Critical Theories

1. Critical Theories Cultural Studies Political Economy Feminist Criticism

2. Critical (cultural) Theory • theory to change status quo and based on literary criticism • based on set of specific social values critising existing social institutions and practices Critical Theory in Media Studies • An answer to shortcomings of limited effect paradigm, • Media are public forum in which may people and groups can participate, • Still elites have some privileges, • Most media content support the status quo

3. Two basic theories: Cultural studies and political economy • Cultural studies: Focus on use of media to crate forms of culture that structure everyday life. • Political Economy: Focus on social elites’ use of economic power to exploit media institutions.

4. Structuralism and the Order of Meaning • Culture is a system of coded meanings that are produced and reproduced through social interaction. Chomksy and Saussure argued that there is a universal structuring principle in all human language that of binary opposition. Black and white, men and women, high and low. • Every individual can decode codes of cultural information. Codes can be culturally specific but the ability to interpret is universal. • Levi Strauss also stress that all cultural messages has both surface and deep structure. • Saussure’s views have been developed by Roland Barthes. Barthes focuses latent meaning of cultural phenomena such as guide-books, margarine and electoral photography.

5. SIGND AND SYMBOLS • Signifier + Signified: Sign • The signifier is a physical object, a sound, printed word, advertisement. The signified is a mental concept or meaning conveyed by the signifiers. • Symbol is a sign that represents an object or concept solely by the agreement of the people who use it.

6. Feminist Critics to Media • Modleski studied on ‘mass produced fantasies for women’, which are soap operas, gothic novels and Harlequin romances. • She says that popular narratives speak to very real problems and tensions in women’s lives’. Modern feminists are generally far from it. But feminists and readers of these fantasies have something common: Dissatisfaction with women’s lives. • She condemns the conditions that have made these products and practices necessary rather than their readers. • She says that the contradictions in women’s lives are more responsible for the existence of Harlequins than Harlequins are more responsible for the contradiction.

7. Feminist Critics to Media • Coward says that romantic novels still meet some very definite needs and they cerate a very powerful and common fantasy. They are regressive, female readers find them restoring childhood world of sexual relations and suppressing criticisms of inadequacy of men and damage of patriarchy.

8. Mulvey’s study on cinema showed that the image of woman in cinema has to pats: i) she is object of male desire and ii) she is signifier (indicator) of the threat of castration (emasculation). Popular cinema gives sexual stimulation (excitation) and develops scopophilia (pleasure in looking at another person as an erotic object) in its narcissistic way. Just as a child recognized and mis-recognized itself in the mirror, the spectator (observer) recognizes and mis-recognizes itself on the screen.

9. In world structured by sexual imbalance, the pleasure of gaze has been separated into two distinct positions: men look and women exhibit(to-be-looked-at-ness). Gaze and pleasure object. Popular cinema is structured around two moments: Moments of narrative and moments of spectacle. The first is associated with the active male, the second with passive female. The male spectator fixes his gaze on the hero to the heroine (the erotic look), to satisfy libido (sexual urge). The first look recalls the moment of recognition/mis-recognition in front of the mirror. The second look confirms women as sexual objects. Mulvey suggests that pleasure that given by cinema can be de-structured. She suggests that popular cinema must be destroyed in order to liberate women form the exploitation and oppression of being the –passive- raw material for the –active- male gaze.

10. Marxist Influences -to understand the meaning of culture and must analyze it in relation to the social structure an historical contingency. -Capitalist societies are divided societies accordance with age, class, race, ethnicity and gender.

11. Mass Culture Frankfurt School defines mass culture it has no autonomous and creative. They see that traditional and high culture mere autonomous and imaginative. • Hegemonic culture: Culture imposed from above or outside that serves the interests of those in dominant social positions. • Colonialism: White anthropologist from colonialist countries named the other culture “primitive”. With American anthropologists cultural studies become relative rather than comparative.

12. The Frankfurt School • New popular culture is a kind of taste culture according to Gans. Plus, Mc Luhan says that possibilities of mass media will unite people in a global village. • MacDonald defines culture in industrialized countries that mass culture is a result of culture industry. It’s commercialized and dependant on the market forces. • Cultural items like music, clothes, wedding rings, sport, literature, campaigns are commodities that are produced and consumed. • Media is producers of a very sophisticated kind, producing not simply objects but values that influence behavior of member of any culture. • Western theorists are concern about pessimistic about the future of mass society. This is the main concern in cultural studies.

13. The Frankfurt School • Loss of artistic values and aesthetic values and isolation of people brought about by media • Electronic media shift from physical space and time. Informing Goffmann back stage front stage idea, Giddens defines structuration and Thomson defines mediazation. • Hegemony is “dominance and subordination in the field of relations structured by power.” • Audience interpretations and uses of media imagery also eat away at hegemony. Hegemony fails when dominant ideology is weaker than social resistance. .

14. Ideology • As Critical are political projects. They are not one of the value-free scholarship but political commitment. • Meaning is social product, the world has to be made to mean. Meaning is always potential arena of conflict, ideological struggle.

