Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by john pullig - Thursday, 17 January 2008, 11:28 AM
I chose this as a topic to examine because I had already acted in and worked set, lighting, sound and ASM on pantomimes previously and took part in last year’s Bruford carnival. “A head start”, I thought to myself, but who was I kidding? It is a lot more complicated than that as my research in books and on the internet has shown.
My very first thoughts or bullet points were these:
Culture: from the Powerpoint Notes - “A particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group” – other stuff in the definitions of Culture such as “…spiritual and aesthetic development” a bit deep and did not seem to apply to my subject.
Pantomime: Christmas season plays, mainly aimed at children but with an innuendo to appeal to adults. Bold costume, settings and makeup – Pantomime Dames played by a man and the male hero is always played by a woman. The pantomime villain(s). Good versus evil. A moral tale.
Carnivalesque: Carnivals – Rio, Mardi Gras, Notting Hill, dressing up, parades, celebrations, religious festivals.
But when I went on to research my topic I found that there are hundreds of years of history behind both pantomime and carnivalesque. I also discovered that carnivalesque has much deeper meaning than just something to do with the carnival as carried out in modern days.
In its roots, and you can guess this from its name, Pantomime has something to do with mime. A literal translation from the Greek means imitator of all and this covers many things such as emotions, ideas and material things. This concept is closer to a European understanding of pantomime with Marcel Marceau being the best know artist in modern times of this art form. The British version is more of a dramatised version of the British seaside postcard. Peter Lathan in his book “It’s Behind You – the story of panto” tells us that British pantomime can be traced back to the Romans’ Fabulae Atellanae (Atellan Stories) which were rather crude and earthy improvised farces.
Pantomime has of course developed and changed with the times and there is a contemporary aspect to be found in today’s pantomimes. While the stories, costume and set remain traditional the innuendo, political and other references found in most of the scripts are very much of today.
Carnivalesque is even more complicated in its background. The first thing (or person) that I fell over was Mikhail Bakhtin – remember him from the quiz? Well, follow this link http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/mikhail_bakhtin.htm or if you can’t be bothered here is a quote that defines Carnivalesque “Bakhtin divides the carnivalesque into three forms: ritual spectacles, comic verbal compositions, and various genres of billingsgate or abusive language. Although Bakhtin separates the forms of the carnivalesque, they are often conjoined within the carnival.” It is a great article that describes carnivals of the past as events of unbridled lusting, crazed bingeing, and even physical mutilation. ‘Sounds a bit like New Orleans Mardi Gras to me.
In other words, and this goes back to the same quiz question, in principal, carnival is a period of time or event which allows people to turn the world upside down. To forget what is regarded as proper behaviour or what is taken as correct within the structures of society and do the opposite. Grotesque imagery is often a feature of carnivals through time (see National Touring Exhibition’s Carnivalesque publication which has a variety of plates that show examples of the mutant human forms employed. Again like pantomime there is a religious season involved. It is the period before Lent that is the traditional time for carnival. Mardi Gras translates from the French for Fat Tuesday (or as we know it Shrove Tuesday). The word Carnival is itself a reference to the pre Lent period translating from the Latiin Carne Vale meaning ‘farewell to meat’ a reference to the fasting period of Lent that follows Shrove Tuesday. In Britain little of the traditional Lent carnival survived the Reformation. That which did survive was based mostly in the West Country. These days, the British have to do things differently and most carnivals here are based later in the year.
Going back to Bakhtin, Carnivalesque and postmodernist culture. I asked myself where has the grotesque imagery, satire and irreverence of the carnivalesque as described by Bakhtin come through in recent culture. Maybe surprisingly there are many examples of this in TV, films and theatre. The satirical movement in comedy starting with ‘That Was The Week That Was’ in the 1960’s, the milestone of ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ and the most vicious of all, ‘Spitting Image’ have paved the way for the populist alternative comedy movement. In theatre, most obviously there is ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ (see Michelle Greer’s contribution). Another example in theatre is the musical “Caberet” set around a burlesque nightclub in pre Second World War Berlin. I found an interesting link on You Tube for this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFTGpULRTuY&feature=related . At the end of the clip is a short interview with Joel Grey where he states that he based the character of the master of ceremonies as a caricature of Adolph Hitler. Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” is another good example of carnivalesque in film. In theatre of course Antonin Artaud Theatre of Crulety has clear parallels with carnivalesque as demonstrated by The Periplum Tree Theatre Company’s production ‘Artuad in Wonderland’.
