Cultural Studies

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Cultural Studies Visual Culture
Black Loyalist Offices after Arson Attack, March
2006.
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Black Loyalist Sign
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Other Readings

• Recall Handout 2
• Critical Theory Two Traditions

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Recommended Readings to Review Semiotics
Structuralism

• Chandler, D. Semiotics for Beginners,
  http//www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem01.ht
  ml
• Irvine, M. Semiotics, Communication and Cultural
  theory Basic Assumptions W
• Irvine, M. Media Theory and Semiotics--Key Terms
  W or R
• Deconstruction (Jacques Derrida)
• entry, Internet Enclopedia of Philosophy
• "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of
  the Human Sciences"

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Recommended Extra Reading on Cultural Studies and
Visual Analysis Methods

• Lister, M and L. Wells. Seeing Beyond Belief
  Cultural Studies and an Approach to Analysing the
  Visual in Vn Leeuwen, T and C. Jewitt (ed.)
  Handbook of Visual Analysis, Sage, 2001, pp.
  61-92.
• On-line Resources Approaches in Cultural Studies
• Wikipedia summary
• Cultural Studies Central
• Culture Machine
• Canadian Association for Cultural Studies On-line
  Journals

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Communication, Cultural Studies Semiotics
(Signs Codes)

• Code the relational system that allows a sign
  to have meaning, the social organization of
  meanings into binary oppositions, hierarchies,
  and differential systems.
• Sign something that stands for something else
  in a system of signification (language, images,
  etc.) (M. Levine 2005)

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Comical Review of Cultural Studies

• Sardar and Van Loon Cultural Studies for
  Beginners, Icon Books, 1997.

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Origins of Cultural Studies

• -multidisciplinary
• many different roots sociology, anthropology,
  history, philosophy, languages literatures,
  media studies
• -Latin root of culture colere
• multiple meanings cultivating, inhabiting,
  worshipping, protecting, related to colonialism,
  religion (cult),
• -positive negative approaches to study of
  culture
• (civilization distinctions, inclusion
  exclusion, pop culture high culture models,
  authority, power, hegemony, resistance)

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General Notions of Culture 1 2works
practices (Raymond Williams)

• A-intellectual (esp. artistic)often associated
  with learned culture, high culture but may be
  popular culture too

Visitors at the Louvre museum in front of a
climate controlled box containing the Mona Lisa
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Recall Re-appropriations of High Culture Canons
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Manet Olympia
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Yasamasu Morimura
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Culture as Practices in the High Culture Model

• civilized practices (high culture vs. mass or
  popular culture)
• habits of the mind (individual or whole group
  or society)
• Issues
• Status, power authority (hegemony, ideology) in
  the field of cultural production
• Distinction (Bourdieu), creation of belief,
  production, reproduction

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3--Culture as everyday values, practices and
way of life of a group of people, period or group

Gustave Courbet, Stonebreakers, c. 1850
(destroyed 1945)

• Expands definition to include non-elites
• process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic
  development (or change or disintegration, etc.)

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Critical Theory on Mass Media Culture

• Origins in Frankfurt School
• Example Adornos critique of American popular
  music and typology of listening
• Film Clip Jane Russell Marilyn Monroe in
  Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

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Critical Analysis Beautiful Women

• Ad and Illustration for article by M. Talbot,
  Getting Credit for being White) New York Times
  Magazine. Vol. 147 (Nov. 30 1997)

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Sterbak Flesh Dress..
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4- Culture in the Anthropological Sense
Difference, Otherness

• Conflict, inequalities, sites of resistance or
  oppression?

• Source
• How to Portray Famine Victims with Dignity
• Pictures Refugee Policy

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Visual Culture Ways of Seeing
Young Farmers, Pastry Chef, Circus People.
Photos by August Sander, People (Man) in the
20th Century. Sources
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John Berger The suit and the photograph. About
Looking, 1980 (reprinted many places)
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Cultural Studies Approaches and Analysis of
Visual Images

• Relationships
• production/medition/consumption,
• belief meaning (signs codes)
• communication processes
• Institutions (Structures)
• in historical context

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What to analyze? (methods) 1-Context of viewing

• where is the image in the social physical
  world?
• Why are viewers there
• why they looking ? (Intended uses)
• Does it exist in other context?
• Interplay of location, scale and meanings

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Contextualizing Doisneau, Sideways Glance
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Mapplethorpe-Ken
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2-Context of Production

• How did the visual image get to a place to be
  viewed?
• Intentions, motives of producers/mediators
• Social context, imperatives constraints of
  institutional contexts

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3-Interplay of Form Meaning

• Content
• Conventions
• Pictorial Photographic
• Social political

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4-Contexts Institutions

• same image or visual thing more powerful in
  some contexts than others,
• multiple registers of meaning depend on
  position/context of visual image, viewers,
  producer etc.
• Institutions framing practices

Quilts on Bed or on Museum walls
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Ann Swidlers theories about culture as a frame
for action beliefs

• 1- Cultures power independent of whether or not
  people believe in it
• 2. Culture shapes peoples own beliefs and their
  knowledge of how others will interpret their
  actions
• 3. Public contexts shape effects of culture on
  action
• 4. Institutions structure culture by patterning
  channels for social action

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Applying Cultural Studies approaches to Analysis
of Visualizations

• Baby Name Visualization

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Visualizations of Home/House. Child Katrina
Survivors
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House/Home (Katrina Victim)
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House/Home

• House as roof

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House?Home

• Sources Slide show of Katrina victims drawings
  of house/home, Dewann, S. Using Crayons to
  Exorcise Katrina, New York Times, Monday
  September 17, 2007, Arts Section, B1,5.

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If time Film Screening

• John Berger, Ways of Seeing Part One