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Understanding Theology and
Popular Culture
Gordon Lynch
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005
Chapter 1 starts by asking the
question: What is popular culture? The answer is not straightforward, but lists
three ways in which popular culture has been defined:
·
over against high culture or the avant-garde. Popular
culture is then inferior to these elite forms of cultural expression.
·
over against folk culture. Popular (commercialised)
culture is then seen as threatening the traditional (romanticised) cultural ways
of old.
·
over against mass culture. Popular culture is then seen as
a creative response from below to the domesticating efforts at massification or resisting the dominant culture of the
dominant class.
All
these definitions do not satisfy. They contain too many preconceived value
judgements or do not do justice to the complexities of life. Gordon Lynch
proposes a definition that connects ‘popular culture’ with everyday life.
‘Popular culture’ then refers to the shared (human) environment in which groups
or subgroups of people live, the resources they have at their disposal and
their day-to-day practices. ‘Popular culture’ is about their real world, which
by and large coincides with contemporary society.
Chapter 2 asks the question: Why should
theologians and scholars of religion study popular culture?
Looking
at studies already undertaken four approaches emerge so far:
·
interest in what popular culture does to religion: how it
shapes religious beliefs and practices, and how it represents religion in its expressions.
·
interest in how popular culture may serve religious functions
in contemporary secular society characterised by a decline in church
allegiance.
·
interest in how religion may make good use of a better
understanding of popular culture in propagating its religious message. This is
called the missiological response to popular culture.
·
interest in using the texts and practices of popular culture
as material for theological reflection in a dialogical conversation.
Chapter 3 is entitled: Machines, TVs,
and shopping: the shape of everyday life in contemporary western society. It
examines two important areas of everyday life: the electronic media and
consumption or consumer culture.
1.
The advance of electronic
media can be compared with the coming of the machine age of mass production at
the beginning of the twentieth century. Both evoked celebration as well as
concern because of the impact they had and still have on everyday lives. The
chapter focuses in particular on changes in community or social relations
described in terms of three inter-related issues:
·
‘deterritorialization’, a changing
understanding of place as people no longer simply associate with, or are
informed by, their local community. The result may be weaker social bonds with
the local culture.
·
growing involvement in electronically mediated groups and
networks. Social contact is no longer bound by face-to-face interaction, which
may result in bonding of people who watch the same programmes or are part of
the same internet discussion boards.
·
growing role of electronic media in shaping people’s personal
identities and understanding of the wider world. This happens by means of the
symbols, images and stories from which audiences pick and choose their own
meanings in a process of negotiation.
2.
The twentieth century has seen
a growth in ways people can consume, from shopping at small neighbourhood
stores to going to large shopping centres or to ordering goods by electronic
means. The growth signifies the key role shopping and consumption play in contemporary
society. Theories
provide explanations about the cultural meaning of commodities
that goes beyond their simple practical purpose. They function in constructing
and communicating a person’s identity, lifestyle and status, actively
encouraged by advertising and brand promotion.
The
phenomena of consumer culture and electronic media are deeply interconnected.
Both function as part of the wider social and cultural system of global
capitalism. A downside of it is the inequality of income and the implications
it has for the identity and status of the consumer of meagre means. Social
justice is also involved in the outsourcing of production to parts of the world
where labour is cheap and employments rights are limited.
Chapter 4 asks the question: Can popular
culture be bad for your health? The answer discusses three types of criticism
levelled against popular culture:
·
popular culture allegedly dehumanizes or constrains those who
take part in it. The most important representative of this criticism is Theodore
Adorno of the Frankfurt School. He was highly
suspicious of the capitalist ‘culture industry’ which provides people with a
range of manufactured entertainments and distractions (substitute
gratification), but its ultimate goal is to generate profit rather than promote
human well-being. In fact, it impedes the development of autonomous individuals
who judge for themselves. The big words are: false consciousness,
pseudo-individualization and pacification. Adorno
even suggested that people can see through the manipulations of the culture
industry, yet struggle to escape its control.
·
electronic media, in particular television, is harmful in
itself. The name to be mentioned here is Neil Postman. He argues that written
texts tend to encourage a way of thinking about the world that encourages
rationality, objectivity and the logical ordering of ideas and arguments. On
the other hand, television has the effect of transforming any content that it
communicates into entertainment, even where it attempts to deal with serious
topics, such as politics (media image more important than ideas) or religion
(increasing pressure for media-friendly services). The fact is that television
is more effective, by means of its visual images, in generating an emotional
response than in eliciting serious analysis. This may lead not only to
superficiality but also to fatalism (things are as they are, not the product of
often complex human actions) and compassion fatigue.
·
content of popular culture presents damaging views of the world
or encourages unhealthy or immoral lifestyles. Much research has been done
about the link between violent media and violent behaviour with the
inconclusive result that individuals do not respond in common and predictable
ways. On the other hand, whilst violent media content is unlikely to promote
violent behaviour, the way of understanding the world that is offered through
the media (Muslims represented as aggressive fundamentalists or black men as
violent criminals) has more of an impact on audiences. Th
media perspective is easily absorbed unless contradicted by some other
experience of seeing things.
