MDSA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Culture Jamming, Reductionism, Louis Althusser
MDSA01
LECTURE 6 – May 24, 2018
Cultural Analysis
• What kinds of practices, beliefs, attitudes, and preferences are normalized by media within a given
culture?
• How are dominant social, political, and economic power structures validated or resisted via media
portrayals?
• Who is and isn’t represented in media? Whose stories re told and whose stories are neglected?
• In what ways is media complicit in maintaining unjust or oppressive conditions within a given culture?
Cultural Analysis: Perspective
• Interdisciplinary – drawing on multiple theoretical tools
• Pragmatic – geared toward a specific end, and accessible to a wide variety of people (liberation or
removing structures of oppression and prejudice)
• Political – dedicated to challenging oppressive ideologies and systemic social inequality
• Self-reflexive – critical awareness of one’s own social location; cultural analysis “is often hyper-aware of
its own socio-political biases”
o Marx’s “Ruthless Criticism”
• Contingent – aware of context and connected to “particular social systems at particular moments in
time”; wanting to be wrong instead of wanting to be right
“Radio, television, film, popular music, the Internet and social networking, and other forms and products of
media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities, including our sense of selfhood;
our notion of what it means to be male or female; our conception of class, ethnicity and race, nationality, sexuality
and division of the world into categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Media images help shape our view of the world
and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. Media stories provide
the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through the
appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture. Media spectacles demonstrate who has power
and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence and who is not. They dramatize and
legitimate the power of the forces that can show that powerless that they must stay in their places or be
oppressed.”
What is Culture?
In the context of Building Blocks, Qualities, and Ideologies
“Culture is simply what human beings produce and the means by which we preserve what we have produced.”
(Ott and Mack 135)
Building blocks of Culture
• Physical: Artifacts, human-made clothing, any material
• Social: Customs and practices prevalent within society
• Attitudinal: Ideas and beliefs, abstract concepts like friendship
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. Media stories provide the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture. Media spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence and who is not. They dramatize and legitimate the power of the forces that can show that powerless that they must stay in their places or be oppressed. In the context of building blocks, qualities, and ideologies. Culture is simply what human beings produce and the means by which we preserve what we have produced. (ott and mack 135) Building blocks of culture: physical: artifacts, human-made clothing, any material, social: customs and practices prevalent within society, attitudinal: ideas and beliefs, abstract concepts like friendship.
