Literary and cultural studies 3.

Pop culture can be defined as commercial objects that are produced for mass
consumption by non-discriminating consumers. In this definition, popular culture is
1) Popular culture
a tool used by the elites to suppress or take advantage of the masses.
Popular culture (or "pop culture") refers in general to the traditions and material culture 4. Popular culture is folk culture, something that arises from the people rather than
of a particular society. In the modern West, pop culture refers to cultural products such as imposed upon them: pop culture is authentic (created by the people) as opposed to
music, art, literature, fashion, dance, film, cyberculture, television, and radio that are commercial (thrust upon them by commercial enterprises).
consumed by the majority of a society's population. Popular culture is those types of media 5. Pop culture is negotiated: partly imposed on by the dominant classes, and partly
that have mass accessibility and appeal. resisted or changed by the subordinate classes. Dominants can create culture but the
subordinates decide what they keep or discard.
The term "popular culture" was coined in the mid-19th century, and it referred to the cultural
6. The last definition of pop culture discussed by Storey is that in the postmodern world,
traditions of the people, in contrast to the "official culture" of the state or governing classes.
in today's world, the distinction between "authentic" versus "commercial" is blurred.
In broad use today, it is defined in qualitative terms—pop culture is often considered a more
In pop culture today, users are free to embrace some manufactured content, alter it
superficial or lesser type of artistic expression.
for their own use, or reject it entirely and create their own.
The Rise of Popular Culture
Popular Culture: You Make the Meaning
Scholars trace the origins of the rise of popular culture to the creation of the middle class
All six of Storey's definitions are still in use, but they seem to change depending on the
generated by the Industrial Revolution. People who were configured into working classes
context. Since the turn of the 21st century, mass media—the way pop culture is delivered—
and moved into urban environments far from their traditional farming life began creating
has changed so dramatically that scholars are finding it difficult to establish how they
their own culture to share with their co-workers, as a part of separating from their parents
function. As recently as 2000, "mass media" meant only print (newspapers and books),
and bosses.
broadcast (televisions and radio), and cinema (movies and documentaries). Today, it
After the end of World War II, innovations in mass media led to significant cultural and social embraces an enormous variety of social media and forms.
changes in the west. At the same time, capitalism, specifically the need to generate profits,
To a large degree, popular culture is today something established by niche users. What is
took on the role of marketing: newly invented goods were being marketed to different
"mass communication" moving forward? Commercial products such as music are considered
classes. The meaning of popular culture then began to merge with that of mass culture,
popular even when the audience is tiny, in comparison to such pop icons as Britney Spears
consumer culture, image culture, media culture, and culture created by manufacturers for
and Michael Jackson. The presence of social media means consumers can speak directly to
mass consumption.
producers—and are producers themselves, turning the concept of pop culture on its head.
Different Definitions of Popular Culture
So, in a sense, popular culture has gone back to its simplest meaning: It is what a lot of people
In his wildly successful textbook "Cultural Theory and Popular Culture" (now in its 8th like.
edition), British media specialist John Storey offers six different definitions of popular
2) Power
culture.
Chief Theorist: Michel Foucault (1926-1984), was a famous French historian,
1. Popular culture is simply culture that is widely favored or well-liked by many people: philosopher and critic, associated with the structuralist and post-structuralist movements.
it has no negative connotations. He strongly influenced a wide range of humanistic and social scientific disciplines as well as
2. Popular culture is whatever is left after you've identified what "high culture" is: in this philosophy.
definition, pop culture is considered inferior, and it functions as a marker of status
and class.
Definition of Power: Power is the ability of its holder to make other individuals obedient on
whatever basis in some social relationship. In Foucault's theories power is not only seen as
brute physical force or faced in one single direction, but working net-like creating
counterforces.
Definition of Knowledge: Knowledge is a person's or a society's familiarity and conciousness
of a topic or an idea mainly created through any type of discourse.
Definition of Power/Knowledge: There exists an omnipresent interplay between Power and
Knowledge. In Foucault's theories power is granted through knowledge and therefore
constructs truth. To understand this, it is helpful to think of knowledge being changeable in
time. New types of discourse are creating new forms of knowledge. Mostly the part of society,
that got the power (through knowledge) leads discourse into the preferred direction (regime
of truth), but as power works net-like, different individuals create different discourses
through their power and knowledge. Though many theorists like Marx or Gramsci with his
idea and definition of hegemony state that power is controlled by the upper class, Foucault
disagrees with the idea of classes in terms of power.
3) Civil society
Civil society refers to the space for collective action around shared interests, purposes
and values, generally distinct from government and commercial for-profit actors. Civil
society includes charities, development NGOs, community groups, women's
organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, social
movements, coalitions and advocacy groups. However civil society is not homogeneous
and the boundaries between civil society and government or civil society and commercial
actors can be blurred. There is certainly no one 'civil society' view, and civil society actors
need to contend with similar issues of representativeness and legitimacy as those of other
representatives and advocates.
Despite its complexity and heterogeneity, the inclusion of civil society voices is essential
to give expression to the marginalised and those who often are not heard. Civil society
actors can enhance the participation of communities in the provision of services and in
policy decision-making. Recognizing this, the Commission on Social Determinants of
Health (CSDH) was set up with a separate civil society stream of work on social
determinants of health, which contributed case studies and a separate report in addition
to conducting workshops and contributing to meetings and the final report. The CSDH
report identifies the need to tackle the inequitable distribution of power as essential to
reducing health inequities. The continued involvement of civil society and the
participation of communities in work on social determinants of health will thus be
fundamental to the chances of success in closing the gap in a generation.
4) Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative research method that comes from the discipline of
anthropology but is applicable to other disciplines. Ethnography is the in-depth study of a
culture or a facet of a culture. Because of this, ethnographic research often looks very
different compared with other research designs.