What about music? As I see it the imagery of Arthur Brown in the 1960’s (perhaps) and stage shows of Alice Cooper in the 1970’s show carnivalesque. Marilyn Manson is certainly there. But the most clear example of carnivalesque in pop culture is the whole Punk movement.
Well that’s it. These are my firsts on the subject apart from this. Have you noticed haw the words Postmodernist, Populist, Pop Culture, Structures have appeared in the above. I have the strangest feeling that all of the topics given for discussion are unavoidably linked. You can’t discuss one without falling over another!
Books used for research:
Peter Lathan “It’s Behind You – The Story of Panto”
National Touring Exhibition “Carnivalesque”
Michael D Bristol “Carnival and Theatre – Plebeian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England”
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Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Sarah Miller - Thursday, 17 January 2008, 01:37 PM
From what I have read, it is Bakhtin’s belief that carnival "offers a temporary refusal of the official world", offering the idea of a different (possibly better) life, as well as providing entertainment.
John Docker, an Australian cultural theorist, believes that “carnivalesque as a cultural mode still strongly influences twentieth century mass culture”.
John Fiske compares carnival to televised wrestling; wrestling on T.V is “a form of spectacle”, where spectators join in verbally, and the camera pans to the audience making them part of said spectacle. As in a carnival, the audience become involved.
When discussing culture, it seems unlikely that many people would consider wrestling to be included as part of it. If however it is to be included, we must surely then include football, tennis, in fact any televised sport or programme which includes an active audience, as part of culture.
And if wrestling is carnivalesque and wrestling is categorised with football etc, does this then mean that most T.V we watch today is therefore a carnival?
Quotes and references taken from John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, (London: Pearson Education Ltd, 2001) Chapter 5
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Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Kieron Vanstone - Thursday, 17 January 2008, 03:08 PM
I would definately like to agree with Sarah's point that football is certainly carnivelesque. The fans of the Brazilian National team with there big drums, dancing and breasts a jiggling, i think i may have just described any old carnival. It probably spans through all football supporters with the use of whistles and those things that you wave around like a flag but they make a cliking sound as they spin. My main point however is to take a look at the cultural demographic between football supporters and rugby supporters. Rugby typically being an upper class sport and football the working mans sport. is there a link in the relationship between the two or is rugby not considered carnivelesque. Certainly there are no big drums, dancing and breast jiggling at rugby matches, only rowdy chaps who want to see a good show; now i can fell a bit of Roman culture coming in to the fray. Is rugby more closely related to an ampitheatre of Rome? And is this because of the archetype of the rugby supporter/player? Therefore could you say that rugby is in fact more closely linked to theatre than carnival. For example, a night at the theatre compared with a night at the rugby:
- A few afternoon drinks and some food with friends
- A chance to see your favourite performers doing what they do best
- Making an opinion on whether you appreciated what happened
To come back to the original point i think both past times are so heavily doused in high(er) culture that that is where the link lies.
To provide a professional opinion:
"The Welsh used to embrace rugby with a passion. In the good old days, when players paid to play rather than the other way round, they raised the game to an art form."
Tim Glover "Too much rugby theory and not enough heart". Independent, The (London). Jun 6 1995
Can you compare football and canrival because of their demographic link?
Can you compare rugby and theatre because of their demographic link?
Therefore im not sure that you can compare all sport to carnival.
In response to John, you mentioned that original carnival still exists in the West Country, what sort of examples do you have; would be quite interesting for me.
k
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Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Aimee Hulme - Thursday, 17 January 2008, 03:30 PM
In John’s post touched on music and the use of carnivalesque in pop culture and the idea of the punk movement. So I looked a little further firstly into the punk movement and where it comes from, it was one of the most successful movements, punk’s revolt against older people, hippies and hard rockers. In 1976 the punk movement was no longer be extinct and they will remain punks forever.
The idea of pop culture is defined as something that is popular within a social context. So the idea of Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson using Carnivalesque can this be classed as pop culture because it’s just an idea used within a popular context? Or is it a style of theatre used to enhance a music show?
Therefore if something is popular because of its social context does that make anything enjoyed in a social situation by a group of people make it part of pop culture. Also like so many people think because of it name that pop culture is just about music. But can we not therefore make anything part of popular culture because it is enjoyed by people in a social context or does this make it lose its meaning?
