the decodings produced, Morley's next research (1986) was an exploration of television viewing in the family home.4

 

TELEVISION AND 'THE IDEOLOGY OF MASS CULTURE'

In the early 1980s, the Dutch cultural critic Ien Ang placed the following advertisement in Viva, a Dutch women's magazine: 'I like watching the TV serial Dallas, but often get odd reactions to it. Would anyone like to write and tell me why you like watching it too, or dislike it? I should like to assimilate these reactions in my university thesis. Please write to ... (1985: 10).

The context for Ang's research was the emergence of the American 'prime-time soap' Dallas as an international success (watched in over ninety countries) in the early 1980s. In the Netherlands, Dallas was regularly watched by 52 per cent of the population.

Following the advertisement, Ang received forty-two letters (thirty-nine from women or girls) from both lovers and haters of Dallas. These form the empirical basis of her study of the pleasure(s) of watching Dallas for its predominantly female audience. She is not concerned with pleasure understood as the satisfaction of an already pre-existent need, but 'the mechanisms by which pleasure is aroused' (9). Instead of the question 'what are the effects of pleasure?' she poses the question 'what is the mechanism of pleasure; how is it produced and how does it work?'

For Ang's letter-writers the pleasure or displeasures of Dallas are inextricably linked with questions of 'realism'. The extent to which a letter-writer finds the programme 'good' or 'bad' is determined by whether they find it 'realistic' (good) or 'unrealistic' (bad). Critical of both 'empiricist realism' (a text is considered realistic to the extent it adequately reflects that which exists outside itself) and 'classic realism' (Colin McCabe's (1974) claim that realism is an illusion created by the extent to which a text can successfully conceal its constructedness), Ang contends that Dallas is best understood as an example of what she calls 'emotional realism'. Accordingly, Dallas can be read on two levels: the level of denotation (the literal content of the programme, general storyline, character interactions, etc.) and the level of connotation (the associations and implications which resonate from the storyline and character interactions, etc.).

It is striking; the same things, people, relations and situations which are regarded at the denotative level as unrealistic, and unreal, are at the connotative level apparently not seen at all as unreal, but in fact as 'recognizable'. Clearly, in the connotative reading process the denotative level of the text is put in brackets. (42)

Viewing Dallas, like any other programme, is a selective process, reading across the text from denotation to connotation, weaving our sense of self in and out of the narrative. As one letter-writer says: '[d]o you know why I like watching it? I think it's because those problems and intrigues, the big and little pleasures and troubles occur in our own lives too ... In real life I know a horror like J.R., but he's just an ordinary builder' (43). It is this ability to connect our own lives with the lives of a family of Texan millionaires which gives the programme its emotional realism. We may not be rich, but we have other fundamental things in common: relationships and broken relationships, happiness and sadness, illness and health. Those who find it realistic shift the focus of attention from the particularity of the (denotative) narrative to the generality of its (connotative) themes.

Given the way that Dallas plays with the emotions in an endless game of musical chairs in which happiness inevitably gives way to misery, Ang calls this a 'tragic structure of feeling' (46). As one letter-writer told her: '[s]ometimes I really enjoy having a good cry with them. And why not? In this way my other bottled-up emotions find an outlet' (49). Viewers who 'escape' in this way are not so much engaging in 'a denial of reality as playing with it ... [in a] game that enables one to place the limits of the fictional and the real under discussion, to make them fluid. And in that game an imaginary participation in the fictional world is experienced as pleasurable' (49). Whatever else is involved, part of the pleasure(s) of Dallas is quite clearly connected to the amount

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of fluidity which viewers are able or willing to establish between its fictional world and the world of their day-to-day existence. But how does Dallas construct this tragic structure of feeling? Ang's answer is that it is 'the combination of melodramatic elements and the narrative structure of soap opera that evokes a tragic structure of feeling' (78). In order to activate this structure of feeling, it is necessary to have the cultural capital to take up a reading formation informed by what she calls (following Peter Brooks (1976)) the 'melodramatic imagination'. The melodramatic imagination is the articulation of a way of seeing beyond the grand human suffering of classical tragedy, to ordinary day-to-day existence, with its own pain and triumphs, its own victories and defeats, as itself profoundly j meaningful and significant. It offers a means of organising reality, cut loose from the certainties of religion, into meaningful contrasts and conflicts. As a narrative form committed to melodrama's emphatic contrasts, conflicts and emotional excess, Dallas is well placed to give sustenance to and make manifest the melodramatic imagination. For those who see the world in this way (Ang claims that it demands a cultural competence most often shared by women), 'the pleasure \ of Dallas ... is not a compensation for the presumed drabness of daily life, nor a flight from it, but a dimension of it' (83).

