Popular culture or film art? Norman Bates ponders the contradictions of Psycho (1960) 8 Andy Willis Cultural studies and popular film Cultural studies emerged in Britain^jurigg;jh£ _J2ZQs - the same period_as screen.-theory - and was"ciósělyTšsdČiátěd"äťthistinTr with work generated at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham. In fact, both^Vree^jheOTyJ^nd_j:ultuial studies developed, at least imtiäTlýJTEfoughji;i^o«s_s_of dialogue and^ "deHtF^tlTo^^nother. The conclusion toDavid^Morley's classic cul-tÄffänťudi^fext,'Ä 'Nationwide' Audience,] for example, clearly situT ates its position in relation tó certain tendencies in screen theory. However, screen theory and cultural studies were not mutually exclusive. Many of the figures associated with cultural studies were published "mScreenýkňd there was a constant interchange of ideas between the two_ approaches. As a result, the main feature which came to distinguish cul-lürarstudies from screen theory in the^ 1970s was that.while the latter tended to see popular ním as a form of ideological domination, cultural Šta&e^eÄre "raťher than the property or expression of any specific group's interests. "TöTtfiiH^ar^c^ between a conservative popular culture and a radical avant-garde, but "tended to be far more historical in its focus. It was concerned with the ways in whichcultural ..formsrd^dope'd' Üii^u^^Jn0^^ of conflict "and'struggle between social groups. .....Work within cultural studies was also critical of the way in which screen lüieörylended^öl^rect äi^^cmrconditions-within which"the" consumption of cuhm^texte took placeľ^creenIheoŕy was pŕeoccu-* piéTwítlT^ ~(íjiex«jfo^ However, tiisjorm of jajjaj$ísis,jřs. has frequmtly^ activities of audiences. It implies a 'hypodermic' model ofjnedjajejfecjs„ In^vhich audiences are seen as little more; .thaty^passiveLH^L^ojwe lctéd^oirby*tKe^exränd h ^ampieV The^ Ümemä~Bookfz text which claims to provide a comprehensive summary of the major areas in film studies, gives very little space to the discussion of audiences. Even in the section entitled 'Narrative and the Audience', the analysis of audiences remains abstract. It is concerned with the ways in which texts construct the position of the spectator, not with the ways in which actual audiences make sense of texts. Although it is briefly acknowledged that social factors may affect interpretation, and that, as a result, the position of the spectator constructed by the text might not coincide with the position of 'empirical Cultural studies and popular film 175 spectators' {actual social subjects), the implications of this observation are not drawn out. If social factors do affect interpretation, and if this does mean that the position of the spectator as constructed by the text does not necessarily coincide with that of 'empirical spectators', then one cannot simply deduce the ideological effect of a text from an analysis of its formal features. As a result, some sort of investigation into the social conditions of the audience is essential if one is to understand the meaning and significance of popular film. However, this kind of work has largely been conducted within the field of media and cultural studies, rather than film studies; and usually in relation to television and popular fiction, rather than film. None the less, the cultural studies approach can be applied to the analysis of popular film, and its strength is that it avoids the tendency either to celebrate or to condemn popular forms. It allows one to study how distinctions between popular film and more legitimate areas of cinema are produced andí reproduced, anď the ways in "which^ucírdis-" tinctions act to legitimate the tastes of dominant social groups. Furthermore, as the introduction suggested, many of the critics associated with cultural studies have questioned what is at stake in different definitions of 'the popular'. The emergence of cultural studies Cultural studies has emerged and developed over the past twenty-five years, most notably_in Britain.,^Australia,, the USA_and Canada. It emerged out ofa^dialogue'among different academic disciplines, most notably literature,^fiistöry *and sociology. Each of these disciplines offered different approaches to their area of study, and it was the ways in which cultural studies sought to bring these approaches together and relate them to one another which justified its claim to interdisciplinar-ity. This interdisciplinarity, coupled with the rapid expansion of work in the area, has made it difficult to define exactly what cultural studies is. Different institutions and practitioners seem to have very different ideas about what the area is or could be. But this difficulty in pinning cultural studies down also remains its greatest asset. It offers the possibility of developing different ways of analysising and understanding which can be applied to diverse areas of study. None the less, it is widely accepted that the roots of what was to become cultural studies lie in the work of three British writers: Richard 176 Andy Willis Hoggart, Raymond Williams jmdE.P. Thompson^ During „theJate_ 1950s and the l^ÖSj^th^e jn^t^^re^resjwm "meaning of the word culture. Instead of equating 'culture' with a 'canon' of great worksof art as many previous critics had done, these "^writers used it in a quite different sense. They tended to use culture in "itssocial or anthropological sense to refer to the institutions, activities^ and beliefs which define a social .group's particular way of life. It was__ TöFthis reason that Williams claimed that culture was 'ordinary'.3 He acknowledged that the word 'culture' had come to mean 'the outward and emphatically visible sign of a special kind of people, cultivated