15. Ideology and Gramcsi • Common sense: based our understanding of the world. Boys are better football player than girls. • Ideology of particular philosophy: Policy of Green Peace or amnesty International • Hegemonic Ideology: One person‘s or one thought’s dominance within society • Further reading: O’Sullivan, T; J. Hartley; D. Saunders; M. Montgomery; J. Fiske (1994) Key concept in Communication and Cultural Studies Routlegde

16. Critical Questions • How do people become part of a culture? • How does critical studies interpret what thing mean? • How can we understand the relationships between cultures? • Why are some cultures or cultural forms valued more highly than others? • What is the relationship between culture and power? • How is culture as power negotiated and resisted? • How does culture shape who are we?

17. What is the relationship between culture and power? • In a society, that is organized politically and economically, power and authority are distributed. Thus cultures are affected by the interest of dominant groups in society. Trash or mass cultures are enjoyed by oppressed groups. High cultural forms actually negate this form. According to Frankfurt School, critical theory culture industries create passivity and conformity among member of society.

18. How is culture as power negotiated and resisted? • Culture has also consists of some kind of argument or resistances in such the areas gender, race class and age according to gender difference, men and women should behave in a certain way in society. These two meanings are never fixed. And they create power struggle between two parts. Movements like women’s movement, gay and lesbian right movements are drown into conflict with law, social-political organizations like churches.

19. British Cultural Studies Strenghts • Asserts value of culture • Empowers ‘common’ men • Empower minorities and values their culture • Stresses cultural pluralism and egalitarianism Weaknesses • Too political too subjective • Employs controversial but innovative reserach methods • İgnore the larger social and political context in which media operate.

20. Cultural studies • Carey’s transmissional and ritual perspective • Transmissional perspective claims that media transmit messages for the purpose of control. (Car commercial try to persuade us to buy a car) • Ritual perspective say that mass comm is the maintanence of society and the representation of common beliefs. It is a symbolic process in which reality is produced. (Car commercial sells more than transportation) • How do people use the media?

21. Discourse: • Foucault argued that social groups, identities such as class, gender etc. do not pre-exist and somehow determine their own and other cultural meanings. • They are produced within discourse. In the view of Foucault there is no determinate relationship between power and discourse. • iscourse is way of thinking about the relationship between power, knowledge and language. According to Foucault discourse is “a system that defines the possibilities for knowledge” or “ a framework for understanding the world “.

22. Discourse • It contains some set of rules. Meaning is an effect of signification, and signification is a belonging of language. “We” and world are what we say it is. • Shortly discourse is making sense process. • Everyone is predated by established discourses in which various subjectivities are represented already those of class, gender, nation. • There are some specific discourse like media discourse, medicine discourse, literature and science discourses. So discourse is also power relation.

23. Symbolic Intercationism in Media,by M. Solomon • Cultural symbols are learned through interaction and tehn mediate that interction • The overlap of shared meaning by epople in a culture means that ibndividuals who learn a culture should be able to predict the behaviours of others in taht culture. • Self definition is social in nature, the self is defined largely through interaction with the environment • The extent to which a person is committed to a social identity will determine the power of that identity to influence his or her behaviour.

24. Semiology: • F. Saussure saw a language as a system of signs whose meanings are arbitrary. Sign consists of elements; which are signifier and signified. Semiologists say that every cultural product should be accepted as texts. Even if it’s not written, but it still consists of signs. All cultural products can be read or interpreted. For ex. One group in society can see the flag as a symbol of unity and patriotism while the other can see inequalities and discriminations. There is relationship between signifier and signified.

25. Political Economy: • It means the study of issue of power and inequality is associated with the allocation of recourses and the formation of wealthy. • What are the connections between ownership and control of media and cultural transmission? • What is the role of economic infrastructure in the dissemination of ideas? • What are the links between technology transfer and the transfer of knowledge? • Newspaper owner’s have other financial and individual investment. Owners share a similar culture. Entertaining reader becomes more important than informing and educating people. Political economy is linked to issues what ought to be. For ex. More channels and prints lead to a lowering of the quality of service. • How the processes of content production ans distribution are constrained. • Deal with privatization of media and centralization of media ownership around the world.

26. Political Economy • Strenghts Provides focus on how media are structured and controlled Offers empirical investigation of media finances Seeks link between media content and production and media finances • Weaknesses Little explanatory power at small scale Based on subjective analysis of finance Culture change also affect economic changes. Superstructure and base are nor diverse but affecting each other. • Political economy and cultural studies for many scholars shoul be complimentary rather than competing schools.

28. Post-structuralist view suggests that meaning is complicated and should be understood in their particular context unlike binary opposition in structuralism. Meanings are not fixed but floating and changing. • According to Derrida, student of culture should not look for systems, structures or ideologies but should look at gaps, discontinuities and inconsistencies in text. • In post-structuralist approach text are always subject to interpretation, doubt ands dispute whatever the attempts of authors to exercise control.