Stephen Pallas, Conversation 2

It was fascinating how this week's readings produced a (often conflicted) collective of ideas concerning popular culture and folklore, while simultaneously segueing the class discussion regarding the nature of folklore generally (the idea that anything can be considered folklore) (1379).  I'd like to add an extension to that idea, which is that anything can be considered part of the folklore metropolis provided it's supporting evidence is extensive and thorough enough to warrant such a condition.  I would also like to note that I'll be tackling the readings as a continuum in the order presented on the D2L site, because after reading them all I've determined that the order matters.

In the first article, Levine authored a renewed perspective on the marriage between folklore and popular culture.  Her theory that "understanding will come not only through examining texts, but also through a clearer perception of audience behavior," applies well to the way we in literature studies have adopted the audience-as-interpreter model.  An interesting case in point is the Sylvia Plath poem, "Metaphors."

 I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

Literature students at the graduate level as well as professors, consider this poem at varying degrees to be either positive, negative, or ambivalent in its emotional and psychological content, and all interpretations are considered correct, given the right supporting evidence.  You may, of course, render a meaning for yourself.  The point is that any interpretation of "Metaphors" can be correct, and likewise becomes part of our academic folklore.  It is essential, however, to maintain an understanding that "recent literary theory sees neither the reader nor the text as necessarily controlling but rather places emphasis on the interaction between the two" (1381).  But there seems to have been a problem
with Levine's article, and Lears certainly believed so.

Lears argues that Levine flipped the script on popular culture studies by leaving the "producers...almost entirely absent" (1418) in lieu of audience reaction as the sole benefactor of the renewed academic focus.  Like the tension between the two essays, Lears argues that producers and consumers often vary in their interpretations of popular culture rather than coming together as two parts of the greater machine at work.  Mark Twain and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn make for an important literary anecdote with regard to Lears' main contention.  Although considered by and large his best and most important work, the Concord Public Library banned Huckleberry Finn for its coarse language as harmful to readers.  And, more recently, Alan Gribben (a noted Twain scholar) will publish a version of the novel without the word, "nigger," which appears over two hundred times throughout the story.  At this very intersection, Twain (the author), the Concord library (representative of his contemporary audience), and Gribben (a producer for the modern audience) represent the tension from which Lears creates his critique of Levine's article.  And, Lears argues, this tension spurned the very idea of entrepreneurship in America, which was replaced instead by a corporate model system of free enterprise that sought only to produce economic profit rather than to create a cultural hegemony.  Levine then responded to Lears' criticism, defending his own position while sharply attacking Lears' as an abstruse misreading of the first essay.  Levine also mentions Davis' and Kelly's essays, and lauds their accomplishments as erudite and thoughtful contributors to the audience-producer model of cultural and folklore analysis.

Kelly expands upon Levine's model of interpretation, by utilizing a more post-modern interpretation of what it means to be a "folk," which was impressively (for our purposes) reminiscent of the Dundes' article, "Who Are the Folk."  Like Lears, Kelly seems to suggest that Levine presents a partially inaccurate analysis of the relationship between production and reception, indicating instead that technology and the media alter the culture it attempts to represent and to which it collects its revenue.  He argues that as scholars "we need to examine how [orality and technology] operate together" (1404).  He further explains that more traditional examinations of power struggles (race and gender, for example) should be explored rather than Levine's emphasis on the consumer-producer split.  Kelly would argue, in the case of Huckleberry Finn or "Metaphors," that these traditional power struggles contribute more directly to the cultural projection of texts than either producers or consumers can provide within that mode of analysis.  The word "nigger" has different implications in Alabama than in Connecticut, and in 1963 than in 1885.  The litany of metaphors in Plath's poem, too, (most certainly about pregnancy) and using the "melon strolling on two tendrils" specifically, have different implications for men and women which are much more significant than either Plath, publishing companies, or readers can contribute without regard to the larger cultural context.  And, to provide another example, the relationship between Shakespeare's Ophelia and Hamlet have renewed significance with every generation because of the multitude of contributions from all races, genders, and classes.

Likewise, Davis argues in favor of Levine's major assumptions in his essay, citing medieval tradition (among others) as evidence that extends the newly adopted post-modern model of cultural analysis and its implications on folklore, which is partly why in literature studies we continue to include such authors as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton as major contributors to our literary canon.  The most prominent item Davis includes among his contentions is an idea we have so far come to understand in folklore and and the search for authenticity, that "hierarchical associations are not so easily shed from 'popular culture,' and the question of whether responses to widely disseminated artifacts can constitute in themselves a cultural system remains perplexing" (1411).  "Ay, there's the rub," would recite an actor portraying Hamlet; how do we, in fact, make sense or finally declare authenticity in the vast sea, the ever-widening expanse, the academic utterances, and all those "words, words, words" (Hamlet 2.2-3.1)?