Holmes and Redmond discuss the dominant themes of star and celebrity analysis, with reference to the work of Gamson, Rojek and Turner who argue that 'the desire for fame, stardom or celebrification stems from a need to be wanted in society where being famous appears to offer enormous material, social and psychic rewards.'
The notion of 'me me me' fame, argues Holmes et al, relates to egotisitical or fractured nature of post modern identity - by which the modern self is based on possessive qualities that measure self worth by their own consumption choices (fashion, beauty etc).
'Leif Memphis - a persona of the epitome of the successful, narcissistic star, made to be in love with his own idolized image. The possessive 'I' of the persona wants to be famous and wealthy but also shows unhappiness with his world, reaching out for what he thinks will bring him wholeness.'
Holmes and Redmond introduce the idea of fandom in the analysis of celebrity; claiming that in the modern world where face-to-face communication had decreased, 'fandom involves an illusion of intimacy that aims to compensate for such lonliness.' They argue that the celebrity is not only a desired object but also a link to connect people.
Talk about fame
Building on the ideas of Braudy (1986), Holmes and Redmond suggest that social interaction and media discourse constitute the very concept of celebrity. 'The famous are constructed, circulated and consumed through the busy channels of media production, as well as the social networks with which they intersect.'
Academic work then, is suggested to explore why celebrity culture is the symbol of cultural decline and how it matters. It is argued that academic 'objectivity' when analysing celebrities is often difficult, when there's often a connection between researcher and famous figure to begin with.
Several points are made in relation to discourses of cultural value:
1. It's impossible to discuss modern celeb without addressing judgements made about the person in question.
2. Issues of cultural value structure different opinions on celebrity - some people defend them, others criticise
3. Compiling an academic collection on celebs has connections with the processes of fame which structure celeb mags
Monday, 10 May 2010
Joshua Gamson: The Name and the Product - Late Twentieth-Century Celebrity
Gamson discusses the making of celebrity in the late 20th century, focusing on how the industry has changed, how the production of celebrity has changed and how media texts' coverage of celebs has changed readers/viewers positions on the industry.
Key points:
- Celebrity has become increasingly industrialized
- Hype, purchase, manipulation, self-promotion and association have become central elements in celebrity discourse
- Most critical to these developments was a shakeup of the movie studio industry - independent studios began to grow, rise of 'agents' meant greater powers to cultivate 'talent'
- Film stars became 'proprietors of their own image' which they could sell to film makers
Gamson identifies key changes in the PR industry post-World War II in which several components affected celebrity:
1. Specialised strategies to target perceived needs and desires of audience. Advertising adopted marketing that focused on consumer lifestyle and attitudes.
2. Practices and interests of journalists and PR operatives have got closer - news has become more dependent on PR sources
3. Technologies to provide visual image that 'imitates the representation of an event/person' have become highly developed. Press releases provide ready-packaged stories.
4. Early 70's saw a boom in magazine and newspaper coverage of 'people and personality'.
Gamson talks about how being famous = commercial product. The links between celebrity and selling in the early 50's meant that celebs began to be represented not only as useful to sell and endorse products but as a business itself by selling - celebrity became 'merchandise', 'property' a 'commodity'.
Celeb-production: where once an agent's job was to discover talent, it’s now about finding a market and manufacturing a celeb to suit it
The argument that celebs portray a certain image and finding the 'real' behind the image still applies today. Behind-the-scenes looks into the world of celeb and documentaries have attempted to show the 'real' but again, that is questionable. Gamson talks about how readers/viewers are often given a set of 'tools' or 'instructions' by media texts in order to not only find the 'real' behind the image but also view the fabrication process of how celebs are constructed to amuse.
Irony is one of the clearest developments in the late 20th Century - particularly in magazines aimed at young, educated people. 'Inside gossip' and mockery has become commonplace in many magazines, where the audience is invited to 'take its power further with a new, cynical distance from the production of celeb and celeb images.'
Celebrity texts now reposition readers to 'see the joke’ of the performed self of celebrity. Cynicism, irony and invitations behind the scenes keep readers/viewers tuned in.
Key points:
- Celebrity has become increasingly industrialized
- Hype, purchase, manipulation, self-promotion and association have become central elements in celebrity discourse
- Most critical to these developments was a shakeup of the movie studio industry - independent studios began to grow, rise of 'agents' meant greater powers to cultivate 'talent'
- Film stars became 'proprietors of their own image' which they could sell to film makers
Gamson identifies key changes in the PR industry post-World War II in which several components affected celebrity:
1. Specialised strategies to target perceived needs and desires of audience. Advertising adopted marketing that focused on consumer lifestyle and attitudes.