There are a couple of aspects of ethnography that differentiate it from research approaches
like phenomenology and case studies. The first is that ethnography takes long periods of
time. Traditionally, ethnographers spent a minimum of one year living amongst members of
the culture they are studying. This extended period of data collection allowed local people a
chance to know and get used to the ethnographer, and this also allowed the ethnographer to
build rapport with local people. Today, ethnographers still spend as much time as possible
collecting data, though not necessarily an entire year or more like in the past.
A second difference is that ethnography relies on participant observation as its key data
collection method. This is when the ethnographer becomes completely immersed in another
culture and way of life. An ethnographer not only observes the phenomenon under study,
but also becomes a participant in daily life. The goal is to understand a practice or set of
practices within a culture; that is, why a practice might make sense in the context of the day-
to-day life of a group. For example, an ethnographer studying the religious practices of a
culture would not only attend religious services but also participate in them, because this
would allow them to truly understand these practices from an insider’s point of view.
Finally, a third difference is that this extended period of participant observation in the field
(the time spent living in another culture) is often used in conjunction with other data
collection methods, like interviews, focus groups, or surveys. However, much ethnographic
data comes from the ethnographer’s field notes. Field notes are written daily logs, almost
like journals, that describe daily life and events that the ethnographer witnessed and took
part in. Field notes are detailed and descriptive enough so that another person could read
them and feel like they were there with the ethnographer.
5) Subjectivity
It is not uncommon to hear the declaration, “That's highly subjective” in some kind of
academic discussion. Typically, what the person is implying by making such a declaration
is that a statement made by someone else is an issue that is highly interpretive and perhaps
one in which there are a number of different stances one might take. One might further
assert that the person making the declaration is using academic discourse to say something
along the lines of, “That's merely your opinion”.
It is thanks to Descartes that humans are all considered subjects. His now famous “cogito
ergo sum” or “I think, therefore I am” lead to the common understanding that humans may
be recognized as sapient beings that are conscious of their existence and
selfhood. Subjectivity brings with it the notion of the individual as a sapient, sentient being,
conscious of his/her self as an individual and able to act as a free agent. In this sense,
subjectivity is taken to mean of or relating to a subject and evokes the notions of
interpretation, perspective, point of view, ideology, and world view.
Subjectivity is broadly used and has become a word with many subtle shades of
meaning. The most value neutral definition would be that it is the thoughts, feelings, beliefs,
and desires that comprise a person's self identity.
However, in a traditional scientific discourse, subjectivity is often presented as a polar
opposite to objectivity. In this sense, objectivity is often seen as an absence of bias, thus
implicitly implying that subjectivity is equated with bias.
At this point, it must be noted that the way in which one views subjectivity in research is
highly dependent upon one's epistemological and ontological assumptions. In the
traditional research paradigm that emerged from the natural sciences, objectivity is seen as
an essential element in doing academic research and forwarding the general understanding
of a field and as such, subjectivity is something which must be limited to the greatest degree
possible in order to be able to assert a degree of generalizability in regard to the findings. If
humans happen to be a part of an experimental research method, they are typically treated
as objects to be observed as opposed to thinking, feeling beings to be socially situated and
unraveled.
The social sciences are quite distinct in that inquiries typically focus on human subjects
rather than the objects, symbols, or abstractions typically investigated in the natural
sciences. The subjective plays an important role in the social sciences as it is often ultimately
what the researcher seeks to uncover and understand—how the social world is experienced,
understood, and produced.
With interpretation of the subjective experience as one of the main goals in much social
science research, it must be noted that this adds more layers to the relationship of
subjectivity to qualitative research. No longer is there only the researcher's subjective
experience to be taken into consideration, there is now also that of the participants.
As there is no empirical way to get at what is going on inside someone's head, or in the heads
of a group of individuals, many of the data collection methods used in qualitative research
are necessarily interpretive and mediated by language and culture. Mediation might also be
seen as layered and complex in this type of research as the subject must interpret their
experience and then the researcher must then interpret that interpretation.
The matter is further complicated by questions of researcher perspective—either as an
outsider looking in, or from the inside as a member of the society or culture. Once again,
this perspective is highly dependent on one's epistemological outlook, for depending on how
one looks at the act of knowing, one may not allow that seeing something from someone
else's subjective perspective is possible.
While qualitative research seeks to understand the subjective experience, it must
nonetheless be concerned with interpretive openness through a process by which the
researcher attempts to acknowledge his or her preformed prejudices, biases, and
stereotypes and in so doing reveal the lens through which he or she builds an interpretation
of the subject. Ultimately one is left pondering to what degree one can be transparent about
one's subjectivity.
A highly positivistic, quantitative influence in qualitative data interpretation seems to be the
use of something that might be thought of as establishing reliability through a form of
consensus. In this case, a researcher might seek a variety of independent opinions on the
interpretation of various pieces of textual data. The hope being that if four researchers look
at something and agree 95 percent of the time, then the interpretation is reasonably
objective—but in so doing it loses its subjectivity and perhaps its value as a piece of
qualitative research.
In qualitative research, subjectivity is both a tremendous strength and a potential
weakness. The research methods we have to work with at present are such that we must
accept the weakness and try to overcome it to whatever degree we can in order to reap the
enormous benefits of context and subjective understanding that afforded by this style of
research.
6) Meritocracy
Meritocracy is a social system in which success and status in life depend primarily on
individual talents, abilities, and effort. It is a social system in which people advance on the
basis of their merits.
A meritocratic system contrasts with aristocracy, for which people advance on the basis of
the status and titles of family and other relations.
