MEDIA GAMES

1 Arthur Asa Berger Media and Communication Games Book

Arthur Asa BergerProfessor Emeritus Broadcast and Electronic Communication ArtsSan Francisco State University

Email: [email protected]

Games & ActivitiesFor Cultural Studies, Media & Communication Students

Table of Contents(Tentative List of Games and Activities)

Learning with Games & Activities

Signifier/Signified Game

Metaphors and Life Game

Comedy Calculator Experiment

Uses and Gratifications Game

Lévi-Strauss (Paradigmatic Analysis)

Political Cultures and the Media

Morphology of a Tale Exercise

Ad Agency: Pitching a Print Advertisement

Therapeutic Fairy Tales

Id, Ego, Superego Game

The Myth Game

Sacred Roots: Functional Alternatives

Time Capsules

Learning With Games and Activities

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It’s one thing to learn some concept about the media and communication in a book and remember it, and its another thing to be able to see how it might be applied to some mass-mediated text or to some aspect of American culture and society. In the course of some forty years of teaching, I found that frequently my students had a difficult time making the connection between an idea or concept they had learned and its application to something else.

To deal with this problem I developed a series of games, activities, exercises, applications—call them what you will—that help students learn how to apply the concepts they learn about the media and communication to films, television programs, advertisements, and other kinds of texts and to American society and culture. To make things easier, I will call all these learning exercises, applications and activities games, for they all have game-like aspects to them.

What follows is a number of games I’ve developed that help students see the usefulness of the concepts they have read about in books on media, communication and related areas. I have rather specific rules for playing these games. I have found that these rules work, but professors with different notions can have their students play these games using other rules.

Rules for Playing Games

There are certain rules that should be followed in playing these games:

1. Divide the class into teams of three students

2. Have one student take the role of scribe and do any writing that might be required

3. All students must contribute to the game

4. After the students in teams have played the gamesthere should be a discussion period involving the whole class.

I’ve played these games with as many as 45 students in a class. The secret is to divide the class into groups of three students and have them sit, if possible, in a triangular configuration. You can use groups of four or more if you have a large class. One student is designated the “scribe” and does whatever writing is necessary. But all students are to contribute to the game playing. The students have to negotiate among themselves matters such as which “answers” they will agree upon as best for the games they are playing. These classroom games take between 45 minutes and an hour, as a rule. The students, in their teams, spend 30 or 40 minutes playing the games and then there is a general discussion period to see which answers or solutions to the game seem most interesting.

5. Some games can also be assigned as homework for individual students or teams of students.

6. In some cases the games can be played as classroom discussions.

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What these games do, among other things, is force students to think about how to apply concepts to media and mass-mediated texts. The games provide an element of structure and most of them have an appeal similar to filling out crossword puzzles.

I have found that when I’ve played these games with my students, there was incredible energy in the room as the students became involved with the games.

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The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image…I propose to retain the word sign [signe] to designate the whole and to replace concept and sound-image respectively by signified [signifie] and signifier [signifiant]; the last two terms have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from the whole of which they are parts. (p.67)

Ferdinand de Saussure A Course in General Linguistics

The Signifier/ Signified Game

In theatrical parlance, a prop is something used by actors and actresses to help establish a character. Props are signs--objects and artifacts that have an established meaning that people generally recognize. Thus, for example, a top hat signifies the upper classes because of the association in people’s minds of top hats and wealthy people.

Signs, Signifiers and Signifieds

This game is based upon the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist who was one of the founding fathers of semiology (now generally called semiotics), the science of signs. Signs can be defined as anything that can be used to stand for something else.

Saussure argued that a sign is composed of a signifier (a sound or object) and a signified (the concept or idea generated by the signifier). The sign is composed of the two, which cannot be separated from one another—like both sides of a piece of paper.

What is crucial here is that the relationship between signifiers and signifieds is arbitrary, based on convention. The meaning of words and other kinds of signs, then, is based on conventions not logic and is subject to change over time. This power of signs (in particular, signifiers) to generate meanings, feelings, attitudes, and so on is of great use to people who work in the media. For it is precisely the matter of generating a particular feeling at a specific moment in a play or film that is of great importance to directors, actors and others involved in the media.

A Crucial Insight

Saussure provided us with a crucial insight about how we find meaning in life. Our feelings and attitudes about someone or something are often affected by seemingly trivial phenomena—that is, signs--which, in curious ways, affect us. The basis of much of this is an association between a signifier and its meaning: the cut of a person’s clothes, a person’s hairstyle, a person’s facial expressions, a person’s body language and so on. Other things such as objects and artifacts a person uses, such as a long cigarette holder or a monocle, play a role here.

When it comes to understanding the role of signs in the media, the secret is to work backwards. That is, we start with the idea or concept we want to place in people’s minds and figure out how to create it or generate it--using the various aspects of the medium at our disposal. In television, for instance, we can consider such things as camera angle, color, kind of shots, editing techniques, sound effects, music, dialogue and action. All film goers and television viewers learn how to interpret various signs they see on

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the screen and hear--they become "media literate," which means they pick up the codes and conventions found in the media relative to the meaning of signs.

In this game we also start with the effect (or concept) and work backwards. Here is how the game is played.

1. You will be given a number of different signifieds or, for our purposes, concepts or ideas. Some examples would be "love,” “hate," or "genius."

2. You will list a number of signifiers that generate the idea desired. All the signifiers must be visual images--objects, tangible things.

3. List as many as you can. In some cases the "gestalt" or collection of objects helps establish the precise meaning desired.

