Cultural Studies, Ethnography (Discussion)

Basic principles

1. Group 4: Explain the original concept of ideology and how Marx connected it to social classes.
2. Group 1: Explain Antonio Gramsci's (pronounced "GRAM-chee") concept of hegemony. Provide an example of hegemony in action.
3. Group 2: Explain what the television apparatus is and Stuart Hall's theory of media encoding.
4. Group 3: Explain Stuart Hall's theory of media decoding.
5. All Groups: Explain John Fiske's idea of discourse. Using The Beverly Hillbillies episode we viewed for specifics: How would you describe the "hillbilly" discourse and how it conflicts with the "Beverly Hills" discourse?

Group 4

1. Perform a dominant-hegemonic decoding of My So-Called Life. What would be the result of your reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
2. How could your reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another?

Group 2

1. Perform a oppositional decoding of My So-Called Life. What would be the result of your reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
2. How could your reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another?

Group 1

1. Perform a negotiated decoding of My So-Called Life. What would be the result of your reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
2. How could your reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another?

Group 3

1. What do you feel is the preferred reading of this episode? What is the preferred reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)? ("Hall and others often presume that the preferred reading encoded on the text by the television apparatus will be from the dominant position," but in this case it probably is not.)

Bibliography

1. Butler, Jeremy G. Television: Critical Methods and Applications. Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.
2. Robert C. Allen, Channels of Discourse, Reassembled, second edition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).

External links

• Chapter 13 illustrations