people',* but he argued there was another meaning. ForJWilliamsLcul- | turejyas^not the.property of social elites, but was also 'a particular way í of life, which expresses certain meanings and values not only úiľärt arid f learning but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour'. This emphä-siTon" ordinary behaviour was central and it opened up the possibility of taking the study of working-class or popular culture seriously. Hqggart's The Uses of Literacy made a valuable contribution to this proféčtľ^the~rtJiän using his literary training simply to analyse and " privilege official literary masterpieces, Hoggart turned his attention to working-class cultural forms such as pubs? working men's clubs, sports,^ popular songs, etc. In so doing, he sought to evoke the complex relations which distinguished this culture in order to portray it_as jajfuU_.. rich life'. Whereas earlier critics had opposed a cultured minority to an uncultured!'working-class majority, Hoggart's analysis demonstrated that the working class had a rich and complex cultural tradition of its J ^own.Hqwéy^ŕ, unlike Williams, he argued that this traditional working-class culture was being threatened and corrupted by a 'brash' and inauthentic mass culture. The working-class culture which he valued "wW*p7ěšented IS'aľltraäitionaf organic community, but one wriich was" already located in a past associated with his own nostalgic memories of "childhood. The popular music, television, fiction and film which wéreJ so important to the working-class culture of the 1950s and 1960s were therefore seen merely to corrupt and debase this earlier form of working class culture, and replace its richness and complexity with superficiality and artificiality. f Williams, on the other hand, became fascinated with these new media and the analysis of these forms was to become 'the central plank of the . new field of cultural studies'.6 Like Hoggart, Williams wanted to extend the analysis of culture beyond the realm of high culture to include the patterns of working-class life. But in his attempt to study 'the charac- I Cultural studies and popular film 177 teristic forms through which members of society communicate',7 he was willing to take the new systems of 'communications' seriously, rather than seeing them simply as a threat to 'authenticity'. Whatever the problems with Williams's analysis of communications, its strength was that it sought to acknowledge their importance in cultural life and to develop modes of analysis which were appropriate to them. Although this included an analysis of media institutions and modes of production, Williams' examination of the cultural industries rejected the assumptions associated with mass culture theory in which high cultural forms were privileged as if they were somehow free of specific institutions and modes of production. At this stage, however, Williams was still concerned to analyse 'the _ culture of a whole society', and it was this approach which E. P. ^Kompsori 'criticized in his review of Williams's The Long Revolution; ; ""'Thompson was both a historian and ä Máŕxľst,~änd as a Marxist hé took issue with Williams's definition of culture as 'a whole way of life'. For Thompson, culture was better described as ťa whole way of conflict'.8 He wanted to present culture as the product^ of struggles between different ways of life. Working-class culture was not simply different from "^rnlddle^lä^čurture, buT was a specific form of opposition to it. For " Thompson, working-class culture did not simply arise out of the shared í meanings and values of a particular class at a specific moment in history; it was central to the emergence of a class. It was the specific means by which its members assembled themselves as a class 'for itself and so resisted their exploitation by other classes.9 Jnjhjsjvay, Thompson was reacting against specific forms of Marxism - specifically Althusserian or structural Marxism - which main-jaineji that classes were simply defined by their relationship to the .. means of production. In contrast, Thompson argued that culture was essential to the formation of any class. Cultural concerns were not seconclary to class politics, but were the specific realin within which" resistance was articulated and practised. As ä result, he not only claimed maTwwEi^ culture, he also emphasized that issues of domination, resistance and contestation were" central to popular, forms. Because culturalists such as Hoggart celebrated working-class cultural production as an authentic expression of working-class interests™ tifieytended to becritical of mass cultural forms jauch as cinemä~whičh~~ they believed were imposed on the working-class^community from the~ outside. The importance of film as a popular form was either ignored 178 Andy Willis or seen as a sign of inauthenticity and superficiality. In this way, this work~orten repiraJučětTsome^^ 3fétyi|esj^ culture'theory. Nevertheless, it has also been pointed out that the cinema was an important institution in the working-class community, and cinema-going an important practice.10 Furthermore, it is possible to see a 'fit' between some films and working-class cultural values and practices. For example, as Chambers argues, Ealing comedies in the 1940s and 1950s emphasized 'the subaltern world and values of the street community, the pub, the Coronation cup, fading sepia photographs on the parlour mantelpiece, the virtues of working and sticking together'.11 However, as Chambers notes, this fails to exlain why, on the whole, British working-class audiences have tended to prefer American films. For early critics like Hoggart this could only be interpreted as a sign of the power of mass culture