When researching pop culture I found a range of meanings and definitions, one I found was –
“A way for Goths and Chavs to insult each other”
Does something like the label of Goths and Chavs enhance pop culture or make it harder to decide what can be seen as popular? Then also who decides what can be part of pop culture and what can’t?
It used to be decided by what class you were, if you were higher class then what you enjoyed socially would have been part of pop culture. Seeing as in today’s society we have less use of classes, segregating people and more social groups. So is this not scope for looking into changing the meaning of pop culture and defining what it means more clearly.
Links Used -
http://library.thinkquest.org/12256/html/punk1.html
urbandicitonary.com
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Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Julian Bryant - Friday, 18 January 2008, 01:13 PM
Great start John. Gets this strand going well.
A propos Kieran's rugby analogy. It's a while since I was the wizard of the wing for my college rugby team: I do remember however, that the beers were a focal point of the exercise and for much of the game before it went professional. And that what went along with that was the singing of some very bawdy songs. My coming of age party, a similar event, was graced by my uncle reciting to me the whole of Eskimo Nell - his party piece from rowing rather than rugby. And breast jiggling has been more prevalent in rugby than soccer (until recently very much a male suppoter sport) in the UK - Erica Rowe's exhortation to the national team being iconic in this repect - as well as streaking. All three sports have a tendency to show displays of wit and barracking, and 'sledging' in cricket.
http://www.rugbysongs.net/
Sarah's research about wrestling, citing ?John Fiske is very much to the same point. You could also look at Signalong Sound of Music in the same way, as another example of irreverance to religious, civil and artistic authority.
About the punk bit -I.ve posted elsewhere about that, but it's a very impoirtant movement with its own philisophy - Aimee's reference is on th lighter side of that, but worth checking out Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood et al.
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Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by john pullig - Thursday, 24 January 2008, 01:43 PM
I am thinking that maybe to call mass behavior at football matches or rugby matches 'culture' or 'carnivalesque' is going a bit far. When I played rugby (prop - can you believe it?) and went on tour, I never thought that when I was captured and had my eyebrow shaved or when the dorms at the outward bound centre that we stayed at in Pembrokshire were customised (wrecked) or indeed that when we called out our cheerie chants to our celtic hosts about their unusual activities with sheep that these were an expression of 'culture' or the 'carnivalesque. I just thought that we were lads 'behaving badly'. But now I feel vindicated!
Picking up on Sarah’s reference to John Docker, I have found an essay of his 'In defence of popular TV: carnivalesque v. left pessimism' at http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/1.2/Docker.html . In this he sets out a long argument for ‘carnivalesque’ as being alive in today’s TV media productions. He examines what is calls ‘left pessimism’, melodrama, TV game shows, TV variety, ‘Multiconciousness’ and ' The bourgeois public sphere’.
On ‘left pessimism he says “….view with dismay the coming of TV, feeling that as a synthesis of radio and film it will lead to a new stage in the culture industry's drastic impoverishment of aesthetic matter. Ten years later, during which time TV had rapidly become established as a mass popular form, Adorno expands, in his essay on "Television and the Patterns of Mass Culture", on this earlier vision of horror by turning for help to psychoanalysis. The procedure of the argument is similarly 'structuralist'. Beneath the surface diversity and 'fake' or 'pseudo-realism' of TV programs, there is an underlying deep structure, a single 'hidden message' that escapes the controls of viewers' consciousness. TV products appear polymorphous, and may even appear antitotalitarian, but they aim to produce in audiences the very smugness, intellectual passivity, and gullibility that fits in with totalitarian creeds.”
Docker takes this view apart in arguing that that modern TV is valid carnivalesque culture in line with Bathkin’s definition. “Crash goes another left pessimist plank. Now there are none”.
On ‘Left Pessimism and Postmodernism’ he goes on to argue “No longer hegemonic in media and cultural studies, the Left Pessimist Machine nevertheless grinds on, unperturbed by critiques of it or any obstacles of evidence.
