Author Archives: calvin

From an aesthetic perspective, I found the choices which the photographer, Alberto Korda made in his production/distribution of the image to be interesting. First, the fact that he chose to crop the image, taking it completely out of context and immortalizing El Che as some sort of statue bust floating in a gray haze. I think that this is the major aspect which affected the popularity of the image as an icon rather than a photograph (to be honest I really sort of forgot, as I’m sure many people do that the image itself actually came from an original photograph and thought that it was drawn or produced in some other way). Second, I find it interesting that the image did not make it out until 1967, after Che’s untimely death. In a sense, the fact that both the image of his dead body and the Korda image came out at the same time crystallized his portrayal as a martyr and an icon of revolution. On one hand, as Casey puts it, the death picture exudes some sense of serenity in a Christlike way (not a weakness which his killers had hoped to portray), while the Korda image takes care of the powerful, moral figure side of his culturally constructed self. I think in a sense the images work together to piece Che into the icon we see in the Korda image. I really liked the first chapter because it deals with the aesthetics integral in the creation of the icon as well as breaks down the creation of the image, and it’s significance at the time it was shot. Really it helps to put the photo, not the icon into context for me.

This phenomenon of reading deeply into what would have previously been perceived as “low culture” (reading the romance as well as this essay) in order to extract elements of academic merit is at times baffling to me. I had to step back from the reading and remind myself exactly what we were talking about (how easy it is to get swept up in the prose). It is very hard for me to see these star trek fans as creating/having any kind of agency due to the fact that at the end of the day they are merely over consuming mass media to the point of it’s logical end. Having said this, I have to add that I did really enjoy The Velveteen Rabbit connection at the beggining of chapter two, I think it really helped me to put the whole thing into a larger perspective rather than focusing my efforts on trying to accept star trek as valid (truthfully my opinions here will always show through, I hate Star Trek). The idea that something becomes “real” or validated through the “loving” of that thing is such a simple yet beautiful understanding of culture (I’m a die hard velveteen rabbit fan, or I used to be…). I think I will make this my credo from now on. Can something be canonized within culture through the hating of it? Could the author have just as easily dissected the culture of furbies or something to that effect?

After our little talk about postmodern art sensibilities and how I thought they were straying from the “right or wrong” of modernism, and becoming more accesible to “low” culture, I came across this…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/arts/design/11museum.html?_r=1&ref=arts

Patrons decide what is good. Saatchi etc. And people like Koons and Hirst ride thier coatails. Nothing has changed.

I found most of the first part of this essay interesting in specific regards to Bourdieu’s readings of tastes in art and music in relation to class and status. As mentioned in previous posts, Bourdieu points out specific aspects of art that people of lower, bourgeois classes prefer in comparison to the arguably more complicated aspects of artwork that the upper classes prefer. I did disagree, or felt that some of these distinctions between artistic aspects were a little outdated, and making connections with art that aligns itself with modernism. Today I feel like art comments more broadly and has a harder time being divided into groups of high brow and low brow. Take someone like Damien Hirst for example, an artist who deals with extremely lofty themes, yet presents them in a visceral form, appealing to anyone who likes a great white shark in a tank of formaldahyde. In this sense, I don’t think that art today holds the answers as clearly for creating distinction among class as much as it used to.

I found it interesting also the ambiguity which Bourdieu describes the impact of musical taste. On page nineteen, he states that music is the most “spiritual” of the arts, and having an interest in music makes one “spiritual”. He goes on to discuss the re-readings of religious/spiritual music by the secularized, what he argues is a valuable aspect of culture today. Bourdieu aslo claims that music is the “purest” of art forms because “it says nothing and has nothing to say”. Again, here I feel that his interpretations are slightly outdated, coming at a time (late 60s was his research for this book) when jazz was still on the brink of being canonized in the academic world. Not to say that jazz is loaded with overt meaning, or strays from Bourdieu’s reading of musical spirituality, but in many ways, jazz is itself a rereading of religious music by the secularized.

I found Bourdieu’s readings into taste interesting, yet a bit dry and dare I say outdated? I felt that Hebdige had a better grasp on what taste meant to people today (although, as Hebdige argues, by the time we figure out about it, it’s gone), a view that was a little more accesible for me.

The more diverse our readings in this class get, the more I realize that I appreciate the calculated subtlety and nuance of Said and Williams over the radicalism of Fanon or Althusser. For me, there is something to be said about acknowledging the intricacy of an issue, as Said seems to do in his discussions on imperialism and colonialism.

