Understand popular culture

Author: John Fiske (USA), translated by Wang Xiaojue and others
Translator: Wang Xiaojue, Song Weijie
Country:
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2001-09-01
Features: He workers or with their own families' unity. With the "conspiracy" of other workers (this action defeated the factory's attempt to instill competition among them), he successfully "deceived" the established order of his own base. "Mall" is far from a regression to craftspersonal or individual production models; rather, it reintroduces "popular" techniques from other times and places into the industrial space (i.e., into the current order). Thus, the mall as a place transforms into countless spaces controlled by the marginalized. Adolescents use them as spaces for meeting, dating, displaying and consuming fashion; department stores become inexhaustible treasure troves of various images. They can be transformed into personal styles or personal expressions. Mothers and children, as well as the elderly, consume the mall's heating or air conditioning in extreme cold or heat. In winter, the mall becomes an indoor sports ground for many; some malls post posters welcoming "mall walkers," while others conveniently set up exercise areas around the walking spots, allowing walkers to better utilize these resources and gain more benefits from the system, though the system itself knows this. Among these "clever" walkers, how many and who exactly have become consumers is unknown. The colonizing power (colonizing power) also cannot explain whether it is ceding territory to the guerrillas or already suppressing their actions. However, to call this measure suppression is to strategically discuss and underestimate the countless tactical raids that remain unchecked. The mall as a place is strategically designed for commercial purposes: the appeal of a large supermarket and/or department store lies in selling daily necessities, while the surrounding specialty stores sell various luxuries, homemade goods, or more everyday products—such as over-the-counter medicines, T-shirts, etc. Scattered among them are leisure services, hair salons, travel agencies, cinemas, cafes, and dining areas (from snack bars to fast-food chains). Surrounding them are open spaces, rest areas, phone booths, bank ATMs, fountains, plants, etc. Additionally, at strategic decision-making moments, they arrange entertainment activities or exhibitions, fashion shows, dance performances by local schoolchildren, Christmas carol singing, magic shows, live broadcasts of game shows, and celebrity appearances. The designated use of spaces and time arrangements is clearly a commercial strategy, but here lies a huge paradox—power must surrender its vulnerabilities to the attackers to achieve its goals; only by exposing its weaknesses to the guerrillas can the occupying force continue to control this territory, however weak that control may be. Thus, as a commercial strategy, this place suppresses its organizational strategy: it is forced to recognize that popular usage does not follow its strategic plans, so the place becomes amorphous and open, and people use it at will. Therefore, attracting consumers is to attract deceivers; encouraging consumption is to encourage deception, looting, and "mall culture." De Certeau (1984:40) argues that the bureaucratic commercial order we live in paradoxically creates self-undermining elements through its own success, and now its very existence relies on cracks and weaknesses that make it so vulnerable to popular raids: in the scope of contemporary history, the generalization and expansion of technocracy-style rationality seem to have created concrete practical gaps and rapid growth between different segments of the system, practices that were previously managed by stable local units. Tactics are increasingly deviating from their original paths. They break free from the traditional communities that once constrained them and begin to roam across a space that is becoming increasingly homogenized and vast. Consumers are transformed into immigrants. The system they move within is too vast to fix them in one place. Yet for these consumers/immigrants, the system is too restrictive, to the point where they cannot evade it and wander elsewhere. In fact, there are no longer "elsewhere." Precisely because of this, the "strategic" model has also changed, as if defeated by its own victory. Jameson (1984) notes when reflecting on the Portman-designed Los Angeles Bonaventure hotel that the space is so chaotic, as if in anarchy—that the hotel is completely unable to establish any order in its mall, either for itself or for the consumers. In this organizational failure, the human body's ability—to "organize its immediate environment from a sensory perspective and to map its position in the measurable external world in terms of cognition"—is surpassed; and I believe this means that the order of things cannot arrange an individual's position. Jameson continues to say: this alarming rupture between the body and its surrounding environment itself symbolizes or resembles an even sharper dilemma, and this dilemma is the helplessness of our minds when we attempt to map vast, decentralized networks of communication (in which we find ourselves as individual subjects). (83–84 pages) Jameson believes that the "new decentralized global network of the third stage of capital" is a "network of power and control," and "our minds and imagination find it difficult to grasp" this network (80 pages). Jameson's argument shows that the power this network has over our subjectivity is so loose that it itself is questionable. In fact, this power may be so distant that it does not establish order but produces fragmented postmodern subjects. As Eco points out, the larger the system, the easier it is to play tricks, and the weaker its ability to control the actors within it. The structure of early capitalism is obvious, and its power acts are also easily understood. When factory owners live in mountain villas while workers reside in factories or simple worker dormitories shrouded in the shadows of wells and black smoke, we know the existence of the system that arranges their work or residence. The obviousness of the system is as clear as its blatant injustice—the power is naked. The shift to corporate capitalism is a shift toward invisibility; the system becomes increasingly abstract and detached from the concrete experiences of daily life, making it increasingly difficult to understand. Late capitalism further shifts toward a transnational state beyond the nation-state, in the process, the capitalist system has become so distant, so alienated, and so irrational that its power to control and arrange daily life details has paradoxically vanished. Therefore, the "Bonaventure"-style postmodern space is the chaotic, unorganized state of the fragmented, fleeting, and discontinuous spaces of each of its users. The capitalist system builds and manages the mall, and the order of the system has always been in danger of transforming into disorder brought about by the mall users. It is impossible to define a dominant mass culture because the formation of mass culture is always a reaction to dominant forces and never becomes part of the dominant force. This does not mean that members of dominant social groups cannot participate in mass culture—they not only can but do participate. However, to do so, they must change their allegiances and keep their distance from those who grant them social power. A merchant rewarding colleagues and watching a football match together in a private box at an exercise ground is not participation in mass culture; but the same person, if they take off their formal business attire and stand in the cheap outdoor stands at the gymnasium,