Go forth and rearticulate......!

In The article “Towards a Left Popular Culture” by Laura Kipnis, she discusses the idea of transforming capitalist raw materials and discourses (“disarticulation”) and reforming them into an antagonistic discourse (“rearticulation”). I think that this a very interesting idea and the emphasis on action rather then merely academic contemplation is also an important concept. I think that a really good example of this (creating antagonistic discourse through action) would be culture jamming (props to Courtney!).
Culture jamming is the act of taking existing mass media (commercials, billboards, magazine ads, and etcetera) and transforming them to alter their meaning, generally with a negative commentary about mass capitalist culture. Thus, people are forming interpellations with these antagonistic discourses disrupting their normal subject formations made through the dominant discourses. This disruption however, like Kipnis discusses, can (at times) be provisional, it only lasts until the ads are changed back or the billboards are replaced (like the stop sign). This provisionality is a very postmodern moment preventing the antagonistic discourse from being assimilated into the dominant discourses umbrella term of “difference”. However, as Kipnis states co-option by capitalist culture is inevitable and ads do now use this idea and almost “poke fun” at themselves in an attempt to sell their products. Regardless of this co-option the rearticulated ads do still work in jarring people from their normal media over load causing them to stop and think about the images and discourses which are being bombarded at them.

"Mommy I want that one!"

Walter Benjamin discusses the contrast of art versus cinema. He uses the term “sense perception,” describing the way we are taught to appreciate art—generally from a distance. The human sense perception may change over periods of history, according to Benjamin, but it is still a matter of teaching correct ways of appreciation. However, this is different for cinema because it allows us to assert a sense of agency in the way we perceive it. Today, this is also true of television as discussed by John Fiske in “Popular Culture.” He discusses how we can have agency in two ways: through popular discrimination choosing to not select the commodity and text or thorough popular selection by only selecting the functional elements—for a specific person or group of people—from the text or commodity. I find the latter the more interesting case because it shows the multitude of meanings and ideas that can be expressed within one movie or television program (hey, sounds like Mimi White). It exposes the slipperiness of meaning, resulting in contradictions and an infinite number of possible interpretations. How people choose to negotiate this slipperiness, by either extracting the bits and pieces they choose or by the ways in which they choose to interpret it, is what grants us agency.

However, as I do believe we have agency, I wonder how much agency we possess towards mass culture (producer of cultural commodities)? With commercials being so crucial for television production and promotion, advertising has now permeated television programming and cinema itself—product placement being the biggest example. Therefore, we are subconsciously saturated with products and lifestyle discourses outside of what we consciously consider commercial messages. Perhaps our agency is diminished in these instances? Are there not instances when, despite the fact that we are aware of advertising, we are still compelled to choose a brand of product over another—perhaps because we’ve connected it, subconsciously, with a film or television program we have recently experienced, thus linking to a specific lifestyle?