4. Be certain that the objects and artifacts you list do not mislead people and generate the wrong signified.

An Example

We will take as our signified "Secret Agent." Suppose you are a director of a film and want to indicate to your viewers that you are dealing with secret agents. You want to show them that they are watching a secret agent but you don’t want to tell them. Here are some of the visual signifiers you might use for a male: trench coat, dark sun glasses, slouch hat, code books, pistol with silencer, sports car, etc. A six-gun would not be appropriate, since it signifies westerns, and would be misleading. So we must be careful that our signifiers or props are appropriate and don't lead people astray. These signifiers could all be drawn as pictures but to simplify things you can use words that stand for these items.

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Secret Agent Love Hate Genius

Slouch HatTrench CoatDark GlassesPistol with SilencerSports Car

Alienation Horror Terror The Future

Frenchness Los Angeles Stupidity The Past

Some Questions:

What difficulties did you face in determining which signifiers to use to generate ideas such as horror or alienation? Which signifieds were most difficult for you to deal with? Why? Were any of your signifiers misleading?

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A given metaphor may be the only way to highlight and Coherently organize those aspects of our experience.

Metaphors may create realities for us, especially social realities. A metaphor may thus be a guide for future action. Such actions will, of course, fit the metaphor. This will, in turn, reinforce the power of the metaphor to make experience coherent. (1980:56)

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.Metaphors We Live By.

The Metaphor Game: Metaphors and Life

Metaphors are traditionally understood as literary devices in which one thing is seen in terms of another. That is, some kind of a relationship between two things is suggested in the form of an analogy. For example, the statement "my love is a red rose" is a metaphor in which a person's love and a red rose equated. (A special form of metaphor, simile, uses "like" or "as" in it and is weaker than metaphors, per se. The statement "my love is like a red rose" is a simile and is less direct and forceful.) But metaphors are more than just literary devices--they actually affect our thought processes in profound ways.

The Function of Metaphor

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, two linguists, discuss the role of metaphor in our lives. In their book Metaphors We Live By they write: (1980: 3)

...metaphor is typically viewed as a characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphoric in nature.

The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities.

The argument the authors make, then, is that metaphor ultimately shapes the conceptual systems we live by which means that metaphor is central to our thoughts and govern our everyday lives.

They also point out that metaphors help shape our futures. What they suggests is that metaphors actually have implications for the way we live and the metaphors we adopt as correct have a kind of logical and coercive power about them.

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Rules for Playing The Metaphor Game.

1. Here are two metaphors: “Love is a Game” and “Love is a Fever.”

2. List the logical implications of the metaphor in the chart I have provided.

3. Consider whether the metaphor is likely to be beneficial or harmful to a person who accepts the metaphor--and its logical implications.

4. See whether you can repair the metaphor and come up with a better one.

5. Later on, think about some of the metaphors you live by. What are your essential metaphors? What implications do these metaphors have for your life?

Love is a Game

Here are two metaphors to analyze dealing with love: “Love is a Game” and “Love is a Fever.” The notion that “love is a game” might not strike anyone as particularly important, but you must remember that metaphors imply things, and if you accept the notion that “love is a game,” various other things related to love follow logically from that notion.

Write down as many aspects or implications of each metaphor that you can think of. I will start each list off with an example. Your instructor may suggest other metaphors to analyze.

Love is a Game Love is a Fever

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Things to Consider

After playing this game, what conclusions do you come to about the ways metaphors help people find meaning in life?

1. Where do we pick up the metaphors that shape our lives? Be as specific as possible here: state the metaphor and see if you can find out where it comes from.

2. Is it possible that what disturbs many people is that they have, unintentionally, internalized destructive (or self-destructive) metaphors?

3. How can we deal with the problems caused by destructive metaphors? Is it also possible that people are illogical and that they don't live by the logical implications of the metaphors they accept? That is, is it possible that Lakoff and Johnson are incorrect about people living by metaphors because people are so "illogical" or "complex"?

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A joke is a play upon form. It brings into relation disparate elements in such a way that one accepted pattern is challenged by the appearance of another which in some way was hidden in the first. I confess that I find Freud’s definition of the joke highly satisfactory. The joke is an image of the relaxation of conscious control in favor of the subconscious…the joke merely affords opportunity for realizing that an accepted pattern has no necessity. Its excitement lies in the suggestion that any particular ordering of experience may be arbitrary or subjective. It is frivolous in that it produces no real alternative, only an exhilarating sense of freedom from form in general. (p. 96)

Mary DouglasImplicit Meanings.

The Comedy Calculator Experiment (A Satire)

Jokes, technically speaking, have the following characteristics:

1. they are short narratives (that is, stories),

2. they are meant to amuse and generate laughter, 3. they end with a punch line.

In the case of shaggy dog stories, the narratives can be relatively long, but still, as a rule, jokes are rather short texts. Many people think the way to be funny, and gain the benefits derived from being amusing, is to tell jokes. I think this is a bad idea, for three reasons.

1. The joke may be lousy. If you tell a joke that isn’t funny, you’ll mildly antagonize people who expect to be entertained and amused.

2. You may not tell jokes well. Even if you have a good joke, if you don’t tell it well, people won’t be amused.

3. Your listener(s) may have already heard the joke. This forces people to pretend to be amused and fake laughter, which can be quite painful.

Two question suggest themselves now. First, how can you be funny without telling jokes and second, what makes a joke funny—that is, how do jokes work? My answer to these questions is that we should use the techniques of humor found in jokes and other forms of humor to create our own humor, based on our personalities, our comedic tendencies and that sort of thing.