The melodramatic imagination activates what is perceived in the text as a tragic structure of feeling, which in turn produces the pleasure of emotional realism. As the melodramatic imagination is in effect a 'reading formation' (see chapter 3 below), it follows that not all viewers of Dallas will take up this particular reading position. On the basis of the letters, Ang is able to separate the viewers into three reading positions connected by what she calls 'the ideology of mass culture' (15). The ideology articulates (using the word in the Gramscian double sense to mean both to express and to form a relationship with) the view that popular culture is the product of capitalist commodity production and is therefore subject to the laws of the capitalist market economy; the result of which is the seemingly endless circulation of degraded commodities, whose only real significance is that they make a profit for their producers. The ideology of mass culture, like any ideological discourse, works by interpellating individuals into specific subject positions. The letters suggest three positions from which to consume Dallas: as fans, as ironical viewers, and as those who strongly dislike the programme.

Those letter-writers who strongly dislike Dallas draw most clearly on the ideology. They use it in two ways: to locate the programme negatively as an example of 'mass culture', and as a means to account for and support their dislike of the programme. As Ang puts it, 'their reasoning boils down to this: "Dallas is obviously bad because it's mass culture, and that's why I dislike it" ' (95-6). In this way, the ideology both comforts and reassures: 'it makes a search for more detailed and personal explanations superfluous, because it provides a finished explanatory model that convinces, sounds logical and radiates legitimacy' (96). This is not to say that it is wrong to dislike Dallas, only that professions of dislike are often made without thinking - in fact, with a confidence born of uncritical thought.

It is possible to like Dallas and still subscribe to the ideology of mass culture. The contradiction is resolved by 'mockery and irony' (97). Dallas is subjected to an ironising and mocking commentary in which it 'is transformed from a seriously intended melodrama to the reverse: a comedy to be laughed at. Ironising viewers therefore do not take the text as it presents itself, but invert its preferred meaning through ironic commentary' (98). In this construction, the pleasure of Dallas derives from the fact that it is bad: pleasure and bad mass culture are reconciled in an instant. As one of the letter-writers puts it: 'Of course Dallas is mass culture and therefore bad, but precisely because I am so well aware of that I can really enjoy watching it and poke fun at it' (100). For both the ironising viewer and the hater of Dallas, the ideology of mass culture operates as a bedrock of common sense, making judgements obvious and self-evident. Although both are trapped in the normative standards of the ideology, the difference between them is marked by the question of pleasure. On the one hand, the ironisers can have pleasure without guilt in the sure and declared knowledge that they know that mass culture is bad. On the other hand, the haters, although secure in the same knowledge, can, nevertheless, suffer 'a conflict of feelings if, in spite of this, they cannot escape its seduction' (101).

21

Finally, there are the fans, those who love Dallas. For the viewers who occupy the previous two positions, to actually like Dallas without resort to irony is to be identified as someone duped by mass culture. As one letter-writer puts it: 'The aim is simply to rake in money, lots of money. And people try to do that by means of all these things - sex, beautiful people, wealth. And you always have people who fall for it' (103). The claim is presented with all the confidence of having the full weight of the ideology's discursive support. Ang analyses the different strategies which the fans of Dallas must use to deal consciously and unconsciously with such condescension. The first strategy is to 'internalise' the ideology; to acknowledge the 'dangers' of Dallas, but to declare one's ability to deal with them in order to derive pleasure from the programme. Another strategy is to confront the ideology of mass culture as this letter-writer does: 'Many people find it worthless or without substance. But I think it does have substance' (105). But, as Ang points out, the writer remains firmly within the discursive constraints of the ideology as she attempts to reloнcate Dallas in a different relationship to the binary oppositions with substance/without substance, good/bad. 'This letter-writer "negotiates' as it were within the discursive space created by the ideology of mass culture, she does not situate herself outside it and does not speak from an opposing ideological position' (106). Finally, there is a letter which reveals a third strategy of defence against the normative standards of the ideology of mass culture. Like the second category of viewer, the ironist, this involves the use of surface irony; only this time irony is used to justify what is in all other respects a form of non-ironic pleasure. In this strategy, irony is used to condemn the characters as 'horrible' people, while at the same time demonнstrating an intimate knowledge of the programme and a great involvement in its narrative development and character interacнtions, etc. She is caught between the dismissive power of the ideology and the pleasure which she obviously derives from watching Dallas. Her letter seems to suggest that she adheres to the former when viewing with friends, and to the latter

when viewing alone (and perhaps secretly when viewing with friends). As Ang explains, 'irony is here a defence mechanism with which this letter-writer tries to fulfil the social norms set by the ideology of mass culture, while secretly she "really" likes Dallas' (109).

