The World of Wrestling

Abstract of Roland Barthes’ “The World of Wrestling” (1957)
By Jennifer Lowry

Description of Article

The whole of Barthes’ essay examines wrestling in light of the theatre, and wrestling being a theatrical act. Like theatre, wrestling is based upon a sign system. Each element of wrestling, whether the wrestler’s physique or his gestures indicate an “absolute clarity, since [the spectator] must always understand everything on the spot” (16). In the theatre, the private becomes public; in wrestling this “Exhibition of Suffering […] is the very aim of the fight” (19). Like the theatre, the public watches wrestling for the “great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice. As in the theatre, “wrestling presents man’s suffering with all the amplification of tragic masks” (19).

The comparisons to theatre continue as Barthes argues that wrestling (and I am thinking of the WWF type wrestling) is not a sport but a spectacle (15) one in which the audience is not concerned with “what it thinks but what it sees” (15). He compares wrestling to boxing and judo, which he considers sports, but unlike sports, wrestling, has no winner (16). It is not the function of the wrestler to win, “it is to go through the motions which are expected of him” (16).

The bastard or villain is usually the sufferer in wrestling. Barthes describes how the body of the bastard sums up all of his “actions, his treacheries, cruelties and acts of cowardice” (17). “The physique of the wrestlers therefore constitutes a basic sign, which like a seed contains the whole fight” (18). The costumes, like those of the theatre, represent the tragic play of wrestling.

According to Barthes, Defeat and Justice go hand in hand. Defeat is not an “outcome”, but a “display” (21). Defeat of the bastard “is a purely moral concept: that of justice” (21). The defeated must deserve the punishment (21) which is why the “crowd is jubilant at seeing the rules broken” (21) as long as it is just. “In wrestling, nothing exists except in the absolute, there is not symbol, no allusion, everything is presented exhaustively” (25). Again, as compared, there is no question of truth, the spectator just accepts what is presented to them as the way it is and should be.

Comments and Questions

This article does not lend much to commenting and is more of a summary… and my own personal thoughts.

Barthes begins his essay by arguing that wrestling is not a sport because there are no winners – at least that is not the point of the fight. He states:
The public is completely uninterested in knowing whether the contest is rigged or not, and rightly so; it abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle, which is to abolish all motives and all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees. (15)
While I have not experienced wrestling in France during this period I have watched wrestling on television (and I am quite sure that it is the kind of theatrical wrestling Barthes is discussing). I think it is pompous of him to assume that no one is interested in whether the contest is rigged. I also think there are many that would argue that wrestling is a sport. There are winners and losers and the winners are not always the good guys.

I do understand his contention that wrestling is like the theatre. Clearly, this type of wrestling is much more dramatic than that of the “sporting” kind. The use of costume and masks separate wrestling from recognized sporting competitions and do represent a theatrical appeal. Barthes argues in “Myth Today” that “myth is a system of communication, that it is a message” (109). He is clearly trying to get this point across in his examination of wrestling. Everything about the wrestler carries a message. The body of the wrestler, Barthes argues, carries the first message. The repulsiveness of the wrestler, his ugliness and the crowd’s reaction to that reflect on the characteristics of the wrestler. Even the wrestler’s commentary reflects upon his character, the gestures he engages in only further represent the character he is meant (assigned) to be.

What really strikes me as important is Barthes idea that the private is publicly displayed through wrestling as it is in the theatre. Using wrestling, spectators are able to identify with the characters and inflict the punishment that they feel is deserved. It seems to me that the caricatures of wrestling are exaggerations of real life. But by portraying them in exaggeration, the spectator is able to separate himself from the feelings associated.

Barthes argues that French and American wrestling are different in that the “heroes in French wrestling […are] based on ethics and not on politics” (23). He also states the American wrestling is based on “a sort of mythological fight between Good and Evil” (23) with the bad wrestler always some sort of Communist (which I don’t really think is always the case). But at the end of his essay he states:

In the ring, and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy, wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible. (25)

I understand that he is probably using these references to “Good and Evil” in different contexts, but isn’t it possible that some Americans actually do view Communism as Evil? This clearly explains to me why they would portray the villain as a Communist.

