Storey, J. (2001). An introduction to cultural theory and popular culture. London: Prentice Hall.
John Storey cultural theory
Feminism
Four different feminisms: p135
each response to women’s oppression in a different way positioning different causes and solutions
radical
- system of patriarchy where men as a group have overpowered women as a group
marxist
- ‘ultimate source of oppression is capitalism’
- ‘the domination of women by men is seen as consequence of capitals domination over labour’
liberal
- ‘sees the problem in terms of ale prejudice against women, embodied in law or expressed in the exclusion of women from particular areas of life’
dual-system
- coming together of marxism and radical
- ‘women’s oppression is the result of a complex articulation of both patriarchy and capitalism’
‘speaking becomes both a way to engage in active self-transformation and a rite of passage where one moves from being object to being subject. Only as a subject can we speak’ p136
Rakow: p136:
‘feminists approaching popular culture proceed from a variety of theoretical positions that carry with them a deeper social analysis and political agenda’
‘first that women have a particular relationship to popular culture that id different than men’s’
‘the second assumption is that understanding how popular culture functions for both women and r a patriarchal culture important if women are to gain control over their own identities and change both social mythologies and social relations’
Women in Cinema:
p137
Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshall
‘questioning whether the gaze is always male or whether it is merely dominant’
‘not enough to dismiss popular culture as merely serving the complementary systems of capitalism and patriarchy, peddling false consciousness to the duped masses. It can also be seen as a site where meanings are contested and where dominant ideologies can be disturbed’
‘it is from popular culture that most people in society get their entertainment and information. It is here that women (and men) are offered the culture’s dominant definitions of themselves. It would therefore seem crucial to explore the possibilities and pitfalls of intervention in popular forms in order to find ways of making feminist meanings a part of our pleasures’
Christine Gledhill (2009)
‘feminist analysis of the women’s film and soap opera is beginning to counter a more negative cine-psychoanalytic… accounts of female spectatorship, suggesting colonised, alienated, masochistic positions of identification’
Summary:
Storey discusses the different types of feminism and states how we can no longer talk about feminism as a whole due to the multiple ‘waves’ that have developed over the years in response to different issues that have arisen. Due to the multiple groups within feminism its more appropriate to too refer to feminism as a political movement, in which women have a voice to discuss the oppression they have and still do face. Storey talks about this aspect of feminism in relation to Bell Hooks (1989) who refers to this as ‘finding a voice’, a metaphor for self-transformation.
In relation to popular culture it’s important to look at the different approaches to women in popular culture in order to gain an understanding of women position and how to change their own identities and bring about social change, through ongoing discussions. Furthermore Storey discusses this further when analysing Mulvey (1975) which looks at women as spectators which Storey questions against Gamman and Marshment's (1988) statement as to ‘whether the gaze is always male or whether it is merely dominant’. This lends power to feminism as he discusses how popular culture can be the basis for disruption not just a platform of ‘false consciousness’.
Storey also discusses Jackie Stacey’s (1994) who looks at the use of cinema in war time Britain for women who used it as an escape from hardship rather than an escape into luxury, which leads to women becoming a part of their own oppression through consumption.
Men’s Studies and Masculinities: p159
Antony Easthope (1968) What a Man’s Gotta Do
focus on dominant masculinity ‘the myth of heterosexual masculinity as something essential and self-evident which is tough, masterful, self-possessed, knowing, always in control etc’
‘dominant masculinity operates as a gender norm and that it is against this norm that many other different types of ‘lived masculinities’ are invited to measure themselves’
‘its coercive power is active everywhere - not just on screen, hoardings and paper, but inside our own heads’
Summary:
Within this section Storey discusses masculinity and mens studies through Antony Easthope (1968) What a Man’s Gotta Do, in which he discusses dominant masculinity and the idea that is become a gender norm. Storey also touches on how some feminists are unhappy about the development of mens studies, as although it may help develop understanding about how men have become dominant many worry that ‘such research might distort, belittle, or deny women’s experiences with men and masculinity’.
Queer Theory: p160
Simone de Beauvoir (1984)
‘while biological sex is stable, there will always be different and competing ‘versions’ of femininity and masculinity’
Judith Butler (1999)
‘the cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes’
‘works with the assumption that there are only two biological sexes which are determined by nature, and which in turn generate and guarantee the binary gender system’
‘the category of ‘sex’ is itself a gendered category, fully politically invested, naturalised but not natural’
‘not a biological truth at the heart of gender; sex and gender are both cultural categories’
‘gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which ‘sexed nature’ or ‘a natural sex’ is produced and established as ‘prediscursive’, prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts’
‘one is not born a woman, but becomes one; but further, one is not born a female, one becomes a female; but even more radically one can if one chooses, become neither female nor male, woman nor man’.
‘gender is the repeated stylisation of he body, as set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being’
P161
Performative language:
brings something into being ‘it’s a boy or it’s a girl’
‘there is no identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is performatively constituted y the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results’
‘each pronouncement comes with rules and regulations, which we are expected to follow and obey: little boys do this, little girls don’t do that’.
P162
‘gender performativity cannot be theorised apart from the forcible and reiterative practice of regulatory sexual regimes… in no way presupposes a chosen object’
Summary:
In relation to queer theory Storey discusses Butler (1999) book Gender Trouble in which butler discuss the cultural meaning that the sexed body assumes based on the assumption that there are two biological sexes. She also discusses the distinction between sex and gender which is not to distinguish between nature and culture ‘gender is not to culture as is sex is to nature; gender is also discursive/cultural means by which ‘sexed nature’ or ‘a natural sex’ is produced and established as “pre-discursive”, prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts’.
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