Forty-Five Ways to Make People Laugh

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A number of years ago I did a large content analysis project in which I looked for the techniques found in comics texts of all kinds—jokes, dramatic comedies, funny short stories and novels and anything else I could find that was humorous. What I came up with were forty-five techniques that I believe inform all humorous works. These are, I argue, the building blocks of all humor. And I can show them at work in jokes, which, it turns out, are often rather complex texts that utilize a number of techniques to generate laughter..

I should point out that I make a distinction between why people laugh and what makes people laugh. They are entirely different matters. Nobody knows why we laugh, though over the millennia, philosophers, psychologists, sages, theorists or one kind or another, have tried to answer this question. Aristotle suggested, for example, that we laugh at people made ridiculous, which suggests that superiority is the reason why we laugh. Other philosophers have suggested that incongruity is the basis of all humor; we expect something and get something else. You find this in the punch lines of jokes. Freud and a number of psychoanalytically inclined scholars suggest that masked aggression is the basis of humor. Gregory Bateson and others like him have argued that humor involves cognition and various forms of processing communication and of meta-communications (communication about communication) to generate humor. There are endless theories on why people laugh, but no general agreement on why people laugh, though I would say that incongruity theories tend to be dominant.

I leave the “Why” theories to others. What I have done, instead, is to focus on what makes people laugh and this led me to find some forty-five techniques of humor. They are listed below in two charts. One chart lists them according to whether the technique is based on Identity, Language, Logic or Visual matters. I discovered these categories after I had found my forty-five techniques. I found the 45 techniques could be fit into a classification system. The second chart enumerates the techniques and lists them alphabetically. Most people can understand what each of these techniques means.

Language Logic Identity Action

Allusion Absurdity Before/After ChaseBombast Accident Burlesque SlapstickDefinition Analogy Caricature SpeedExaggeration Catalogue EccentricityFacetiousness Coincidence EmbarrassmentInsults Comparison ExposureInfantilism Disappointment GrotesqueIrony Ignorance ImitationMisunderstanding Mistakes ImpersonationOver literalness Repetition Mimicry Puns/Wordplay Reversal ParodyRepartee Rigidity ScaleRidicule Theme & Var. StereotypeSarcasm UnmaskingSatire

Techniques of Humor According to Category

Here are the 45 Techniques Numbered and placed in Alphabetical Order

1. Absurdity 16. Embarrassment 31. Parody2. Accident 17. Exaggeration 32. Puns

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3. Allusion 18. Exposure 33. Repartee4. Analogy 19. Facetiousness 34. Repetition5. Before/After 20. Grotesque 35. Reversal6. Bombast 21. Ignorance 36. Ridicule7. Burlesque 22. Imitation 37. Rigidity8. Caricature 23. Impersonation 38. Sarcasm9. Catalogue 24. Infantilism 39. Satire10. Chase Scene 25. Insults 40. Scale, Size11. Coincidence 26. Irony 41. Slapstick12. Comparison 27. Literalness 42. Speed13. Definition 28. Mimicry 43. Stereotypes14. Disappointment 29. Mistakes 44. ThemeVariat. 15. Eccentricity 30. Misunderstanding 45. Unmasking

Techniques of Humor in Alphabetical Order

I should point out that in a number of cases, the reverse of a technique can be used; for example, exaggeration and its opposite understatement.

Because there may be some confusion about what some of these terms mean, I have provided brief explanations of how each of them is to be defined. I should point out that I use the term “absurdity” to refer to specific works from the theater of the absurd and that none of the jokes I offer for analysis use absurdity in them.

After I make my capsule definitions, I will offer a joke and then show how the techniques can be used to “deconstruct” it into the various techniques that are operating in it. These techniques can also be found in films, novels, plays, sitcoms, and all kinds of other literary works.

Definitions of Some Basic Techniques

Absurdity:Logical confusion, crazy situations, bizarre characters

Allusion:Referring to some embarrassing well-known event

Bombast:Highly inflated use of language

Burlesque:Ridiculous imitation of people, actions, or literary works

DisappointmentExpectations are not fulfilled

Facetiousness:Making light of something serious

Irony:Opposition between what is said and what is meant.

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Mimicry:Maintaining own identity while imitating that of others

MistakesErrors due to poor judgment, inattention or inadequate knowledge

Misunderstanding:Errors in comprehending something that has been said or written

Parody:Humorous Imitation of a text, style of writing, or genre

Sarcasm:Insults described as praise.

Stereotyping:Oversimplified notions about nationalities, ethnic groups, etc.

Here is a joke that I have deconstructed, using the comedy calculator (the 45 techniques) into its various elements:

A person calls Radio Erevan and asks, "Is it true that comrade Gorshinko won 5000 rubles at the lottery?" "Yes," replies Radio Erevan. "But it was not comrade Gorshinko but comrade Kataev, and it was not 5000 rubles but 10,000 rubles, and he didn't win it at the lottery but lost it gambling."

In this joke, we find the dominant technique is number 35, reversal. Radio Erevan says “yes” to the question but reverses every part of the event involving comrade Gorshinko. There is also 39, satire. These Radio Erevan jokes satirize Russian politics. One of the most famous of these Radio Erevan jokes goes as follows: “Would it be possible to bring Socialism to the Sahara?” “Yes,” replies Radio Erevan, “But after the first five year plan, we’ll have to import sand.” You might also say that the joke deals with ignorance—the revelation of ignorance by the caller, who asks “Is it true…?” This would be 21.

So the “formula” for this joke would be: 35/39/21:

35: Reversal “Yes, but….”39: Satire “It was not comrade….”21: Ignorance “Is it true…”

Jokes to Analyze Using the Techniques Chart

Find the formulas for the following jokes, using the format for the Radio Erevan joke: the number, the technique, the part of the joke that is relevant.