I don’t really have any questions… the only thing that really struck me was my defensiveness at his comparison between American and French wrestling. Of course, only being familiar with the one and not the other doesn’t really give me much of a foot to stand on. I am curious as to why he even felt he had to throw in this comparison of French and American wrestling, as I don’t really see it necessary to his argument.

Barthes: Intro, Signifier and Signified, Denotation and Connotation

Author: Bill Schnupp

Abstract: Elements of Semiology: Intro., Signifier and Signified, Denotation and Connotation.

I. Summary

A. Introduction

In this section, Barthes introduces readers to semiology, tempering his definition with the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure to characterize the as yet undeveloped discipline as “a science of signs. . .[and] systems of signification” (9). These systems can encompass objects, music, public entertainment, and myriad other possibilities.

Barthes stresses that at the time he is writing, semiology is a very underdeveloped area of study, “a tentative science.” In this science, no system can signify autonomously—language must, at some level, be present. In this sense semiology is a sub-discipline of linguistics: “it is semiology which is a part of linguistics. . .it is that part covering the great signifying unities of discourse” (11). Barthes closes by highlighting the four divisions of semiology he perceives and later discusses: Language and Speech, Signified and Signifier, Syntagm and System, and Denotation and Connotation.

B. Signifier and Signified

Perhaps the first thing that should be said about this section is that it is a continual parallel between linguistics and semiology, as the latter was, at this time, a rather raw and undeveloped mode of inquiry. Barthes draws continually on linguistics as the forbearer of semiology to inform his discussion in places where semiological thought is not yet fully articulated.

Barthes opens this section with the concept of the sign, a signifying relationship (or meaning, as I read it) which is essentially the union of the components signifier (a term) and the signified (its concept or relation.) Ideas of content and expression are inextricable from this process.

signifier+signified=sign

At the same time, readers are reminded that the sign is more complex than this basic formula: indeed, it is more than “the mere correlation of a signifier and a signified, but perhaps more essentially an act of simultaneously cutting out two amorphous masses” (56). Every element in the semiological relationship has more than one meaning. Like a sheaf of paper, each possesses a reverse image. Signs, particularly those with utilitarian, functional origins, are known as sign-functions. The idea I draw from this from this is that reality and meaning are based on use and function: “there is no reality except when it is intelligible” (42).

The signified in the relationship Barthes imposes is defined as “the mental representation of a thing. . .a concept” (42-3). It incorporates such elements as practices, techniques, and ideologies. It is this component of the triadic relationship which triggers Barthes’ discussion of metalanguages (languages about languages—that is, a discourse employed to make sense of another discourse.)

The signifier is a mediator to handle the words, images, and objects in the sign equation. It is the initial element triggers the process of investing meaning and thus making a sign. The union of the signifier and signified is termed signification. This process of making meaning is, according to Barthes’ interpretation of Saussure, arbitrary, a product of social convention. The sign can be interpreted as the value of the expression, and is a product of exchange and comparison among dissimilar words and ideas. Barthes closes with an estimate of where he believes semiology is headed: toward existence as a discipline concerned with the production of reality, fused with taxonomy—termed arthrology, a science of apportionment.

C. Denotation and Connotation

In this discussion, Barthes revisits the relationship between signifier, signified and sign. However, in this section, the relation is approached in a new way, in the relation (R) between expression (E) and content (C), expressed as ERC. The focus here is on staggered systems of signification, or those systems in which one or more of the components in the relation (ERC) is expressed by a relation all its own.

Ex. (ERC) RC, where E=(ERC). The first system lies in the plane of denotation, and the second (collective), in the plane of connotation; it is wider and encompasses all the elements. The way I read this (and if I'm wrong somebody please correct me), denotation stands for the collectively agreed upon meaning of an image or text--comparable to the signifier-- and connotation represents the accompanying ideas and concepts--much like the signified and the ensuing process of signification.

