SWA #2

The most amazing aspect of “The Lady or the Tiger” to me was not the admittedly eccentric origins of the food which sustains us until lunch. I was simply astounded about the fact that I had been watching these cereal commercials for years without noticing the degree to which they condone crazy and even criminal behavior. The most prevalent behavior condoned is theft (Trix Rabbit, Cookie Crunch mascot, children stealing Lucky Charms from the leprechaun, and perhaps the king of cereal thieves Barney Rubble himself). I found myself imagining where the limit on this sort of approval of criminality would go. Will the next commercial feature the cereal (replacing serial) killer Captain Crunch slitting Tony the Tiger’s throat in an effort to demonstrate how much better the Captain’s cereal is? Perhaps the next commercial can feature some children cooking up some meth and withholding their drug from the Cocoa Puffs mascot (who is clearly ingesting more than a chocolate cereal).

The purpose of the reading was not cereal icons. Cereal icons were merely a way of defining what cool is. Why is it that any action, in the world of cereal cartoons, is justifiable in the pursuit of “cool?” The actions of the cereal mascots (thievery, social humiliation, racism, a complete lack of empathy and compassion) are glorified. Perhaps one reason no one raises an eyebrow is the fact that all of these actions are fake seeing as the characters performing the deplorable acts are cartoons. In my mind the fact that these characters are being designed to appeal to children in this fashion is almost as grotesque as the acts themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I am not some sort of moral crusader who dumbly believes that television is evil. My concern is I do not enjoy the idea of a society whose members are subconsciously haunted by the ideal of something as intangible as “cool.” If my choices are being cool by mimicking some of the behavior demonstrated by the cereal icons and being ostracized. I prefer my solitude.

Summary of Ferdinand de Saussure’s, Chapter 3 of Course in General Linguistics

The key concept of this reading is the description of what semiology is. Semiology is nothing more than a different way to think about language. Since language is so natural and common, most people pay no attention to how language works. The central function of language is communication and Saussure defines the method of communication as a sign. A sign is composed of two things; a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the word used to reference a concept or a thing and the signified is the actual concept or image that appears in the brain. For example, what happens when a person reads the word “funny”? One reader may think of a humorous joke (insert stereotypical blonde joke here) and yet another person may conjure an image of classic hilarity such as a Roadrunner cartoon. The word “funny” is a signifier because when a person encounters a word they consciously or subconsciously have a concept of what that word is and what the word means in their minds (signified). Even though the signified concept may vary from person to person they still refer to the word “funny”. Signifiers and the signified are meaningless without one another. What would be the purpose of having a word for something while having no conceptual understanding of what the thing is or what would be the point of having a concept of a thing in mind if there is no formal signifier to communicate that concept to another person?
It may seem trivial at first but there is a reason to think about language in this way. Having a conscious method of describing language gives every person the ability to better understand the world around them and it also gives social creatures the ability to readily and intelligibly communicate with one another. Saussure’s primary goal in redefining language as a system of signs was to get past the linguistic definitions of how language works so that people could focus more on the why’s of language. Linguistics had before Saussure focused on specific aspects of specific languages rather than analyzing language as a whole. Semiology is simply Saussure’s method of helping the linguistic community move past traditional linguistics in an effort to gain a better educational understanding of what language is.

Summary of John Storey’s, What is popular culture?

The central purpose of this reading is to create an understanding in the reader of just how difficult it is to define a term such as popular culture. The trouble with defining such a broad phrase as popular culture lies in the fact that the definition of popular culture is dependent upon the context the phrase is used in. The word popular culture can have multiple meanings to scores of different people within the same language and people of different languages and countries may have a completely different definition. Storey presents six plausible and broad definitions of what popular culture may be. Within each definition there are characteristics of the definition outlined that describe why each definition is not perfect. The first definition is quantitative in that it defines popular culture as the culture which is wide spread and populous. The second definition defines popular culture as the “residual category” that all culture not defined as high culture is placed into. The first and second definitions do not have a definitive political connotation but the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth definitions certainly do. The third definition of popular culture declares all popular culture is merely a commercial product of companies and is distributed to the people in a capitalist fashion. The fourth definition is the opposite of the third in that it defines popular culture as being derived from the people and then transferred to commercial companies. The fifth definition is a combination of the third and fourth definitions because it takes the stance that the materials for creating popular culture are given to the people through commercial companies and the people then create popular culture with the building blocks they are given. The sixth and final definition given says there is no distinction between high and popular culture and that all such past definitions are all part of a postmodern culture. The chapter concludes with a very broad definition of popular culture as the culture that emerged after the Industrial Revolution as a result of social conflicts between different social classes. There are surely more than six possible definitions of popular culture but Storey uses these six as a way to demonstrate how any one definition is faulty in some way. Storey shows that the definitions are faulty in an effort to show the reader just how difficult it is to define popular culture.

Summary of “Culture” by Raymond Williams

The main idea of “Culture” is to provide a history of and the evolution of the word culture and other derivatives of that word. The history of the word culture is meant to give the reader a greater understanding of the present day definitions of culture by illuminating the changes to the original definition of the word that have occurred slowly over time. It is impossible to try to assign a single date to any one change of a word. The meaning of words evolves slowly over time as different people use the word differently and that different meaning slowly spreads through various social circles. Williams uses various historical sources to show how the usage of the word culture has changed. At its origin, the word culture referred to the physical act of encouraging something to grow (such as crops) or caring for the well being of live stock. As time passed, culture came to take on a more metaphorical meaning in relation to the mental development of an individual human or to the development of humans as a group (civilization). Through a long period of time, culture had its meaning changed from the idea of physical husbandry of any living thing to the much more specific development of an individual man. This change occurred through the use of the word by various English people and their writings. These changes of the meaning of culture throughout history lead to the three present day definitions of the word culture as given by Williams in his text. His definitions are paraphrased as follows; the noun discussing the process of various types of development (physical and spiritual for example), the noun that describes the way of life of different groups of people, and finally the noun that discusses the development of art such as music and literature. Different ethnic groups tend to use one definition of culture more heavily than some of the other definitions. In conclusion, the definition of culture has slowly evolved from a simple physical definition to a much more complex and specific developmental definition of human behavior.