"To insist that the kids speak in English to express themselves in schools, or that the teacher teaches Science and Math in English and require students to answer in the same language, is to insist that the tail wag the dog. It is not only cruel, it is idiotic. All the studies show that kids learn best in their own language, and conversely that they learn hardest in a foreign one. Filipino kids trying to learn Science and Math in English do double the work Japanese kids do in trying to learn Science and Math in Japanese, or Thai kids do trying to learn Science and Math in Thai. And the results show it. Filipino kids do poorly in both as compared with Japanese or Thai kids."
- Conrado de Quiros, 'Knave's English'
I hope this bill never pass. It's ridiculous and over the top. We need a better system in educating our youth, and not a different language as a medium in teaching.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Notes on John Fiske's 'Popular Discrimination'
John Fiske
Popular Discrimination
Outline:
I. Introduction
A. Underestimation of the masses’ ability to discriminate products of popular culture.
B. “Popular culture has been denied discriminatory ability.”
II. “Critical Discrimination” vs. “Popular Discrimination”
A. Critical Discrimination
a. “Applied exclusively to high culture”
b. “ability to discriminate distinguishes the ‘cultured’ from the ‘uncultured’”
c. Concept, has always contained, however repressed, a dimension of social discrimination
d. Characteristics: quality and aesthetics
i. Aestheticism: “weapon in class struggle”, to distinguish the cultured, high society from others, focused on the Classics (art);
a. universalized into the essence of humanity;
b. distances art from necessity, anti-materialistic, art as self-contained, completed, contains in itself everything that it needs for appreciation, no more reader input needed, “art for art’s sake”
e. Function: to mask the social under the aesthetic, so the aesthetic ‘quality’ as marker of the social status of those who can appreciate it
B. Popular Discrimination
a. Begins with which products to use in the production of popular culture TO the linking of meanings and pleasures derived from the process of consuming such products related with the situations of everyday life
b. 2 key characteristics: Relevance and productivity
i. Relevance: the interconnections between a text and the immediate social situation of its readers;
a. text as socially and historically specific and will change as the dragging of time through history.
o text’s example: Miami Vice and Latinos
c. “Popular is functional”
a. Functional artworks: as reminders for holidays, family histories, propaganda – help one make sense of and cope with one’s subordination in society
o Example David Halle: study of paintings, contrast between the homes of the middle and upper class and the working class
b. Works to pluralize the meanings, pleasures, and uses of the text because it has to serve different functions for the different readers; artwork can only be functional if it is relevant.
c. Popular taste – for polysemic texts which are open to multiple interpretations; different from aestheticism, no hierarchy of readings
d. Role of academic critic of pop culture – social as much as textual, simultaneous tracing of the meanings in the text and relevance in the society
e. Texts are more of cultural resources rather than art objects
a. Michael de Certeau metaphor of the text as a supermarket
f. Popular reader holds no reverence for the text but sees it as a resource to be used at will against aesthetic reader reading on the text’s terms;
a. Concerned less with unity than with the pleasures and meanings the elements can provoke, “undisciplined” vs. aesthetic requiring understanding for overall unity, etc. – whole shebang goes with the disregard to the artist (who is otherwise revered in aestheticism).
g. Focuses on the conditions of consumption rather than of its production as opposed to the appreciation of the uniqueness of the artistic prowess that produced the text, the emblem, the signature (which is also valued for its monetary significance for the bourgeoisie).
III. Popular texts vs. ‘highbrow texts’
A. Popular texts
a. 3 main reasons for the highbrow dismissal of the popular texts:
o Their conventionality, conformity to the generic patterns, and being mass-produced.
o Their superficiality, sensationalism, obviousness, and predictability.
o Their easiness and failure to challenge the readers.
b. Focus on the generic convention which benefits a “three-way contract” between the audience, producer, and text.
c. Necessary openness attributed to its conventionality and superficiality:
o They have to appeal on the surface so the readers can supply meanings.