The United Nations asks a group of scholars to write a book on Elephants. The following books are contributed: The French write "The Love Life of the Elephant." The English write "The Elephant and English Social Classes." The Germans write "A Short Introduction to the Elephant in Five Volumes

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A minister returns unexpectedly early to his house and finds his wife naked in bed and the strong smell of cigar smoke. He looks out the window and sees a priest smoking a big cigar walking out of the door of his apartment house. In a jealous rage he picks up the refrigerator and throws it on the priest, killing him instantly. Then, smitten by remorse he jumps out the window and kills himself. The next instant, the minister, the priest and a rabbi appear before an angel at the Pearly Gates. "What happened?" the angel asks the priest. "I was walking out of this house and a refrigerator fell on me," said the priest." "And you?" asks the angel to the minister. I threw the refrigerator on the priest and then felt so bad I killed myself." "And you?" asks the angel to the rabbi. "You've got me?" says the rabbi. "I was minding my own business, sitting in a refrigerator and smoking a cigar...."

Why did the moron bring a ladder to the party?He heard the drinks were “on the house.”

Jack, eating rotten cheese did say, “Like Samson I my thousands slay.”

“I vow,” said Roger, “so you do,And with the selfsame weapon, too.”

Benjamin Franklin

Questions

Did the various teams come up with similar “formulas” for each joke? If so, how do you explain this? If not, why do you think they didn’t?

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…The causes of media use are held to lie in social or psychological circumstances which are experienced as problems, and the media are used for problem resolution (the meetings of needs) in matters such as information seeking, social contact, diversion, social learning and development. If media use were unselective, then it could not be considered in any significant degree as instrumental in problem-solving or even very meaningful for the receiver. Much research over a period of forty years seems to show that audience members can and do describe their media experience in functional (that is problem-solving and need-meeting) terms. (1994:318-319)

Denis McQuail. Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction

Uses and Gratifications in Texts

Uses and Gratifications Theory focuses upon the “social” uses people make of texts and the psychological gratifications these texts supply people, rather than being concerned with the effects of mass-mediated texts upon audiences. It is worth considering what these uses and gratifications may be when analyzing a text. Communications scholars developed this theory after interviewing people about such matters as why they watched soap operas or what they got out of reading comics.

Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler and Michael Gurevich (1979), who helped develop Uses and Gratification Theory, mention some of the early research done using this theory. They write (1979:215):

Herzog (1942) on quiz programs and gratifications derived from listening to soap operas; Suchman (1942) on motives for getting interested in serious music on radio; Wolfe and Fisk (1949) on the development of children’s interest in comics; Berelson (1949) on the functions of newspaper reading; and so on. Each of these investigations came up with a list of functions served either by some specific contents or by the medium in question: to match one’s wits against others, to get information or advice for daily living, to provide a framework for one’s day, to prepare oneself culturally for the demands of upward mobility, or to be reassured about the dignity and usefulness of one’s role.

The point is that watching television and going to the movies and listening to the radio has certain functions—or, more specifically, provide certain gratifications.

Take a text, such as a comic book or a music video or a television program and list the uses readers might make of it and the gratifications it might offer. Be sure to tie any use or gratification you find to something specific that happens in the text.

Uses People Make of Media 1. To share experiences with others in some group.2. To find models to imitate3. To help gain an identity and a personal style4. To obtain information about the world5. To affirm and support basic values6. To see order imposed upon the world

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Gratifications Media Provide to People

1. To see authority figures deflated or exalted.2. To experience beautiful things.3. To identify with the divine.4. To find diversions and distractions.5. To empathize with others.6. To experience extreme emotions in a guilt-free and controlled situation. 7. To reinforce a belief in the ultimate triumph of justice.8. To reinforce a belief in romantic love.9. To reinforce a belief in the magical, the marvelous and the miraculous.10. To see others make mistakes (and feel satisfaction in not having made those mistakes oneself).11. To participate in history and events of historical significance in a vicarious manner.12. To be purged of unpleasant feelings and emotions (a catharsis).13. To obtain outlets for sexual drives in a guilt-free manner.14. To explore taboo subjects with impunity and with no risk.15. To experience the ugly and the grotesque.16. To affirm moral, spiritual and cultural values.17. To see villains in action.

Questions

What problems did you face is analyzing your text using this list of Uses and Gratifications? How would you deal with the fact that different people might see an event in a text as providing different uses or gratifications?

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The ensemble of a people’s customs has always its particular style; they form into systems. I am convinced that the number of these systems is not unlimited and that human societies, like individual human beings (at play, in their dreams, or in moments of delirium), never create absolutely: all they can do is to choose certain combinations from a repertory of ideas which it should be possible to reconstitute. For this one must make an inventory of all the customs which have been observed by oneself or others, the customs pictured in mythology, and the customs evoked by both children and grown-ups in their games….With all this one could eventually establish a sort of periodical chart of chemical elements analogous to that devised by Mendeleier. In this, all customs, whether real or merely possible, would be groups by families, and all that would remain for us to do would be to recognized those which societies had, in point of fact, adopted. (1970:160)

Claude Lévi-StraussTristes Tropiques

Lévi-Strauss & Paradigmatic Analysis

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist who had had a major impact on the discipline...and, by implication, on literary and media studies as well. It is not exaggerating much to say that he was one of the most important anthropologists of recent years, whose ideas have influenced modern thought very profoundly.Paradigmatic Analysis

This game modifies one of his approaches and applies it to narratives. He argues that in myths there are hidden sets of oppositions that can be elicited from the events that take place which generate meaning. He has made a fascinating study of the Oedipus Myth and shown that certain relationships exist in this myth that we had not recognized. We will modify his methodology and look for a set of complimentary polar oppositions that inform narratives. What we do when we play Lévi-Strauss is to look for the set of hidden oppositions that are found in any narrative (and which must be there if we are to find meaning in it).

