Orientalism – The link between culture, imperial power & colonialism

Edward Said – “The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism”, “creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness”, “In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West”

• The East becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which Westerners do not choose to acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness)
• Often discussed by contemporary philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the recognition of the ‘Other’ is mainly attributed the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan

Louis Althusser: ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpolation’

“All ideology hails or interpolates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject”

• Ideological state apparatus (ISA), is a theoretical concept developed by (Algerian born) French philosopher Louis Althusser which is used to describe the way in which structures of civic society – education, culture, the arts, the family, religion, bureaucracy, administration etc serve to structure the ideological perspectives of society, which in turn form our individual subject identity
• In other words, the way in which society calls / addresses / hails you is interpolation, which is the way in which your subject identity is formed and which, more often than not, corresponds to the dominant ideology

Frantz Fanon

• In terms of post-colonialism, we can look at The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
• Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique and appears to recognise the ‘mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared‘ 

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony

• Gramsci suggests that power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture. In other words, Gramsci raises the concept of Hegemony to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others
• In terms of post colonialism, is ‘a flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand’

Gilroy & Du Bois

Paul Gilroy is insistent that ‘we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.’ (2004:13) His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency

‘Cross-cultural’ interactions is indeed a characteristic of postcolonial criticism. Often found by foregrounding questions of cultural difference and diversity, as well as by celebrating ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural poly-valency’. A unique position where ‘individuals may simultaneously belong to more than one culture – the coloniser and the colonised’. (2016:198) Even Fanon suggests an emphasis on identity as ‘doubled, or ‘hybrid’, or ‘unstable’.

• Systemic societal sexism – MISOGYNY. This is a term that derives from psychoanalysis and essentially means a fear and hatred of women, or put simply: SEXISM a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society, otherwise known as PATRIARCHY.
• Institutional, individual levels of sexism
• Michelene Wandor, ‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s
• Laura Mulvey – specifically focus on her 1975 polemical essay: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘. Central to her thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media. another is fetishism (‘the quality of a cut-out . . . stylised and fragmented‘), the way in which parts of the female body are presented as something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ 
• Scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ ie OBJECTIFICATION)
• Vouyerism (the sexual pleasure gained in looking)
• Jacques Lacan – highlighting the parallel between the ‘mirror stage’ of child development and the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen – ‘a complex process of likeness and difference‘
• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics
• Raunch culture – 3rd wave feminism

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable characteristics:

• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity
• plurality

Intersectionality: Queer theory

• Initial critical ideas that looked at the plurality of feminist thought can be found in the early work around Queer Theory. In the UK the pioneering academic presence in queer studies was the Centre for Sexual Dissedence in the English department at Sussex University, founded by Alan Sinfield and Johnathon Dollimore in 1990
• More focus on individual agency – you can be whoever you want, whenever you want

• Narrative – Time
• Time could be linear, non – linear, always sequential or non – sequential
• Chronologically
• Narratives are organised around a particular theme or space
• Narrative – overall construction
• Story – themes and meaning
• Plot – sequences, chronological
• Todorov instead says to use – Equilibrium, disruption, new equilibrium
• Propp – stock characters in order to structure a story (Hero, helper, princess, villain, victim, false hero etc.)
• 1. Preparation 2. Complication 3. Transference 4. Struggle 5. Return 6. Recognition
• Strauss – binary oppositions, for instance myths structured by binary oppositions (Good vs evil, human vs alien)
• Chatman – Kernels: key moments in the plot/narrative structure Satellites: embellishments, developments, aesthetics

Narrative planning

Setting – home, woods, beach

Characters – 3 males

Can be understood as a philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE. It’s an approach towards understanding, knowledge and life

Parody v Pastiche

Pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist

Parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony

“The Simpsons relishes its self-referentiality and frequently engages in pastiche” – Gray (2005:5)

Intertextuality: surface signs, gestures & play

Shuker notes, two points are frequently made about music videos: ‘their preoccupation with visual style, and associated with this, their status as key exemplars of ‘postmodern’ texts.’