and the ways in which Americanization was 'unbending the springs of action' of the British working class. Alternatively, as Miles and Smith have suggested in their work on 1930s cinema, American films may have 'fitted* more closely with the values of a British working-class audience than British films. Hegemony, dialogue and taste By the 1970s, cultural studies was beginning to establish itself as a vital and important area within academic life, and, in this period, much of the work that helped shape it was associated with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham. Under the directorship of StuarTíTalíjIhe work of the Centre was still í clearly indebted to Hoggart, Williams and Thompson, but it was also / influenced by an,.altermrive^riieoretÍcal tradhwn,_French strucmralism. In fact, Hall has claimed that it was the tensions between culturalism and structuralism^jvhk^ studies.12 For example, while culturalists such as Hoggart, Williams and Thompson had emphasized the creativity of ordinary people in the production of their own culture, structuralism tended to stress determinism. Rather than seeing "culture" "äs the product of^ human activity, "structuralism tended to see human activity as the product of culture, 1 The impoffälíče"oF"structuralism to the Centre was that it offered a theory of ideology which was a necessary antidote to culturalism's overemphasis on the radicalism of working-class popular culture. Although structuralism may have overemphasized ideological domina- Cultural studies and popular film 179 tion and provided little real space for struggle, it did offer some explanation of how cultural reproduction was brought about: and "hovOfdí^ näry working people came to accept or even support thé'inequälíties of the existing social systém.However,~ cultural studies was far more critical of structuralism than was screen theory. (For an outline of this position, see chapter*" sixT) Äs Hall pointed out, structuralism had functionalist tendencies which made it almost impossible for those working within this theoretical framework to conceive of 'ideologies which are not, by definition, "dominant"', nor could it broach 'the concept of struggle' in anything but a gestural way.'3 Ultimately Hall argues that just as the weaknesses of culturalism were answered by structuralism, the weaknesses of structuralism were answered by culturalism. As he noted, culturalism 'insisted, correctly, on the affirmative moment of the development of conscious struggle and organization as a necessary element in the analysis of history, ideology and consciousness'.14 The Centre found a way of overcoming the tensions between cultur-alis^TaTía^^uctuHIišm'inthé'wOŕkof Aftto'niö'Grämsä, an Italian heo-"^ ""Mafxistľlíowever, the way out of the impasse between these two"" ™""p7evíôus"*positions also depended on,the.infiuenceof'the Russian lingua" VrNTVolosin^ and in a far less explicit way, the French cul- ""tüfäl analyst, Pierre Bourdieu. The importance of Gŕämsci's "work was that it enabled the Centre to address „the. issue of cultural domination without conceptualizing sub-'Ordiffate"groŤřpT!Ěs'mCT ceB" n^"c6h'cep'ťÔPHegemojiy'7(or leaderšH^^fere?an~ěxplanation of how certa'uTčläššés and social groups come to establish and maintain a post-tióíTof dominance over other classes and groups. Rather than simply ■"imposing its own will upon subordinate■ groups through the use of ide-^ ological or physical coercion, Gramsci argued that a class can only attain dominance by 'winning' the right to rule over others. It must present itself as the group which is best able to fulfil the interests and aspirations of other classes_or_social groups. As a result, he claimed that a ) "class or group can only achieve and maintain dominance over others if J it is able to gain the consent of other classes or groups by addressing j their interests and aspirations and making concessions to them.15 ^ ^However, Gramsci also stressedjhat hegemony is inherently unsta-_ bleľ'Dominant classes can never finally satisfy the demands of subordinate classes. The dominance ofbiie'a^ěmlš"On"thě Subordination of the ■"ôlfierľTorexample, aslvfarx had argued, the interests of the bourgeoisie äňcľtne proletariat are necessarily at odds with one another. The dom- 180 Andy Willis inance of the former depends upon its exploitation of the latter. A bourgeoisie cannot exist without a proletariat to exploit. As a result, there will always be challenges to dominant classes (so long as there coriťiň-" uei to be a dominant class) and such challenges will continually require the dominant class to reform itself in order to pacify and appease them. As Stuart Hall argues: Hegemony ... is not universal and 'given' to the continuing rule of a particular class. It has to be won, reproduced, sustained.JHegemony is, as Gramsci said, a 'moving equilibrium' containing relations oMorces TSvoürable and unfavourable to this or that tendency.'