An essay on Bakhtin in New Left Review, for example, opens with the familiar move, the relating of his theories of past popular culture to modern literary culture. It then calmly intones near its end that the only presence the contemporary working class has in modern culture is the mass culture organised for it, involving a mass spectatorship composed of isolated, private individuals. (Ken Hirschkop, "Bakhtin, Discourse and Democracy", New Left Review 160, 1986, p.111)
A recent issue of Arena on media, film and the information society sees a bizarrely fundamentalist version of Frankfurt school theory meet post-modernism, with mixed results. John Hinkson takes Lyotard to task for his benign view of the post-modern information society, which in its very heterogeneity carries the possibility of social relations constituted as open interchange, heightened individuality, local narratives. On the contrary, says Hinkson quoting Marshall McLuhan, the information society is the global village, a total system which instates social abstraction, the terrifying condition when reality is no longer grounded in human presence. Lyotard is simply being naive, ignoring the historical logic that has led to the information society as the latest stage of a repressive totalising system.”
Unfortunately, I had to spend much of my time reading this essay with a dictionary my hands. Docker seems, in this essay, to regard the ‘common man’ with a good deal of respect but does not write as if it will be read by him! He could do with joining the Campaign for Plain English. See http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/. Their “Golden Bull Archive” is full of light relief from similar overly wordy writings.
Getting back to ‘carnivalesque’ I think we need to be clear about one thing and that is that Bathkin defined it broadly as being the “turning upside down” of normal behaviour or the moral code of society for a day or a short period after which the revellers go back to life as normal. Looking at all the examples that we have, football, rugby, WWE, TV programs etc. these are for those taking part very much the ‘norm’, week after week. There is no other ‘norm’ for them to return to. So how can these be viewed as truly ‘carnivalesque’? I think also that those taking part do not act deliberately to shock society. For example, the football hooligan goes from one match (ruck) to the next and sets out to ‘do’ another team’s fans. I don’t think they even care if society is offended or not.
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Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Julian Bryant - Wednesday, 6 February 2008, 07:29 PM
If you're right, then it looks as if we live a world of constant playfulness! That's kinda the postmodern condition I think. I've seen an argument somewhere, a neo-Marxist view, that modern consumer capitalism seeks to infantilise us all - keep us as children, begging for sweeties.
If it's all playtime (our jobs to manage that, after all), when do we go back to learn, or to work? But that's probably better than to see the results of all one's industry spread across the fields of the Somme, or Auschwitz, or Darfur.
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by john pullig - Thursday, 17 January 2008, 11:28 AM
I chose this as a topic to examine because I had already acted in and worked set, lighting, sound and ASM on pantomimes previously and took part in last year’s Bruford carnival. “A head start”, I thought to myself, but who was I kidding? It is a lot more complicated than that as my research in books and on the internet has shown.
My very first thoughts or bullet points were these:
Culture: from the Powerpoint Notes - “A particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group” – other stuff in the definitions of Culture such as “…spiritual and aesthetic development” a bit deep and did not seem to apply to my subject.
Pantomime: Christmas season plays, mainly aimed at children but with an innuendo to appeal to adults. Bold costume, settings and makeup – Pantomime Dames played by a man and the male hero is always played by a woman. The pantomime villain(s). Good versus evil. A moral tale.
Carnivalesque: Carnivals – Rio, Mardi Gras, Notting Hill, dressing up, parades, celebrations, religious festivals.
But when I went on to research my topic I found that there are hundreds of years of history behind both pantomime and carnivalesque. I also discovered that carnivalesque has much deeper meaning than just something to do with the carnival as carried out in modern days.
In its roots, and you can guess this from its name, Pantomime has something to do with mime. A literal translation from the Greek means imitator of all and this covers many things such as emotions, ideas and material things. This concept is closer to a European understanding of pantomime with Marcel Marceau being the best know artist in modern times of this art form. The British version is more of a dramatised version of the British seaside postcard. Peter Lathan in his book “It’s Behind You – the story of panto” tells us that British pantomime can be traced back to the Romans’ Fabulae Atellanae (Atellan Stories) which were rather crude and earthy improvised farces.
Pantomime has of course developed and changed with the times and there is a contemporary aspect to be found in today’s pantomimes. While the stories, costume and set remain traditional the innuendo, political and other references found in most of the scripts are very much of today.
Carnivalesque is even more complicated in its background. The first thing (or person) that I fell over was Mikhail Bakhtin – remember him from the quiz? Well, follow this link http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/mikhail_bakhtin.htm or if you can’t be bothered here is a quote that defines Carnivalesque “Bakhtin divides the carnivalesque into three forms: ritual spectacles, comic verbal compositions, and various genres of billingsgate or abusive language. Although Bakhtin separates the forms of the carnivalesque, they are often conjoined within the carnival.” It is a great article that describes carnivals of the past as events of unbridled lusting, crazed bingeing, and even physical mutilation. ‘Sounds a bit like New Orleans Mardi Gras to me.