From the days of Aristotle, who coined the term "ethos," the idea of awarding positions of
power to those most capable have been a part of political discussion not only for
governments but for business endeavors as well.
Many Western societies--the United States chief among them--are commonly considered to
be meritocracies, meaning these societies are built on the belief that anyone can make it with
hard work and dedication. Social scientists often refer to this as the "bootstrap ideology,"
evoking the popular notion of "pulling" oneself "up by the bootstraps."
However, many challenge the validity of the position that Western societies are
meritocracies, perhaps rightfully so. Widespread evidence exists, to varying degrees, within
each of these societies of structural inequalities and systems of oppression designed and
developed specifically to limit opportunities based on class, gender, race, ethnicity, ability,
sexuality, and other social markers.
7) Television
In the 1950s, most television entertainment programs ignored current events and political issues.
Instead, the three major networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) developed prime-time shows that
would appeal to a general family audience. Chief among these types of shows was the domestic
comedy—a generic family comedy that was identified by its character-based humor and usually
set within the home. Seminal examples included popular 1950s shows such as Leave It to
Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Presenting a
standardized version of the White middle-class suburban family, domestic comedies portrayed
the conservative values of an idealized American life. Studiously avoiding prevalent social issues
such as racial discrimination and civil rights, the shows focused on mostly White middle-class
families with traditional nuclear roles (mother in the home, father in the office) and implied that
most domestic problems could be solved within a 30-minute time slot, always ending with a
strong moral lesson.
Although these shows depicted an idealized version of American family life, many families in
the 1950s were traditional nuclear families. Following the widespread poverty, political
uncertainty, and physical separation of the war years, many Americans wanted to settle down,
have children, and enjoy the peace and security that family life appeared to offer. During the
booming postwar era, a period of optimism and prosperity, the traditional nuclear family
flourished. However, the families and lifestyles presented in domestic comedies did not
encompass the overall American experience by any stretch of the imagination. As historian
Stephanie Coontz points out, “the June Cleaver or Donna Stone homemaker role was not
available to the more than 40 percent of black women with small children who worked outside
the home (Coontz, 1992).” Although nearly 60 percent of the U.S. population was labeled middle
class by the mid-1950s, 25 percent of all families and more than 50 percent of two-parent Black
families were poor. Migrant workers suffered horrific deprivations, and racial tensions were rife.
None of this was reflected in the world of domestic comedies, where even the Hispanic gardener
in Father Knows Best was named Frank Smith (Coontz, 1992).
Not all programs in the 1950s were afraid to tackle controversial social or political issues. In
March 1954, journalist Edward R. Murrow broadcast an unflattering portrait of U.S. Senator
Joseph McCarthy on his show See It Now. McCarthy, a member of the Senate Investigation
Committee, had launched inquiries regarding potential Communist infiltration in U.S.
institutions. Murrow thought that McCarthy’s aggressive tactics were a potential threat to civil
liberties. His portrait cast the senator from Wisconsin in an unflattering light by pointing out
contradictions in his speeches. This led to such an uproar that McCarthy was formally
reprimanded by the U.S. Senate (Friedman, 2008).
Entertainment programs also tackled controversial issues. The long-running television
western Gunsmoke, which aired on CBS from 1955 to 1975, flourished in a Cold War society,
where U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon (James Arness) stood up to lawlessness in defense of
civilization. The characters and community in Gunsmoke faced relevant social issues, including
the treatment of minority groups, the meaning of family, the legitimacy of violence, and the
strength of religious belief. During the 1960s, the show adapted to the desires of its viewing
audience, becoming increasingly aware of and sympathetic to ethnic minorities, in tune with the
national mood during the civil rights era. This adaptability helped the show to become the
longest-running western in TV history.
1) Five ways Harry Potter changed children's literature
Rachel Rushworth-Hollander was charmed by Harry Potter when she started the book
series in middle school, and the adventures of the young wizard never lost their magic as she
became an adult.
Guests at her Harry Potter-themed bridal shower were divided into teams for party games
by sorting hat.
She and Chris Hollander visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter during their Orlando,
Florida, honeymoon.
And three years ago, she named her firstborn Rowling after J.K.Rowling, author of the Harry
Potter series.
Now a high school English and AP literature teacher at Maryville High School in Maryville,
Tennessee, she keeps a Harry Potter corner in her classroom.
"It's behind my desk with posters and a couple of paperback copies. I have a Hogwarts
banner hanging up, a Platform 9 3/4 (the Hogwarts Express train platform)," she describes
along with collectibles students have brought in knowing she is a Potterhead.
"It's a weird fandom thing, but I just appreciate [the book series] for what it did for me
growing up as a reader and getting kids into the magical world of reading," she says.
Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Harry Potter book in the
United States.
The first book of the series was released in England in June 1997 under the title "Harry Potter
and the Philosopher's Stone." On Sept. 1, 1998, Scholastic published the first book in the U.S.,
renamed "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
The seven-volume series has sold more than 500 million books worldwide in 80 languages
since — that's roughly one in every 15 people who own a copy of a Harry Potter book.
Yes, 20 years in, and the wizard still holds the American public under his spell.
"The novelty of Harry Potter books has not worn off at all; kids are still reading them," says
Lee Hope, head of children's services for the Chattanooga Public Library.
"We're still replacing much-loved copies with new ones. We try to keep at least eight to 10
copies of each title. I've seen third-graders reading them, and I've seen parents coming in to
check them out and read to their kids. A lot of high school and even college kids will check
them out to re-read," Hope says.
Rushworth-Hollander, a 2004 graduate of Red Bank High School, says she can't claim to have
been an avid reader before she met Harry.
