2/4/10 Class Summary

In class we divided into 4 groups to discuss and summarize the readings from Media and Cultural Studies:

Barthes ("Margarine" and "Myth Today"): Barthes uses margarine as an example of how recognizing an object's faults shields it from criticism. HE contends that myth takes the history out of an object--no more concern for how it was obtained, prepared, set out, etc.--if the object is overanalyzed.

McLuhan ("The Medium is the Message"): McLuhan defines media as any extension of ourselves: "The medium shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action." He uses the examples of the light bulb (which signifies the ability to work day and night) and the television (which offers faster information both visually and aurally).

Debord ("The Commodity as Spectacle"): Debord says that everything man produces is a spectacle. Because spectacle becomes commodity through the dominant class, it also becomes commodity in its production.

Dorfman & Mattelart ("Disneyland Club"): This article expands on Debord's concept of spectacle as commodity. The authros say that adults create commodity from spectacle by creating literature and inputting their own ideas of childhood in the text, thereby creating embedded ideas within the culture that are perpetuated generation after generation.

Williams ("Base and Superstructure in Marxist..."): Williams defines base (or process) as the social interactions between people. Superstructure (or product) organizes the ideas coming out of the base. While the two cannot be separated (process and product), the base is the more important concept. Hegemony determines how processes become ebedded in everyday lives. The dominant culture struggles with emerging and residual cultures, resulting in new cultures.

Hebdige ("Culture and Subculture"): Hebdige makes two distinct points: everyday life is culturea nd subcultures exist within every culture. There is a push/pull cycle between dominant cultures and subcultures; the subculture eventually becomes dominant and then changes again.

Hall ("Encoding and Decoding"): Hall discusses how people's histories and influences affect the way they encode and decode messages. Some audiences may decode the message in the way the producer intended (creating a cyclical relationship between audience and producer) while others react in opposition to the encoding (there are multiple types of oppositional reactions).

Ang ("On the Politics of Empirical Audience Research"): Ang says that Hall's ideas are not accurate because people aren't so black-and-white. Ang recognizes and argues the existence of the gray area. There is no point to encoding because there are too many layers to everyone's experiences and influences to be able to discover the way any single person will decode a message.

After these discussions, Patrick gave us three handouts explaining changes and developments in material and cultural theory, encouraging us to read and understand these as we figure out our own project. We also discussed the concept of media by identifying forms of media within our surroundings.

We also discussed the Lubar/Kingery readings. Each of these had the concept of contextualization in common. Put gardens in the context of what came before and after as well as what is happening between the social classes. Look at what is happening outside of the "social and physical vacuum" in which gardens exist.