Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular' - Stuart Hall

Finally, a theorist who doesn't believe that popular culture is the end of a civilised and educated society! Hall makes it clear that cultural struggles and the transformations of cultures and traditions are necessary and acceptable.

He begins the chapter by talking about 'periodisation', in other words, the historical theories based around popular culture and the problems that arise from those theorists speaking only from a certain time. Hall does not really seem to reach a conclusion of any sort about these issues, he merely points out their existence, therefore warning us of cultural theories from the past which may not have so much relevance or truth today.

Hall then goes on to discuss the meanings of the word 'popular' when put together with the word 'culture'. He gives us two fairly basic definitions. First a 'common-sense' meaning:

"The things which are said to be 'popular' because masses of people listen to them, buy them, read them, consume them and seem to enjoy them to the full."

Second, a more 'anthropological' meaning:

"Popular culture is all those things that 'the people' do or have done."

However, he explains that these two definitions have many flaws and are too general when describing such a complicated theory. He therefore goes on to give us a far less concise, but apparently more accurate, definition of popular culture:

"Those forms and activities which have their roots in the social and material conditions of particular classes; which have been embodied in popular traditions and practices."

Suggesting that modern day culture is often closely linked with traditional values instead of being, as many of the cultural theorists I have read seem to think, a modern disgrace and mockery of traditions.

One point on this chapter which I think is important to highlight is that Hall, quite unlike the Frankfurt School theorists, says that you cannot generalise a cultural form as a whole:

"Is the novel a 'bourgeois' form? The answer can only be historically provisional: When? Which novels? For whom? Under what conditions?"

This shows that generalising cultures in their many forms can be harmful. Forming a prejudice against a particular industry or form of entertainment is unreasonable and unnecessary and it is important to look at all facts and be far more specific when making that type of judgement.

Hall's writing about popular culture seems far less critical and pessimistic and gives me the impression that, while he is perhaps not much of a popular culture consumer, he does understand its meanings and relevance to the masses. I believe that this comes from writing in modern times, when class distinctions are a lot less obvious and widespread political unsettlement and post-war worries are of the past. That being the case, I look forward to bringing cultural theory into the 21st Century, as the more up-to-date it gets, the more accepting theorists may become of popular culture and its consumption.