2. Practices and interests of journalists and PR operatives have got closer - news has become more dependent on PR sources
3. Technologies to provide visual image that 'imitates the representation of an event/person' have become highly developed. Press releases provide ready-packaged stories.
4. Early 70's saw a boom in magazine and newspaper coverage of 'people and personality'.
Gamson talks about how being famous = commercial product. The links between celebrity and selling in the early 50's meant that celebs began to be represented not only as useful to sell and endorse products but as a business itself by selling - celebrity became 'merchandise', 'property' a 'commodity'.
Celeb-production: where once an agent's job was to discover talent, it’s now about finding a market and manufacturing a celeb to suit it
The argument that celebs portray a certain image and finding the 'real' behind the image still applies today. Behind-the-scenes looks into the world of celeb and documentaries have attempted to show the 'real' but again, that is questionable. Gamson talks about how readers/viewers are often given a set of 'tools' or 'instructions' by media texts in order to not only find the 'real' behind the image but also view the fabrication process of how celebs are constructed to amuse.
Irony is one of the clearest developments in the late 20th Century - particularly in magazines aimed at young, educated people. 'Inside gossip' and mockery has become commonplace in many magazines, where the audience is invited to 'take its power further with a new, cynical distance from the production of celeb and celeb images.'
Celebrity texts now reposition readers to 'see the joke’ of the performed self of celebrity. Cynicism, irony and invitations behind the scenes keep readers/viewers tuned in.
The Media and Consumer Culture
Last week's lecture and workshop focused on the concept of consumer culture; the things we buy, how we are influenced to consume and how we define ourselves by what we buy.
We considered the following in discussing consumer culture:
- The development of modern cities
- Growth of the middle classes
- The emergence of leisure time
- Advertising and PR
Turning our attention to how the media and consumer culture operate alongside each other, I've been looking at how Style magazine exemplifies this culture in operation.
As this is also the focus of my research report, this will potentially form the basis for my textual analysis, when considering the cultural significance of the magazine.
Firstly, a bit of background on Style. It is one of several Sunday supplements which come with The Sunday Times newspaper. The magazine, like most 'consumer' titles, covers fashion and beauty, celebrity, music, lifestyle, food and homes. It also has several key features each week on particular issues e.g. this week's features include ethical fashion, the secret party life of Kabul and the latest craze 'cringe parties'.
To me, Style exemplifies consumer culture much like the majority of similar magazines, but the way in which certain products and brands are presented is not as obvious as examples like glossy weekly Look. Because there is a clearer element of real editorial content e.g. news features (often on quite serious subjects) it is harder to determine where editorial stops and advertising starts. By this I mean that often features will talk about issues within the fashion industry and include specific names, brands and designers as part of the write-up. Although presented as 'newsy', there is advertising and branding apparent in much of the content.
The key features of Style are recurrent weekly:
- The weekly update from Shane Watson together with the 'going up - going down' scale of fashion and lifestyle 'must-haves'
- Fashion news including trend watch, 'one to worship' and 'blog off' (what the web thought of a celebrity outfit/outing etc)
- 'People like them' - an update on the world of celeb parties, launches and designer latest
- Artist/band profile feature (this week it's Plan B)
- Fashion pages which include 'your style' (advice), key looks and weekly fashion shoot spread
- Beauty pages which often profiles a particular artist and their work as well as the latest products and tips
- Inner style pages which focus on health issues, emotions, problem advice and personal stories
- Life style pages which feature someone’s home interior each week, food recipes, a restaurant review and wine reviews
- Advertising for luxury brands such as Gucci, Tiffany’s, Dior, Prada as well as high street favs M&S, TK Maxx and Boots
The kind of experience offered by Style is very different depending on the reader. For me, a full-time student who earns next to nothing and is up-to-the-eyeballs in student debt, the experience is very much one of admiration, awe and jealousy. Not in a bad way - just in the way that I cannot afford most of the products and featured items in the magazine and so end up with a sense of lust and longing.
Again, personally I feel this is a good thing. Although not necessarily the prime target in terms of the consumer - many of the features such as fashion and lifestyle are things that I would like to aim for in the future - the finer side of life and all that. Whether or not that becomes a reality is another ball game but the desire is there for me as a poor student!