Barthes uses the discussion of denotation and connotation to branch off and further explore metalanguages, those discourses employed to speak about and analyze discourses. In this model, a language (in the linguistic sense) is a first-order language, and the ensuing metalanguage is a second-order language. The role of the semiologist, then, is to decipher the first-order language through the lens of the second, but in doing so there is a danger: just as connotation served as an extension of denotation in the system above, so too can each subsequent metalanguage serve as a segue into another and another, a self-sustaining and destructive cycle. As each language rises, another takes its place, “a diachrony of metalanguages, and each science, including of course semiology, would contain the seeds of its own death, in the shape of the language destined to speak it" (93).

II. Analysis

I’ll start by saying that a great deal of this was tough to grasp the first time around. I’ve tried to bring out some of the main ideas (or what I perceived as the main ideas) in this section.

Clearly, the roots of Semiology stem from linguistics—“there is no meaning which is not designated, and the world of signifieds is none other than that of language” (Barthes 10)—but for me the two diverge in their scope: linguistics is dedicated solely to the study of languages and the various forms and processes encompassed therein; semiology, on the other hand, is devoted not only to the verbal, but to all other means of making meaning that intersect the verbal realm. In some additional reading, I even found that there are branches of semiotics that study animal behavior (zoosemiotics), human body language (kinsemics and proxemics), and one variety that examines communication by olfactory signs. Semiology seems a literal embodiment of the connotation Barthes is so enamored of (there is more to meaning than meets the eye; it goes beyond language to engage the public and the personal to include things like music, gestures objects, events, etc.)

It is not difficult to perceive how the ideas of Barthes tie in with the ideas we have encountered in class to this point. Semiology is concerned with the interpretation of various cultural texts, and though the discipline is clearly very structuralist, I’m not sure it falls entirely under that paradigm. The meaning that arises from the triadic relationship between signifier/signified/sign is essentially arbitrary, an idea Barthes touches on—“the only link between signifier and signified, is a fairly arbitrary (although inevitable) abstraction” (54). This suggests that the meaning someone invests in a sign is largely socially dictated—a word means something because we collectively allow it to do so. Thus, our experience is dictated by the pre-approved structure. A good example can be found in Daniel Chandler’s discussion of semiotics, in which he gives the example of an open sign in a shop window. In this scenario, a passerby would likely invest meaning in the following way: the signifier, the word ‘open,’ is mentally combined with the accompanying signified concept that the shop is open for business, and these two combine to form the resulting sign, a shop with an ‘open’ sign in the window is prepared to exchange with consumers.

?My question here concerns the different meanings people may construct. Say someone outside is wearing a sweater. When I see this, I would see the signifier, sweater, combined with the signified concept that it is cold outside, and the sign, that someone is wearing a long-sleeved, heavily woven garment because it is cold outside. Perhaps, though, it isn’t cold. Maybe it’s a hot July day and the person wears the sweater because their office air-conditioner is too efficient. Maybe the sweater was a gift from a loved one no longer living and the wearer dons the sweater for sentimental reasons. Maybe the wearer’s friend made a bet that the wearer couldn’t go an entire July day wearing a wool sweater. There could be many variations in this story. My point is simply this: many of the myriad meanings for the wearing of the sweater are not socially configured; as such, personal experience seems to motivate the wearing of the sweater, and thus experience here is no effect, but a driving force. Isn’t this culturalist influence?

?I'm also still working on the idea of the metalanguage and its destructive potential. The way I read it, a metalangauge is a discourse used to discuss another discourse and is thereby its destroyer (for example, myth is a metalanguage for the language in which the myth originates.) So, couldn't, say, cultural studies be considered a metalanguage because it 's used as a means to interpret cultural texts? If this is the case, then isn't the discipline simultaneously studying and destroying its object of inquiry?

Barthes ideas, though at times a bit difficult, nonetheless fascinate me. By-and-large, his work seems motivated by the relationship between language (and other modes of signification) and thought, and how the two combine to make meaning. It unites questions of culture, psychology, reality, and many others.