A Lévi-Straussian Analysis of Gosford Park.

Robert Altman’s Gosford Park (2001) deals with the lives of a number of wealthy people who spend a weekend together at a country estate in England. The story deals with the complicated relationships between upper class men and women and between the upper class men and women visiting the estate (and in some cases their servants) and the servants who work there. The basic or primary polar opposition found in this text is Masters and Servants. From this opposition, others follow.

Masters ServantsCommand ObeyWealthy Poor

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Leisure Hard WorkMarriage and infidelity Bachelorhood, Spinsterhood

The film is rather complicated and the relationships going on between the various characters are often hard to figure out. But you can see from this very simple set of complimentary polar opposition what the core or central oppositions in the film are. Lévi-Strauss was interested in myth and not popular culture, per se, but his ideas can be adapted to help us understand texts such as mysteries, spy stories, detective stories, science fiction tales and other kinds of narratives.

Rules for Playing Lévi-Strauss

1. You must have a narrative text—that is, one that tells a story. Your instructor may give you a text. If not, choose a film, a story, a comic book or episode from a television series to analyze.

Find the two central opposing concepts that you believe are central to the text, concepts which enable you to deal with the various characters and most important events in the text.

3. Make sure you deal with real oppositions as opposed to negations (happy, unhappy is a negation, not an opposition; happy, sad is an opposition).

NOTE: Remember that this process of finding oppositions is not done consciously by people who read novels, see television dramas or go to the movies. But if Lévi-Strauss is correct, we all have to elicit these oppositions in order for any story to make any sense to us. What happens is that we are so good at doing this and so fast at it that we do not become conscious of what we are doing.

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What matters to people is how they should live with other people. The great questions of social life are “Who am I?” (To what kind of a group do I belong) and “What should I do?” (Are there many or few prescriptions I am expected to obey?). Groups are strong or weak according to whether they have boundaries separating them from others. Decisions are taken either for the group as a whole (strong boundaries) or for individuals or families (weak boundaries). Prescriptions are few or many indicating the individual internalizes a large or a small number of behavioral norms to which he or she is bound. By combining boundaries with prescriptions…the most general answers to the questions of social life can be combined to form four different political cultures.

Aaron Wildavsky “Conditions for a Pluralist Democracy or Cultural Pluralism means More Than One Political Culture in a Country.” (1982:7)

Political Cultures and Popular Culture

Aaron Wildavsky was an extremely influential political scientist who taught at the University of California for many years. He developed a way of breaking down democratic societies into four political cultures based on the answers people give to two basic questions: who am I? (does the group I belong to have strong or weak boundaries) and what should I do? (does the group I belong to have few or many prescriptions or rules). These two questions lead to four political cultures, based on whether the boundaries are strong or weak and the number of rules are few or many.

Political Culture Prescriptions Group Boundaries

Elitists: numerous strongFatalists: numerous weakEgalitarians: few strongIndividualists: few weak

Elitists believe that stratification in society is necessary but also have a sense of obligation towards those below them, unlike the individualists; individualists stress the importance of limited government, which should do little more than protect private property, and believe in free competition;fatalists believe that they are victims of bad luck and tend to be apolitical; egalitarians emphasize certain needs that they believe everyone has that must be taken care of (especially the downtrodden fatalists) and tend to oppose mainstream political thought in America.

Wildavsky argued that you need all four groups for democracy to flourish in a country, and that the four groups need one another. He suggested that the individualists and elitists were the dominant political cultures in America and the egalitarians functioned as the loyal opposition. We must realize that Americans (or people in other democratic cultures) may not recognize that they belong to one of these political cultures, or be able to articulate the beliefs of any of the political cultures, but they do know, somehow, that certain ideas they hold are all-important.

Psychologists point out that people wish to avoid cognitive dissonance—ideas that conflict with their basic notions. They also seek reinforcement—that the ideas they hold are correct. Thus, members of each political culture, without being aware of what they are doing, would tend to seek out books, radio

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shows, television programs, films and other media that support or reinforce their values and beliefs and avoid ones that might cause cognitive dissonance.

In the chart below I list a number of media and the four political cultures. Your task is to fill in the appropriate text (it will always be a specific film or book or television show) for each of the political cultures.

Text Elitist Individualist Egalitarian Fatalist

Books

TV Shows

Films

Songs

Sports

Games

Fashion

Magazines

When you’ve filled in this chart I think you’ll be able to see why members of different political cultures, with different core values and beliefs, might choose to watch certain films, read certain books, as well as decide on who to vote for in elections. These members of these four political cultures may not always have articulated their beliefs to themselves or others and may not be conscious of what motivates them, but it can be seen that there is a logic, in many cases, to the choices members of audiences make as far as consuming media is concerned.

Questions

On the basis of this chart, where do you fit in the Wildavsky scheme of things? That is, based on the films, television shows, songs, books and so on that you like, to which political culture do you belong?

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As a society, we are embedded in a culture of consumption. Neil Postman…notes that by the age of forty the average American will have seen well over one million commercials and have “close to another million to go before his first social security check.” In order to comprehend the impact of all this advertising on society we must learn how to see through advertisements, for they are not just messages about goods and services but social and cultural texts about ourselves. (1997:1)

Katherine T. Frith, “Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising.” In Katherine Toland Frith, ed. Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising. New York: Peter Lang.