On the other hand, the target reader of Style is likely to be not only a little older and more financially stable than me, but also in a position whereby they could genuinely go out and consume whatever takes their eye in this week's edition. For them, the experience is something that is more familiar to them - something which they're accustomed to - and so they can relate to the consumer aspect of the magazine more closely than I can. This is reflected in the advertising which appears in the magazine - high-end brands that only someone with a very comfortable lifestyle could afford or those who buy into the lifestyle amidst crippling debts!
We considered the following in discussing consumer culture:
- The development of modern cities
- Growth of the middle classes
- The emergence of leisure time
- Advertising and PR
Turning our attention to how the media and consumer culture operate alongside each other, I've been looking at how Style magazine exemplifies this culture in operation.
As this is also the focus of my research report, this will potentially form the basis for my textual analysis, when considering the cultural significance of the magazine.
Firstly, a bit of background on Style. It is one of several Sunday supplements which come with The Sunday Times newspaper. The magazine, like most 'consumer' titles, covers fashion and beauty, celebrity, music, lifestyle, food and homes. It also has several key features each week on particular issues e.g. this week's features include ethical fashion, the secret party life of Kabul and the latest craze 'cringe parties'.
To me, Style exemplifies consumer culture much like the majority of similar magazines, but the way in which certain products and brands are presented is not as obvious as examples like glossy weekly Look. Because there is a clearer element of real editorial content e.g. news features (often on quite serious subjects) it is harder to determine where editorial stops and advertising starts. By this I mean that often features will talk about issues within the fashion industry and include specific names, brands and designers as part of the write-up. Although presented as 'newsy', there is advertising and branding apparent in much of the content.
The key features of Style are recurrent weekly:
- The weekly update from Shane Watson together with the 'going up - going down' scale of fashion and lifestyle 'must-haves'
- Fashion news including trend watch, 'one to worship' and 'blog off' (what the web thought of a celebrity outfit/outing etc)
- 'People like them' - an update on the world of celeb parties, launches and designer latest
- Artist/band profile feature (this week it's Plan B)
- Fashion pages which include 'your style' (advice), key looks and weekly fashion shoot spread
- Beauty pages which often profiles a particular artist and their work as well as the latest products and tips
- Inner style pages which focus on health issues, emotions, problem advice and personal stories
- Life style pages which feature someone’s home interior each week, food recipes, a restaurant review and wine reviews
- Advertising for luxury brands such as Gucci, Tiffany’s, Dior, Prada as well as high street favs M&S, TK Maxx and Boots
The kind of experience offered by Style is very different depending on the reader. For me, a full-time student who earns next to nothing and is up-to-the-eyeballs in student debt, the experience is very much one of admiration, awe and jealousy. Not in a bad way - just in the way that I cannot afford most of the products and featured items in the magazine and so end up with a sense of lust and longing.
Again, personally I feel this is a good thing. Although not necessarily the prime target in terms of the consumer - many of the features such as fashion and lifestyle are things that I would like to aim for in the future - the finer side of life and all that. Whether or not that becomes a reality is another ball game but the desire is there for me as a poor student!
On the other hand, the target reader of Style is likely to be not only a little older and more financially stable than me, but also in a position whereby they could genuinely go out and consume whatever takes their eye in this week's edition. For them, the experience is something that is more familiar to them - something which they're accustomed to - and so they can relate to the consumer aspect of the magazine more closely than I can. This is reflected in the advertising which appears in the magazine - high-end brands that only someone with a very comfortable lifestyle could afford or those who buy into the lifestyle amidst crippling debts!
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Performatism
What is Performatism?
Performatism was a term coined by German-American Slavist Raoul Eshelman in 2000 and refers to one concept of post-postmodernism. It attempts to show that works in a new epoch are constructed to bring about a unified, aesthetically mediated experience of transcendence.
Performatism does this by creating 'closed works of art that force viewers to identify simple, opaque characters and experience beauty, love, belief and transcendence under artificial conditions.'
Eshelman defines performatism as:
"An epoch in which a unified concept of sign and strategies of closure have begun to compete directly with - and displace - the split concept of sign and the strategies of boundary transgression typical of postmodernism."
He applied this model to literature, film, architecture, philosophy and art and suggests four features of performatism:
1. Semiotic mode of performatism requires things to be integrated into the concept of sign.
2. Aesthetic device to performatism is double framing - the fit between the outer frame (work itself) and the inner frame (an ostensive scene).