"During summer, Mom and Dad had me pick two books that I had to read. I didn't read the
first Harry Potter book when it came out. I read it about a year or so later. By the time I was
done with the first one, the second had come out. I had to wait on the rest," she says adding
she finished the seven books when she was in college.
Their appeal was "a great story. I loved the characters. I loved that it was in England — that
sort of felt fantastic. By the time I got to the third book, I was so connected to the characters
and engrossed in that world that I wanted to know what happened."
The Maryville teacher is a good example of the influence of the Potter series had increasing
young readers that Hope says she witnessed.
"Harry Potter helped kick off the boom in young-adult reading. The series brought in kids
who were not interested in reading that much, but heard wonderful things about Harry
Potter and came in for that," says the librarian.
THE HARRY POTTER EFFECT
The power of the Potter series did more than increase the number of young readers. It so
drastically changed preconceived notions about the children's publishing industry that it
became known as "the Harry Potter effect."
Following are five ways that Harry Potter changed the young-adult genre.
1. Fattened the size of YA books. Harry Potter was the first series that surpassed 300 pages,
and later 800 pages, yet young readers weren't deterred by their size. The Booklist Reader
found that in 2006, the average middle-grade book was 174.5 pages long, and that average
has risen to 290 pages.
Research by the National Endowment for the Arts found that because of the popularity of the
Potter series, there was a 37 percent increase in page lengths between 1996 and 2006.
2. Merged literary culture with pop culture. Midnight Potter book parties on release dates
and mass-produced paraphernalia were primarily the realm of comic-book characters
before the series.
But Harry Potter's rise in popularity coincided with the increased use of the internet, where
fans could find other Potterheads just a chat room away. As fans of all ages became more
active online, discussions of YA fiction to science fiction became commonplace.
3. The series increased empathy in children. Because Harry Potter maintained a staunch
loyalty and friendship to stigmatized groups in the books — for example, Mudbloods, those
half-Muggle, half-wizard students scorned by Lord Voldemort — he set an example of
kindness.
A 2014 study by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology discovered that reading Harry
Potter books helped improve attitudes toward "out-groups," a group with whom one didn't
identify.
4. Kicked off the boom in young adult reading. By 2004, in the midst of the Harry Potter
phenomenon, sales of children's lit were increasing by 2 percent each year, according to Vox
Media. Since then, the children's market has seen a sales increase of 52 percent, while the
overall book market has only increased by 33 percent since 2004.
5. Opened the door to more YA series. "The release of Harry Potter really opened a lot of
publishers' eyes to the fact there is a huge market for well-crafted young-adult literature,"
says Kelly Flemings of Barnes & Noble in Hamilton Place.
Flemings says the YA genre has seen a trend in longer series thanks to Harry Potter.
"Before Harry Potter, you might get kids to make it through three books of a trilogy. Now
they are hungry for a series," he says.
For example, he points to Lisa McMann's "The Unwanteds" series.
"There were seven books in the first series, and now she is on Book 3 in the second set of
seven. Sarah Maas's 'Throne of Glass' series is going to be seven books as well. Cassandra
Clare has 'The Mortal Instruments' series. There are three sets of five books in that
collection."
2) Tamanna and Bombay
The year is 1975, the place is Mahim, Bombay. This is the story of Tikku (Paresh Rawal),
a transgender and the only child of yesteryear Bollywood actress Nazneen Begum. Begum
has fallen upon hard times, is virtually destitute, and is dependent on Tikku, who does make-
up/hair-dressing of Bollywood actresses. When she passes away, Tikku is beside himself
with grief. After the funeral, he witnesses a woman leaving a child in a garbage bin. Tikku
picks up the girl, longing for human company, decides to keep her, names her Tamanna, and
brings her up on his own with the help of a close friend, Saleem (Manoj Bajpayee).
When she is old enough, he arranges for her education in St. Mary's High School's hostel.
When she completes school, she returns home to find Tikku in the guise of a hijra and shuns
him, but subsequently relents. Then Tikku finds out that Tamanna (Pooja Bhatt) is the
daughter of Ranvir Chopra, an up-and-coming politician. He tells her, and she goes to their
palatial house. Watch what impact this has on the Chopra family and the excuse they have
for abandoning Tamanna.
Bombay Shekhar is the son of an orthodox Hindu Narayana Pillai living in a coastal village
in Tamil Nadu. A journalism student studying in Bombay, Shekhar visits home to be with his
family. On one of his return trips, he notices Shaila Banu, a Muslim schoolgirl in the village
and falls in love with her. Initially shy, Shaila seeks to distance herself from Shekhar, but after
frequent run-ins, and days of pursuit, Shaila begins to like Shekhar. Eventually, they both fall
in love.
Shekhar meets Shaila's father Basheer and reveals he wants to marry her. Basheer throws
him out, citing difference in religions. Shekhar reveals his interest to his father Pillai, who
becomes angry, meets Basheer and gets into an abusive argument with him. Upset with
rejection from both families, Shekhar leaves the village and returns to Bombay. Through
Shaila's friend, he sends her a letter and a ticket for her to travel to Bombay. However, she is
undecided; Basheer comes to know of her regular letters from Shekhar and plans to get her
married immediately to stop this relation growing further. Left with no choice, Shaila leaves
the village with the ticket sent by Shekhar and reaches Bombay.
Shekhar and Shaila marry and lead a happy life. Shaila conceives and delivers twins who are
named Kabir Narayan and Kamal Basheer. The twins are raised in both religions. Shekhar
continues to work as a journalist, while Shaila takes care of home and children. After six
years, Shekhar and Shaila settle down in their life and begin the process of re-establishing a
relationship with their respective families.