If our material needs are not satisfied, we die from hunger or exposure; if our social needs are not satisfied, we are liable to suffer psychological problems. Now the crucial point is that in our consumption of goods, we satisfy both material and social needs. Various social groups identify themselves through shared attitudes, manners, accents and habits of consumption—for instance, through the clothes they wear. In this way the objects that we use and consume cease to be mere objects of use; they become carriers of information about what kind of people we are, or would like to be. (1985:5)

Torben Vestergaard and Kim Schroder. The Language of Advertising. Oxford: Blackwell.

Ad Agency: Analyzing a Print Advertisement.

The quotations about suggest that we can learn a lot from advertising—since advertisements reflect, in interesting ways, different aspects of our culture, some of which may not be apparent to us. In this exercise, you will break into teams and pretend you work for an advertising agency and are “pitching” the ad that you have been given to analyze. To do this, you analyze a print advertisement that your instructor gives you—trying to find as much in it as you can. You use what you find to sell the ad to the company for which you have (in principle) prepared the ad. This exercise works best with print advertisements that have several people in them and a decent amount of written material in them. Analyze the advertisement you are giving using the topics listed below. Use what you find as “selling” points. Your team of three people will include: a creative director, an artist, and a marketing expert.

If you are asked to analyze an advertisement as an assignment, find one that has several people in it and a good deal of copy.

1 How would you describe the design of the advertisement?

2. How much copy is there relative to the amount of pictorial matter? Is this relationship significant in any respect?

3. Is there a great deal of blank (white) space in the advertisement or is it busy--full of graphic and textual material?

4. What angle is the photograph shot at? What significancedoes the angle of the shot have?

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5. How is the photograph lit? Is there a great deal of light or a little light and very dark shadows (chiaroscuro lighting)? What is the mood generated by the advertisement?

6. If the photograph is in color, what colors dominate? What significance do you think these colors have?

7. How would you describe the two figures in the advertisement? Deal with:

facial expression hair color hair length hair styling, fashions (clothes, shoes, eyeglasses design and jewelry) props (a cane, an umbrella), body shape body language age gender race ethnicity signs of occupation, educational level relationships suggested between the male and female objects in the background, and so on.

8. What is happening in the advertisement? What does the “action” in the photo suggest?

9. Are there any signs or symbols in the photograph? If so, whatrole do they play?

10. In the textual material, how is language used? What arguments are made or implied about the people in the photograph and about the product being advertised? That is, what rhetorical devices are used to attract readers and stimulate desire in them for the product or service? Any interesting metaphors or metonymies?

11. What typefaces are used in the textual parts of the advertisement? @What importance do you think the various typefaces have?

12. What are the basic “themes” in the advertisement?

13. What product or service is being advertised? Who is the target audience for this product or service? What role does this product or service play in American culture and society?

14. What values and beliefs are reflected in the advertisement? Sexual jealousy? Patriotism? Motherly love? Brotherhood of man? Success? Power? Good taste?

15. Is there any background information you need to make sense of the advertisement? How does context shape our understanding of the advertisement?

This list of questions will direct your attention to various matters that might be considered when interpreting a typical print advertisement found in a newspaper or magazine. Your task, remember, is to use the insights that you and the members of your team have gained from using this list of questions to

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“pitch” your advertisement to someone who, in theory, represents the advertising director for the company selling the advertised product or service.

Questions to Consider

What problems did you face in “pitching” your ad to the person(s) playing the role of representatives of the company whose product your agency is working for. After playing the game, do you think you’d like to go into advertising?

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In a fairy tale, internal processes are externalized and become comprehensible as represented by the figures of the story and its events. This is the reason why in traditional Hindu medicine a fairy tale giving form to his particular problem was offered to a psychically disoriented person, for his meditation. It was expected that through contemplating the story the disturbed person would be led to visualize both the nature of the impasses from which he suffered, and the possibility of its resolution. From what a particular tale implied about man’s despair, hopes, and methods of overcoming tribulations, the patient could discover not only a way out of his distress but also a way to find himself, as the hero of the story did. (1976:25)

Bruno BettelheimThe Uses of Enchantment:The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales

Therapeutic Fairy Tales

This exercise stems from the brief discussion in my chapter on fairy tales of Bruno Bettelheim book The Uses of Enchantment. He recounts how Hindu healers often composed individualized fairy tales for their patients to help them deal with their problems. The patients would study the fairy tales and learn, by identifying with the characters, something about their problems and how to solve them.

In this exercise we will pretend that you are a Hindu healer and are writing a fairy tale to help a person deal with an assortment of psychological afflictions that he or she is suffering from.

Please do the following:

1. Write a traditional (not a modernized parody) fairy tale, which starts as follows--"Once upon a time, long, long ago..." and concludes as follows: "and so they all lived happily ever after." Use the following in your story: dialogue, description, conflict and action.

2. Write in the past tense, and include typical characters from fairy tales in your tale: that is, write about kings, queen, princes and princesses, dragons, animal helpers, heroes with names like "Jack" or "Tom," etc.

3. Have the actions of the characters reflect and solve the numerous psychological problems of the person who has been assigned to you (number 1 through 5).

Person 1 Oedipus complex, castration anxiety, regression.Person 2 Penis envy, narcissism, rationalization.Person 3 Anal eroticism, ambivalence, fixation.Person 4 Fixation, castration anxiety, narcissismPerson 5 Oedipus Complex, ambivalence, sibling rivalry

These psychological terms are explained below.