1. Example: contrast between a soap opera which gives chance to its viewers to give meaning to the events in the show and a Broadway play which obliges viewers to ‘decipher’ the meaning
o Keeps the cost down
o (of plot lines) Enables readers to write ahead and expect that they’d tune in more, be empowered, and situated in a far more democratic relationship with the text.
d. Absence of the need for difficulty, challenge and complexity, since the text and its author are not superior to the readers, but required to align itself with the readers’ whims. But this does not insinuate that the reader is passive (as there is an obvious participation of the reader), however, the participation is not necessarily laborious.
e. Can be and are challenging, too, on the other hand, but different from highbrow texts.
o Mostly on who is challenged, activating social conflicts
B. Highbrow texts
a. ‘difficult’
b. Filter readers up to those who have the competency to understand it.
c. Difficulty- measure of social exclusivity than textual quality
d. Challenge: aesthetic in two main arenas:
o Individual- between the reader and the decoding of the text, involves the development of the individual to his/her superiority that in the end will again form a faction of an elite force (Leavis); forgot to note that the individuals were already a part of the ruling class that made the aesthetic discrimination a self-confirming conservatism.
o Social- offered by the avant-garde, which is radical aesthetically.
e. “Textual challenge still had social distinction built into it, but the distinction worked not only to maintain, but actually to increase, social difference and to defend current power relations.”
f. Challenge: “always offered primarily within the realm of the aesthetic and any social dimension never crosses class barriers and thus never challenges the econ base of society, nor its differential distribution of power.”
IV. Popular art
A. Challenge: social instead of aesthetic, “The various formations of the people who experience various forms of subordination are challenged constantly by the conditions of their social experience: they do not need challenge in their art as well.”
B. Masses need art to be functional and useful for everyday life.
C. Meanings, complexities, and challenges of pop art are to be found in the ways of its potential to be mobilized socially, not only in the texts
V. Fandom
A. Readers who became intensely involved in pop culture.
B. Poised between pop and high culture, the fan works with both popular and critical discrimination.
C. Marked by excess: obsessive; practices are exaggerations of the more popular reader
D. Fan knowledge – fan cultural capital:
a. Gives similar social benefits (to those of the official cultural capital of the bourgeoisie) like prestige, sense of belonging, and feeling of self-worth;
b. Cannot be so easily translated into econ capital (although this is debatable).
i. Econ capital: fan memorabilias, mint conditioned comic books, 1st edition books, classic records, industrial texts, knowledge itself through promotion, etc.
ii. Value due to the item’s scarcity economical terms, distinctiveness socially, and authenticity culturally.
iii. Final step of ‘gentrifying’ of pop art to enhance it further, if its in mint condition, the item being unread or unused, and for autographed items, with the signature as the gentrifying agent.
*as published in Popular Culture: A Reader edited by Raiford Guins, et al.
Popular Discrimination
Outline:
I. Introduction
A. Underestimation of the masses’ ability to discriminate products of popular culture.
B. “Popular culture has been denied discriminatory ability.”
II. “Critical Discrimination” vs. “Popular Discrimination”
A. Critical Discrimination
a. “Applied exclusively to high culture”
b. “ability to discriminate distinguishes the ‘cultured’ from the ‘uncultured’”
c. Concept, has always contained, however repressed, a dimension of social discrimination
d. Characteristics: quality and aesthetics
i. Aestheticism: “weapon in class struggle”, to distinguish the cultured, high society from others, focused on the Classics (art);
a. universalized into the essence of humanity;
b. distances art from necessity, anti-materialistic, art as self-contained, completed, contains in itself everything that it needs for appreciation, no more reader input needed, “art for art’s sake”
e. Function: to mask the social under the aesthetic, so the aesthetic ‘quality’ as marker of the social status of those who can appreciate it
B. Popular Discrimination
a. Begins with which products to use in the production of popular culture TO the linking of meanings and pleasures derived from the process of consuming such products related with the situations of everyday life
b. 2 key characteristics: Relevance and productivity
i. Relevance: the interconnections between a text and the immediate social situation of its readers;
a. text as socially and historically specific and will change as the dragging of time through history.
o text’s example: Miami Vice and Latinos
c. “Popular is functional”
a. Functional artworks: as reminders for holidays, family histories, propaganda – help one make sense of and cope with one’s subordination in society
o Example David Halle: study of paintings, contrast between the homes of the middle and upper class and the working class
b. Works to pluralize the meanings, pleasures, and uses of the text because it has to serve different functions for the different readers; artwork can only be functional if it is relevant.