In other words, and this goes back to the same quiz question, in principal, carnival is a period of time or event which allows people to turn the world upside down. To forget what is regarded as proper behaviour or what is taken as correct within the structures of society and do the opposite. Grotesque imagery is often a feature of carnivals through time (see National Touring Exhibition’s Carnivalesque publication which has a variety of plates that show examples of the mutant human forms employed. Again like pantomime there is a religious season involved. It is the period before Lent that is the traditional time for carnival. Mardi Gras translates from the French for Fat Tuesday (or as we know it Shrove Tuesday). The word Carnival is itself a reference to the pre Lent period translating from the Latiin Carne Vale meaning ‘farewell to meat’ a reference to the fasting period of Lent that follows Shrove Tuesday. In Britain little of the traditional Lent carnival survived the Reformation. That which did survive was based mostly in the West Country. These days, the British have to do things differently and most carnivals here are based later in the year.
Going back to Bakhtin, Carnivalesque and postmodernist culture. I asked myself where has the grotesque imagery, satire and irreverence of the carnivalesque as described by Bakhtin come through in recent culture. Maybe surprisingly there are many examples of this in TV, films and theatre. The satirical movement in comedy starting with ‘That Was The Week That Was’ in the 1960’s, the milestone of ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ and the most vicious of all, ‘Spitting Image’ have paved the way for the populist alternative comedy movement. In theatre, most obviously there is ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ (see Michelle Greer’s contribution). Another example in theatre is the musical “Caberet” set around a burlesque nightclub in pre Second World War Berlin. I found an interesting link on You Tube for this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFTGpULRTuY&feature=related . At the end of the clip is a short interview with Joel Grey where he states that he based the character of the master of ceremonies as a caricature of Adolph Hitler. Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” is another good example of carnivalesque in film. In theatre of course Antonin Artaud Theatre of Crulety has clear parallels with carnivalesque as demonstrated by The Periplum Tree Theatre Company’s production ‘Artuad in Wonderland’.
What about music? As I see it the imagery of Arthur Brown in the 1960’s (perhaps) and stage shows of Alice Cooper in the 1970’s show carnivalesque. Marilyn Manson is certainly there. But the most clear example of carnivalesque in pop culture is the whole Punk movement.
Well that’s it. These are my firsts on the subject apart from this. Have you noticed haw the words Postmodernist, Populist, Pop Culture, Structures have appeared in the above. I have the strangest feeling that all of the topics given for discussion are unavoidably linked. You can’t discuss one without falling over another!
Books used for research:
Peter Lathan “It’s Behind You – The Story of Panto”
National Touring Exhibition “Carnivalesque”
Michael D Bristol “Carnival and Theatre – Plebeian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England”
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Picture of Sarah Miller
Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Sarah Miller - Thursday, 17 January 2008, 01:37 PM
From what I have read, it is Bakhtin’s belief that carnival "offers a temporary refusal of the official world", offering the idea of a different (possibly better) life, as well as providing entertainment.
John Docker, an Australian cultural theorist, believes that “carnivalesque as a cultural mode still strongly influences twentieth century mass culture”.
John Fiske compares carnival to televised wrestling; wrestling on T.V is “a form of spectacle”, where spectators join in verbally, and the camera pans to the audience making them part of said spectacle. As in a carnival, the audience become involved.
When discussing culture, it seems unlikely that many people would consider wrestling to be included as part of it. If however it is to be included, we must surely then include football, tennis, in fact any televised sport or programme which includes an active audience, as part of culture.
And if wrestling is carnivalesque and wrestling is categorised with football etc, does this then mean that most T.V we watch today is therefore a carnival?
