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Chapter 3. Cultural Studies: Agency, Community, and Pleasure
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Chapter 3 Cultural Studies: Agency, Community, and Pleasure In sifting through reams of material written about the ubiquitous and mysterious "idiot box," I decided to base my analysis on the cultural studies research tradition because it has focused on the interaction of both females and young people with media. Founded in Great Britain , this school pioneered the move to study television viewing, not quantitatively in the laboratory, but qualitatively in the busy, messy settings of everyday life. In pondering cultural studies analyses, however, I realized that the school was divided in at least one fundamental way. These researchers disagreed profoundly over whether and how media empower or oppress. Some argued that watching television shows and reading magazines and romance novels-and talking about them-disadvantaged women and young people by perpetuating existing patriarchal and capitalist power structures. But others maintained that these media encounters could strengthen media users by building community and helping them take charge of their lives. Some writers even started in the negative camp, then moved to the positive one. As this disagreement suggests, behind both fears and hopes about what happens when we watch television lies a concern with what many authors call agency-with whether we can initiate changes in our lives, and in the meanings we make of events and power relations, or whether cultural forces shape what we value and thus where power resides. Are women active in our enjoyment of soap operas or romance novels, or are we manipulated by the patriarchy into valuing certain female behaviors over others? Do we exercise agency as we take time for ourselves to watch and read, or are we co-opted into substituting this behavior for any real fulfillment of needs or improvement in our condition? Cultural studies targets two arenas in which to study agency: The generation of community and the production of pleasure. Some researchers expected that subcultures would filter and reshape media and cultural 32 Chapter 3 messages, giving individuals agency over and ownership of the meanings they made. And these researchers suspected that taking pleasure in media texts-often in ways not anticipated by producers of the textsgave users agency in their media experiences. However, others maintained that this very activity and enjoyment worked ultimately to reproduce a culture that disadvantaged women and young people. This chapter overviews cultural studies' treatment of agency, particularly with regard to community and pleasure. I start with the work of hegemony theorists, in whose bleak view media users work actively to perpetuate a status quo that disadvantages them. I then discuss work of researchers who celebrate the active media user. Agency, Resistance, and Hegemony Theory The issue of agency has for cultural studies researchers been inseparably linked with resistance to dominant social mores. British Cultural Studies was initially identified with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University. Founded by Richard Hoggart in 1963 (for a more complete history, cf., for example, McGuigan 1992), the school was fueled by a deep resistance to cultural elitism and an interrogation of traditional literary canons. As articulated in Hoggart's (1957) The Uses of Literacy, these researchers treated mass culture as a legitimate focus of study, asking how subcultures gave individuals agency to resist and interrogate existing power structures, especially in their media encounters. Members of this school saw themselves as speaking for, and with, some of those thought to be disadvantaged in Western society-women, youth, and the lower class. Early researchers wanted to celebrate resistance to elitist or "high" culture, particularly as this culture was codified and transmitted through formal education. But despite this somewhat biased framing of research questions, early cultural studies findings did not support the expectation that subculture and mass culture fueled effective resistance to dominant ideologies. Two researchers who looked at the operation of subcultures in the lives of lower-class youth, Willis (1977) and McRobbie (1978), found that, while these young people appeared active and resistant , their activity ultimately worked to prevent them from bettering their situation. Willis studied disaffected "lads" in a working-class school, who had developed a culture of defiance that seemed to help them control an otherwise demoralizing situation. These youths built a lively and rebellious community, united by what Willis heard as an active language of resistance. They empowered themselves by adopting what at the time were considered counter-culture identities (drinking, smoking, having Cultural Studies: Agency, Community, and Pleasure 33 sex, and generally refusing to conform to classroom norms) in their revolt against education...