* Therefore, by using Gramsci's concept of hegemony the Centre was able to analyse culture in a way which was, in Raymond Williams' terms, 'historical* rather than 'epochal'.17 Rather than understanding 'capitalist' or 'patriarchal' culture as essentially fixed and unchanging systems, the 'turn to Gramsci' allowed the Centre to address the historical processes through which these systems changed and developed. For example, the work of the Centre demonstrated that while the political configuration generally referred to as 'Thatcherism' may have been an example of a capitalist culture, it was significantly different from -and even opposed to - the post-war welfare capitalism which preceded it. Through the concept of hegemony, the Centre was also able not only to acknowledge the interests and aspirations of different classes and social groups within a given society at a specific historical moment, it was also able to illustrate how these interests and aspirations were the | product of struggles between them. In this way, it offers a way out of the oppositions which had dominated the discussion of popular forms such as popular film. It enabled one to present an analysis of popular films which neither celebrated nor condemned them, but examined riovT they were produced in relation to the struggles between dominant and subordinate groups. In this way, as Tony Bennett has argued, the critical spirit of Gramsci's work, totally shunning the intolerable condescension of the mass culture critic while simultaneously avoiding any tendency towards a celebratory populism, both avoids and disqualifies the bipolar alternatives of structuralism and culturalism.18 As a result, popular film could no longer be seen as an ideological form which was simply imposed upon subordinate groups...Instead it was recognized that popular films have to address the interests and aspirations Cultural studies and popular film 181 of their target audiences, even if a particular film may seek to^contain... those interests and aspirations within specific terms. As a result, popular films will always attempt to resolve contradictory ideologies, rather than simply to promote a specific ideological position. Gramsci's work also offered a way of rethinking cultural politics so that 'foreign' influences need no longer be seen as a threat to national political struggles. Gramsci's 'project for a radical and political sense of culture did not exclude commercial or American-inspired forms'.19 This creates space to re-evaluate the relationship between British audiences and Hollywood cinema. If, as Gramsci suggests, national cultural traditions are often implicated in the maintenance of a cultural conservatism, then, as Chambers argues, 'foreign' influences might offer radical alternatives. Indeed, Hollywood might 'represent a more significant chal- [ lenge to a native cultural hegemony than more local forms of opposition based on more traditional affiliations'.20 For example, as Miles and Smith's work demonstrates, British working-class audiences in the 1930s responded to the morality and class-bound character of British cinema by voting with their feet. Rejecting British films as boring, these audiences found that Hollywood offered sexy and strong heroes and heroines in contrast to the puritanism of British cinema. Furthermore, Hollywood offered a vision of a vibrant society that was apparently classless, a world in which change seemed possible. In this way, although Hollywood cinema may not be more democratic than British cinema, it offered British audiences 'a more extensive and imaginative sense of the possible'.21 ^Volosinov's ^importance was that his work enabled the Centre to develop and apply this approach in terms of language and textuality, terms which were necessary for the analysis of literary, televisual or film texts. While structuralism had seen the meanings of signs as solely the product of their relations to other signs, Volpsinov argued that the meanings of signs were always in a process of change and development as different classes or groups struggled over these meanings. For example,.the word 'freedom' does hot simply gain its meaning from its relation to other signs, but is continually being fought over by different sections of society whose interests and aspirations lead them to define it in different ways. Similarly, words such as 'black' and 'queer* have been used to denigrate certain groups, but they have also been .appropriated by these groups and invested with alternative meanings and significance. As Volösihöv~ärgued, 182 Andy Willis Class does not coincide with the sign community, i.e. with the totality of 1 users of the same set of signs of ideological communication. Thus vari- | ous different classes will use one and the same language. As a result, dif- ij ferently oriented-accents intersect in every ideological sign. Sign becomes \\ an arena of the class-struggle." ' ......"""" v"" \^ , As a result,-the meanings^f_sjg^s^re^lway^c!hanging as they become 1 , the site of dialogue and debate between different classes and groups. 'Tjhisjwsition-w^älš^^ '" a language which pre-exists it, but reaccents that language. It is ^artjjf a proc(^~öf~diälögiTe~and"debate, and as such, each text is shaped "through" its response to other texts." Just lis'GfamščTš workärgifédThat the dominant group can only win the consent of subordinate groups by addressing their interests and aspirations, Volosinov's work suggested that any text must include alternative positions if it Is X§ ŕespónd^to""" "othěFťexts. This situation means that no text is ever purely radical or "^oměTvaťiver"Whatever its political ideology^ it "is" always produced withln^ndiuon^ ""it" mušt address "alternative ■ interests and aspirations if it is to present its own position as a solution _to them. For example, Philadelphia, the first mainstream Hollywood AIDS movie, attempts to portray a gay man with AIDS sympathetically and as a victim of prejudice and dicrimination rather than the disease. In order to achieve this, it has to engage with and answer other 'utterances' about gay men and AIDS. For example, the film counters the New Right's claims that both gays and AIDS are a threat to family values by continually locating the protagonist, Andrew Beckett, within a strong, supportive and caring family. The film engages with homophobia not only through the narrative, but by presenting the homophobic views of Beckett's attorney and showing how these views can be transformed. In