Chapter 5 develops a theological
approach to the study of popular culture. The kind of theology Gordon Lynch
stands for is normative, contextual and dynamic. Theology is not confined to a
descriptive history of theological ideas. Rather it tries to relate life, in
terms of what is true, good and just, to God as an absolute reference point. It
does so not in timeless ways as if from another world perspective but from the
contemporary context and experience of the particular theologian. Theology is
then an ongoing dynamic conversation between situational questions and the use
that is made of traditional theological resources in the search for answers.
Theological
questions about popular culture involve three types of inquiry:
·
ontological inquiry: about the true meaning of life, suffering, evil and
redemption;
·
ethical/liberationist inquiry: about just relationships between people,
about human well-being;
·
aesthetic/spiritual inquiry: about beauty,
pleasure and transcendence.
In
1951 Richard Niebuhr developed a classic summary of
different approaches to the theology of culture ranging all the way from
withdrawal to engagement, from a highly optimistic view about human culture to
a highly pessimistic one. Gordon Lynch himself is foremost interested in the
ways a dialogue between theological tradition and human culture might be
conducted. He chooses for a combination of different approaches: the so-called
revised correlational approach.complemented
by the praxis model. On the one hand, theology engages with themes of popular
culture and links or correlates them with similar themes of the theological
tradition. It does this in such a way (that is what is meant by the word
‘revised’) that a ‘two-way street’ type of conversation takes place. In the
process both theology and popular culture can learn from each other. On the
other hand, the conversation remains informed by a stand for liberation and
human well-being (praxis model) critiquing, if necessary, beliefs and practices
of popular culture as well as those of religion.
Chapter 6 is entitled “An
author-focused approach to studying popular culture: Eminem
and the redemption of violence. Popular culture needs to be taken seriously and
be understood on its own terms. One of the ways of studying popular culture is
that of the author-focused approach as distinguished from the text-based
approach and the audience-reception approach. The emphasis is on the role of
the author in shaping the meaning of a cultural text of other form of cultural
expression. Four types of questions are suggested:
·
contextual/cultural questions: e.g. what is the
author’s social and cultural background and how does this influence the style
and content of his or her creative work?
·
questions of authorial intent: what do we know about the
author’s own views about his or her choice of genre, about the meaning of a
particular piece of creative work?
·
questions relating to the author’s wider body of work: how does
one particular piece work relate to other work done by the same author? What
significance can be attached to similarities and differences?
·
psychological/psychoanalytic questions: what can re
reconstruct about the author’s psychological history and how is it related to
his or her creative output?
The
author-focused approach is then applied to the white rapper Eminem
describing what is known about his childhood years and making his biography the
starting point for reflecting on his lyrics, relating the abuse he suffered as
a youth and young adult to the violence, notable against women, in the texts he
produced. Eminem himself ascribes a therapeutic
function to his performances, it makes him getting
things off his chest. Gordon Lynch relates this to redemption, but at the same
time questions the narcissisistic disregard of
feelings of other people named in his text. Perhaps it is too much to talk
about redemption, survival like Hagar in the desert might be more appropriate,
at least at the present stage of his personal development. Gordon Lynch is also
aware that redemption is not just a personal matter but part of a larger
process involving society as a whole.
Chapter 7 discusses text-based
approaches to the study of popular culture and applies this method to one episode
of the Simpsons “Homer the Heretic”. The first
text-based approach is that of semiotics connected with Roland Barthes. He maintains that texts or other cultural forms of
expression speak for themselves by the way the different and contrasting
elements they are composed of
are ordered, generating meaning in the process. He rejects
speculating about the mind of the author and let the creative expressions make
sense themselves, claiming that authors are often not the best interpreters of
their work. Text-based approaches are moreover the only way to study creative products that have an unknown author or that is the
result of a cooperative effort. Gordon Lynch focuses on just two concepts of
semiotic analysis:
·
difference: the meaning of a word or sign is determined by the relations
(binary oppositions) it has to other words/signs within the larger system of
language;
·
metonymy: the process in which a part (e.g. an image of two
parents and two children) serves as a symbolic representation of the whole (all
that concerns family life).
Another
text-based approach is that of narratology which
tries to identify the different elements of a narrative or story. Lynch
discusses:
·
fabula or main events: the situations and actions presented
in the story;
·
sujet or plot-line: giving the events their particular
meaning or inflection;
·
narration: the way the story is told, in the first or third person, as
happenings unfold or with hindsight;
·
characters: agents who act or are acted upon and unfold the plot through
their interactions;
·
characterization: characters are not presented in neutral or
objective ways but in function of the story.
