Speech Chapter 27 Cultural Studies Outline Introduction Critical Theorists Such Stuart Hall Question The

CHAPTER 27

CULTURAL STUDIES

Outline

I. Introduction – Critical theorists such as Stuart Hall question the narrow, quantitative, and

scientific focus of mainstream communication research on media influence.

II. Cultural studies versus media studies: An ideological difference.

A. Hall believed that the media function to maintain the dominance of the powerful and

D. Mainstream U.S. mass communication research serves the myth of democratic

pluralism and ignores the power struggle that the media mask.

E. To avoid academic compartmentalization, Hall preferred the term cultural studies to

media studies.

F. Articulate means both speaking out against oppression and linking that subjugation

with the communication media.

III. Hegemony: Marxism without guarantees.

A. Hall is strongly influenced by Marxist thought, though he sees the hard line of

economic determinism as an oversimplification.

B. Hall uses the term hegemony to refer to already accepted interpretations of reality

that keep society’s haves in power over its have-nots.

IV. Making meaning through discourse.

A. Hall contended that the primary function of discourse is to make meaning.

2. We learn what signs mean through discourse—through frameworks of

interpretation.

B. Hall believed we must examine the sources of discourse.

1. People with power create “discursive formations” that become naturalized.

2. Those ways of interpreting the world are perpetuated through further discourse

and keep the dominant in power.

V. Corporate control of mass communication.

A. Hall believed the focus of the study of communication should be on how human

culture influences the media and on power relations and social structures.

B. For Hall, stripping the study of communication away from the cultural context in

which it is found and ignoring the realities of unequal power distribution in society

weakened our field and made it less theoretically relevant.

VI. Cultural factors that affect the selection of news

A. Hall saw corporate clout as only one reason broadcast and print journalism support

the status quo.

B. Over an eight year period, Herbert Gans of Northwestern University’s Medill School

of Journalism conducted a content analysis of newscasts at CBS and NBC along

with the coverage of two news magazines—Newsweek and Time.

C. He discovered multiple values, procedures, and publishing realities that ensure

their stories favor people who already have power, fame, and fortune. Those factors

include, source of news, individualism, ethnocentrism, the democratic process, and

objectivity.

a. Sources of news: The bulk of broadcast and print news comes from those

who already have power.

b. Individualism: Americans value individual effort and news stories are usually

framed around a single person who is powerful, wealthy, and has a vested

interest in the status quo.

VII. Extreme Makeover: The ideological work of reality TV.

A. Luke Winslow claims that ordinary people are offered more explicit guidelines for

living in reality TV than other genres or formats.

VIII. An obstinate audience.

A. Audiences may not accept the source’s ideology.

C. Although Hall had trouble believing the powerless can change the system, he

respects the ability of people to resist the dominant code.

D. He is unable to predict, though, when and where resistance will spring up.

E. James Anderson (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Amie Kincaid

(University of Illinois, Springfield) point out the paradox of satire that is used by Jon

Stewart and Stephen Colbert on their television shows.

F. Their very exposure and reiteration of the dominant ideology may make it more

acceptable.

G. Without naming a viable alternative, the dominant ideology will have no rival and

seem to be natural.

IX. Ethical reflection: Larry Frey’s communication activism for social justice.

A. Social justice activism is based on an identification and solidarity with oppressed,

marginalized, and under-resourced communities.

B. Larry Frey, professor of communication at the University of Colorado, says action to

address these wrongs starts with a social justice sensibility—the ethical conviction

that “none of us is truly free while others of us are oppressed.”

X. Critique: Your judgment will depend on your ideology.

A. Perhaps more than any other theorist covered in this book, Hall sought to change the

world.

B. Cultural studies involves learning what the “other” is like.

C. Hall was critical of scholars who didn’t realize—or didn’t reveal—their value

commitments.

2. To some, the strong ideological component inherent in cultural studies limits its

credibility.

D. The book Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law & Order is Hall’s best

known qualitative research.

E. Students’ first reading of a typical Stuart Hall monograph may find it daunting, both

in clarity and in style.