this way, the film seeks to win support for its case that discrimination against gays is wrong. It achieves this both by engaging with, and attempting to displace, the homophobic views that underpin this discrimination and New Right definitions of 'family values'. Popular films must not only address the interests and aspirations of their target audience (even if they seek to counter or contain their political implications), they also take elements of other films reworking them in different ways and so giving them different political inflečtionš7~ THis latter process is particularly clear in the case of film genres where similar narrative patterns and figures are reworked with very different Cultural studies and popular film 183 political accents." For example, after the ways in which the film Rambo, became the object of violent criticism, action movies had to distance themselves carefully from associations with this film. For example, in Die Hard, the hero, John McClane (Bruce Willis), is taunted by the villain who accuses him of being 'an orphan of a bankrupt culture' and thinks he's 'Rambo'. McClane carefully deflects this association by choosing to identify himself with Roy Rogers, a self-effacing gesture which is able to distance his status as a male action hero from the negative associations of Rambo. In fact, even Sylvester Stallone has had to renegotiate his image in similar ways. In the film Tango and Cash, for example, not only does he carry a very small gun (one which is played off against the giant rocket-launcher which he carried on the poster for Rambo), but when one character associates him with the character of John Rambo, Stallone's character pointedly rejects the association." However, Volosinov's arguments about the multi-accentuality of the sign not only means that_there will be differences bet^én"popular ^texts, it also means that audiences can réspoříd totexts in different waysrif is here that the influence of Pierre Bourdieu is most pronoun^ 1:e^,~thóíígh^^ CentreľFor example, David Morley's. work on television audiences is "deeply dependent on Bourdiéu'š" study of cultural competences and dispositions, . .....' Bourdieu's analysis of cultural competences and dispositions was an attempt to explain how and why different classes and social groups consumed "different culturaľJongsjn different ways.25" AY'w^ln^ellľ-irtr>' "člwfptHTour, for Bourdieu, just as class differences are the product of differential access to economic capital, they are also produced through,/ the unequal distribution of cultural capital. It is the amount and type \ of cultural capital which is possessed by a class which produces speci- : fie competences and dispositions. Cultural competences refer to the;{ forms of skill and knowledge which enable one to make sense of certain \ types of material. For example, some groups may have the competence necessary for an understanding and appreciation of modernist art, but they may lack the competences necessary, to make sense of Martial Arts" movies. The differential distribution of cultural capital also means that different classes...and,socml„grou^ tain groups will be more disposed towards the consumption of avant-garde films and others will be more disposed towards the consumption of popular forms such as 'Carry On' films, action movies, or 'weepies'. 184 Andy Willis It is these dispositions which make people see certain types of film as 'for me' and other forms as 'not my sort of thing'. As a result, Bourdieu does not see these differences as the result of '; individual tastes, but as the product of the ways in which people are '[ socialized within specifi^cjasses,particularly thrbugh the agency of the ' llamily. While"we"may see our tastes as personal, natural and inherent ~ To" ourselves, Bourdieu argues that they are the product of wider (usually class-based) taste formations. (Bourdieu also suggests that the distribution of competences and dispositions is gendered, a point expanded upon in the work of critics such as Angela Partington and Ann Gray.)26 However, it is important to stress that Bourdieu is not simply arguing that subordinate sections of society are deprived of access to 'superior' forms of culture, quite the reverse. He is attempting to explain how and why different sections of society engage in different forms of cultural consumption, and the' wäyš'iň wKicH these^differences...... are both the product of certain power relations and can also help to reproduce and justify those relations. Not only do different sections of society have different forms of cultural consumption, but these different forms of consumption áre used to distinguish one group from another. For example, dominant groups often justify their dominance over others by reference to their 'superior' tastes, while subordinate v groups will often reject these supposedly 'superior' tastes as 'arty-farty'. í As Bourdieu puts it,J3qurgeoisjaste is usually; defined through its rějec-tion o^ a rejection of that rejection. As a result, taste formations are not simply produced out of the interests of a specific class or social group, but out of the struggles between classes and groups. Audiences, interpretations and the activities of cultural consumption As a result of the influence of Gramsci, Volosinov and Bourdieu, many of those associated with the-Centre argued m^^ňě"HhňW^Heduce"a particular ideological effect from an analysis of the formal features of a texTöiTgrÖüp of texts. Instead they stressed that different audiences make different responses on the basis of their specific cultural competences arid dispositions. Äs many critics from the Centre have pointed out, the problem with much work on popular culture is not only that it obscures differences between texts, but also that it tends to present the audience as a homogeneous and passive mass. However, members Cultural studies and popular film 185 of a film audience, for example, have a history which has constructed the^n^^örnfsubjects prior to .their .encounter with ä particular, filmy -— • and they will have attitade^nd„opmions^ whi^ have been^shaped^™' *"—-tilis"htstc^*As ^result, while a film might have a 'preferred reading' "whTč^Tseeksto elicit certain responses from its audience, real audiences are not compelled to respond in this way. Th^y_may_accepJ^^j^ni'!