OSE Intro to Cultural Studies

Culture Consuming Itself?

Outline of this session• Semiotics - revision

• What are the implications of semiotics?

• Marxism – revision

• Marxism and consumerism

• Exercises: using Marxism to inform semiotic analysis

Semiotics - revision• Signifier (code)• Signified (concept)• Denotation• Connotation• Myth

• Mini semiotic analysis of the following VW car advert…

• Start by assessing connotations, then think about: intertextuality, anchorage, myth, polysemy

Implications of semiotics• Arbitrary nature of the sign

• Distinctions only have meaning in language (dogs and cats don’t worry about differences between them…)

• Meaning = difference (a dog is a dog because it’s not a cat, not a horse, not a sheep).

• Culture & science rest on organising, classifying and naming difference, eg. Victoria classification of species, eg. classification of products, cars, fashion, etc.

Implications of semiotics• Language constructs culture (and not other way

round)

• Without a signifier (code = words, symbols, pictures) concepts are inaccessible

• If meaning/language is based on constructing difference, and language constructs culture, then we can say that culture is a function of difference, eg. binary opposites (male/female, black/white)

• Are all differences the same? (power)

Marxism - revision• Base/superstructure• Ideology: Whose interests are being served?• Dominant ideologies:• naturalise specific conditions as being natural or universal• freeze history, and represent historical processes as

inevitable• only a few benefit from them, but everybody believes

them • Surplus value / profit

Revision: alienation

capitalism degrades our humanity by forcing us into relationships with ‘things’ that are more important than we are

1. we are alienated from fellow workers by conditions of competition: surplus labour pool / workers=commodities 2. we are alienated from the products of our labour by their commodity value3. we are alienated from an understanding of the meaning of the commodities we work to buy

Marxism & Commodities

•Use Value• Exchange Value• Commodity Fetishism

Exercise: Calvin Klein & iPod Nano ads • How do you know what the commodity is?• According to the advert, what distinguishes this

commodity from other commodities?• What kinds of “mysteries” or myths are being

used to fetishise these commodities here?• How do these myths relate to identity?• Why is there no discussion in the advert of

money?•

Meaning is always a process of contestation…

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (1986)Concerned with social reproduction – how societies maintain themselves over time – not simply as a set of individuals, but as groups in certain relations of power to each other.

Resources or assets of different social classes are as much symbolic as economic

Taste is a key mechanism for organizing the distribution of symbolic resources

People who wish to gain more social power through the class system must acquire the symbolic assets of the class above: eg. Del Boy on Only Fools & Horses

Class differences no longer simply about money and what you own in the way of capital assets but more to do with education and how taste reflects levels of education and professional standing.