F. Hall enjoys widespread community of agreement for his pioneering work.

Key Names and Terms

Stuart Hall

Late professor emeritus of sociology at Open University, Milton Keynes, England; during

his life, a leading proponent of cultural studies.

Cultural Studies

Neo-Marxist critique that sets forth the position that mass media manufacture consent

for dominant ideologies.

Ideology

Articulate

The process of speaking out on oppression and linking that subjugation with media

representations; the work of cultural studies.

Economic determinism

The belief that human behavior and relationships are ultimately caused by a difference

in financial resources and the disparity in power that those gaps create.

Cultural industries

Discursive formation

The process by which unquestioned and seemingly natural ways of interpreting the

world becomes ideologies.

Larry Frey

Communication scholar from the University of Colorado who advocated for action to

address wrongs with social justice sensibility—the ethical conviction that none of us are

truly free while others of us are oppressed.

Principal Changes

A new ethical reflection is included, focusing on Larry Frey’s communication activism for

social justice, which replaces Cornel West’s prophetic pragmatism that was featured in the

Kick-off Questions & Interaction Starters

• If you knew more about the multinational corporations that owned the media outlets

that you consume, do you think it would make any difference in your consumption

habits?

• Everyone belongs to a culture. Can you ever fully escape the filters of culture and

see through unbiased eyes?

Suggestions for Discussion

Social constructionism with an ideological twist

There is a story of the three umpires discussing their profession before a ball game. The

first umpire declares, “Some’s balls, some’s strikes—I calls them as they is.” The second

umpire says, “Some’s balls, some’s strikes—I calls them as I sees them.” The third umpire

states, “Some’s balls, some’s strikes, but they ain’t nothin’ till I calls them!” Some attribute

this story to Wil Linkugel, late rhetorician of the University of Kansas. Proponents of cultural

Hall and McLuhan

To help your students locate Hall’s work within the larger field of mass communication

studies, encourage the comparison to McLuhan (Chapter 25), whose approach is based on the

powerful—perhaps irresistible—impact of media technology itself. Although not a strict

prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

economic determinist, Hall found economic and class-based variables salient and moved away

from the kind of technological explanations of cultural phenomena that so fascinated

McLuhan. Both theorists suggested that media and technology can have a detrimental and oft-

times unintended effect on viewers (or consumers), but they did not attribute the same

causality. This distinction is worth exploring.

Connecting Hall, Barthes, Foucault, and Deetz

Connections to theorists in other areas of communication studies are also worth

discussing with your students. As the chapter notes, Hall’s neo-Marxist focus on hegemonic

ideology, and his concern over the potentially pernicious power of connotation, link him to

Barthes’ semiotic analysis (Chapter 26). No doubt Hall’s approach to the wrestlers and the

yellow ribbons would closely resemble Barthes’. However, as the chapter explains, semiotics is

limited by its inability to explain why certain meanings are attached to certain symbols at

certain historical times. Here is where Foucault comes in, of course—and where students (and

instructors!—hey, Foucault is tough stuff!) may get lost. To help them understand Foucault’s

The hegemonic encoding of welfare reform

How do the media engage in “hegemonic encoding” with respect to welfare? The

media have tended to portray welfare as a problem of people of color (although the majority of

people on public assistance are white) and as a “lifestyle” people adopt permanently (although

even prior to welfare reform, most welfare recipients used the system for less than two

consecutive years). Audiences have acted on these perceptions when they have elected

Cultural studies: Un-American?

Many students who have been raised on the language of the Constitution and the

Declaration of Independence find analyses with even the slightest tint of Marxism irrelevant to

the American experience. Some even consider it downright distasteful or threatening. Since

America is the land of freedom and economic opportunity, certainly we don’t have economic

system is more entrenched than its American counterpart. This observation may lay the ground

for debate regarding the extent to which cultural studies is bound by culture—i.e., to what

extent must Hall’s ideas be translated when moving from one cultural context to another? And

might there be cultural contexts where his ideas have less applicability?