3. Human performative characters consolidate their position by appearing opaque to the world around them.
4. Theist mode - time and space are framed so that subjects have a chance to orient themselves around them and transcend in some way.
My understanding of the concept is that it moves on from the ideas of post-modernism - which sees 'art' as undermined by narrative or visual devices to create uncertainty about the status of the work and how it is received. Instead, performatism looks at 'art' (in the literal sense as well as buildings, film, literature)from the outside and considers the wider context of its form and position.
Derrida suggests that discussion of 'intrinsic aesthetic value depends on that value being set off from the extraneous context around it.' By this, I think the idea is that the text itself and the wider context come together to determine a response without having pre-determined 'idea' in mind.
Key theorists:
Raoul Eshelman
Jacques Derrida
Reading list:
Derrida: "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966)
Eshelman: "Performatism, Or The End of Postmodernism" (2008)
Gans: "Signs of Paradox. Irony, Resentment and Other Mimetic Structures" (1997)
Hutcheon: "A poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction" (1988)
Culler: "On Deconstruction - Theory and Criticism after Structuralism" (1982)
Epstein: "Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture" in Slavic Literature, Culture and Society; Vol. 3 (1999)
Performatism was a term coined by German-American Slavist Raoul Eshelman in 2000 and refers to one concept of post-postmodernism. It attempts to show that works in a new epoch are constructed to bring about a unified, aesthetically mediated experience of transcendence.
Performatism does this by creating 'closed works of art that force viewers to identify simple, opaque characters and experience beauty, love, belief and transcendence under artificial conditions.'
Eshelman defines performatism as:
"An epoch in which a unified concept of sign and strategies of closure have begun to compete directly with - and displace - the split concept of sign and the strategies of boundary transgression typical of postmodernism."
He applied this model to literature, film, architecture, philosophy and art and suggests four features of performatism:
1. Semiotic mode of performatism requires things to be integrated into the concept of sign.
2. Aesthetic device to performatism is double framing - the fit between the outer frame (work itself) and the inner frame (an ostensive scene).
3. Human performative characters consolidate their position by appearing opaque to the world around them.
4. Theist mode - time and space are framed so that subjects have a chance to orient themselves around them and transcend in some way.
My understanding of the concept is that it moves on from the ideas of post-modernism - which sees 'art' as undermined by narrative or visual devices to create uncertainty about the status of the work and how it is received. Instead, performatism looks at 'art' (in the literal sense as well as buildings, film, literature)from the outside and considers the wider context of its form and position.
Derrida suggests that discussion of 'intrinsic aesthetic value depends on that value being set off from the extraneous context around it.' By this, I think the idea is that the text itself and the wider context come together to determine a response without having pre-determined 'idea' in mind.
Key theorists:
Raoul Eshelman
Jacques Derrida
Reading list:
Derrida: "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966)
Eshelman: "Performatism, Or The End of Postmodernism" (2008)
Gans: "Signs of Paradox. Irony, Resentment and Other Mimetic Structures" (1997)
Hutcheon: "A poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction" (1988)
Culler: "On Deconstruction - Theory and Criticism after Structuralism" (1982)
Epstein: "Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture" in Slavic Literature, Culture and Society; Vol. 3 (1999)
Thursday, 11 March 2010
I still don’t know what ‘postmodernism’ is
This weeks’ reading – ‘Postmodernism and The Other Side’ by Dick Hebdige – was tough going. Again, I found myself taking relatively few points away from pages and pages of text laced with long words and even longer sentences. And my conclusion – I still don’t really understand ‘postmodernism’.
But that’s ok because neither does Hebdige – and he wrote the thing! What I did manage to siphon from the reading was that the term ‘postmodernism’ is problematic because it is ‘stretched across disciplines.’ People use it to refer to so many aspects of life such as describing the decor of a room, the design of a building or a TV commercial – so it seems very difficult to pin down exactly what it means.
Hebdige questions ‘periodisation’, saying that ‘to talk of ‘post’ is to talk of the past’, and so where exactly ‘postmodernism’ fits in our history is another puzzling debate. In our struggle to work out ‘postmodernism’, it appears we will probably never crack it because ‘modernism’ itself is undefined so how are we supposed to decipher the ‘post’ if we can’t even suss out the ‘modern?’
