strawberry wine: Week 2 Group Assignment

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham, began in 1964 and gained global recognition in the field of cultural studies. At the time, this was a huge development due to its difference to the thinking of Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School. The CCCS went against the traditional understanding of mass culture expressed by Adorno who believed “art and commoditised culture had degenerated into a mere reproduction of and support for the economic base”. The main focus of the CCCS was subculture, popular culture and media studies. They were interested in how popular culture was integrated into advanced capitalism and politics.

Stuart Hall, a theorist at the CCCS, made a specific point by questioning the relationship between ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’ placing a certain stress on how mass produced texts are used. They prompted a cross-disciplinary investigation of different media areas such as education, genre and ‘race’. They also became re-known in their field for the combination of political critique and work on texts but also through ethnographic studies inside a generic framework.

What is very interesting in what we found was that the CCCS used various ideas, studies and theories such as Western Marxism, feminism and critical race theory to relate how the ‘masses’ interpret and consume various forms of media.

Their ideas and beliefs tie in with the masses because people relate in different ways to different forms of media. They wanted to study people’s reactions; people’s presumptions and people’s interpretations because they felt that the ‘consumer’ should have a voice on what the ‘producer’ produced. They placed the importance on the mass produced texts because they felt that there wasn’t diversity for the ‘masses’. Looking back in history, a lot of ‘mass media’ was generally looked down on e.g. poetry was favored by the high class due to its formal register and lexis. The lower class would not have been able to even read it due to the level of education. Nowadays, poetry is something that isn’t necessarily frowned upon due to its educational purposes but it is a form of media that is becoming more and more dissolved, due to the existence of mass culture, which is rather more entertaining and accessible for the masses.

Their ideas tell us that the media today is more diverse and culturally-aware than it was 30-40 years ago. It also proves that popular culture is becoming more and more evident through today’s forms of media; from newspapers to TV. It takes in a lot of different contexts such as religious and social to tackle issues that are related to modern day debates i.e. abortion. The media today proves the idea that popular culture may be a commodity that is being sold, but it is a culture that is enjoyed by the masses as well and forms a great part of today’s social environment.

SOURCES:

http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631207535_chunk_g97806312075356_ss1-10

Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies", Cultural Studies Now and In The Future, University of Illinois, Urbana-Campaign, April 1990.

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