Cultural Theory and Popular Culture and introduction 4th
by John Storey
After reading Cultural Theory and
Popular Culture and introduction 4th Edition by John Storey, I
found it particular deep but interesting to
discuss about his hegemony theory. The cultural concept of the hegemony theory is
introduced by the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci defined “hegemony”
as a process of negotiation when two parties or cultural groups collide. In
other words, hegemony is the result of resistance and incorporation between
dominant and subordinate groups. Therefore, the hegemony theory pictures a
society in which subordinate groups actively subscribe the values that
incorporate them to the prevailing structures of the dominant group, and the
people that appear as “dominant groups” are those who function as intellectuals
in the society. Moreover, the dominant group does not “rule” the rest of the
society, but rather, these intellectuals have reached a high degree of
consensus with the subordinate groups. Therefore, the dominant group “leads” the
society through moral and intellectual leadership. To make a further and deeper
discussion of the concept of hegemony, I can think of three typical examples
related to hegemony.
The first example is the dominance and
widespread of American culture and the popularity of McDonalds’ can be seen as
a typical example of hegemony. To begin with, though McDonalds appears as an
international corporation founded in different countries, in each country,
there exists a variety of differences when it comes to the food served in the
menus. For example, McRice burger, a ground beef burger, or chicken fillet,
served with special sauce in fried rice cakes, can be ordered in the Taiwanese
McDonalds’ menu. Beer is offered in
McDonalds’ in Germany, France, and a few other locations across Europe. Another
example is the McTurco sold in Turkey, which is 2 burger patties covered in
cayenne pepper sauce, and vegetables, and served on a fried pita. From all of
these examples, one can see the widespread of McDonalds’ as a symbol of
dominant American culture and the different “local specialties” that appear in
the menus as subculture groups. It is a process of struggle and negotiation
that brings the two together, and such equilibrium creates a variety of
“localized food” served in the menus of McDonalds’ in different countries.
The second example associated with the
hegemony theory is another evidence of the successful dominance of American
culture, that is, when mentioning about the American film industry. It is
evident that American values are diffused worldwide through the film industry, and
there are several main reasons that the American film industry has the ability to
become a “hegemon”. In terms of ability,
one cannot deny that “the Hollywood system” has become a standard for the
global motion picture industry because the United States has a solid global
network, abundant production resources, such as prominent producers, actors and
studios. Furthermore, ever since the
early 20th century, the United States has had a great interest in
exporting films overseas. This results in attaining the advantage of monopolizing
the global film distribution with nearly a market share of over 50 percent. Moreover, the biggest advantage is, through
such “filmic hegemony”, the U.S. is able to use “soft power” to maintain global
hegemony. Unlike the earlier times when people used weapons (hard power) as a
violent force to maintain power and dominance, the notion of “soft power” has
flourished in the U.S. through different ways, via culture and ideology. That is to say, the U.S. uses “filmic
hegemony” as a soft power to diffuse its values worldwide and make the American
influence more continuous and solid. The “filmic hegemony” mentioned above is
one aspect of cultural hegemony, for often times, these films tell audiences
what the world is or what the world is supposed to be. Therefore, soft power deliberately enables
the dominant ideology or culture, in this case, the U.S., to control one’s
thinking and helps maintain its own the status quo.
However, some people may be skeptical
about the relationship between the spread of films and the control of politics
because these people may argue that many Hollywood movies simply function as
mass entertainment and do not always reflect American hegemony. Despite such
claim, films and politics do have a correlation with each other, whether one is
aware of it or not. That is why the American government has always been aware
of the political function of Hollywood and maintained close ties with the film
industry. Such awareness strengthens the power of “American filmic hegemony”
because these films have the potential to represent the political, economic and
military aspects of the U.S.
One of the suitable examples of U.S. “filmic
hegemony” would a further analysis of the James Bond 007 movie series,
which is a masterpiece controlled by U.S. funding and in many ways reflects
American perspectives. Over a forty-five
year period, the 007 series has achieved tremendous worldwide box-office record
and has successfully showed the prevailing American values and cultures. To
analyze the 007 series, one can first discuss about the general setting of the
series, which is the Cold War, and this holds a premise of “America controlling
in the West. Next, one of the series’ specific traits is that the international
society is usually divided into “good and evil”, and the nationality of the villains is
the key to know who the main enemy of the U.S. is. For
example, the Soviet Union plays the villainous role with which the U.S. needs
to confront. Furthermore, the American perspective on international politics
became more evident after the release of Die another Day (2002). In this
film, there was a reestablishment of the villainous role, which was substituted
by North Korea. Such switch could not be just a coincidence, but rather an
obvious proof of the spread of American political
values. Next, understanding the
selection of actors in the 007 series is another evidence of American hegemony.
The main character, James Bond, appeared to be as a more “Americanized
Anglo-Saxon”. Albert Broccoli, the
producer of the series, chose Scottish-born Sean Connery to play James Bond
instead of choosing the British actor David Niven, and this was a critical act
of transforming “British” Bond into an “American” Bond”. Moving to the themes in the series, the core
values of the United States are threatened, and the villains’ plans usually
include stealing the space shuttle and microchips, which are both advanced
technologies of the United States.
In addition,
institutions and infrastructure which are important symbols of the U.S, such as
the Federal Reserve Bank, are attacked by “the villains”. One might question
why do these villains target strongly on attacking the United States, and the
answer would be that attacking the U.S.
is the most effective tactic to disrupt international order. This shows that to
threaten the value of the United States equals threating world peace.
Therefore, James Bond holds the responsibility to settle down such chaos and
restore international peace. Simultaneously, the high-tech equipment and the
U.S military are keys to maintain world peace because James Bond is only able
to complete his missions through these facilities. This fact can be explained
as the superiority of the U.S. over Britain when it comes to science,
technology and national defense. The
last interesting point to mention about American hegemony inserted in the 007
series is that the U.S. is seen as “good” in a rather unspoken manner, with
which terms such as “safe”, “world” and “best” the U.S. would be associated.
Such purpose is to reassure the positive values of the United States. Therefore, the 007 series is a typical example
of American “filmic hegemony”.
The last example of the hegemony theory
is adopted through the historical case of British hegemony in the Caribbean. In
order to avoid conflicts and maintain control over the indigenous people, the
British rulers instituted a “transformed English” as the official language. The
so-called “transformed English” was a combination with new stresses and new
rhythms introduced by the indigenous tribes, such as introduced from the
African languages. Therefore, this
combination is another example of hegemony, which shows through the process of
resistance and incorporation comes negotiation and the result of a combination
of the dominant language culture and the subordinate language culture.
In conclusion, Gramsci’s
hegemony theory allows one to view “popular culture” as a negotiated mix made
from both “above” and from “below”, both “commercial” and “authentic”, which
shows that it is a compromise equilibrium of
forces between resistance and incorporation.