__ ideological .position, but^theyjmay. als_o_qualify or even reject tfiaLpůsi- tifilk__... „. ~.......-.......— For example, in his highly influential article 'Encoding/Decoding', Hafl outlines three categories of audience responses: 'dominant', 'negotiated' and 'oppositional' readings." The dominant reading, it is argued, uncritically accepts the text's 'preferred meaning'. (At this stage, it was still assumed that media texts necessarily presented dominant or hegemonic ideological positions.) People who produce the oppositional read-ing, Hail argues, challenge the positions presented by the text and| articulate their opposition to these positions. The negotiated reading,'; on the other hand, is claimed to be the most common, and, it is argued,' falls somewhere between the other two readings. While not always completely opposed to the dominant ideological positions present in the text, it does not simply accept them either. Negotiated readings may acknowledge contradictory evidence, which may be the product of the viewer's own experience, but define such evidence as merely an exception to the rule. For example, a viewer who has been harassed by a policeman may watch a news report which praises the police and denies that they harass people. In such a situation, he might accept the news report and believe that his own experience was simply the result of 'one bad apple'. Although the Centre acknowledged the importance of the audiences, t it did not reject textualanalysis."This is illustrated by David Morley \ and~Charlotte Bŕuhsdon'š íi^jw^X^^^-^hip^-Uli^SĚŠi^68 t0 li analyse the television ptop^w Nationwide. However, for Morley and I ^runsdon mis semiotic analysis^was not used to provide a definitive "" __reääíng^rí^ simply seen as 'a base line against which.differential readings might be'........* posed'!2* In other words, it was a first stage in a research process which wouiaTnclude an interrogation of the readings "which specific audience^, groupslnade of this text. This did not mean that Morley and Bruns-don thought that any text could be read in any way. On the contrary, ^theyläxgued^diat^texts did have preferred readings, but that the social history of audience members willaffect their interpretation of, and 186 Andy Willis responses_^jheje^j^ejr^^ Morley and Bruns- "cfon rejected the assumption within screen theory that the dominant ideology was guaranteed simply because a viewer watching a film was being 'positioned by the text'. Instead, they argued that it was also a responded to that position. As Morley puts it, domination is not, 'secured solely through 'the successful'positioning of the subject in the "' signifying process (the same signification or position is compatible with different ideological problematics; successful positioning in the chain of signification is not a guarantee of dominant decodings); but also because of the acceptance of what is said.'29 However, the different ways in which audiences interpret or decode a text are not just a result of whether they accept or reject a text's ideological position. As Morley argues, the relevance/irrelevance and comprehension/incomprehension of specific types of material must also be taken into account.50 In this way, the effect of a text is also related to / whether or not people choose to view these texts, and whether or not j they are able to make sense of them. For example, an avant-garde film will not have the effect which many film theorists identify as the pro-' duct of its formal features unless one is familiar with the theories and ; conventions of avant-garde cinema. But, in the same way, familiarity ' with the avant-garde will not equip one to make sense of popular : cinema. | This may also help to explain why people so often find the tastes of j others so incomprehensible. They literally do not comprehend what | others see in the texts which they choose to consume. This sense of incomprehension is also related to whether or not people view a film as relevant to them or not. If they do not believe that it 'speaks to them', they may not only refuse to see the film, but also be hostile in their interpretation of it if they do see it. This not only applies to people who may justifiably feel that art-house films are 'not for people like me', but also relates to issues such as genre. It has often been claimed that different genres appeal to different genders, and while such gendered divisions are never absolute, there are good reasons why women may tend to see war films as irrelevant to their lives, or men tend to see domestic dramas as irrelevant to them. In such a situation, even if the power relations involved in such divisions do not produce a hostile response, a film's irrelevance to the viewer will make it unlikely that its ideological concerns will have much purchase or impact upon the viewer. However, cultural studies has not simply been concerned with the Cultural studies and popular film 187 competences and dispositions of audiences. As Morley has pointed out, the social situation of tto^vicwe^jnayjüso,^^ pŕetäfion"Ín other ways. For example, he_feh_dissatisfied