As Ang shows, the fans of Dallas find it necessary to locate their pleasure in relation to the ideology of mass culture; they 'internalise' the ideology; they 'negotiate' with the ideology; they use 'surface irony' to defend their pleasure against the withering dismissal of the ideology. What all these strategies of defence reveal is 'that there is no clear-cut ideological alternative which can be employed against the ideology of mass culture - at least no alternative that offsets the latter in power of conнviction and coherence' (109-10). The struggle therefore, as so far described, between those who like Dallas and those who dislike it, is an unequal struggle between those who argue from within the discursive strength and security of the ideology of mass culture, and those who resist from within (for them) its inhospitable confines. 'In short, these fans do not seem to be able to take up an effective ideological position - an identity -from which they can say in a positive way and independently of the ideology of mass culture: "I like Dallas because . . ." ' (110). There is, however, one final viewing position as revealed in the letters; one that might help these fans: that is, one informed by the ideology of populism. At the core of this ideology is the belief that one person's taste is of equal value to another person's taste. As one letter-writer puts it: 'I find the people who react oddly rather ludicrous - they can't do anything about someone's taste. And anyway they might find things pleasant that you just can't stand seeing or listening to' (113). The ideology of populism insists that as taste is an autonomous category, continually open to individual inflection, it is absolutely meaningless to pass aesthetic judgements on other people's preferences. Given that this would seem to be an ideal ideology from which to defend one's pleasure in Dallas, why do so few of the letter-writers adopt it? Ang's answer is that it is to do with the ideology's extremely limited vocabulary. After one has repeated 'there's no accounting for taste' a few times, the argument begins to appear rather limited. Compared to this, the ideology of mass culture has an extensive and elaborate range of arguments and theories. Little wonder, then, that when invited to explain why they like or dislike Dallas, the letter-writers find it difficult to escape the normative ideological discourse of mass culture.

Cultural studies, especially feminist cultural studies, must, accordнing to Ang, break with the ideology of mass culture. She sees pleasure as the key concept in a transformed feminist cultural politics. Feminist cultural studies must struggle against 'the paternalism of the ideology of mass culture ... [in which w]omen are . .. seen as the passive victims of the deceptive messages of soap operas . .. [their] pleasure . . . totally disregarded' (118-19). Pleasure should not be condemned as an obstruction to the feminist goal of women's liberation. The question which Ang poses is: can pleasure through identification with the women of 'women's weepies' or the emotionally masochistic women to soap operas 'have a meaning for women which is relatively independent of their political attitudes?' (133). Her answer is yes: fantasy and fiction do not function in place of, but beside, other dimensions of life (social practice, moral or political consciousness). It ... is a source of pleasure because it puts 'reality' in parenthesis, because it constructs imaginary solutions for real contradictions which in their fictional simplicity and their simple fictionality step outside the tedious complexity of the existing social relations of dominance and subordinaнtion. (135)

Of course this does not mean that representations of women do not matter. They can still be condemned for being reactionary in an ongoing cultural politics. But to experience pleasure from them is a completely different issue: 'it need not imply that we are also bound to take up these positions and solutions in our relations to our loved ones and friends, our work, our political ideals and so on' (135).

Fiction and fantasy, then, function by making life in the present pleasurable, or at least livable, but this does not by any means exclude radical political activity or consciousness. It does not follow that feminists must not persevere in trying to produce new fantasies and fight for a place for them ... It does, however mean that, where cultural consumption is concerned, no fixed standard exists for gauging the 'progress-iveness' of a fantasy. The personal may be political, but the personal and the political do not always go hand in hand. (135-6)

 

THE TWO ECONOMIES OF TELEVISION

John Fiske (1987) argues that cultural commodities - including television - from which popular culture is made circulate in two simultaneous economies: the financial and the cultural. The financial economy is primarily concerned with exchange value, the cultural is primarily focused on use - 'meanings, pleasures, and social identities' (311). There is of course continual interaction between these separate but related economies. Fiske gives the example of Hill Street Blues. The programme was made by MTM and sold to NBC, which then made a sponsorship deal with Mercedes Benz - in effect making the audience for Hill Street Blues available to Mercedes Benz. This all happened in the financial economy. In the cultural economy, the series changed from a cultural commodity (to be sold to NBC) to a site for the production of meanings and pleasures for its audience. In the same way, the audience changed from commodity (to be sold to Mercedes Benz) to a producer of meanings and pleasures.