When the Babri Masjid is demolished by Hindu extremists on 6 December 1992, riots break
out in Bombay. Kabir and Kamal, who had gone to buy groceries, get caught in the riots;
eventually, Shekhar and Shaila save them and reach home safely. Narayana Pillai, who
receives the news of the riots, rushes to Bombay to meet his son and his family. Everyone is
happy with his arrival, and he stays with them. Soon, Basheer also comes with his wife and
all of them live together happily for a few days. Both Pillai and Basheer are happy with their
grandchildren and wish to be with them.
On 8 January 1993, when two murders are propagated as communal killings, another riot
breaks out in Bombay, raising tensions between religious communities. Hindus and Muslims
clash in the streets, resulting in hundreds of deaths on both sides. During the conflict,
arsonists set fire to the apartment where Shekhar lives with his family. Shekhar tries to
evacuate everyone, but Narayana Pillai, Basheer and his wife fail to escape in time and are
killed when the building explodes. In the confusion of the panicking crowds, Kamal and Kabir
are separated from their parents.
Kamal is saved by a transgender woman who cares for him and protects him, while Kabir
searches aimlessly for his brother. Shekhar and Shaila begin to search for them and they go
through several tense moments, as they check the morgues and hospitals for their kids.
Shekhar grows emotional and participates in the movement to stop the riots with other
moderate religious leaders, ultimately succeeding. When the riots end, Shaila and Shekhar
are reunited with their children tearfully as the people on the streets join hands, regardless
of age or religion.
3) Ghost Stories
As the nights draw in, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as scaring yourself witless with a
good old-fashioned ghost story. Nobody appreciated this better than MR James, who wrote
spine-tinglers like Casting the Runes and Whistle and I’ll Come to You specifically to be read
aloud in the run-up to Christmas.
But James’ classic tales also helped solidify another aspect of the form: its essential maleness.
James, a bachelor don, was provost of King’s College, Cambridge, where he stridently
opposed the admission of female students. He eventually left for Eton, his first all-male alma
mater. It’s hardly surprising that women feature so infrequently in his stories.
When we think of supernatural yarns we think also of HP Lovecraft, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu,
Oliver Onions and others, all of them male. In recent months, a series of books by female
authors have been published to challenge this. Gillian Flynn’s novella, The Grownups, tells
the story of a sham psychic, a troubled child, and a house that seems to be home to a
malevolent spirit. Reading it is like having an icicle dropped down your back. Lorna Gibb’s
debut novel A Ghost’s Story fictionalises the life of a Victorian séance staple, Katie King, and
Catriona Ward’s Rawblood tells a gothic tale of a cursed family.
Women were contributing around 70% of ghost stories to magazines in the 19th
Century
In The Taxidermist’s Daughter, meanwhile, Kate Mosse blends a ghost story with a historical
mystery. Louise Welch and Audrey Niffenegger, both of whom have written their own
spectral fiction, have now edited anthologies – the brilliant Ghost: 100 Stories to Read with
the Lights On and Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories – that are strong on female authors.
And having long ago staked her claim to the genre with The Woman in Black, Susan Hill’s
collected ghost stories are now available, proving her to be the grande dame of ghouls.
The turn of the shrew
What’s interesting is that this is really nothing new. According to some scholarly estimates,
in the 19th Century, at the height of the form’s popularity, women were contributing around
70% of ghost stories published in British and American magazines. The names of these
authors – Amelia Edwards, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charlotte Riddell, Mary Louisa
Molesworth – have largely faded into obscurity while others (think Edith Wharton and E
Nesbit) are remembered for other works.
In stories by James and co, male protagonists commonly find their intellectual and scientific
ideas challenged by supernatural phenomena. In stories by women, when something goes
bump in the night, it’s often the sound of the author butting her head against society’s rigid
definitions of her role.
It was in the 1970s that critics first began to appreciate how gender affected ghost stories,
excavating subversive subtexts in stories that women wrote. One such classic is Charlotte
Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), whose nameless narrator, suffering from
post-natal depression, is confined to bed rest under the care of her doctor husband and
begins to lose her mind.
Gilman herself was diagnosed with neurasthenia (nerve weakness) in her twenties, and
treated by Dr S Weir Mitchell, whose rest cure consisted of banishing the patient to bed for
months at a time, allowing her only mild foods, and denying all mental, physical, and social
activity. Creative pursuits such as writing, painting – even reading – were strictly prohibited.
As Gilman declared, the “cure” itself nearly drove her insane.
Stories by women emphasise the psychological aspects of a character’s torment
In the story, our heroine is confined to an old nursery with ghastly wallpaper in whose
pattern she’s soon seeing strangled heads and unblinking “bulbous eyes”. Eventually, a
skulking female figure appears, seemingly trapped behind the bars of its design. Is it the
narrator’s own hidden self? When her husband enters to find her tearing down the
wallpaper, she tells him “I’ve got out at last. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can’t
put me back!”
Appreciated at the time for its horror, it was reappraised almost a century later as a
condemnation of Victorian patriarchy. The doctor faints upon finding his wife stripping the
walls, leaving her to “creep” over his inert body to freedom.
Again and again, stories by women can be found emphasising the psychological aspects of a
character’s torment. In Kerfol, a story by Edith Wharton, a woman is falsely accused of
murdering her older husband. But what really killed him – could that reality be still worse?
In the wake of the trial, she goes mad.
Restless spirits
Along with their fears and anxieties, women use ghost stories to exorcise their resentments
over societal restrictions. The ghost is the ultimate outsider – an absent presence, all-seeing
and yet unable to partake of life in any meaningful way. As Welch notes, a significant number
of the Victorian and Edwardian women authors featured in her anthology were active
supporters of the women’s suffrage movement, and it’s not hard to see why the idea of a
ghost would have resonated.