III. Questions and Further Reading.

1. For you, does semiology seem more aligned with structuralism or culturalism?

2. After reading Barthes, what do you make of this statement: the limits of my language are the limits of my
world?

3. How do you respond to Barthes’ idea of the destructive cycle of metalanguages?

It always helps me to have other readings to draw on. I found some very accessible readings online at:

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/as-sa/index.html
http://www.percepp.com/semiosis.htm

Chapter 8: Globalization and Popular Culture

Storey begins this chapter by offering a definition of globalization. He calls it "the establishment of a capitalist world economy" and also a "time-space compression [...] in which the world appears to be getting smaller" (152). This information helps to situate his arguments against the view of globalization as "cultural americanisation," or in other words, the imposition of American culture onto "weaker" cultures through American media and products. Storey finds fault with this view of globalization for four reasons:
1) The model "assumes that economic success is the same as cultural imposition" (154). I like John Tomlinson's comment that this is a "rather impoverished concept of culture--one that reduces culture to its material goods" (qtd. on 154).
2)The model "claim[s] that commodities have inherent values and singular meanings, which can be imposed on passive consumers"(155). To debunk this myth, Storey refers to a study conducted in which several culturally diverse groups were shown the same American TV program and asked to discuss it. The response and analysis of the show varied widely and depended on the cultural lens through which the participant viewed the program.
3)The model "assumes that America is the only global power"(159).
4)The model is based on the assumption that "American culture is monolithic"--that it is a prepackaged, one-size-fits-all homogenous entity that is injected into other countries when we export our products there.

I appreciate Storey ability to expose and critique these long-held assumptions of American globalization. We need only look at the meteoric progress of China to recognize that America is certainly not the only global power. Also, as was confirmed in our own class as we shared our cultural artifacts, American culture is certainly not monolithic. Like other cultures, it is "hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic"(Said qtd. in 162).

Storey concludes by arguing that there has never been a culture in any part of the world that has stayed pristine and pure, without variation. Rather, every culture evolves as it negotiates and incorporates the influences it is exposed to over time.

As I read this chapter, the visual that kept coming to my head was the idea of the McDonalds in Argentina. While it is true that material goods are not the only component of culture, or that American culture is ingested along with a Big Mac in Argentina, it is also true that the influx of American products and conveniences seems to be changing the daily routines of Argentines, which is having an effect on their culture. For example, it is an age-old custom to sit around and share a drink called Mate with friends and family after dinner in Argentina. This is a time to be close and share and build relationships, and it is a huge indicator of the type of hospitable culture the Argentines are known for. Of course, Argentines that eat out at McDonalds forego that tradition at least for that meal. They trade the tradition of family togetherness for the comfort of convenience...it is interesting for me to reflect on that example as I evaluate Storey's arguments in this chapter.

Summary of "Globalisation and Popular Culture"
by Tom Peele

Summary
No one who read this entire collection will be surprised to learn that Storey takes an oppositional stance to the concept of globalisation. By oppositional, I mean that he doesn't buy the concept that America is by degrees turning the world into a clone of itself. Let me let Storey (at least as I read him) explain.

Usefully, Storey defines globalisation: "the establishment of a capitalist world economy [I wrote and then corrected "world order." Are you familiar with Bush the First's justification for the first gulf war: establishing a "new world order" and something about 1,000 points of light. Where are they now?] in which national borders are becoming less and less important as transnational corporations, existing everywhere and nowhere, do business in a global market" (152). This sense of globalisation, he writes, can be experienced by going anywhere and doing anything -- clothes and food from around the world are available far from their origins. He also defines globalisation as "time-space compression," a world in which people travel more and are more digitally wired (and thus more often and more rapidly in communication with each other) than before. The final definition he provides concerns the increasing migration of the labor force.

Storey's beef has to do with "globalisation as cultural Americanisation" (153). He's not concerned about this because, as he emphasized throughout the book, culture is made locally; it happens when cultural artifacts are consumed. The meanings of those artifacts are not pre-determined, but rather made in the process of consumption. This is a point with which both Matthew and Jenny might take issue. If the range of products is predetermined, then how is meaning made locally?

To defend his claim, Storey points out that "commodities are [not] the same as culture" (154). By this, he means that individuals make meaning from commodities; it is this process of meaning making where culture resides. Instead of assuming that meaning remains stable, we need instead to consider how commodities are read (155-57).