c. Popular taste – for polysemic texts which are open to multiple interpretations; different from aestheticism, no hierarchy of readings
d. Role of academic critic of pop culture – social as much as textual, simultaneous tracing of the meanings in the text and relevance in the society
e. Texts are more of cultural resources rather than art objects
a. Michael de Certeau metaphor of the text as a supermarket
f. Popular reader holds no reverence for the text but sees it as a resource to be used at will against aesthetic reader reading on the text’s terms;
a. Concerned less with unity than with the pleasures and meanings the elements can provoke, “undisciplined” vs. aesthetic requiring understanding for overall unity, etc. – whole shebang goes with the disregard to the artist (who is otherwise revered in aestheticism).
g. Focuses on the conditions of consumption rather than of its production as opposed to the appreciation of the uniqueness of the artistic prowess that produced the text, the emblem, the signature (which is also valued for its monetary significance for the bourgeoisie).
III. Popular texts vs. ‘highbrow texts’
A. Popular texts
a. 3 main reasons for the highbrow dismissal of the popular texts:
o Their conventionality, conformity to the generic patterns, and being mass-produced.
o Their superficiality, sensationalism, obviousness, and predictability.
o Their easiness and failure to challenge the readers.
b. Focus on the generic convention which benefits a “three-way contract” between the audience, producer, and text.
c. Necessary openness attributed to its conventionality and superficiality:
o They have to appeal on the surface so the readers can supply meanings.
1. Example: contrast between a soap opera which gives chance to its viewers to give meaning to the events in the show and a Broadway play which obliges viewers to ‘decipher’ the meaning
o Keeps the cost down
o (of plot lines) Enables readers to write ahead and expect that they’d tune in more, be empowered, and situated in a far more democratic relationship with the text.
d. Absence of the need for difficulty, challenge and complexity, since the text and its author are not superior to the readers, but required to align itself with the readers’ whims. But this does not insinuate that the reader is passive (as there is an obvious participation of the reader), however, the participation is not necessarily laborious.
e. Can be and are challenging, too, on the other hand, but different from highbrow texts.
o Mostly on who is challenged, activating social conflicts
B. Highbrow texts
a. ‘difficult’
b. Filter readers up to those who have the competency to understand it.
c. Difficulty- measure of social exclusivity than textual quality
d. Challenge: aesthetic in two main arenas:
o Individual- between the reader and the decoding of the text, involves the development of the individual to his/her superiority that in the end will again form a faction of an elite force (Leavis); forgot to note that the individuals were already a part of the ruling class that made the aesthetic discrimination a self-confirming conservatism.
o Social- offered by the avant-garde, which is radical aesthetically.
e. “Textual challenge still had social distinction built into it, but the distinction worked not only to maintain, but actually to increase, social difference and to defend current power relations.”
f. Challenge: “always offered primarily within the realm of the aesthetic and any social dimension never crosses class barriers and thus never challenges the econ base of society, nor its differential distribution of power.”
IV. Popular art
A. Challenge: social instead of aesthetic, “The various formations of the people who experience various forms of subordination are challenged constantly by the conditions of their social experience: they do not need challenge in their art as well.”
B. Masses need art to be functional and useful for everyday life.
C. Meanings, complexities, and challenges of pop art are to be found in the ways of its potential to be mobilized socially, not only in the texts
V. Fandom
A. Readers who became intensely involved in pop culture.
B. Poised between pop and high culture, the fan works with both popular and critical discrimination.
C. Marked by excess: obsessive; practices are exaggerations of the more popular reader
D. Fan knowledge – fan cultural capital:
a. Gives similar social benefits (to those of the official cultural capital of the bourgeoisie) like prestige, sense of belonging, and feeling of self-worth;
b. Cannot be so easily translated into econ capital (although this is debatable).
i. Econ capital: fan memorabilias, mint conditioned comic books, 1st edition books, classic records, industrial texts, knowledge itself through promotion, etc.
ii. Value due to the item’s scarcity economical terms, distinctiveness socially, and authenticity culturally.
iii. Final step of ‘gentrifying’ of pop art to enhance it further, if its in mint condition, the item being unread or unused, and for autographed items, with the signature as the gentrifying agent.
*as published in Popular Culture: A Reader edited by Raiford Guins, et al.
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