The ghost is the ultimate outsider – unable to partake of life in any meaningful way
Of course, some women occupied more marginal roles than others. In the 19th Century,
governesses and ladies’ maids – employees who were neither of the serving class nor the
served – were especially vulnerable and lonesome. Elizabeth Taylor’s Poor Girl (1958)
depicts the lot of one such woman, Florence, who’s haunted by an apparition from the future,
a flapper who embodies all her pent-up desire for passion. Whereas Florence is unassuming,
dowdy, the ghost is fragrant, dressed in “a tunic which scarcely covered the knees, a hat like
a helmet drawn over eyes intensely green and matching the long necklace of glass beads
which swung on her flat bosom”.
Spinsters are another group whose discontent is given voice by spooky goings-on. Forced to
reply on the goodwill of male relatives, they were expected to embrace self-sacrifice and
good works. Little wonder they were so prone to feeling haunted by lives that might have
been. The Dissatisfied Soul of Annie Trumbull Slosson’s 1908 story is Maria Bliven, a spinster
described by her sister-in-law as being “the fittiest, restlessest, changeablest” person
imaginable, always leaving before she can be thought to have outstayed her welcome. Little
wonder that she can’t settle in the afterlife either. And yet by continually effacing herself,
hadn’t she become a ghost even while alive?
Unleashed anger
Whatever women repress, ghost stories suggest, will eventually come back to haunt if not
them, then those who colluded in keeping them downtrodden. Published the same year as
Slosson’s story, Mary Austin’s The Readjustment conjures up the character of Emma Jossylin,
a woman whose life’s achievements amount to a “little low house”, a “common” husband and
a son who is crippled. She manages all this with a “hard, bright, surface competency” and yet,
Austin observes, “Emma had always wanted things different, wanted them with a fury of
intentness that implied offensiveness in things as they were”. Three days after Emma dies,
she’s back.
These ghost women are often deeply sympathetic characters. What makes them terrifying is
that death has enabled them to break free of social mores and fully unleash the anger that
their living sisters must swallow. The ghosts become proto-feminist figures who – in death
at least – cast off the traditional roles that society foists upon them, those of obedient wife,
doting mother, dutiful daughter.
Some decades later, with feminist gains threatened by the rise of the 1950s domestic
goddess, Shirley Jackson could be found mischievously railing against convention: “I am tired
of writing dainty little biographical things that pretend that I am a trim little housewife in a
Mother Hubbard stirring up appetising messes over a wood stove. I live in a dank old place
with a ghost that stomps around in the attic room we’ve never gone into (I think it’s walled
up), and the first thing I did when we moved in was to make charms in black crayon on all
the door sills and window ledges to keep out demons, and was successful in the main”. (The
words come from a newly published collection of literary odds and ends, Let Me Tell You,
but her 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, has been cited by Stephen King as one of the
greatest horror novels of all time.)
In writing ghost stories, the authors were exorcising thoughts and concerns deemed
unspeakable at the time. It’s these women writers themselves who are the real restless
spirits. When Wharton confessed that ghost stories made her so uneasy, she’d actually burnt
books containing them, it was presumably with tongue firmly in cheek, yet there is often a
thrillingly dangerous frisson to the ghost stories that she and her sister writers penned. As
Gillian Beer so quotably notes, the form depicts “the insurrection not the resurrection” of the
dead, and nowhere is this truer than in works by women. Given their lineage, you might want
to double check that you’ve locked the back door before settling down with one of this
season’s phantom-filled yarns by the likes of Gillian Flynn or Susan Hill.
1) Culture as a whole way of life
Raymond Williams’ assertion that culture is ‘a whole way of life’ formed the basis of his
1958 work Culture and Society. This was a book that was received by his peers as polemical
and as a manifesto for the New Left. It was very much a product of the time, written in
response to a burgeoning conservative reactionary stance against the extension of education
to all children.[1] His primary motivation for writing Culture and Society was consequently
refuting ‘the increasing contemporary use of the concept of culture against democracy,
socialism, the working class or popular education.’[2] In other words the current
interpretation of culture was being used as a means of perpetuating and shoring up social
inequality. This opinion, as it will be made clear, is evident in Williams’ attempt to
democratise the meaning of culture and the political climate in which he was writing is an
important contextual consideration. In the following analysis first the phrase ‘a whole way
of life’ will be deconstructed and its meaning explained. Proceeding this the merits and
limitations of his perspective will be discussed.
Williams’ understands ‘culture’ as being made of two separate components; the first denotes
a whole way of life, the second refers to the arts and learning. The former component
represents the known meanings and directions which its members recognise and respond
to, the latter represents new observations and meanings which are put forward and
tested.[3] These components are reflected in every human society and render culture
ordinary.
This interpretation challenges the widely held notion that culture means the high arts –
theatre, literature, painting – that it is exclusive and access to it is restricted, predominantly
through education, and is diametrically opposed to business, urban growth and
individualism.[4] For Williams the idea that possession of culture rested on the narrow
assumption outlined above was absurd. This definition placed culture firmly within the
realm of the bourgeois and out of the reach of the working classes. Instead, whilst
recognising the contribution the bourgeoisie have made to English culture, Williams argues
that the working classes have their own institutions, common meanings, arts and learning
and therefore participate in culture.[5] Consuming and engaging with culture arises through
the very prosaic prerequisite of living; it is the ‘product of a man’s whole committed personal
and social experience.’[6]
In The Long Revolution (1961) which followed on from Culture and Society Williams’ view on
culture became distinctly relational in the sense that he champions the breaking down of a
cultural hierarchy which separates literature and art from the everyday. [7] This position is
the logical outcome of an argument which sees all facets of life feeding into the conventions
and institutions which inform the meanings that are shared by the community. Throughout
Williams’ career he was interested in the processes of cultural development and he devised
a theory of cultural materialism.[8] The concept of culture as ‘a whole way of life’ should be
seen as the first step taken by Williams in the construction of this dialectical understanding
of culture.