Three negotiations are highlighted by Hebdige in terms of distinguishing ‘postmodernism’:
• Against Totalisation
• Against Teleology
• Against Utopia
(I really don’t understand the words – they just sound important!)
My final observations of the reading lie in Marxism. It appears that Hebdige refers to many early Marxist thoughts and ideas and his own ideas on ‘postmodernism’ seem to be a continuation of some Marxist lines.
I find myself agreeing with Hebdige (on the points I understood anyway) because my lack of understanding ‘postmodernism’ clearly shows it’s such an ambiguous term and one that is hard to pin down to a simple thought. And I believe that until we can define ‘modernism’ we are unable to work out what ‘postmodernism’ is, who or what it refers to, and when exactly, in time, it took place.
Useful/interesting quotes:
But that’s ok because neither does Hebdige – and he wrote the thing! What I did manage to siphon from the reading was that the term ‘postmodernism’ is problematic because it is ‘stretched across disciplines.’ People use it to refer to so many aspects of life such as describing the decor of a room, the design of a building or a TV commercial – so it seems very difficult to pin down exactly what it means.
Hebdige questions ‘periodisation’, saying that ‘to talk of ‘post’ is to talk of the past’, and so where exactly ‘postmodernism’ fits in our history is another puzzling debate. In our struggle to work out ‘postmodernism’, it appears we will probably never crack it because ‘modernism’ itself is undefined so how are we supposed to decipher the ‘post’ if we can’t even suss out the ‘modern?’
Three negotiations are highlighted by Hebdige in terms of distinguishing ‘postmodernism’:
• Against Totalisation
• Against Teleology
• Against Utopia
(I really don’t understand the words – they just sound important!)
My final observations of the reading lie in Marxism. It appears that Hebdige refers to many early Marxist thoughts and ideas and his own ideas on ‘postmodernism’ seem to be a continuation of some Marxist lines.
I find myself agreeing with Hebdige (on the points I understood anyway) because my lack of understanding ‘postmodernism’ clearly shows it’s such an ambiguous term and one that is hard to pin down to a simple thought. And I believe that until we can define ‘modernism’ we are unable to work out what ‘postmodernism’ is, who or what it refers to, and when exactly, in time, it took place.
Useful/interesting quotes:
A Marxism of whatever kind could never move back from or go beyond ‘modernity’ in the very terms in which it is defined...
Hegemony is a precarious, ‘moving equilibrium’ (Gramsci) achieved through the orchestration of conflicting and competing forces by more or less unstable, more or less temporary alliances of class fractions.
It becomes more and more difficult...to specify exactly what it is that ‘postmodernism’ is supposed to refer to as the term gets stretched in all directions...
Sunday, 28 February 2010
A smidgen of Stuart Hall on popular culture
Hall's 'Notes on deconstructing 'The Popular'' focuses on the topic of popular culture; addressing the issues of movements and periodisations linked to popular culture and discussing the problems with definitions of both terms.
Main points (there are lots) argued include:
1. Culture changes in periods but so do people, who are reformed and transformed.
2. Historical changes influencing popular culture such as revolutions, capitalism and changes to press.
3. Definitions of 'popular culture'and the 'problems' with these definitions.
4. There is no fixed category of culture, therefore there is no fixed subject to attach it to 'the people'.
5. Popular culture is about stuggle; for and against the powerful and something which evokes consent and resistant in different amounts.
6.Problem with 'tradition' in popular culture - its vital but meaning changes over time (e.g. the swastika)
Hall combines a historical reflection/critique of ideas on popular culture with his own definitions and thoughts, and then analyses and challenges the cocncepts by highlighting the problems with each of the terms. I think this was a really useful method because although he argued his points well, he remains critical that no definition is infinate and that problems can be found in all studies of popular culture.
Hall's conclusions argue that the term 'popular culture' is and has always been problematic and that there are many other 'factors' which contribute to its definition such as audience, traditions and class. He believes that popular culture is where 'struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged'.
I find myself agreeing with much of what Hall discusses in the article; based mainly on the fact that I found it very difficult to pin a definition on the term 'culture' to begin with (and still do to be honest). I think he is right that there are many contributing relations such as 'the people', historical changes and traditions; which add to and also provide problems when trying to define what popular culture is. I agree that popular culture is about struggle; some people will readily accept what the 'masses' do and others will disregard things that don't 'fit in' with their own interests/ideas.