Fiske insists 'that the power of audiences-as-producers in the cultural economy is considerable' (313). The power of the audience 'derives from the fact that meanings do not circulate in the cultural economy in the same way that wealth does in the financial' (313). While it is possible to possess wealth, it is much harder to possess meanings and pleasures. In the cultural economy - unlike in the financial economy - commodities do not move in a linear fashion

25

from production to consumption; pleasures and meanings circulate without any real distinction between production and consumption. Moreover, the power of the consumer becomes manifest in the failure of producers to predict what will sell. 'Twelve out of thirteen records fail to make a profit, TV series are axed by the dozen, expensive films sink rapidly into red figures (Raise the Titanic is an ironic example - it nearly sank the Lew Grade empire)' (313).

In an attempt to offset the failures, the culture industries produce 'repertoires' of goods in the hope of attracting an audience. But audiences constantly engage in what Fiske calls - borrowing from Michel de Certeau (1984) - 'semiotic guerilla warfare' (316). Whereas the culture industries seek to incorporate audiences as commodity consumers, the audience often excorporates a television text, for example, for its own purposes. Fiske cites the example of the way in which Australian Aboriginal viewers appropriated Rambo as a figure of resistance, relevant to their own political and cultural struggles. He also cites the example of Russian Jews watching Dallas in Israel and reading it as 'capitalism's self-criticism' (320).

Fiske argues that resistance to the power of the powerful by those without power in Western societies takes two forms, semiotic and social. The first is mainly concerned with meanings, pleasures and social identities; the second, with transformations of the socio-economic system. He contends that 'the two are closely related, although relatively autonomous' (316). Popular culture operates mostly, 'but not exclusively', in the domain of semiotic power. It is involved in 'the struggle between homogenisation and difference, or between consensus and conflict' (316). In this sense, popular culture is a semiotic battlefield in which a conflict is fought out between the forces of incorporation and the forces of resistance, between an imposed set of meanings, pleasures and social identities, and the meanings, pleasures and social identities produced in acts of semiotic resistance: 'the hegemonic forces of homogeneity are always met by the resistances of heterogeneity' (Fiske 1989a: 8).

Fiske's two economies operate in the interests of opposing

sides of the struggle: the financial economy tends to favour the forces of incorporation and homogenisation, while the cultural economy tends to favour the forces of resistance and difference. Semiotic resistance - in which dominant meanings are challenged by subordinate meanings - has the effect of undermining capitalнism's attempt at ideological homogeneity. In this way, according to Fiske, the dominant class's intellectual and moral leadership is challenged.

Fiske's approach to popular culture - including television - is one which recognises popular culture as 'a site of struggle' and, while acknowledging 'the power of the forces of dominance', chooses instead to direct its attention to 'the popular tactics by which these forces are coped with, are evaded or are resisted'. In other words, '[i]nstead of tracing exclusively the processes of incorporation, it investigates rather that popular vitality and creativity that makes incorporation such a constant necessity' (20). Moreover, 'instead of concentrating on the omnipresent, insidious practices of the dominant ideology, it attempts to understand the everyday resistances and evasions that make that ideology work so hard and insistently to maintain itself and its values'. His approach 'is essentially optimistic, for it finds in the vigour and vitality of the people evidence both of the possibility of social change and of the motivation to drive it (20-1).

 

NOTES

1.ааааааааааааааааааааа David Morley's Family Television (1986) discusses how television is in ways which render the term 'watching television' rather inadequate.

2.аааааааааа ааааааааааThe essay was first presented as a paper to The Council of Europe Colloнquy on 'Training in Critical Reading of Television Language', September 1973, and subsequently published as Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies Stencilled Occasional Paper no. 7 in the same year. The diagram (Figure 1) and quotations are from Hall's 1980 revised version (Hall et al. 1980).

3.ааааааааааааааааааааа One interesting problem about the model is the way in which it seems always to assume encoding from a dominant position. What happens to the model when the encoded message is 'radical' or 'progressive'? See Dyer (1977).

4.ааааааааа ааааааааааааSince the publication of The 'Nationwide' Audience, Morley has sought to both clarify and modify its theoretical and methodological claims.

For details see Morley 1980, 1986, 1992. For critical commentaries on the encoding/decoding model, and on Morley's use of it, see Ang 1989, Grossberg 1983, Jancovich 1992, Lewis 1983, Moores 1993, Turner 1990. See Cruz and Lewis 1994 for an interview with Stuart Hall on the encoding/decoding model.