The distinction between pluralism and polysemy

Hall’s distinction between pluralism and polysemy may be useful. He asserts that our

national communication is polysemic—a variety of voices compete for the audience’s attention,

Sample Application Log

Sharon

“The ideological fight is a struggle to capture language.” We see this battle in the abortion

debate. The media seems to favor those with “pro–choice” beliefs. How I wish we could even

Exercises and Activities

Applying cultural studies

One way to discuss skepticism toward cultural studies is to put the theory to the test.

Choose a relevant local, national, or international issue that is currently experiencing heavy

coverage in the mainstream media and have your students analyze the way it is pitched to the

audience. How are connotative meanings shaped and controlled? How are key players (e.g.,

workers and management, minorities, and women) characterized? How are the economic

important ideologies at work. The Hilliard article mentioned below proves that even sports

broadcasting can demonstrate the value of Hall’s thesis. “Reality” television could lead to

interesting analysis, for—in fact—what is “real” on these shows is highly scripted and edited.

We see beautiful, upwardly mobile people participating in staged events; we aren’t shown

poverty or day-to-day challenges when we watch Survivor or The Bachelor.

Hollywood films can be particularly rich texts for critical analysis, especially those that

present ostensibly class-conscious messages. A useful example is Titanic, the 1997 Academy

Award-winning blockbuster that features a star-crossed romance between an upper-class

maiden and a working-class adventurer. What’s particularly intriguing about the film is that

although it emphasizes a relationship that crosses class lines and draws attention to the unfair

treatment of passengers in steerage who are denied seats in the lifeboats, its most powerful

theme is naive romanticism. It’s no surprise that the film’s most devoted audience on its

release—adolescent girls—revisited theatres for multiple viewings, not to further ponder the

social inequities of early twentieth-century travel or class boundaries, but to celebrate the

A controversial reading of The Blind Side

Does the story of suburban heroism reinforce status quo values about American

capitalism? The 2009 film The Blind Side tells the true (though screen-dramatized) story of

Michael Oher, a homeless African American with little chance for success. With a drug-addicted

mother and best by academic and social challenges, “Big Mike’s” life was on an unpromising

trajectory, until Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy stepped in. An upper class white couple, they took

country-club membership, nice clothes, and so forth. Although it is perhaps true that the

greatest gift exchanged between the Tuohy family and Michael Oher was unconditional love

and support, nevertheless those things are offered against a nice backdrop of a big house and

expensive vehicles.

The film wants you to celebrate the hero’s act of winning “the good life” for himself by

buying into the film’s conclusion. In fact, it seems as if the hero’s ultimate material success is

the result of his moral goodness. Persistent economic inequality is not only inevitable, but the

message but still see it with less distorted or “rose-colored glasses” optimism? And finally,

what other oppositional reads are there of this movie, such as the “white savior complex” or

that Oher’s worthiness was only based on his athletic talent (since, in the film, the Tuohys

didn’t make it their mission to rescue other in-need students)? While the critique part may be

painful to some students because it challenges their understanding of the film, it’s a worthy

endeavor because it helps them understand how Hall might consider a text (even if they

disagree with his approach). Another film that would work equally well is Sliding Doors, which

features a “parallel lives” story where happiness is linked both to romantic relationships and

financial independence.

The Internet’s influence

To pull the discussion in a different direction, ask your students to name mass media

products that appear to comment on capitalism, class structure, or American racial problems.

Is the critique genuine, or is it simply another clever method of co-opting “the left” for the

purpose of selling “the right”? You may also wish to discuss whether the increasing use of the

Internet challenges or validates Hall’s claims about hegemony and control. Some argue that

the increasing number of voices provided by the Internet give it the potential to challenge the

status quo; others see it as yet another tool of corporate control. Does the widely popular site

YouTube really provide a level playing field where anyone can have their voice heard by

millions?

On the music side, after the downfall of rogue peer-to-peer sharing sites like Napster in

the late 90s and early 00s, Apple took command of the music industry through its site, iTunes.

