Analytical “paradigms”

• dominance-subordination

• conformity-resistance

• resistance-incorporation

• all of the above can apply at the same time

Terminology

• “Reactionary”

• “Progressive”

• “Radical”

Exnomination

• only the lower-level discourses are named

• “capitalism,” “patriarchy” named only after critical approach

Tautology

• x is x “just because” it’s x

• “… the indignant `representation’ of the rights of reality over and above language. (…) because that’s how it is.”

– Roland Barthes

Lecture Summary

• Polysemy and resistance

• Incorporation

• Realism, radicalism, progress

• The relationship between hegemony and incorporation

Colin MacCabe:

• realism always leaves viewers in a reactionary frame of mind

• realist form makes viewers make viewers use the dominant ideology to make sense of a radical movement

• diffuses radicalism

Resistance (seen within the conformity-resistance

paradigm)• the text is NOT able to impose its

“meaning” on the readers

• polysemy

• hegemony’s “victories are never final”

• hegemony = a constant struggle

Semiotic Resistance• In “conformist” groups

– resistance = producing own meanings of commercial texts

• In subcultures

– (Historically) bohemian and avant-guarde cultures; (recently) e.g. oppositional youth cultures

– resistance MAY also mean creating own texts

Incorporation: examples

• Incorporating the “New Woman” into patriarchy

• Incorporating youth subcultures

• Incorporating ecology

• Incorporating minorities

• Incorporating “the people”

Incorporation (politics)

• defuses threat by accommodating it

• robs “the radical of its voice and thus of its means of expressing opposition” (Fiske, 38)

• does this by placing the oppositional low in the hierarchy of discourses

Television and social change

• MacCabe, Kaplan:

– realistic texts are always reactionary

– only non-realistic texts can cause or promote change

• Fiske:

– disagrees on both counts

Radical text (Kaplan):

– Refuses the language of the dominant (realism)

– draws attention to production techniques

– eliminates dominant specularity

– etc.

Is TV all that realistic?

• an interruptible medium:commercials

• consider viewing habits:channel hopping

• TV viewers are more aware of the constructedness of the medium than film viewers

Post-modern Television

• “objective” camera - recognized

• viewer positioned behind the camera or in the studio

• but is the program any more radical?

The “language of the oppressed” (Barthes)

• one language; of emancipation

• aims at transforming, not eternalizing

• [this is not the actual language of the subordinate - but the ideal one]

Fiske:

• industry conventions are agents of popularity and understandability

• oppositional readings find a space along the dominant ones

• change happens through the struggle between dominant and oppositional readings

Hegemony and Incorporation

• The subordinate assimilate dominant discourses (hegemony)

• The dominant assimilate subordinate discourses (incorporation)

Consumer incorporating commercial imagery:

A personal ad on the yahoo.com personals web site.

The “language” of this personal ad photograph is taken from advertising. It may also be inspired by tabloid shots of royal princesses in private.

Possible interpretation:

In this image, Calvin Klein displays “sexiness” that we can buy, and at the same time incorporates the consumer's doubts and fears about such “sexiness” and its display.

• Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion -- and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assumes its opinion, which then becomes that of the majority, i.e., becomes nonsense...while Truth again reverts to a new minority. - Søren Kierkegaard