2. Stuart Hall (1932-2014)
• Cultural & media theorist, political activist, media
sociologist
• Jamaican-British
• Oxford educated
• Academic and political activism
• Founding member of Centre for Contemporary
Culture Studies (Birmingham, UK)
• Media representations, esp. related to race/ethnicity
• Cultural Studies: the politics of culture
3. Encoding, Decoding (1973)
• Audience reception studies
• Hall: meaning not fixed, message not transparent,
audience not passive
• Encoding/decoding
• Three reader/consumer positions:
• Dominant
• Negotiated
• Oppositional
4. Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
• French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist
• Major works:
• Mythologies (1957)
• The Death of the Author (1967)
• The Pleasure of the Text (1973)
• Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980)
• How dominant ideologies come to present themselves as “natural”
• Role of images in constructing “myth”
• Applying semiotics to culture
“The starting point of these reflections was usually a feeling of
impatience at the sight of the 'naturalness' with which newspapers, art
and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even though it is
the one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by history. In short, in the
account given of our contemporary circumstances, I resented seeing
Nature and History confused at every turn, and I wanted to track down,
in the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying, the ideological
abuse which, in my view, is hidden there.”
(Barthes, Prologue to Mythologies)
9. Barthes & “Myth”
• Myth as a type of
communication
• Reworked signs
• Reader removed from active
interpretive role
• Myth as constructing what is
“natural” and “given”
• Ideological function of myth
• 1st and 2nd order signs
10. “..a young Negro officer is saluting, with his eyes uplifted,
probably fixed on a fold of the tricolor. I see very well what it
signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons,
without any color discrimination, faithfully serve under her
flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an
alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in
serving his so-called oppressors.”
