Reading Lawrence Levine’s article “The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences” and T.J. Jackson Lears’ criticism of it in “Making Fun of Popular Culture” reminded me of one of the discussions from last week’s class: do we cast the subject of folklore, history, anthropological, ethnographic, etc. as the victim? This brought to my mind Gayatari Spivak’s work in post-colonial theory “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in which Spivak ultimately concludes that the subaltern cannot speak.[i] She concludes that there is too much mediation. The people trying to help the subaltern articulate their situation change, misunderstand, and misrepresent what they have been told or have witnessed. And if the subaltern manages to disseminate his or her own story, then he or she is no longer a subaltern because to disseminate one’s own story is to move permanently out of the subaltern category, ergo “the subaltern cannot speak.” I felt this was Lears’ ultimate conclusion about the audiences of popular culture, American film in particular. Audiences are so constrained by economics, gender, race, and other categories of negative circumstances that their perceptions of popular culture are so limited as to be unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
First off, I found Levine’s article refreshing in his positive attitude toward audience reception, interpretation, and re-dissemination of popular culture creations. His point that we must consider not just the producers, but the audience of any cultural production may seem “old hat” to many of us in the humanities and social sciences. However, it is not a given even in non-academic discussions of popular music, art, and film. Even as we consume popular culture the fact that we call it “popular culture” as its consumers indicates the ingrained distinction in Western discourse between what is “high art” and what is only popular. There is the pervasive feeling and understanding that what we like and what we should like are too very different things. In conversations with friends, I have come up against this assumption that film and music, in particular, are just entertainment, that they do not mean anything beyond being something fun and enjoyable. And yet, we pick songs for our weddings and our funerals, popular songs, because they have meaning for us. They connect with a memory, a knowledge, an understanding of life that resonates with us.
Lears’ article reminded me of Spivak’s bleak conclusion because of his instance on the constrained circumstances of the “recipients” of popular culture. I am calling the audience “recipients” here for a reason. Lears’ treats the audience of popular culture productions not as passive necessarily, but as so constrained as to not have any choice in what they receive, in what they consume. He refers to their possibilities as predetermined items on a menu. Undoubtedly, choices for audiences in the 1930s were more limited than they are now. But, even in the early 1990s, when this piece was written, this was not the case. It is an elitist point of view that forgets the fact that Lears is part of the audience too. The producers of popular culture expressions are part of the audience as well. Lears wants to draw an economic distinction that overstates the differences and the division between those who produce and those who enjoy, or do not enjoy, the resulting product. It is also a distinction between those who are the audience and those who watch the audience. Lears puts himself and academics in the latter category without asking what makes this distinction or how he himself, who had to have been a member of the audience in his lifetime, escaped from being the constrained receiver of cultural products. Perhaps that is what irritates me so, his tone of superiority, over Levine, by most importantly over the audience. Though the issues that may constrain audiences may be relevant and real, Lears’ insistence upon emphasizing them over what the audience is free to do, interpret the culture product according to their own life experiences, is patronizing, misleading, and insulting. Lears casts the audience as victims of the machine of popular culture. His conclusion appears to be that because audiences have constraints on them then their reception of any particular cultural creation is somehow less, is lacking. Additionally, where did Lears’ article title come from? Who is making fun of popular culture? The title is irrelevant to his discussion. For me, it further reveals his negative attitude toward the audiences of popular culture.
[i] The word subaltern derives from Late Latin subalternus, "subordinate," from Latin sub-, "under" + Latin alternus, "alternate," from alter, "other” (Dictionary.com). The subaltern in post-colonial theory is the subject and/or former subject of colonization. They are at the very bottom of hierarchy. There are many other things one could say about the subaltern; this is a simple explanation. Originally, subaltern was a British military term for a junior officer. Its use in post-colonial theory for the most “othered” Other is related to the British colonization of India.
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