The specific example I’m thinking of is his acknowledgment on page1 19 of Fanon’s theory of “national bourgeoisie”, and their ideological domination of the colonized, post colonization. Now having acknowledged this as a legitimate issue, Said brings up the converse side of this relationship in a discussion on immigrants of colonized countries to the cities of their colonizers (Algerians in Paris, Indians in London etc.) and the enormous impact they have made on the western cultures of these major European cities. To me, this is an extremely important aspect of imperialism which is generally overlooked in other accounts such as Fanon’s. Not to say that I find it a positive aspect of imperialism, it is merely an aspect, not to be overlooked.

Playing into this more over-arching idea of imperialism presented by Said, is his warning against “compartmentalizing” histories of imperialism. He addresses the issue on page 28 as such, “…it is one of the virtues of such conjunctures of politics with culture and aesthetics that they permit the disclosure of a common ground obscured by the controversy itself. Perhaps it is especially hard for the combatants directly involved to see this common ground when they are fighting back more than reflecting.”

Said’s dissection of culture and imperialism offers something more accessible for me than the moments of rage, and promotion of violence. Maybe this comes from a colonial education, such as that of Said’s (and to a certain extent, mine), but I find his points to be more useful and grounded than Fanon’s.

This book, along with the piercing preface by Jean-Paul Sartre is up there as one of the most outright critical pieces of literature I have ever read. The two hold no bars in singling out all of the major issues with the colonialism of the world. Fanon does so to the extent of offering violence as the one option for decolonization. This is an idea we see emphasized by many of the worlds most well known and “successful” revolutionaries and critics of colonialism (che, castro, Subcomandante Marcos, Zapata etc. etc.). When reading on violence all I could think of relating it to was Malcom X and his famous line “by any means necessary”, in reference to the methods he believed in using to decolonize America’s relationship with it’s black population.

Whatever justification Fanon or any of the aforementioned revolutionaries use for the use of violence as an act of decolonization, it is still something that I struggle with personally, and that I believe anyone attempting to make a revolutionary act feels similarly towards. The example which I reference in my thought process is again that of the different ideological systems of Malcom X and Martin Luther King jr. Today we recognize both men as incredible important in the fight for black rights in the united states, yet each believing in a very different methodology. I don’t know that Fanon or Sartre would even place King’s work in the category of decolonizing.

I can’t say if I believe outright in the use of violence either way, it is something that I have always wrestled with in discussing these theories, yet I know that it creates an enormous gap between two groups who seek similar ends.

In reading Raymond Williams Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory, I found many of Marx’s major topics illuminated in a way that most of the other authors we have read truly could not do. Williams’ writing is direct and concise, making it very possible to follow in terms of genealogy of thought. I also enjoyed the way in which is essay was structured, beginning with an exploration of the nuanced meanings and relationships of base and superstructure to contemporary society, and ending with what I felt to be a brilliant definition of art and art analysis in it’s relation to cultural studies.

Williams simple yet perfect examples also, for me helped to clarify some of the cloudy systems of Marxist thought. For example, in defining one idea for representations of base and superstructure, Williams uses the example of the piano maker, the piano seller and the piano player. Maker and seller both falling into the economic category of base, and the piano player, falling into the category of superstructure. The division here being one of economy and production and more of a leisure activity defined by said base, yet equally important in the definition of culture. This example for me also explains the complicated and not completely determined relationship between the two which Williams’ essay seeks to prove.

Williams’ continues to show the delicate relationship of base and superstructure in their creation of culture by addressing ideas of alternative and oppositional aspects of culture, or cultures themselves. He says on page 43, “…in certain areas, there will be in certain periods practices and meanings which are not reached for. There will be areas of practice and meaning which, almost by definition from its own limited character, or in its profound deformation, the dominant culture is unable in any real terms to recognize.” This is an important aspect of dominant culture that Marx fails to recognize or address, but that I feel adds a degree of complexity to his articulations of culture.

Finally, and most importantly, Williams ends on the ideas of art and literature, some of the most complicated in terms of the definition of culture. Williams again illuminates and interesting contradiction, that of the work of art seen as both an object and the “alternative view of art as practice” (47). His  quote at the bottom of page 47 rings true for me in the analysis of art in terms of cultural studies: “What this can show us here about the practice of analysis is that we have to break from the common procedure of isolating the object and then discovering its components. On the contrary we have to discover the nature of a practice and then its conditions.” This quote shows the importance of the artist within society,whose job today is to push boundaries of the definition of culture, and eventually, moving from oppositional theories into a more commonly accepted “truths” through ideas of “practice” and its “conditions”.

Williams theories here hit home for me in terms of trying to define art, the most complicated and nuanced asprect of culture, through a clear exploration of relations between base and superstructure and how they relate to a broader sense of art in culture. For these reasons I really enjoy a lot of Williams writings as well as those of other English scholars of Marx like Stuart Hall and Perry Anderson in that they tend to present clear and concise understandings of contemporary cultural studies.