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Sep. 27th, 2007 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI read a whole chapter of the book for the Cultural Theory class.
With a highlighter even.
... okay, so now most of it is bright yellow, but I'm getting back into the swing here.
I feel all busy and accomplished :-)
11 pages. Defining 'popular culture'. Because first you have to define culture, and popular. And then you put the definitions together in assorted combinations and end up with dozens of things they can mean. And each of them has it's very own argument aka theory.
Fun!
... er, the fact I can find this fun suggests I'm studying the right area...
And then the different definitions / theories tend to study slightly different things. Like there was a section where I was all *eyebrows raised / forehead wrinkle* until it said it was used mostly to study pop & rock music and then I was like *lightbulb* because it made more sense that way.
Apparently one of the more common distinctions is between texts and practices.
If you do that to fandom you end up with halves that don't really make sense, yesno?
I mean you could study conventions and communities without studying the texts that inspired them, but... missing a lot?
And you can study the source texts on their own, but then you maybe not see what people do with them and miss half the fun.
I don't know. I guess it's harder to use the same tools to analyse a convention and a poem.
And analysing girls in chainmail as some kind of symbol could miss the more obvious thing where everyone stares and they grin. Although that's part of their symbol value too.
And if you try and analyse convention dancing with the kind of tools usually applied to plays and stuff you get some interesting ideas out.
... well, interesting-for-two-in-the-morning ideas anyways.
(It's about how we all do the same things at the same time, and then the music changes and we do different things, and it's all con dances.)
(it was really profound insight on asunday night technically-monday-morning.)
Okay, done with studying for the night. I watch TV and go to bed. Well, watch DVD actually, TV is rarely interesting. And when it is I'm usually reading a book and forget.
With a highlighter even.
... okay, so now most of it is bright yellow, but I'm getting back into the swing here.
I feel all busy and accomplished :-)
11 pages. Defining 'popular culture'. Because first you have to define culture, and popular. And then you put the definitions together in assorted combinations and end up with dozens of things they can mean. And each of them has it's very own argument aka theory.
Fun!
... er, the fact I can find this fun suggests I'm studying the right area...
And then the different definitions / theories tend to study slightly different things. Like there was a section where I was all *eyebrows raised / forehead wrinkle* until it said it was used mostly to study pop & rock music and then I was like *lightbulb* because it made more sense that way.
Apparently one of the more common distinctions is between texts and practices.
If you do that to fandom you end up with halves that don't really make sense, yesno?
I mean you could study conventions and communities without studying the texts that inspired them, but... missing a lot?
And you can study the source texts on their own, but then you maybe not see what people do with them and miss half the fun.
I don't know. I guess it's harder to use the same tools to analyse a convention and a poem.
And analysing girls in chainmail as some kind of symbol could miss the more obvious thing where everyone stares and they grin. Although that's part of their symbol value too.
And if you try and analyse convention dancing with the kind of tools usually applied to plays and stuff you get some interesting ideas out.
... well, interesting-for-two-in-the-morning ideas anyways.
(It's about how we all do the same things at the same time, and then the music changes and we do different things, and it's all con dances.)
(it was really profound insight on a
Okay, done with studying for the night. I watch TV and go to bed. Well, watch DVD actually, TV is rarely interesting. And when it is I'm usually reading a book and forget.