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In writing your therapeutic fairy tales, you never say outright what a problem is but show it by things that happen in the story—by actions, by dialogue, by description. That is, the meaning is conveyed symbolically.

Make sure your verbs are in the past tense: he was, he asked, she thought, he yelled, they ran, they were, it growled…

One member of your team should be appointed the scribe, to write the story down, but everyone on the team should be involved in writing it. A hint: Don’t try to plan the story in advance…just make it up as you go along. I will start the story for you and finish it for you:

Once upon a time, long, long ago….

YOUR THERAPEUTIC FAIRY TALE

And so they all lived happily ever after.

Psychoanlytic Concepts

Ambivalence: Simultaneous love and hatred or attraction and repulsion toward a person.

Anal Eroticism:Personality traits such as being overly orderly, parsimonious (cheap), and obstinate…tied by Freud with difficulties overcoming anal stage in childhood.

Castration Anxiety:Unconscious fear males have of being castrated. Often takes symbolic form.

Fixation:Obsessive attachment or preoccupation with something, generally as the result of some childhood trauma.

Narcissism:Excessive self-love and concern only for oneself.

Oedipus Complex: Desire of a child for undivided attention of parent of the opposite sex.

Rationalization:Offering seemingly rational reasons or excuses for behavior thatis shaped by unconscious forces.

Regression:Returning to earlier stages of development for various gratifications..

Penis Envy:Unconscious desire women have for a penis and envy of males who have penises.

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Sibling Rivalry:Fighting between children (siblings) for attention and love of their parents.

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We may say that the id comprises the psychic representatives of the drives, the ego consists of those functions which have to do with the individual's relation to his environment, and the superego comprises the moral precepts of our minds as well as our ideal aspirations.

The drives, of course, we assume to be present from birth, but the same is certainly not true of interest in or control of the environment on the one hand, nor of any moral sense or aspirations on the other.

It is obvious that neither of the latter, that is neither the ego nor the superego develops till sometime after birth.

Freud expressed this fact by assuming that the id comprised the entire psychic apparatus at birth, and that the ego and superego were originally parts of the id which differentiated sufficiently in the course of growth to warrant their being considered as separate functional entities. (1974:35)

Charles BrennerAn Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis(Revised Edition)

The Id, Ego, Superego Game

The Id, Ego, Superego Game is one in which Freud’s classic explanation of how the psyche works, his “Structural Hypothesis,” is applied to television programs, films and other aspects of popular culture, the media, and everyday life. Freud’s notions about the Id, Ego, and Superego are described in the quotation that starts this exercise.

Playing the Game

We play the game by looking for manifestations or representations of each of these concepts in some text or aspect of life. For example, let me suggest that we can look at the three main characters in the show Star Trek as being, each, id, ego, and superego figures.

Id Ego SuperegoMcCoy Spock Captain KirkEmotion Rationality Command

In essence the three combine to form one “heroic” personality and each character represents one aspect of that personality.

One reason we play this game is to see whether we can determine, in the case of television programs, for instance, why we like a certain show and whether or not we may be identifying with one or another of the main characters. We can also apply this id/ego/superego notion to other aspects of media,

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popular culture and everyday life. Please fill in the chart below, which offers a number of different topics to consider.

Topic Id Ego Superego

Cities

Books

Magazines

Heroes

Heroines

Regions of USA

Songs

Films

You may not be able to find a perfect fit, but it is possible to find things to put in this chart. You may have simplify matters a bit. Let me suggest that Spock is “essentially” an ego figure, who claim to fame is not having human emotions and being rational. But I think you can see the point I’m making. Kirk, incidentally, is similar to the German word “kirche” which means church.


Did using this Id/Ego/Superego chart make you see things about media, popular culture, and every day life differently?

You can extend this chart and deal with topics not listed on it. If asked to do so, what other topics would you consider?

Can you learn anything about trends? That is, have television shows moved from being id to superego or the opposite?

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Myth…is a traditional religious charter, which operated by validating laws, customs, rites, institutions and beliefs, or explaining socio-cultural situations and natural phenomena, and taking the form of stories, believed to be true, about divine beings and heroes….

Myths are dramatic stories that form a sacred charter either authorizing the continuance of ancient institutions, customs, rites and beliefs in the area where they are current, of approving alternations….One must recognize that there is a mutual cross-fertilization between myth and those aspects of socio-cultural life that are subsumed under terms such as customs, rites, institutions, beliefs, and the like. (1972: 2-3)

Raphael Patai,Myth and Modern Man

The Myth Game

In this game we examine the relationship that exists between ancient myths and legends (which might be described as sacred stories and tales) and our arts and everyday practices. The game is based on the notion, described in the Patai quotation, that there are often a strong mythic basis to much of what seems to be secular.

As the scholar of religions Mircea Eliade wrote in his book The Sacred and the Profane (19 : 204,205):

modern man who feels and claims that he is nonreligious still retains a large stock of camouflaged myths and degenerated rituals…the festivities that go with the New Year or with taking up residence in a new house…still exhibit the structure of a ritual of renewal. The same phenomenon is observable in the merrymaking that accompanies a marriage or the birth of a child or obtaining a new position or social advancement….

According to Eliade, then, much modern behavior is ultimately sacred in nature, even though we may not recognize it as such.

Myths, then, have the following attributes:

They are narratives or storiesThey involve superhuman beings, deitiesThey involve the creation of the world, people, practices

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Myths function be giving meaning to everyday life, even though we generally don’t recognize the relationship between things we do and ancient myths. In the chart below I deal with the Paradise myth and its possible relation to American historical experience, elite culture, popular culture and everyday life.

