The Ideological Weight of Popular Culture Artifacts: The Walking Dead, Batman, Professional Wrestling, and Neoliberal Education Reforms

• In Event: 33.052 - New Materialist Education 1: Cultural Studies and the Power of Things

Abstract

This paper seeks to (re)consider Stuart Hall’s notion of articulation (Grossberg, 1996), as it relates to popular culture, in a way that embraces Barad’s (Barad, 2007) concept of “agential realism”. It contends that such a (re)consdideration contests “the Cartesian (inherent, fixed, unambiguous) subject-object distinction in a way that undermines the very foundations of classical epistemology and ontology” (Barad, 2007, p. 125). As Fiske (1989) discusses, popular culture is unique because it “is made by subordinated peoples in their own interests out of resources that also, contradictorily, serve the economic interests of the dominant” (p. 2). This seeming contradiction is infused into popular culture artifacts themselves where both the dominant hegemonic structure that produces it and the various readings by its consumers result in a an ideological weight that makes them ideal for the metaphor offered by Stuart Hall (Grossberg, 1996) of the articulated truck where the cab and trailer of a semi-truck can, but do not need to be, connected. Articulation allows ideological elements to come together in academic examination dependent of the specifics of the subjects that they seem to effect. In this sense, popular culture should be chosen because of, not in spite of, their situated position within society. Ultimately, this type of analysis takes Grossberg’s (2010) lead when he says

Instead of the disjunctive (either ... or ...) rhetoric of the modern academy, cultural studies adopts a conjunctive rhetoric, "yes (that is true), but so is ... (and so is ... and so is ... )," a logic of "yes and ... and ... and," where each additional clause transforms the meanings and effects of all the previous ones. (p. 17)
Using the examples of The Walking Dead (Darabont, 2010), the most recent Batman trilogy (Nolan, Goyer, & Nolan, 2012), and professional wrestling, this paper seeks to embrace Barad’s (2007) contention that the tools of measurement and analysis affect the very objects they seek to examine by demonstrating how popular culture artifacts can bring understanding to neoliberal education reform through articulation. In other words, by examining the specific connection between a popular cultural artifact (and simultaneously the artifact itself) and neoliberal education reform (or any other ideological piece) one can gain greater understanding. Additionally, popular cultural artifacts represent an opportunity to reject the epistemology and ontology dichotomy by not only discussing what such artifacts mean, but what they do. In the end, it is not simply enough to focus on how these artifacts are read, but the affect they create in the readers themselves. Such a focus on the episte-ontological and affect can carry over into the analysis of the ideological element with which the popular artifact is articulated. This type of analysis aligns with Coole and Frost’s (2010) thoughts about “New Materialisms” and is in the sprit of Kellner’s (2002) call for a “multiperspectival” analytic mode that examines cultural artifacts in relation to political economy, their textual meaning, and audience reception.

Author

• Gabriel Stephen Huddleston, Texas Christian University