Storey provides many examples of how culture is appropriated then moves to a useful discussion of "hybridization" (161). One can only imagine, he claims, that culture can be penetrated and overwhelmed only if one imagines that cultures are monolithic and static. Instead, what occurs is hybridization, which results in "Thai boxing by Moroccan girls in Amsterdam, Asian rap in London, Irish bagels, Chinese tacos" and other cultural manifestations (161). The difficulty, Storey, following Said, claims, "was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly exclusively, White, or Black, or Western, or Oriental" (162).

How, then, do we think of ourselves? How is identity shaped? How do we (should we?) stop thinking of ourselves as primarily one thing or another? If commodity consumption allows us to create our own identities, how have these come to be the identities we create? Commodity consumption is just one avenue of the creation of culture -- that culture is created in so many ways, from so many sources (Ideological State Apparatuses come to mind) suggests that as we pursue cultural studies we consider, or acknowledge that we will not be considering, various forms of cultural production.

It is telling that Storey ends the book with a discussion of hegemony: "popular culture is neither an 'authentic' subordinate culture, nor a culture imposed by the culture industries, but a 'compromise equilibrium' (Gramsci) between the two; a contradictory mix of forces from both 'below' and 'above'; both 'commercial' and authentic'; marked by 'resistance' and 'incorporation', involving both 'structure' and 'agency'" (163).

Chapter 3 Fiction

In the 3rd chapter, on fiction, Storey describes the four main methods for studying popular fiction. These four main approaches are: symptomatic reading, reception theory, reading formations, and feminism and romance reading.

Ideology and Symptomatic Reading- The real basic overview of this section is all meaning is found in the text, if you look hard enough everything that can be found will be found there.

Storey begins with the ideas of Louis Althusser. He believes that “ideological discourse is a closed system” (37). What we are to understand from the text comes from both what the text says and what the text does not say. To gain all the information possible from a given text we must deconstruct it. We deconstruct in two main ways. First we read the text for what is obvious, then we do a second reading, recording all that was not said, for what is left unsaid is also very much a part of the text according to Althusser.
Pierre Macherey, a user of this method, is much more clear when describing what he means by deconstruction of the text. Macherey believes that “the view that a text has a single meaning which it is the task of criticism to uncover” (38) is false. He believes that a given text will have multiple meanings, depending on what is deconstructed and how far you go. He also puts forth the theory that a fictional text is “decentered”. Storey explains “his point is that all fictional texts are ‘decentered’ (not centered on an authorial intention) in the specific sense that they consist of a confrontation between several discourses: explicit, implicit, silent and absent” (38). Basically, Macherey says, “in order for something to be said, other things must be left unsaid” (39).

Reception Theory- The real basic overview of this section is that all meaning that is taken from a given text depends entirely on who is reading the text.

Storey gives it right to us when he starts with Hans-Georg Gadamer. It is very clear when Storey states Gadamer’s argument as, “an understanding of a cultural text is always from the perspective of the person who understands” (41).
This theory states that every time someone picks up a novel they are not starting that novel blank. The reader brings to the text all of their experiences and these individual experiences shape the meaning that is derived from the text. Storey explains, “a text is always read with preconceptions or prejudices; it is never encountered in a state of virginal purity, untouched by the knowledge with which, or the context in which, it is read” (42).
Another literary theorist Wolfgang Iser feels that not only does the reader make his own meaning of the text but that this process is an ‘act of production’. This in effect gives the reader all control over meaning because Iser states “as a literary text can only produce a response when it is read, it is virtually impossible to describe this response without also analyzing the reading process…the text represents a potential effect that is realized in the reading process…the meaning of the text is something that [the reader] has to assemble” (43).

Reading Formations- This section in a nutshell has to do with what happens when readers of a text are predisposed to read it in a specific way, it shows that specific historical and situational points affect the reading of a text.

Storey explains this theory with the help of John Bennett and Janet Woollacott’s study of the ever-shifting meaning of the character James Bond. They do not agree that all meaning in a text is already there. Their main point is that “popular fiction is a specific space, with its own ideological economy, making available a historically variable, complex and contradictory range of ideological discourses and counter discourses to be activated in particular conditions of reading” (50).
To further their point they look at the ever-changing view of James Bond. They contest that given the particular era, what Bond films have been out, and the appearance of the Bond girls, all have an effect on how one will read the books. For example, if you watch a Bond movie in the 50’s you will read more into the text about a Cold-war hero, and if you watch the movie in the 70’s you might read more into the text about sexual liberation.