Quotes and references taken from John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, (London: Pearson Education Ltd, 2001) Chapter 5
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Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Kieron Vanstone - Thursday, 17 January 2008, 03:08 PM
I would definately like to agree with Sarah's point that football is certainly carnivelesque. The fans of the Brazilian National team with there big drums, dancing and breasts a jiggling, i think i may have just described any old carnival. It probably spans through all football supporters with the use of whistles and those things that you wave around like a flag but they make a cliking sound as they spin. My main point however is to take a look at the cultural demographic between football supporters and rugby supporters. Rugby typically being an upper class sport and football the working mans sport. is there a link in the relationship between the two or is rugby not considered carnivelesque. Certainly there are no big drums, dancing and breast jiggling at rugby matches, only rowdy chaps who want to see a good show; now i can fell a bit of Roman culture coming in to the fray. Is rugby more closely related to an ampitheatre of Rome? And is this because of the archetype of the rugby supporter/player? Therefore could you say that rugby is in fact more closely linked to theatre than carnival. For example, a night at the theatre compared with a night at the rugby:
- A few afternoon drinks and some food with friends
- A chance to see your favourite performers doing what they do best
- Making an opinion on whether you appreciated what happened
To come back to the original point i think both past times are so heavily doused in high(er) culture that that is where the link lies.
To provide a professional opinion:
"The Welsh used to embrace rugby with a passion. In the good old days, when players paid to play rather than the other way round, they raised the game to an art form."
Tim Glover "Too much rugby theory and not enough heart". Independent, The (London). Jun 6 1995
Can you compare football and canrival because of their demographic link?
Can you compare rugby and theatre because of their demographic link?
Therefore im not sure that you can compare all sport to carnival.
In response to John, you mentioned that original carnival still exists in the West Country, what sort of examples do you have; would be quite interesting for me.
k
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Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Aimee Hulme - Thursday, 17 January 2008, 03:30 PM
In John’s post touched on music and the use of carnivalesque in pop culture and the idea of the punk movement. So I looked a little further firstly into the punk movement and where it comes from, it was one of the most successful movements, punk’s revolt against older people, hippies and hard rockers. In 1976 the punk movement was no longer be extinct and they will remain punks forever.
The idea of pop culture is defined as something that is popular within a social context. So the idea of Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson using Carnivalesque can this be classed as pop culture because it’s just an idea used within a popular context? Or is it a style of theatre used to enhance a music show?
Therefore if something is popular because of its social context does that make anything enjoyed in a social situation by a group of people make it part of pop culture. Also like so many people think because of it name that pop culture is just about music. But can we not therefore make anything part of popular culture because it is enjoyed by people in a social context or does this make it lose its meaning?
When researching pop culture I found a range of meanings and definitions, one I found was –
“A way for Goths and Chavs to insult each other”
Does something like the label of Goths and Chavs enhance pop culture or make it harder to decide what can be seen as popular? Then also who decides what can be part of pop culture and what can’t?
It used to be decided by what class you were, if you were higher class then what you enjoyed socially would have been part of pop culture. Seeing as in today’s society we have less use of classes, segregating people and more social groups. So is this not scope for looking into changing the meaning of pop culture and defining what it means more clearly.
Links Used -
http://library.thinkquest.org/12256/html/punk1.html
urbandicitonary.com
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Picture of Julian Bryant
Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Julian Bryant - Friday, 18 January 2008, 01:13 PM
Great start John. Gets this strand going well.
A propos Kieran's rugby analogy. It's a while since I was the wizard of the wing for my college rugby team: I do remember however, that the beers were a focal point of the exercise and for much of the game before it went professional. And that what went along with that was the singing of some very bawdy songs. My coming of age party, a similar event, was graced by my uncle reciting to me the whole of Eskimo Nell - his party piece from rowing rather than rugby. And breast jiggling has been more prevalent in rugby than soccer (until recently very much a male suppoter sport) in the UK - Erica Rowe's exhortation to the national team being iconic in this repect - as well as streaking. All three sports have a tendency to show displays of wit and barracking, and 'sledging' in cricket.
http://www.rugbysongs.net/
Sarah's research about wrestling, citing ?John Fiske is very much to the same point. You could also look at Signalong Sound of Music in the same way, as another example of irreverance to religious, civil and artistic authority.
About the punk bit -I.ve posted elsewhere about that, but it's a very impoirtant movement with its own philisophy - Aimee's reference is on th lighter side of that, but worth checking out Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood et al.
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Picture of john pullig
Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by john pullig - Thursday, 24 January 2008, 01:43 PM
I am thinking that maybe to call mass behavior at football matches or rugby matches 'culture' or 'carnivalesque' is going a bit far. When I played rugby (prop - can you believe it?) and went on tour, I never thought that when I was captured and had my eyebrow shaved or when the dorms at the outward bound centre that we stayed at in Pembrokshire were customised (wrecked) or indeed that when we called out our cheerie chants to our celtic hosts about their unusual activities with sheep that these were an expression of 'culture' or the 'carnivalesque. I just thought that we were lads 'behaving badly'. But now I feel vindicated!