The overriding merit of Williams’ conceptualisation of culture is its inclusivity. The
recognition of the cultural worth of all human activity is socially equalising. Its destruction
of the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture shuns the conservative view that mass
participation in culture somehow devalues it and instead opens the way for its
democratisation. This is decidedly progressive and his particular commitment to the
democratisation of education has been inaugurated and accepted.
On the other hand one of the most poignant criticisms levied at Williams’ ‘a whole way of life’
premise is that it is politically charged and that as a Marxist he has a vested interested in
attributing, say, the formation of a trade union with the same cultural value as Dickens’ Bleak
House or Millais’ Orphelia. He has been criticised for assuming that all people are capable of
achieving an intellectual engagement with the world around them that has the capacity to
inform cultural progression. [9] Whilst this critique is somewhat condescending of the
working classes’ cognitive prowess, it should be remembered that when Williams’ work was
first published, growing tension between the West and the Soviet Union increased hostility
towards opinions that displayed socialist optimism.
Williams’ view, as illustrated by the history of culture put forward in Culture and Society, is
rooted in the analysis of past cultural change. He uses these observations to build a theory
of progress, not only within this text, but also in his eventual propagation of cultural
materialism. As with the historical materialism of Marx, such a view gives systems of
production a central waiting and is consequently dialectical, idealist and more often than not
proven wrong by actual events.
To conclude, the concept that culture is ‘a whole way of life’ challenged the
compartmentalisation of culture into ‘high’ and ‘low’ and instead sought to create an
understanding of the word which embraced the full range of human activity. Throughout his
work Williams displayed a clear agenda. He sought, in San Juan words, ‘the democratisation
of culture through mass participation in political decisions and the broadest access to
education and the resources of communication.’[10] At the most basic level of this call for
what was barely short of a revolution was the premise that culture was ‘a whole way of life.’
This left a bad taste in the mouths of many of Williams’ conservative and centrist
contemporaries. Notwithstanding the hard to deny political overtones of his work Williams’
groundbreaking cultural critiques have merit enough to cement his position as the father of
Cultural Studies.
2) Art in the age of mechanical reproduction analysis
Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” begins by
calling into question the notion of art, linking the construction of its meaning and value with
that of the historical conditions of its production, distribution, and reception.
Benjamin cites the rise of mechanical reproducibility as a transformative force in establishing
the meaning of art in his particular epoch, and discusses the political stakes of such a shift.
For Benjamin, The aura is the temporal location or embeddedness of a thing in a specific time
and space. “The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the
fabric of tradition.”
A work of art is given authority, conferred authenticity and deemed original through the
historical contextualization provided for it within the space of sacred houses of such
knowledge, such as museums. The aura is a property of distance from the observer which
necessitated its being actively pursued via contemplation, yet precludes its ever being fully
understood. Thus, the sublime aura gains authority by virtue of the transcendental realm it
claims to represent.
For Benjamin, the mystifying aura is freighted with religious connotations. It derives its force
from ritual and ceremony, elaborate circumscription and arcane knowledge. Prior to the
advent of methods of mass reproduction, a work of art was a unique object or performance
that could not be experienced except by audience members willing to make a pilgrimage to
the artwork’s location.
These rituals of pilgrimage and contemplation were a form of worship that acknowledged the
artwork’s cult value, and the unique communion between the artwork and the artist led to
the elevation of the latter to the status of genius. Due to its cult value, a product of its unique
existence, the art object had value in and of itself.
Benjamin argues that the work of art under mechanical reproduction shatters the aura by
way of eliminating these substantiating traditions as it is inherently defined by a plurality of
copies.
Art forms such as film and photography exist purely in the realm of reproduction, so that an
original artwork is indistinguishable from its copies and any authenticity that it claims is
arbitrary and illegitimate. Mass distributed artistic reproductions are incorporated into the
personal contexts of their observers, meeting “the beholder or listener in his own particular
situation,” instead of retaining their distance, their aura.
The value of art is now determined by an increasingly wide array of modern spectators and
taken outside of the traditional storehouse of meaning and context; the museum. Increasingly,
art is designed with reproducibility in mind, a shift that lends itself to more politicized forms
of artwork that anticipate a multiple address. Removed of their cult value, reproduced art
images are appreciable for their exhibition value only, for the way in which they seek out and
influence their audience.
Aura is both diminished and expanded to be part of a wider trend of consumer culture and a
something perceived about, rather than inherent to, an object or person.
Nativism in Culture and Literature
According to Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (2005:159) nativism is a ‘term
for desire to return to indigenous practices and cultural forms as they existed in pre-colonial
society’. Nativism as a theoretical term received its present popularity and even notoriety in the
last decade of the twentieth century. Benita Parry (1996:84) valorised the cause of nativism keeping
in mind the practical problem of reviving the indigenous culture with its pristine originality in his
famous essay “Resistance Theory/Theorising Resistance or Two Cheers for Nativism”. Rey Chow
(1996:122) in her essay “Where Have All the Natives Gone?” problematizes the concept of
nativism by asking the important question; ‘whether native is silent object or speaking subject?’1
G.N.Devy (1992) in his book After Amnesia: Tradition and Change in Indian Literary Criticism
claims that India has great literary culture of its own. But for long it has remained submerged in
the collective unconscious of the Indian psyche. According to him the cause of this repression or
‘amnesia’ is the colonisation of India, and the only way to get out of the clutches of that amnesia
is to concentrate and practice pre-colonial Indian literary tradition. However, as early as 1970’s,
the term with its present theoretical overtones was used by African cultural anthropologist Ralph
Linton in his essay “Nativistic Movements.”2 Linton, Makarand Paranjape.(1997:160) opines,
‘identified a strategic and symbolic mode of protest adopted by groups which feel inferior or
threatened by the onslaught of more powerful or dominant culture’. The concept with which Linton
used the term (at least as claimed by Paranjape) was the guiding principle for the early postcolonial
theorists like Frantz Fanon. In his book Black Skin, White Masks (1952) he accounts for the
endangered state of the cultural independence of the people under colonial rule. Fanon(1952)
recognises that many black people adopt ‘white masks’ in the sense that, to get entrance into the
coloniser’s culture those black people conform to white values and versions of their behaviour.