Feminism and Romance Reading

In this section Storey quotes Tania Modleski, who says there are three ways women critics write about romance stories, with “dismissiveness; hostility – tending unfortunately to be aimed at the consumers of the narrative; or, most frequently, a flippant kind of mockery” (60).
Janice Radway conducted a famous study to try and figure out romance reading. She did research on forty-two women in the town of ‘Smithton’. Her first conclusion was “that romantic fantasy is a form of regression in which the reader is imaginatively and emotionally transported to a time ‘when she was the center of the profoundly nurturing individual’s attention’” (62). Having come to this conclusion, Radway feels that “romance reading can be viewed as a means by which women can vicariously, though the hero-heroine relationship, experience the emotional succor which they themselves are expected to provide to others without adequate reciprocation for themselves in their normal day-to-day existence” (62).
However, Storey points out that some do not fully agree with Radway’s findings. Critic Ien Ang feels that Radway is perhaps being a little one-sided. She feels that Radway, being a feminist, isn’t seeing beyond her political agenda. Ang feels that feminists can read Romance as pleasure for pleasures sake. Ang, along with Alison Light, feel that Radway made a lot of interesting discoveries with her work but that it is important not to go too overboard into a ‘book-burning legislature’ (68).

Chapter Five Summary

Chapter Five: Newspapers and Magazines
From: Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture, by John Storey
Summary by: Diane Neu

General Overview

Storey outlines various approaches to understanding cultural studies within three separate contexts of newspapers and magazines: “The Popular Press,” “Magazines for Women and Girls,’ and “Reading Visual Culture.”

The Popular Press

Storey begins his explanation of the role that the popular press plays in cultural studies by quoting from Jostein Gripsrud that while we do not need to come to the defense of the press “in any simplistic populist or ‘anti-elitist’ manner,” we should strive to understand it and the way it functions (87). He then moves into discussing four different cultural studies approaches to the popular press:

Peter Dahlgreen: For Dahlgreen, storytelling is the “ ‘key link’ ” “between tabloid journalism and popular culture” (87). Storytelling is “one of the two basic modes of knowing and making sense of the world, the other being the analytic mode” (87). While the analytic mode is made up of facts, logic, and navigational information, the storytelling mode makes sense of the world through narrative accounts. Though journalism may aim for the analytic mode with straightforward facts, it is “the storytelling mode which is most often brought into play” (87). Dahlgreen sees a “ ‘storytelling continuum’ ” existing “ ‘between serious and tabloid news, between fact and fiction’ ” (87).

Colin Sparks: Sparks contends that the “key difference” between “quality” journalism and the popular press is the use, by the popular press, of “an explanatory network” (88). While the “quality” press may prefer to present a strict timeline of events and facts and leave inference up to the reader, the popular press decides to bridge that gap for the reader. The reader does not need to create human-interest stories to go along with the news – the popular press will create it for them.

John Fiske: Fiske maintains that while the popular press is “ ‘not radical,’ ” it is often “ ‘potentially, and often actually, progressive’ ” (89). Fiske explains that the popular press “ ‘may be progressive in that they can encourage the production of meanings that work to change or destabilize the social order, but they can never be radical in the sense that they can never oppose head on or overthrow that order” (89). While the official press serves as the mouthpiece “of the prevailing structures of power,” the popular press “is full of utopian fantasies of another way of understanding the world which challenges the normalizing “reality” of the power-bloc” (89-90). The popular press functions as a way for “the people” to enter into conversation with the official news through a process where this official news is “ ‘re-informed’ ” in order to “ ‘be made relevant to everyday life’ ” (91).

Ian Connell: Connell focuses in on the ways in which the popular press devotes its pages to detailing the lives of the rich and famous. Connell argues that readers are simultaneously “ ‘engaged by the stories,’ ” imagining themselves as one of the mega-wealthy while also
“ ‘mount[ing] a populist challenge on privilege’ ” (92). At the heart of these stories of the wealthy is an articulation of “a moral economy in which the world is divided between those with power and privilege and those without power and privilege” (93).