Several quotes I found useful within the reading because they summarise Hall's main points well and show how the definition of popular culture is difficult to close down:
Main points (there are lots) argued include:
1. Culture changes in periods but so do people, who are reformed and transformed.
2. Historical changes influencing popular culture such as revolutions, capitalism and changes to press.
3. Definitions of 'popular culture'and the 'problems' with these definitions.
4. There is no fixed category of culture, therefore there is no fixed subject to attach it to 'the people'.
5. Popular culture is about stuggle; for and against the powerful and something which evokes consent and resistant in different amounts.
6.Problem with 'tradition' in popular culture - its vital but meaning changes over time (e.g. the swastika)
Hall combines a historical reflection/critique of ideas on popular culture with his own definitions and thoughts, and then analyses and challenges the cocncepts by highlighting the problems with each of the terms. I think this was a really useful method because although he argued his points well, he remains critical that no definition is infinate and that problems can be found in all studies of popular culture.
Hall's conclusions argue that the term 'popular culture' is and has always been problematic and that there are many other 'factors' which contribute to its definition such as audience, traditions and class. He believes that popular culture is where 'struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged'.
I find myself agreeing with much of what Hall discusses in the article; based mainly on the fact that I found it very difficult to pin a definition on the term 'culture' to begin with (and still do to be honest). I think he is right that there are many contributing relations such as 'the people', historical changes and traditions; which add to and also provide problems when trying to define what popular culture is. I agree that popular culture is about struggle; some people will readily accept what the 'masses' do and others will disregard things that don't 'fit in' with their own interests/ideas.
Several quotes I found useful within the reading because they summarise Hall's main points well and show how the definition of popular culture is difficult to close down:
"The study of popular culture keeps shifting between these two, quite unacceptable poles: pure 'autonomy' or total encapsulation."
"There is a continuous and necessary uneven and unequal struggle, by the dominant culture, constantly to disorganise and reorganise popular culture; to enclose and confine its definitions and forms within a more inclusive range of dominant forms. There are points of resistance; there are also moments of supersession. This is the dialectic of cultural struggle."
"Culture is not already permanently inscribed with the conditions of a class before that struggle begins. The struggle consists in the success or failure to give 'the cultursl' a socialist accent."
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Frankfurt School-style critique of the consumer magazine industry
I have chosen the 'glossy-weekly' magazine industry as the basis of this critique, inspired by the ideas and 'thoughts' of the Frankfurt School scholars Adorno and Horkheimer.I feel that this is one strand of the media industry that demonstrates how mass-produced cultural products are standardized and leave little choice for the reader.
The nature of the women's magazine industry is centred around providing all the latest celebrity gossip, 'real-life' trash, latest fashion and offering reams of useless 'agony-aunt-style' relationship advice. The agenda of every single one of the 20+ weekly mags is to encourage women to buy them and buy into the celeb/lifestyle culture by thinking they have to keep up with the gossip and latest trends.
Adorno and Horkheimer's beliefs that mass-produced culture is standardized can clearly be applied to the 'weekly-mag' market. The shelves of magazines each week are filled with exactly the same stories - all claiming that their's is the exclusive. Take Katie Price - her latest marriage to Alex Reid was splashed over all the mags that week and it's the same for every other celeb drama. They're all talking about Cheryl Cole, Brad and Angelina, who's pregnant this week, who's split up, who's getting it on etc etc etc. If you covered up the name on every cover, you'd never tell which was which - they're all soooooooo similar.
The idea of pseudo individulisation - cultural products made to give the user the impression of choice, when really there is none - can also be applied to the magazine industry. Just count the number of weekly women's mags on the shelf - clearly there is plenty of choice. But is there really? If they're all talking about the same thing and thrusting the same 'must-buys' under your nose, then where's the choice?
The Frankfurt School shared concerns that the 'masses are oppressed through culture' and that cultural products are 'perpetuating false conciousness'. I think these thoughts can be applied to women's mags because the sheer volume of standardized magazines could quite realistically lead readers to accept that this is our culture - everyone's interested in celebs and lifestyle - and that's the way it is.
Benjamin's suggestion that individual reactions to mass products are pre-determined also rings true. We're lead to believe that we must keep up with the latest fashion and celeb gossip else we won't fit in with the rest of society. It's sad but its true - women's mags have their own agenda and ladies, we're falling for it!
Hmmmmm......point proven, I think.
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