Ultimately this erases their own identity. Fanon urges them to recognise the damage of hiding
behind such a mask and the need to seize and shape their own identity. In The Wretched of the
Earth, published in French in 1961, he claimed that the first step for colonised people in finding
their own voice and identity is to reclaim their own past. For centuries the European colonial power
has devalued the colonised country’s own cultural past. It showed the pre-colonial era as a pre-
civilised limbo or even as a historical void. History starts, it claims, with the arrival of the
Europeans. If the first step is to reclaim one’s own past, the second step is to erode the colonialist
ideology by which the past has been devalued. In this respect it is important to mention that eroding
colonialist ideology is not an easy task, because ideology works in an insidious manner. Gauri
Viswanathan (1990) showed how the study of English Literature in Indian institutions served the
colonialist purpose.
The debate as to how far such a revival or returns to the precolonial past is possible (or
even advisable) is a vigorous one. There is not only the existence of two or more groups with
contradictory opinions, sometimes one single theorist holds deliberately two or more contradictory
opinions. Farntz Fanon, as mentioned earlier, started his Black Skin and White Mask with the
purpose of reviving and celebrating the black identity (Negritude) of the Negro people.
Accordingly he declared, “I needed to lose myself completely in Negritude.”3 But by the time of
conclusion it seems that his earlier stance is altered: ‘In no way should I dedicate myself to the
revival of an unjustly unrecognised Negro civilization.’4 Perhaps he realises that any chauvinistic
attitude will land him in the same group he is trying to resist. It does not prove that his stance is
altered. At the core of his heart there is a painful belief that Negro civilization is ‘unjustly
unrecognised.’ Another celebrated theorist Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak is also often accused of
inconsistent theoretical stance. But her situation is different. Fanon is the founding father of
postcolonial theory. He was trying to give a respectable identity to an ‘unjustly unrecognised’
group of people. Whereas when Spivak came to the theoretical field it was the heyday of
postcolonial study. Subaltern study group was already established.5 There was much romanticism
about voicing the voiceless ‘subaltern’. Her controversial essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1985)
induced other theorists to conceive that Spivak did not believe that the subaltern could ever have
a voice. But later in an interview she claimed that she had been misunderstood. Her aim was
instead, ‘to counter the impulse to solve the problem of political subjectivity by romanticising the
subaltern.’6 Later on in another interview Spivak defended the postcolonial societies’ excavation
for indigenous cultural forms.7 At least it helps them, she thinks, to resist the onslaught of global
culture, though in a negative manner.
Indian Literature is replete with nativistic images. Arabindo Ghosh in his epic poem Savitri
tried to revive the Hindu mythology. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1960) for her subject in The
Householder chooses one of the four ‘ashrams’ or stages of life (of ‘grihastha’ or householder) in
a man’s life as it was in practice in Vedic period.8 Amitav Ghosh (1986) seeks to structure his The
Circle of Reason on three cardinal qualities that, according to Indian philosophy, determine a
person’s character: ‘Tamas’, ‘Rajas’ and ‘Satwik’. The order indicates the soul’s gradual and
upward evolution. Ghosh reverses the order to indicate the degeneration of life in modern age. The
Part One is entitled ‘Satwa’: Reason; Part Two, ‘Rajas’: Passion; and Part Three, ‘Tamas’: Death.9
In recent past Manil Suri (2001) in his The Death of Vishnu made use of Hindu mythology ‘while
his goal was not to write treatise on Hinduism, but to create narratives and characters that pulsate
with life’ (Singh,2004:216).

To create nativistic images, postcolonial writers use myth and legend as well as folklore and
oral traditions of their own cultures. Chinua Achebe’s (1958) Things Fall Apart is full of proverbs
and aphorisms from Igbo culture. Promad K. Nayar (2008: 223) claims “In Ngugi’s later fiction,
especially, Petals of Blood (1977), Devil on the Cross (1982), and Matigari (1989) we see the
return of a traditional African artist-as-prophet”. This Kenyan writer, who was used to write in
English, has now switched over to his native language Gikuyu. African writer Toni Morrison’s
(1977) Song of Solomon is reworking of the African flying legend. Her Beloved (1987) explores
the role of supernatural in African traditions. Behind Yole Soyinka’s (1975) play Death and the
King’s Horseman the presence of Yoruba belief that gods and humans once lived together on earth
is clearly perceptible. Ben Okri’s (1991) The Famished Road reworks with the concept of ‘abiku’,
a southern Nigerian belief in the endless reincarnation of a child. Salman Rushdie also turns to
Indian traditions, both written and oral, instead of Western ones. Rushdie himself says, “In India
the thing I have taken most from ... is oral tradition.”10 Promad K. Nayar (2008:234-35) justly
claims:

Postcolonial cultures’ reliance on myth and local legend is an effort at de-contamination,

a process of freeing their cultures from colonialism’s pervasive influence. The return to
roots – while running the very real danger of fundamentalism, reactionary nativism, and
chauvinism – is an attempt to gain a measure of self-affirmation that is not tainted by
colonialism.