Myth/Sacred Story Adam in the Garden of Eden. Theme of natural innocence.

Oedipus Myth. Theme of son unknowingly killing father and marrying his mother.

Psychoanalytic manifestation.

Repression?Suppression?

Oedipus Complex. Love of child for parent of opposite gender. .

Historical Experience Puritans come to USA to escape corrupt European civilization

Revolutions: American, French, Arab awakenings

Elite Culture American Adam figure in American novels. Henry James’ The American

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex Shakespeare, Hamlet

Popular Culture Westerns…restore natural innocence to Virgin Land. Shane.

Jack the Giant Killer James Bond novels, films King Kong

Everyday Life Escape from city and move to suburbs so kids can play on grass (and when teens smoke grass).

Oedipus period in little children

Your task it to take some important myth, from Greek Mythology or from the Bible, and trace it through the various aspects in the chart above. Below I mention a number of myths, sacred stories, etc. you may want to consider, but you may think of others you wish to use.

Noah and the Ark, IcarusSamson and Delilah, MidasDavid and Goliath, Sisyphus Trojan Horse, Ulysses/Odysseus

There is an argument to this game—namely, that there is often a hidden mythic basis to many of our entertainments and everyday activities, whether we recognize that this is the case or not. I would suggest that it is important to recognize what it is that may be shaping our thinking and behavior so we can decide on a rational basis whether we wish to continue being guided by myths (and in some cases fairy tales).

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A whole volume could well be written on the myths of modern man, on the mythologies camouflaged in the plays that he enjoys, in the books he reads. The cinema, that “dream factory,” takes over and employs countless mythological motifs—the fight between hero and monster, initiatory combats and ordeals, paradigmatic figures and images (the maiden, the hero, the paradisical landscape, hell, and so on). (1966: 205)

Mircea EliadeThe Sacred and the Profane

Sacred Roots:

This game involves asking you to see how one institution might be seen as functioning as a functional alternative to another one. I play this game so that students can move beyond a purely intellectual understanding of the sacred and its relation to an important sociological concept, functionalism. This game can be done in teams or, like many games, can be used as the basis for a discussion with the class.

I start with an example: the notion that professional football can be seen as a functional alternative to religion. Let me suggest how certain activities associated with religion are now functioning in professional football.

Religion Sunday Pro Footballsaints superstarsSunday service Sunday gameofferings ticketstheology complex plays

You can also find a considerable number of other parallels or functional alternatives between religion and football if you wish to think about this matter.

You can see how you find polar oppositions…and how each item in a list is related, logically, to others in the list. This game is based upon Eliade’s suggestion that frequently there are sacred roots to seemingly secular behavior and also on Saussure’s theory that we make sense of concepts by seeing them as the opposite of some other concept in the system.

As Saussure wrote in A Course in General Linguistics(1966:117):

Concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content by negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system.

That is, the most precise characteristics of concepts is in being what other concepts, in the same system, are not..

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Let me move on to the notion that one of the dominant institutions in contemporary American society is the department store and that this institution has its roots in the medieval cathedral. I draw here upon Mircea Eliade's book, The Sacred and The Profane which suggests that many of the things modern men and women do are really camouflaged versions of ancient religious rites (though we don't recognize them as such).

This game is played by finding paired opposites: things that happened in cathedrals and that now, in a secularized form, take place in department stores. There are more than a dozen of these paired opposites, many of which are quite amusing and others of which are imaginative and insightful, that can be found when playing this game. I will start this game off with an example of a polarity that can be found.

Department Stores Medieval Cathedrals

Sell Products Sell God

Questions to think about

Are there other topics that would yield interesting results when investigated and analyzed in terms of functional alternatives?

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Are there any other seemingly "secular" activities that you participate in (rock concerts? Birthdays? New Year’s Eve Parties, Thanksgiving Dinners) that may, in reality, be seen as modern manifestations of ancient sacred rituals. If so, what are they?

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Time Capsule: A receptacle containing documents or objects typical of the current time period place in the earth or in a cornerstone for discover in the future.

Random House Dictionary of the English Language:The Unabridged Edition

Time Capsule

Implicit in the definition of a time capsule is the notion that objects and artifacts (to which we can add DVDs of films, television shows, etc.), what anthropologists call “material culture,” reflect a given era accurately. This means that later generations, which open time capsules at dates when they are scheduled to be opened, will get a good idea of what life was like when the time capsule was filled and sealed

Playing The Game

We play the game by taking 24 objects and, in order of their importance, placing them in an imaginary time capsule. These objects must give the best indication of what life in the United States was like in the year 2003…but we can fudge a bit and say in the years since 2000.

The problem we face is in being representative and choosing those artifacts that give the best picture of American culture and society.

How do we make sure we are being representative?How do we avoid giving a biased view?

To make things easier, we can focus this time capsule on American popular culture and media—films, television shows, books, magazines, fast foods, fads, and so on. Make sure that you name specific texts, such as The Survivor rather than a genre such as “Reality Television Shows.” Remember to put things in the capsule in order of importance.

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1. 13.

2. 14.

3. 15.

4. 16.

5. 17.

6. 18.

7. 19.

8. 20

9. 21.

10. 22.

11. 23.

12. 24.


Was there much agreement by different teams about the objects? That is, where the lists of objects fairly similar? If so, how do you explain this? If not, why do you that happened?

What problems did you face in deciding on the artifacts to use, other than lack of time?

If you only could have put in five artifacts and objects, would you have chosen different things to put in the time capsule?

If you had to fill a time capsule with objects and artifacts about yourself, what would you put in it?

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