Notes
on: Bennett, T. (1980) 'Popular Culture:
a "Teaching Object"'. Screen
Education 34:17-30
Dave Harris
There are problems of teaching the concepts of
culture and ideology, and this article arises from
the experience of trying to develop a course on
popular culture [the legendary U203 Popular
Culture]. It was an Open University
(OU) course, featuring all the specifics and
constraints of the OU context. It was
designed to discuss popular culture and its
opposites, leading to problems with definitions,
including which opposite was to be developed in
particular. For example one old opposition
was to the notion of high culture, but the team
felt that this had 'all but collapsed' (19).
Nor had popular culture achieved any stability is
a theoretical object. It remained a teaching
object, shaped by strategic possibilities.
In the OU context, U courses were designed
specifically to encourage interdisciplinarity and
to be accessible and of interest to students from
a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds. [They
also did not need to be located in conventional
Faculties -- S.Hall had faced much scepticism and
lack of cooperation from Sociology and English
when establishing CCCS] They were designed
to 'widen [student] horizons… through the
juxtaposition of complementary disciplinary
perspectives or… more radically… to question
the way in which discipline boundaries are
conventionally constructed' (19). The actual
title for U203 was intended to pull together
different staff [ the select few of like-minded
people,including quite a few CCCS graduates --must
have helped cohesion. However, the historians
never really belonged and Bennett as Chair had to
tell them off in the course materials themselves
-- see my 1992 book] , producing a 'relatively
pragmatic' title before detailed sorts of content
and strategy were developed [a footnote describes
the 'coursework bidding' system at the OU, where
proposals were approved in principle by University
committees before resources were released
(20). The precise field the course was to
address was defined by outside speakers as well,
including R Williams, Eagleton, Stedman-Jones, R.
Johnson and S Hall [ the old New Left lot].
The course was always 'the product of collective
work' [with a bit of judicious policing from
Bennett] (20).
Several pedagogic options were available, linked
to the several meanings of the term popular
culture. The broadest meaning would not
define the field narrowly enough and tend to
produce a mass of a 'sociologies' or 'histories'
of [sport, cinema and so on] rather than
developing the notion of a system of cultural and
ideological relations. The term mass culture
was 'pejorative', the notion of a popular radical
culture was too oppositional and too romantic [too
'culturalist' too I bet], and also tended to
reifiy the opposite pole, leaving the team unable
to problematize the polarization [ defend it in
gramscian terms]. Any simple classification
like this ignores 'relationships, processes and
transactions'.
[Interesting, but so far almost nothing on actual
pedagogy, more on the pragmatics of course
design—typical OU perspective].
Rethinking these conventional oppositions led to
the idea of culture as moments 'placed' in
superstructures through the process of hegemony
[taken for granted organizing concept from the
very beginning, already showing the convenient
alliance between theoretical tidiness, political
commitment, and the problems of defining things
nicely in academic contexts]. The process
was to be understood historically. There was
a focus on space or site rather than
content. Hegemony was taken to be as
[widespread if not universal] struggle, and the
team were led to Gramsci through Mouffe [surely
disingenuous] . Hegemony was seen as
enabling articulations. [Classic academicism
here—the aim was to get a 'coherent "teaching
object" capable of sustaining a theoretically
productive teaching strategy' (28). The only
practical problem seems to have been one of
limiting the field].
Conventional definitions were seen as slicing into
this overall terrain, producing abstracted
enclaves—film studies, studies of working class
culture, for example. A dilemma did arise,
when thinking of a possible student audience: the
question of the
real effects produced by a text can only be
ascertained conjuncturally, by examining the
relationship between text and reader/viewer as
aligned by an overall system of cultural and
ideological relationships in which both are
inscribed. But if this is so… The
study of texts should proceed through a prior
elucidation of such relationships rather
than… as an afterword. In the absence of
such a reorientation… such problems are
recognized only to be endlessly deferred, pushed
into an ever - receiving future for someone else
to deal with'(29).
[Please note there is one study of the
actual responses from the actual audiences
struggling to grasp U203: Miller, R.(1994) '"A
Moment of Profound Danger"; British Cultural
Studies Away From the Centre'. Cultural
Studies 8(3) 416--37. This article cites me
a lot {!!}
Miller notes that Bennett wrote a
publicity piece attempting to 'make U203
sound fun and attractive {popular you might say}
,while letting on that it will also involve
serious work' (424). U203 was evaluated as
usual by OU surveys and self-report forms {pretty
flimsy and empiricist}. As you might expect,
results were rather negative. Students were
soon 'registering their surprise and dismay at
its content and approach' (427). Some referred
to 'brainwashing', others to a 'patronizing
faintly disapproving almost puritanical
attitude'. Miller tells us that 'only
36% of those students who completed the course
found its content similar to what they
expected...a full 86% of those polled found the
course,in general, more difficult than they had
anticipated...69% of those who completed had
either a negative of neutral response to its
approach, and 45% recorded a negative or neutral
approach to its content' (425). Miller knows that evaluations
like this are ambiguous, and might even
vindicate the team's view of the ideological
depth of popular culture. However, apparently
some academic reviewers also noticed the
selectivity in the approach and the dubious
pedagogical tone. Sean Cubitt, a fan, writing
after the course was closed, 'felt compelled to
mention the "highly structured if at times
patronizing, way in which the materials are
presented"' (426)
Miller says that the team had never really been
that interested in popular culture for its own
sake. S Hall argued that popular culture was
an area of political contestation and struggle,
and otherwise '"I don't give a damn about it"'.
Miller says : 'One cannot help but wonder what
would have happened if this sentiment had been
openly expressed in Bennett's article advertising
the course' {well-we know -- low recruitment}.
Overall, it is likely that 'the pedagogical
strategy used to introduce Gramsci's notion of
hegemony has failed...a situation has been
produced that doesn't allow the students to do
work that either they or their teachers would be
likely to value' (427).
Miller also notes the disagreements among the
course team about Gramsci which surfaced in the
course materials. He detects Bennett changing his
definition of hegemony to meet the various
criticisms. Again students were just left to deal
with these ambiguities and debates, especially as
assessment demanded the usual stance of
'reiterating the information proffered in each
individual block { of material}, a point made
again in student feedback]
More social theory
More educational
studies
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