However, as your students are likely aware, iTunes is not democratic—it doesn’t sell every

artist, but instead only those with corporate deals with the computer maker. This strikes me as

much more self-serving for the corporations compared to earlier styles of disseminating music

where independent or counter-cultural artists at least had a chance of being heard.

Furthermore, until recently, music purchased from the site could only be played on Apple’s

iTunes or the associated players (i.e. iPod, iPhone, iPad). In the end, Apple controls what you

“Helping” those who least want it

To those left-of-center students who may have the tendency to endorse the message of

cultural studies unthinkingly, it may be useful to mention that the individuals Hall most wants

to help remain least responsive to his message. Many poor immigrants and working-class

Americans have bought into the ideological system characterized by the American Dream—

that’s why they work so hard. They aren’t interested in overcoming hegemonic ideologies; they

want to participate in them. Hall’s biggest fans are professors and graduate students—well-

serve? If your students bristle at this, you might point out that critical theorists operate inside

academia, which has its own “haves” (high-level administrators, athletic coaches, and tenured

critical theory professors, among others) and “have-nots” (adjunct faculty, graduate students,

college freshmen, and so forth). Does academia, as a “culture industry,” manufacture consent

The Wall

The Wall is a strange television game show that incorporates elements of The Price is

Right’s Plinko wall and Trivia Pursuit. It features couples where one member answers

questions in a room with no knowledge of what is going on outside, where the other member

places balls to drop to the bottom in a large, pinball-like environment. After a given period of

time, the question-answering member of the couple is faced with the decision to sign a

contract and take a secure minimum dollar amount or to risk it all by tearing up the contract in

hopes of winning an even bigger sum. What they don’t know is the value they’re playing for—

An important dose of levity

Without a doubt, cultural studies is fairly heady stuff from which you and your students

might welcome some release. Toward that end, you might introduce your students to the

“theory trading cards” created by David Gauntlett, which take a humorous look at social theory

Further Resources

▪ For a critical perspective on Hall as a theorist and as a critic of cultural, see Chris Rojek,

Stuart Hall, Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2003.

▪ For a hypothesized next stage of cultural studies, see Scott Lash, “Power After

Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?,” Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 24, 2007, pp.

55–78.

effort to demonstrate the ways in which the business decisions of the economic elite

limit the diversity of news coverage falls into the larger category of economic

determinism.

Additional sources about Hall

The Media Education Foundation distributes a video production of an accessible lecture by

Stuart Hall entitled Stuart Hall: Representation and the Media You can check it out at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTzMsPqssOY.

277-281.

Sut Jhally, “Stuart Hall: The last interview,” Cultural Studies, Vol. 30, 2016, pp. 332-345.

Sut Jhally, “Stuart Hall’s Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: Reflections on an

Intellectual Life,” Cultural Studies, Vol. 30, 2016, pp. 322-331.

Cultural studies analyses

Jimmy Draper, “Theorizing Creative Agency Through ‘Discerned Savvy’: A Tool for the Critical

Study of Media Industries,” Media, Culture, & Society, Vol. 36, 2014, pp. 1118-1133.

Jayson Harsin and Mark Hayward, “Stuart Hall’s ‘Deconstructing the Popular’:

Reconsiderations 30 Years Later,” Communication, Culture & Critique, Vol. 6, 2013, pp.

201-207.

Isabel Molina-Guzmán, “#OscarsSoWhite: How Stuart Hall Explains Why Nothing Changes in

Hollywood and Everything is Changing,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol.

33, 2016, pp. 438-454.

prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

Katherine Sender and Peter Decherney, “Stuart Hall Lives: Cultural Studies in an Age of Digital

Media,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 33, 2016, pp. 381-384.

Handel Kashope Wright, “Stuart Hall’s Relevance for the Study of African

Blackness,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 19, 2016, pp. 85-99.

Other teaching ideas

Catherine Driscoll, “Teaching Cultural Studies; Teaching Stuart Hall,” Cultural Studies

Review, Vol. 22, 2016, pp. 269-276.