A
third text-based approach is the discourse analysis of Michel Foucault. By
“discourse” Foucault refers to the way in which language constructs our
understanding of reality. Human knowledge is not primarily created through the
inner working of the private, individual mind, but through social interaction
of individuals, groups and institutions mediated by language. The result is
discourses of several kinds. In contemporary society, for example, we can
identify several discourses of health-care e.g. based on medical science or on
alternative health-care practices such as faith healing. These discourses are
more than health practices, they refer to different world views altogether.
This makes the concept of discourse an important one for the study of popular
culture, in which different discourses operate and challenge one another.
All
the analytical tools discussed in this chapter are being used to analyse“Homer the herectic”, an
episode of the Simpsons, in which Homer decides not
to go to church anymore but to have a good time instead. He succeeds very well.
A variety of people tries to persuade him to come back to church, but they are
unsuccessful. One Sunday morning Homer accidentally sets his house on fire. He
is saved by his church-going neighbour and this makes him go back to church
again, but while in church he drops off and sleeps his way through the service.
In
semiotic terms, the meaning of the narrative is established through the system
of similarities and differences between the characters in the story, whereby
the characters serve as metonyms representing religious convictions of wider
communities in American society. The subsequent theological reflection does not
confine itself to the strengths and weaknesses of these particular convictions
but delves deeper and detects a common discourse of how religion functions in
American society (the so-called civil religion) underlying all these
convictions.
Chapter 8 is entitled: An ethnographic
approach to studying popular culture: the religious significance of club
culture. Chapter 6 studied the author-focused approach and Chapter 7 the
text-based approach. To complete the triangle of communication (author -
creative product - audience) chapter 8 discusses a method for gauging the
reception of popular culture by the people that have come in contact with it.
This method is of an ethnographic nature, meaning to say a qualitative approach
that makes use of participant observation and takes notes of conversations with
people, including more or less formal interviews. The method requires a refexive attitude on the side of the ethnographer who is
aware of his personal involvement in the interactions that are going on.
Gordon
Lynch used this ethnographic method personally when he studied the significance
of British club culture with a particular interest in its religious functions, whether drug
induced or not. What he finds is that club culture lacks ethnic diversity, his sample of 37 participants was all white. It
became clear, furthermore, that the community aspect of clubbing was very
important for the participants. They commonly talked about the clubs as
extended families of communities of friends. Some acknowledged that the warmth
of the clubbing community was an effect of being “loved up”on
Ecstacy. Still, it lead to
form deeper and more intimate relationships with other people, not known
before.
Clubbing
can also be described as a therapeutic discourse. The tolerant ethos of the
club nights provided a space in which people were allowed to be themselves and
to become more confident.
It
made them more “well-rounded” as persons.
The
participants did not explicitly think about their club experiences in terms of
“religious” or “spiritual”. Gordon Lynch used questions based on William James:
“When clubbing/dancing, have you ever had particular experiences?
·
that you find hard to put into words:
·
that felt meaningful to you, or that influenced how you feel about the
rest of your life;
·
that may have lasted for only a short period of time;
·
in which you felt passive, or caught up in something?”
In
answer to these questions participants told stories of intense bliss but
without any sense of a spiritual source either within or beyond themselves. It
made Gordon Lynch wonder whether the sense of the absolute is absent in their
lives or that they simply lack a discourse of transcendence (Schleiermacher) to describe their experiences in a spiritual
way.
The
final Chapter 9 takes steps towards
a theological aesthetics of popular culture. Aesthetics has to do with
evaluative judgements: is this better than that, is this beautiful or not, is
it well-designed or skillfully performed, is it morally
and spiritually uplifting or just a waste of time? These are questions often
asked in everyday life. They are good questions to pose to popular culture as
well, even though in academic circles they have often been neglected. Still,
they have to do with the experiences popular culture has on the lives of people
and these experiences matter. From this pragmatist principle Gordon Lynch lists
tentatively nine criteria to help form aesthetic judgements of examples of
popular culture:
1.
Is the popular cultural text
or practice an admirable symbol of human achievement by its demonstrated skill
or competence of performance?
2.
Does it exemplify originality,
imagination or creativity?
3.
Does it offer a satisfying
reflection of human experience, and/or provide a means for empathizing with a
range of different experiences?
4.
Does it offer a valuable
vision of the meaning of our lives? Does it have a particular “moral”?
5.
Does it provide us with
genuinely pleasurable experiences, whether emotional, sensual, or intellectual?
6.
Does it encourage constructive
relationships between people or make certain useful and enjoyable forms of
social interaction possible?
7.
Does it make possible a sense
of encounter with “God,” the transcendent, or the numinous?
8.
Does it successfully serve the
functions for which it has been created? Does it work effectively?
9.
Is it authentic, a genuine
expression of a person’s physical, technical, and emotional capabilities?
The
criteria provide a broad outline of what it means to be fully human. Moreover
they invite further discussion about what it means to live each of these
different elements in truthful, good, authentic and fulfilling ways in relation
to the absolute reference point in life.