Picking up on Sarah’s reference to John Docker, I have found an essay of his 'In defence of popular TV: carnivalesque v. left pessimism' at http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/1.2/Docker.html . In this he sets out a long argument for ‘carnivalesque’ as being alive in today’s TV media productions. He examines what is calls ‘left pessimism’, melodrama, TV game shows, TV variety, ‘Multiconciousness’ and ' The bourgeois public sphere’.
On ‘left pessimism he says “….view with dismay the coming of TV, feeling that as a synthesis of radio and film it will lead to a new stage in the culture industry's drastic impoverishment of aesthetic matter. Ten years later, during which time TV had rapidly become established as a mass popular form, Adorno expands, in his essay on "Television and the Patterns of Mass Culture", on this earlier vision of horror by turning for help to psychoanalysis. The procedure of the argument is similarly 'structuralist'. Beneath the surface diversity and 'fake' or 'pseudo-realism' of TV programs, there is an underlying deep structure, a single 'hidden message' that escapes the controls of viewers' consciousness. TV products appear polymorphous, and may even appear antitotalitarian, but they aim to produce in audiences the very smugness, intellectual passivity, and gullibility that fits in with totalitarian creeds.”
Docker takes this view apart in arguing that that modern TV is valid carnivalesque culture in line with Bathkin’s definition. “Crash goes another left pessimist plank. Now there are none”.
On ‘Left Pessimism and Postmodernism’ he goes on to argue “No longer hegemonic in media and cultural studies, the Left Pessimist Machine nevertheless grinds on, unperturbed by critiques of it or any obstacles of evidence.
An essay on Bakhtin in New Left Review, for example, opens with the familiar move, the relating of his theories of past popular culture to modern literary culture. It then calmly intones near its end that the only presence the contemporary working class has in modern culture is the mass culture organised for it, involving a mass spectatorship composed of isolated, private individuals. (Ken Hirschkop, "Bakhtin, Discourse and Democracy", New Left Review 160, 1986, p.111)
A recent issue of Arena on media, film and the information society sees a bizarrely fundamentalist version of Frankfurt school theory meet post-modernism, with mixed results. John Hinkson takes Lyotard to task for his benign view of the post-modern information society, which in its very heterogeneity carries the possibility of social relations constituted as open interchange, heightened individuality, local narratives. On the contrary, says Hinkson quoting Marshall McLuhan, the information society is the global village, a total system which instates social abstraction, the terrifying condition when reality is no longer grounded in human presence. Lyotard is simply being naive, ignoring the historical logic that has led to the information society as the latest stage of a repressive totalising system.”
Unfortunately, I had to spend much of my time reading this essay with a dictionary my hands. Docker seems, in this essay, to regard the ‘common man’ with a good deal of respect but does not write as if it will be read by him! He could do with joining the Campaign for Plain English. See http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/. Their “Golden Bull Archive” is full of light relief from similar overly wordy writings.
Getting back to ‘carnivalesque’ I think we need to be clear about one thing and that is that Bathkin defined it broadly as being the “turning upside down” of normal behaviour or the moral code of society for a day or a short period after which the revellers go back to life as normal. Looking at all the examples that we have, football, rugby, WWE, TV programs etc. these are for those taking part very much the ‘norm’, week after week. There is no other ‘norm’ for them to return to. So how can these be viewed as truly ‘carnivalesque’? I think also that those taking part do not act deliberately to shock society. For example, the football hooligan goes from one match (ruck) to the next and sets out to ‘do’ another team’s fans. I don’t think they even care if society is offended or not.
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Re: Cultural Theory Re Pantomime and Carnivalesque
by Julian Bryant - Wednesday, 6 February 2008, 07:29 PM
If you're right, then it looks as if we live a world of constant playfulness! That's kinda the postmodern condition I think. I've seen an argument somewhere, a neo-Marxist view, that modern consumer capitalism seeks to infantilise us all - keep us as children, begging for sweeties.
If it's all playtime (our jobs to manage that, after all), when do we go back to learn, or to work? But that's probably better than to see the results of all one's industry spread across the fields of the Somme, or Auschwitz, or Darfur.
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