Respond to another student’s post by reiterating what they have said (not just “I agree!” or “great point” but a substantive response). Your response should be courteous as well. If you disagree, sta

Respond to another student’s post by reiterating what they have said (not just “I agree!” or “great point” but a substantive response). Your response should be courteous as well. If you disagree, state why politely.

The first post；

1) Kellner said “Cultural studies shows how media culture articulates the dominant values, political ideologies, and social developments and novelties of the era.”pg. 8.Kellner defines cultural studies as the ability to identify media manipulation and to analyze how the media forms society. Being able to analyze the impact of media on society is valuable Kellner said on page 8, because it allows individuals to understand and interpret culture critically. Kellner discusses the components of analyzing cultural studies which he names the threefold project, production and political economy of culture, cultural texts, and the audience reception. My definition is cultural studies is analyzing how media shapes the way of what society thinks, acts, and dresses. 2) Kellner says Political economy has to do with the cultural texts when referring to cultural studies because of the production and distribution cycle. Political economy can control what will be produced, what will be shown, who will be shown to and how it will be shown. Political economy is important when discussing cultural studies and the media because it has a lot of power over the media. Kellner uses the example of media corporate business like twitter, twitter only lets you type a certain amount of words in a post which is limiting the users. He also gives the examples of radio stations, the music that is distributed is always three - five minutes. Political economy controls the media.3a) Radway writing has to do with cultural studies because of the messages of manipulation and gender ideology that is being put out. The main points that stuck to me while reading Radways writing was the women felt like they were escaping from the real world and rebelling against their current lives while reading. We can identify the impact of the romance books and how the political economy has so much power over the female audience that are reading them to make them feel they are escaping and rebelling. The messages that are being put out in the romance books are important but the focusing on who is buying the books are as well. 3b) Radways findings were that the women reading the romance novels were just trying to escape their lives for the moments they were reading. “the cultural value attached to books permits them to overcome the guilt they feel about avoiding their responsibilities” (Radway, 59). Radway discussed her findings by saying that the women were unhappy about their lives and that is why the romance books let them escape from reality. The women when reading feelings had changed even towards their husbands because they felt their husbands were more sensitive to their feelings. In all reality they were just reading the romance book.

The second post:

In this section, Kellner defines cultural studies as a way that “media culture provides the materials for constructing views of the world, behavior and even identities.” (Dines and Humes, 8). He also thinks that the “media culture tend to mainstream themselves, conforming to the dominant fashion, values, and behaviors” (Dines and Humes, 8). It is not only the dominant views that cultural studies views, but it also takes into account “subculture groups and individuals that resist dominant forms of culture and identity” (Dines and Humes, 8). Kellner also states that cultural studies allow us to examine a range of culture without prejudice (Dines and Humes, 8). The three main components of cultural studies, according to Kellner, are the production and political economy, textual analysis, and the reception of cultural texts (Dines and Humes, 10). After reading the chapter what I believe cultural studies is the analyzation of how the media shapes our opinions on all aspects of our lives by presenting things in a particular way. These portrayals of things like race, gender, or political influencers are meant to shape our understanding, thoughts and how we perceive the world around us. I think also that cultural studies really analyzes the hold the media has on shaping the dominant cultural, but also looks into how the opposition can change or manipulate how the media is viewed. I think it also looks into how systemic change can happen from subgroups in a culture that rebel against how the media is trying to shape the American culture.

2. I believe that Kellner thinks political economy is so important to cultural studies because whoever owns the media outlets controls what is seen by the majority of media viewers. This can sway the dominant culture into a view that is aligned with the owner of that particular outlet's views. This portrayal of only one-sided views is not necessarily good for culture and can keep things like structural violence, systemic racism, and inequality standards alive and normalized within the dominant culture. Political economy also reflects on the “homogeneity of the genres” (Dines and Humes, 11) and can detract from having a more worldly view, or a portrayal of anything other than the current dominant narrative, within most media outlets (TV, news, movies, etc.). This controlling what people see, hear, and become somewhat normalized to can detract from needed change within the social structures we create and as well as the acceptance that other cultures mingling within the dominant culture are greeted with resistance and hate rather than acceptance and evolution. With the culmination of this, I believe the definition of political economy is creation and curation of a dominant culture based on one-sided views of an elite class that portrays misinformation, uneducated opinions, and shuts out the narrative of subcultures within our nation. This being propagated through the major media outlets sways peoples, identities, beliefs and the view of the world around them.

3A. I think that Radway’s text is an example of cultural studies because it shows the side effect of only having one culture. The culture that these women have grown up in and are living is propagated by media and social structures that are seen as the dominant culture in society. Radway summarizes the women's’ responses on pages 60 and 61 and these summaries are telling. They share a story of how women are meant to be a stay at home woman “does nothing worthwhile” all day, while the male goes out and works for a living. However, what is not shown is that a woman's work is never-ending. It is taking care of all the chores, taking kids where they need to be, nurturing, and making everything effortless. It is showing that a woman must be “Marry Poppins. You can’t be mad, or sad, you have to keep everything bottled up inside” (Dines and Humes, 61). It also portrays that men are supposed to be emotionally unattached and just the providers. This would be the dominant cultures seen by many through the media, news, TV, and radio, but there is a sort of escape used by these women. This “escape” is a subculture within the dominant and a way to rebel against the social norms of daily life. It takes on the dominant culture view and turns it into something that women actually want and put women in a place where they deny the demands that are culturally seen as an integral part of their roles of mothers and wives (Dines and Humes, 64).

3B. The findings that Radway found that women between the ages of 25 and 49 in middle-class households are predominantly the readers of romantic novels (Dines and Humes, 59). These novels are specific in that they are not necessarily over sexually graphic, not inhumanely violent towards women, and all contain a maculine character that also has a very nurturing side. It was a common theme that these women read these books in order to “flee from the pressures and tensions they experienced as wives and mothers” (Dines and Humes, 60). It was also mentioned that the main source of knowledge of these books, Dot, had some very feminist ideals. I think that this is an important link to the romantic escapes because it shows that these women are ascribing to a dominant culture that they do not necessarily agree with and find the need to escape from.