with The ^Nationwide' Audience h£ci\^fci had not been able to examine the dif- ^fétěnt" responses whichmigHt be madejjy the same people within the different comexEliflKe^workpiace and the EomeTÄs a result, by the TrfmT'he "published 'Tam^^élcvmon^^^^č^j^^Y^J^mlsĹ^ interest [had] shifted from the analysis of the patterns of differential tiřěá^mgs'r"of particular programme materials, to the analysis of the domestic viewing context itself - as the framework within which "read-ings"~ofprogrammes are (ordinarily) made.,'3.1. His point was that the V / * meaningof cultural ^consumption cannp^ ~3onor decodingof particular texts. For this reason he refers to Janice / \ Itadwaywlib has suggestedThat whether the genre ofromantic fiction""" is ideologically conservative, or. not, .the^actiyi^ "fiction is often JjformJofjrejastance through which women^are able^toj^x escape the demands_jrnade upon them in the domestic sphere. As__ Radway has argued, 'The significance of the act of reading itself might, ~~lmderlom^conHitions, contradict, undercut, or qualify the significance of producing a particular kind of story.'32 As a result, Morley has argued that one of the problems which film studies faces has been its tendency T:o"Torfcenťräté ön the 'object viewed' rather than the 'context of view- , ing'; the film rather &an^say,jhe 'picture pajace\ As he puts it, There is more to cinema-going than seeing films. There is going out at night and the sense of relaxation combined with the sense of fun and excitement. The very name 'picture palace', by which cinemas were known for a long time, captures an important part of that experience. Rather than selling individual films, cinema is best understood as having sold a habit, a certain type of socialized experience ... Any analysis of the film subject which does not take on board these issues of the context within which the film is consumed is, to my mind, insufficient. Unfortunately a great deal of film theory has operated without reference to these issues, given the effect of the literary tradition in prioritizing the status of the text itself abstracted from the viewing context.33 This point seems central given that films are now viewed in so many different contexts: at the cinema; on network television; via satellite or cable; and on video. The meaning of any of these different contexts may well be very different. However, Morley also suggests other ways of thinking about the context of consumption. People go to the cinema on dates, for a night out 188 Andy Willis with the gang, or to fill a free afternoon. Couples may watch a film together as a way of winding down before sleep. All these contexts have different meanings which will affect the viewer's decoding, but which is not determined by that decoding. The transition from The 'Nationwide' Audience to Family Television also marks another transition in the work associated with the Centre. Its initial work on the media had tended to concentrate on the sphere of..news^and/current affairs programmes, but by the 1980s there was a \ growing interest in popular fictional programming. This transition was rthe product of changing conceptions of politics within the period. In the early stage, news and current affairs programming were seen as > dealing with 'serious* political and ideological struggles. They were about government, labour disputes, and the policing of society. They also provided a useful way of examining the relationships between media institutions and the state. The influence of feminist work at the Centre helped to shift this focus. This work often refused the definition of the 'political' which limited politics to the public sphere, and in contrast it emphasized the political nature of the personal and domestic sphere. As a result, popular fictional programming was not seen as a distraction from 'real' politics but became a way of investigating the ways in which 'the contradictions of everyday life and popular experience' were worked through in relation tö popular media. These transitions were also related to a third transition. JDespite the importance of Gramsci during the 1970s, the Centre had still tended to assume that the popular texts produced by media industries such as broadcasting, publishing and the film industry necessarily reproduced the dominant ideology - even if they stressed that they must include oppositional elements and could be resisted or challenged by audiences. The influence of feminism in particular tended to-challenge this assumption. Instead of identifying media texts as an expression of the dominant ideology, later work from the Centre tended to reject this simple formulation. In fact, as Hall points out, there is no actual fixed content of popular culture. It is not a series of objects whose status is fixed and unchanging, but rather the manner in which objects are defined and consumed. For example, a text which in one historical period was seen as popular may later be redefined as an example of high art. The case of Shakespeare is often used here, but it also applies to many more recent texts. For example, the melodramas of Douglas Sirk were often dismissed by critics during the period in which they were produced. Cultural studies and popular film 189 They were seen as displaying the clichéd and formulaic features associated with popular film. But during the 1970s auteur critics and psychoanalytic feminists appropriated and virtually 'canonized' these texts. Instead of clichéd and formulaic examples of popular culture, they were redefined as subtle and radical films which took the supposedly conservative forms of popular melodrama, and through the stylistic techniques of irony and distanciation, subverted their ideological