• BRICOLAGE is a useful term to apply to postmodernist texts as it ‘involves the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’
• INTERTEXTUALITY is another useful term to use, as it suggests signs only have meaning in reference to other signs and that meaning is therefore a complex process of decoding/encoding with individuals both taking and creating meaning in the process of reading texts

Surface and style over substance

If it the priority is play, then the emphasis is on the surface, in other words, if the main focus is the idea of just connecting one product to another, then the focus is superficial, shallow, lacking depth, so ‘in a postmodern world, surfaces and style become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture‘

In terms of the key principles of art and design the priority is in formal elements: of shape, colour, texture, movement, space, time and so on. As opposed to more discursive principles of: narrative, character, motivation, theme, ideology

A brief economic, historical and societal backdrop to Postmodernism

In 1959, Richard Hoggart (Uses of Literacy) noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our ‘neighborhood lives’, which was ‘an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near‘

Characteristic of modern societies, is the creation, development and concentration of centres of high consumption, with a displacement of both consumption and production that has radically altered the nature of societies and individuals living in them.

Fragmentary consumption = Fragementary identities

This process of fragmented consumption separating, splitting up and dividing previously homogeneous groups such as, friends, the family, the neighborhood, the local community, the town, the county, the country and importantly, is often linked to the process of fragmented identity construction

The focus on FRAGMENTATION OF IDENTITY is characterised and linked to an increase of consumption and the proliferation of new forms of digital technologies. In effect, another key characteristic of postmodernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies

The loss of a metanarrative

A process which the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard would describe as IMPLOSION which gives rise to what he terms SIMULACRA. The idea that although the media has always been seen as a representation of reality – a simulation, from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation and it has become SIMULACRUM not just a representation of the real, but the real itself, a grand narrative that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL

Jameson argued that parody implies a moral judgment or a comparison with previous societal norms. Whereas pastiche, such as collage and other forms of juxtaposition, occur without a normative grounding and as such, do not make comment on a specific historical moment

This links to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s proposition that postmodernism holds an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives‘ (1979:7) those overarching ideas, attitudes, values and beliefs that have held us together in a shared belief, For example, the belief in religion, science, capitalism, communism, revolution, war, peace and so on. Lyotard points out that no one seemed to agree on what, if anything, was real and everyone had their own perspective and story

Definitions

• Pastiche – A parody but rather than mocking, it celebrates a work of visual art, literature, theatre, or music imitating a style or character of the work of artists
• Parody – A work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony
• Intertextuality – Shaping a text’s meaning by a different text
• Metanarrative – A narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience or knowledge
• Hyperreality – An inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality
• Simulacrum – Those systems in which different relates to different by means of difference itself
• Consumerist Society – A type of society where people devote a great deal of their life to “consuming”
• Fragmentary Identities – Presence of more than one sense of identity within a single human body
• Implosion – A collapse of a system
• Cultural Appropriation- The inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another culture

Task 1

Ghost town, the song produced by the specials, was released on the 12th of June 1981. The song spent three weeks at number 1 and a total of 10 weeks in the top 40. All three major uk music magazines awarded the song single go the year in 1981. the specials were a British band signed to the label 2 tone. Their specific genre of music was ska/ two tone which was influenced by Jamaican culture.

Task 2

The song was written about the decline in Coventry, which is where the band grew up as well as the scenes seen on their uk tour where they saw numerous amounts of shops becoming closed down as well as violence spreading. At the time the song was released the uk saw a spread of riots caused by racial tensions, as many ethnic minority communities suffered from poor housing and low wages as well as police powers being abused. These riots lead the governments attention to help the unemployed.

Task 3

The music video demonstrates an empty city which would usually have been filled with people. The band were in a car driving around this empty town joyfully singing and dancing to the lyrics. During the line ‘why must the youth fight against themselves’ shadows of people fighting is shown to demonstrate the scenes seen throughout the uk.