Magazines for Women and Girls

Storey skips the lead-in quote here, and begins right away by discussing one of the three approaches to looking at magazines created for women and girls:

Angela McRobbie: McRobbie begins by dissecting the role of magazines in the lives of women and girls through the 1970s magazine Jackie. She posits that magazines like Jackie strive “ ‘to win and shape the consent of the readers to a particular set of values’ ” (94). These magazines do so by appealing to its readers through four “ ‘subcodes’ ” which serve to define these areas of the reader’s life (94):
1. The code of romance: Girls must fight each other over men. Girls cannot trust other girls. Heterosexual romance is the only path to happiness (94).
2. The code of personal/domestic life: The values from the other codes must be instilled into the everyday workings of a girls personal life as well. The magazine uses its “problem page” to send “explicit messages to girls about what is right and expected of them (95).
3. The code of fashion and beauty: Wearing make-up and dressing nicely should be “ ‘of paramount importance’ ” to a girl (95).
4. The code of pop music: Pop stars (male, I presume) are a suitable release for young, female emotions. You can look and listen – but do not touch (95).
McRobbie “welcomes the fading popularity of Jackie, and other magazines like it” while welcoming magazines like Just Seventeen and Mizz as examples of magazines for girls that have been “influenced by the success and circulation of feminist ideas” (95).

Janice Winship: Winship contends that we cannot “ ‘simply dismiss women’s magazines’ ” because to do so would be “ ‘to dismiss the lives of millions of women who read and enjoyed them each week’ ” (96). Winship desires to explain why women enjoy these magazines so much, and she does this by explaining the ways in which these magazines directly appeal to their demographic (96-7). These appeals, according to Winship, are organized around different “ ‘fictions.’ ” These fictions are essentially the stories the magazines creates through its articles and advertising, in order to draw the reader “into a world of consumption “ where they will be sold on the idea of “pleasurable femininity” (97).

Joke Hermes: Hermes’s approach is similar to Winship’s in that she finds fault with those that simply criticize the women who read the magazines written for them. She rebels against the idea of feminists who think that the readers of such magazines must be saved and enlightened away from their choice of reading material (99). Instead, she advocates for an “ ‘appreciation that readers are producers of meaning rather than the cultural dupes of the media institutions’ ” (99). Hermes is more interested in the meaning that readers construct from the text for themselves as opposed to the message that the text may or may not be trying to impose on them. After conducting interviews with readers of women’s magazines, Hermes identifies the four main meanings that readers constructed, which she refers to as “repertoires.” They are:
1. “ ‘easily put down’ ”
2. “ ‘relaxation’ ”
3. “ ‘practical knowledge’ ”
4. “ ‘emotional learning and connected knowing’ ” (101)

Reading Visual Culture

In this section, Storey only focuses on Roland Barthes’s approach to reading visual culture, as Storey sees the “foundational work” of Barthes to be some of “the most influential work on popular visual culture within cultural studies” (103).

Roland Barthes: Each visual image is involved in a process of “ ‘signification’ ” (103). In this process, there is both a “primary signification (denotation)” and a secondary signification (connotation)” (105). Barthes uses the example of a cover of Paris Match magazine. On the cover is a “black soldier saluting the French flag.” This is the primary signification – the surface level picture. However, the secondary signifier is that of “Paris Match’s attempt to produce a positive image of French imperialism” (105). However, there are several things to consider before coming to a conclusion about an image’s secondary signifier. The context of the photo is extremely important to making meaning of the secondary signifier. If the same photo had been placed “on the cover of a socialist magazine, its connotative meaning(s) would have been very different” (105). In such a context, the reader would have likely looked for humor and irony. As photos “rarely appear without the accompaniment of a linguistic text of one kind or another,” each photo is carefully placed within a context and can be removed from one context and then reused in another context through the use of new text, layout, etc. Barthes calls this process anchorage (107-8). Ultimately, what makes the reader able to jump from the level of primary signification to that of secondary signification is “the store of social knowledge (a cultural repertoire) upon which the reader is able to draw when he or she read the image. Without access to this shared code (conscious or unconscious), the operations of connotations would not be possible” (108).