project. In this way, Sirk's films were no longer seen as sharing the formal features associated with a conservative popular culture, but as texts whose formal features established their difference and distinction from popular film." Indeed, a text may even have different readerships at the same moment. This is illustrated by the case of Psycho. Initially it was derided as a sick and degraded work of popular horror, but it was very quickly appropriated within film studies as a major work of great aesthetic significance. None the less, it has continued to occupy an important space within popular culture as is shown by the number of sequels, imitations and allusions to it which have been made over the years. It has therefore acquired contradictory and opposed meanings within culture. It has been seen by some as an exemplary instance of all that is right or wrong with popular film, but in much the same way as Sirk's films, it has also been seen as an example of film 'art' which is defined by its difference and distinction from popular film. Conclusion So the simple distinction between popular film and the avant-garde found in much writing on film becomes untenable. The meaning ärTd apolitical significance of texts are not simply inscribeä in their formal ^_ features, but: are defined through their appropriation or rejection by different groups. The distinction between/popularfilm and the avant-garde; is; not jimpjyji property of;mdividual texts or groups of texTsrlT^ i^rproduct ofthe cultural distinctions through which the^testes^ of cer- Taln^roups are rejected~anXm^^ __ re^I^3ěxts_.can,be^deployed andiedeployed in different ways. They -can.be. appropriated or rejected^but the same text may at different moments be identified as displaying the textual features of a radical avant-garde or a conservative popular culture. This critique of the distinction between a radical avant-garde and an ideologically conservative popular culture is important to the study of 190 Andy Willis popular film because film studies has been so dependent on this kind of distinction. In fact, as Bourdieu's work suggests, the distinction between the popular and the avant-garde is itself a product of economic and cultural power. The idea that popular culture is ideological and conservative is necessary so that dominant social groups can define their own tastes as 'superior' and so win authority over others. Notes: 1 David Morley, The 'Nationwide' Audience; London: British Film Institute, 1980. 2 Pam Cook, The Cinema Book, London: British Film Institute, 1985. 3 Raymond Williams, 'Culture is Ordinary* in Ann Gray and Jim McGuigan, eds, Studying Culture: An Introductory Reader, London: Edward Arnold, 1993, pp. 5-14. 4 'Culture is Ordinary', p^ 7. 5 Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958. 6 Stuart Laing, Representations of Working Class Life, 1959-64, London: Macmillan, 1986, p. 217. 7 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965, p. 58. 8 E. P. Thompson, '"The Long Revolution" Part ľ, New Left Review, nos. 9-10 (1961). 9 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Har--mondsworth: Penguin, 1963. 10 See Peter Miles and Malcolm Smith, Cinema, Literature and Society, London: Croom Helm, 1987. 11 Iain Chambers, Border Dialogues: Journeys in Postmodernity, London: Rout-ledge, 1990, p. 40-1. 12 Stuart Hall, 'Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms', in Richard Collins et ai, eds, Media, Culture and Society: A Reader, London: Sage, 1986, pp. 33^8. 13 'Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms', p. 45. 14 'Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms', p. 45. 15 See Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971. 16 Stuart Hall et al., Resistance through Rituals, London: Hutchinson, 1976. 17 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. 18 Tony Bennett, 'Introduction: Popular Culture and "the Turn to Gramsci'" in Tony Bennett et ai, Popular Culture and Social Relations, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986, p. xiii. 19 Border Dialogues, p. 44. 20 Border Dialogues, p. 44. Cultural studies and popular film 191 21 Border Dialogues, p. 42. 22 V. N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, (originally published 1929), Seminar Press, 1973, p. 23. 23 See, for example, Mark Jancovich, Horror, London: Batsford, Í992. 24 For discussions of masculinity in the action genre, see Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Movie, London: Routledge, 1993; and Andy Willis, Jean Claude Van Damme: A Study of Masculinity, the Male Body and Martial Arts Cinema, M.A. dissertation, Thames Valley University, 1994. 25 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London: Routledge, 1984. 26 Ann Gray, Video Playtime: The Gendering of a Communication Technology, London: Roudedge, 1992; and Angela Partington, 'Melodrama's Gendered Audience', in Ojf-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies, London: HarperCollins, 1991, pp. 49-68. 27 Stuart Hall, 'Encoding/Decoding', in Stuart Hall et al, eds, Culture, Media, Language, London: Unwin Hyman, 1980, pp. 128-38. 28 David Morley and Charlotte Brunsdon, Everyday Television: Nationwide, London: British Film Institute, 1978, p. v. 29 The 'Nationwide' Audience, p. 153. 30 David Morley, Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure, London: Comedia, 1986. 31 Family Television, p. 14. 32 Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, London: Verso, 1987, p. 210. 33 David Morley, Television, Audience and Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 157-8. 34 See Christine Gledhill, ed., Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Women's Film, London: British Film Institute, 1987-.