• Colonialism – a policy of acquiring full or partial political control over another country
• Post Colonialism – theoretical approach in multiple different disciplines
• Diaspora – dispersion of any people that are from their original homeland
• Bame – a term that has been used in the UK to refer to black or people of a different ethnicity
• Double consciousness (Gilroy) – a book about the black atlantic culture that has incorporated elements from different cultures e.g. African, American, British and Caribbean
• Cultural absolutism – the idea created exploiting that there are certain principles and sets of values that are either right or wrong in every context
• Cultural syncretism – distinct aspects of different cultures are combined together to create something new and unique
• Orientalism – a book written by Edward W Said, in which he developed the complete idea of Orientalism to define the West’s historic representation of The East
• Appropriation – where a culture adopts different aspects of another culture
• Cultural hegemony – domination or power maintained by ideological or cultural meanings
• The public sphere – a gained public opinion obtained that can be formed about the activities taken place within the government
• The role of public service broadcasting – for example the BBC news are usually biased towards different minorities in a negative manner portraying an unfair image of how they’re presented

War of The Worlds was a book originally published by author H.G Wells in 1898. War of The Worlds was broadcast on the radio on October 30th, 1938; this was between both WW1 and WW2. The 1930’s was a decade full of unfortunate events as people across the world were still recovering from WW1, the Great Depression and Wall Street’s crash. In addition, across the globe dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were gaining power. The Nazi party in Germany began to escalate in number and force, followed by its’ persecution of Jewish people and others considered ‘undesirables’. A second world war was imminent, bringing with it an air of uncertainty and negativity. In contrast, the 1930’s and 1940’s brought the ‘Golden Age’ of radio to the masses, whereby radio was the most used media platform in households across the world. 

The War of The Worlds was broadcast in America by CBS radio, as part of The Mercury Theatre’s ‘On the Air’ series. Roughly, 80% of households in the US owned a radio at this specific time. The drama performance of War of The Worlds was adapted to sound like a present day, live broadcast. It had no breaks and only had one announcement at the beginning of the broadcast to warn listeners that it was a play and not a real news broadcast. The broadcast is an early example of a hybrid-genre as it mixes conventions from H.G Wells’ science-fiction story together with a News / Documentary type broadcast.  Welles used simulated on-the-scene radio reports about aliens advancing on New York City linking to the story. Repetition of this technique throughout the performance links to Stuart Hall’s Cultivation Theory where over time a story becomes more believable.

The broadcast demonstrates how media institutions manufacture consent, linking with the ideas of Noam Chomsky, ‘Ownership, Advertising, The Media Elite, Flak and The Common Enemy’ as with the broadcast of War of the Worlds by Orson Welles. Therefore, this creates a presence on how the media dominates, and is dominated by power. By exposing how people react with panic if the “news” provides the audience with information about the significance of an event, Orson Welles exposed how the media can spread misinformation i.e. ‘Fake News’. The War of the Worlds broadcast is also considered an early form of ‘fake news’ as it supposedly had some members of the American public believe that there had been an alien invasion on earth. An example of this is the Hypodermic needle model, which is a communication theory that suggests mixed media messages are injected directly into the brains of audiences. It comes from a fear of mass media, and provides the media with much more power than it can contain within a democracy, which causes mass shock.

At the time of the broadcast American citizens will have been very on edge considering the events happening in the world around them due to the anticipation of a second world war combined with the fact that it was Halloween. The broadcast became famous for supposedly causing mass panic among its listeners however, many doubt the scale of panic that was claimed to have been made, as the radio channel had relatively few listeners. In reality, it was the speculations that newspapers portrayed that caused mass hysteria.

The War Of The Worlds is a historically significant media product as it was an early idea of how the media can persuade and effect peoples thoughts and views on the world around them and can influence a person’s thoughts and feelings towards a specific thing whether it be political or an opinion on a book. We still see this today where news is more accessible through improved technology and the worldwide web. Even though people are more aware of the role the media plays, people are still susceptible to believing it. 

• Understanding self
• Enjoyment
• Escapism

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

• Originally launched in 2010 as a sister paper to The Independent
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