Abstract of Chapter 5: Newspapers and Magazines
by Mike Peterson

Description of Article
In this chapter, John Storey outlines four approaches to understanding the “popular press,” two approaches for analyzing “magazines for women and girls,” and one approach to “reading visual culture.”

THE POPULAR PRESS
Peter Dahlgren: The connection between tabloid journalism and popular culture is storytelling. While journalism is committed to the analytic mode, it often still uses the mode of storytelling, and the difference between “serious” and “tabloid” news, therefore, isn’t really that different (75).

Colin Sparks: The difference between serious and tabloid (what he calls quality and popular) press, is the marked reliance of popular press on the “personal” as an explanatory framework (76). This reliance, he argues, makes it nearly impossible for the popular press to engage in “popular productivity,” but will, instead, usually fall in the realm of the “reactionary popular,” which can only “speak of their concerns, joys and discontents within the limits set for it by the existing structures of society” (76).

John Fiske: “Popular culture is potentially, and often actually, progressive (though not radical)” (77). Fiske lumps the types of press into three categories: popular, official, and alternative (though nothing more is said in this chapter about the alternative press). The official press represents the interests of the power-bloc in a “top-down flow of information” and ensures the “maintenance of the prevailing structures of society” (77). The popular press, on the other hand, takes a tone of “skeptical laughter” and sees through the power-bloc. One such way this happens is through the popular press’s utopian fantasies, which challenge the “normalising ‘reality’ of the power-bloc” (78). The official press, Fiske argues, would have its readers “deciphering” its texts—subjecting themselves to its “truths,” whereas the popular press would have its readers “reading” its texts—actively participating in the production of the text’s relevance.

Ian Connell: The popular press is somewhat ineffective for social change because it merely produces resentment for those in the stories (celebrities, politicians, etc.) but not resistance to them (80). In other words, in the clash of the “haves” and “have-nots,” the popular press merely causes the “have-nots” to want to be a member of the “haves,” rather than questioning why there are “haves” and “have-nots” to begin with. The popular press has three players: the characters (the haves), the narrator (who writes about the haves but isn’t necessarily one himself), and the powerless readers (presumably the have-nots) (81).

MAGAZINES FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS
Angela McRobbie: There has been a satisfying shift in how feminity is portrayed for teenage girls between Jackie of the seventies and Just Seventeen and Mizz of today. All of Jackie’s articles, ads, and columns center around one or more of four strategies: the code of romance, the code of personal/domestic life, the code of fashion and beauty, and the code of pop music—all of which function “to map and, ultimately, to limit the feminine sphere” (83). The newer magazines talk about love and sex and boys, but not in the “conventionally coded meta-narrative of romance which…could only create a neurotically dependent female” (84).

Janice Winship: Feminists shouldn’t simply dismiss women’s magazines. Instead, they should “critically consider its limitations and potential for change” (84). All women’s magazines, she argues, follow the same formula regardless of politics: they operate as survival manuals through a combination of entertainment and useful advice (85). Each magazine works to draw the reader into a world of consumption, but this isn’t necessarily bad. Advertisements, for example, can be aesthetically and emotionally pleasing, letting readers “vicariously indulge…in the fictions they create” without necessarily duping or fooling the reader (85). The problem with the magazines is that they are survival manuals for the “mythical individual woman” which encourages woman to “do alone what they can only do together” in fighting “powerful social and cultural structures and constraints” (85, 87).

READING VISUAL CULTURES
Roland Barthes: In the process of signification, the secondary signification, or connotation, is where myth is created. A myth, according to Barthes, is an “ideology understood as a body of ideas and practices which defend and actively promote the values and interests of the dominant groups in society” (88). Barthes uses the example of the image in Paris Match: a picture of a black man in a French uniform saluting the French flag. At the level of connotation, there are considerations that go into reading the visual: the context of the publication is paramount in this example. As we understand the role of semiology in the construction of connotative readings, we can go beyond being innocent consumers of myth (90). Images rarely appear without text, and Barthes argues that “the image does not illustrate the text; it is the text which amplifies the connotative potential of the image” (91). The text helps readers pin down the denotative meaning as well as limit the connotative interpretations. It is important to remember that how an image/text is read depends on the “location of the text, the historical moment and the formation of the reader” (92).