Week 7: Cultural Studies

It is hard to pinpoint the definition of culture. Throughout the history of cultural studies, Matthew Arnold, F.R. Leavis, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and E.P Thompson all have their own interpretation of ‘Culture’ and where the study of culture should start from. This can be understood as culture is able to change according to the times.

As quoted from Hall (2005):

Culture is a production. It has its raw materials, its resources, its 'work of production.' It depends on a knowledge of tradition as 'the changing same' and an effective set of genealogies. (p556)

For this theory, I will focus mainly on visual culture, which according to Nicholas Mirzoeff (1991), “Visual culture is concerned with visual events in which information, meaning, or pleasure is sought by the consumer in an interface with visual technology.” (p3) The visual technology here can be any interface that is designed to be looked at or enhance the visual appearance through art and media.

One of the visual cultures in Japan is Gyaru, in which its name is originally derived from the English word ‘Girl’. The Gyaru culture started in the 1970s and has since broken down into different sub-cultures. Although Gyaru culture may seem broad, it shares the same significance as its sub-cultures, and that is the girly-glamorous style, breaking away from the traditional styles in Japan.

By applying the theory, the discourse of ‘Gyaru’ has many representations, such as glamorous, beauty, pretty, cute, inferior feminity, and perhaps for some people, excessive makeups and cross-culture of the eastern and the western. The ideologies from the discourse are those of the representations from it. Anne Makus mentioned that "Hall argues, there exist ideological "logics" to public debate which create limiting social realities about the way the world works." (p495), where the ideologies are the common sense that has a structural meaning embedded to it. When people acquire a discourse about certain cultures, they have their own ideologies on what they think about the culture itself.

And of course, the politics of this culture is the politics of feminity, politics in individuality, politics in sexuality and politics of consumerism. Gyaru culture may be popular in Japan, but there are still many criticisms regarding their style, language and mannerism. In this culture, they have their own language, where they mix English with Japanese words in order to create a new trend. As explained by Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times (1997), “The enthusiasm for the new words seems partly based on the dominance of English in popular music and partly on the notion that it is more mellifluous than other languages.”

Hall’s cultural studies may be biased towards the less-known cultures that are often criticized and be put into ‘low class’ categories. As Griffin (2012) stated:

“Hall is suspicious of any cultural analysis that ignores power relationships. That's because he believes the purpose of theory and research is to empower people who live on the margins of society, people who have little say in the direction of their lives and who are scrambling to survive.” (p345)

References:
Griffin, E. (2012) A First Look At Communication Theory (8th Edition). New York. McGraw Hill.

Nicholas, M. (1999). An Introduction to Visual Culture. Routledge: London.

Nicholas, D. K. (1997, October 19). Stateside Lingo Gives Japan Its Own Valley Girls. The New York Times. Retrieved April 1, 2012 from http://209.68.50.46/nakamura/courses/japan/readings/NYT_971019.pdf

Anne, M. (1990). Stuart hall's theory of ideology: A frame for rhetorical criticism. Western Journal of Speech Communication. 54. 495-514.