Presentation slides for LucyTV week in Approaches to Visual Culture, Berklee College of Music, Lori Landay. Videos not included. For more information, see the book I Love Lucy, Wayne State University Press.
2. What is culture?
Culture is a “whole way of life” (anthropologist Clifford Geertz)
Culture is learned:
systems of meaning (language)
ways of organizing society
distinctive techniques of a group & their products
Culture is “ordinary” (Raymond Williams)
5. REGULATIONREGULATION
government or industry policies and regulations
(The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930)
the reproduction of a particular pattern and order of signifying
practices, so that things appear to be 'regular' or 'natural'
(Classical Hollywood Cinema)
6. IDENTITYIDENTITY
derives from a multiplicity of sources--from nationality, race,
ethnicity, social class, religion, community, gender, sexuality, etc.
can be conflicted, contradictory (see W.E.B. DuBois’s concept
of Double Consciousness)
Develops in relationship to hegemonic ideas
identity gives us a location in the world and presents the link
between us and the society in which we live.
7. W.E.B. DUBOIS
ON DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS (1903)
The history of the American Negro is the history of this
strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to
merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this
merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He
would not Africanize America, for America has too much to
teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro
soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro
blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to
make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an
American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows,
without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his
face.
9. CONSUMPTIONCONSUMPTION
the active process of buying, adopting, and “reading” (or interpreting)
cultural texts (songs, tv commercials, iPods, music videos, movies,
operas, novels, shopping malls, monuments, etc)
10.
11. 11
Cultural Work Performed by Lucy the Trickster
Lucy performed the cultural work of embodying contradictions
between female ambition and cultural ideals of femininity. She
enacted survival strategies that call attention to the possibilities and
limitations of domestic ideology, and articulated anxieties about the
breakdown of the traditional separation between public and private.
Perhaps most importantly, Lucy provided occasion for laughter and
pleasure by creating comedy out of the constraints of the postwar
feminine mystique.
12. 12
How does a text perform cultural work?
“Encoding/Decoding,” Stuart Hall
ENCODING: (production & regulation)
A text has a preferred reading
DECODING: (consumption & identity)
Social conditions and identity shape interpretation
Hall posited 3 “reading” positions for the viewer/hearer/reader:
dominant (or hegemonic) reading
negotiated reading
oppositional reading
13. 13
A woman at work?
The character Lucy
Ricardo embodies
the contradictions
of women’s work
after WW2.
What would a
dominant reading of
this ad be? An
oppositional one?
14. 14
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
From Finding Lucy, an American Masters
documentary, first broadcast on PBS 2000
Ball’s physical comedy often played on cultural ideas about
women’s competence in the public sphere.
15. 15
From “Job Switching,” first aired September 15, 1952
In the ideology of “separate spheres,” women were
relegated to the “private” sphere of domesticity while men
participated in the public sphere outside the home.
16. 16
In “Lucy,” Lucille Ball played on the contradictions of being a
woman and a comic.
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
From Finding Lucy, an American Masters
documentary, first broadcast on PBS 2000
17. 17
Lucy functions as a trickster
Tricksters are fantasy figures who do what we cannot or
dare not by moving between social spaces, roles, and
categories that the culture deems oppositional. When
faced with a situation that appears to have only two
choices, the trickster finds a third way. But the trickster’s
schemes often backfire, and the trickster becomes the
dupe.
Lucy is a specifically female trickster who crosses the
boundaries between polarized masculine and feminine
social roles, separate public and private spheres, and
sharply delineated definitions of “good” and shadow
femininity.
18. 18
In “The Ballet” (2/18/1952), Lucy is a trickster who moves
between the spheres of masculine and feminine performance.
24. 24
From “Lucy’s Schedule,” first aired May 26, 1952
Lucy fails to be an “ideal wife” in front of Ricky’s boss and his wife.
Lucy is a specifically female trickster who crosses the boundaries between
polarized masculine and feminine social roles, separate public and private
spheres, and sharply delineated definitions of “good” and shadow femininity.
25. 25
“Mrs. Ricardo, what are you doing to the wives of America?”
From “Lucy’s Schedule,” first aired May 26, 1952
26. 26
Lucy uses trickery to preserve women’s autonomy in the domestic
sphere.
From “Lucy’s Schedule,” first aired May 26, 1952
27. 27
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
From Finding Lucy, an American Masters
documentary, first broadcast on PBS 2000
“Real life” & “Reel life”
28. 28
From “Lucy Does a TV Commercial,” first aired May 5, 1952
The audience’s knowledge that Lucille Ball is really a TV star
creates layers of reflexivity in the relationships between
television, domesticity, and gender.
29. 29
From “Lucy Does a TV Commercial,” first aired May 5, 1952
Here the joke plays on the audience’s knowledge of
marketing and advertising.
