Sincerely Seeking the Investigation Report of "Theory and Method of Cultural Criticism"

If you can read or have no time to read, then this day is equivalent to no prayer, and life becomes empty and meaningless. Hegel's exposition on reading newspapers endows reading newspapers with a cultural significance, and in our view, it also reveals the cultural significance of reading newspapers. Such an explanation of the cultural significance of reading newspapers can also be extended to people's understanding of other media.

For example, TV has entered the family now, and watching TV has brought an impact on family life. The original dining occasion where family members exchange information and communicate their feelings may be replaced by watching TV, so the plot on TV becomes a clue to implicate them. Some family TV plays, such as "Sister Ma, an Idle Man", are broadcast around 6 pm because the plot is closely related to people's daily life. When the communication of daily life content is absent at the dinner table, "Sister Ma" can become an alternative symbol. If "Idle Man Ma Dajie" is successful in ratings, then the artistic height can also be ignored. It can be seen that the market reaction of many popular literature and art is actually caused by such market factors, and the focus of criticism activities is not artistic factors, but the cultural factors behind them. Only through cultural factors can artistic factors play a role.

Back to the question of critical methods, cultural criticism is not a closely organized critical faction, and there is no single critical method. So the main thing is not to create your own methods, but to find your own suitable methods. French critic roland barthes made a semiotic analysis of the cover image of paris match magazine published in 1955. The picture shows a black French soldier paying tribute to the French flag. Then, the main ethnic group in France is French of European descent, and here he is black. As a member of the French army, he must have French nationality. Therefore, the cultural significance of this image lies in that it shows that France, as a great empire, all its people, regardless of color, are taken care of by it, and at the same time, they are loyal to the empire. In roland barthes's analysis, we can see that these pictures are colonial. Of course, this kind of ideological implication depends on the expression of the picture itself, but roland barthes later sorted out the book Image-Music-Connotation (London, fontana Press, 1977, page 26) published in English, and thought that the meaning of the picture still depends on many factors, including the display context. Storey explained: "If this photo of a black soldier saluting the national flag appeared on the cover of the Socialist Review, its implied meaning might be quite different. Readers may ridicule. Not only will it not be regarded as a snail of French imperialism? Is it bad enough? Hey? Let's do our best! I [5] here involves the thoughts and methods of semiotics (symbolic meaning of national flag), sociology (image of imperialism), ethnology (black and white), literature and art (reception psychology) and so on.

This critical method combining life situations does not even exclude critics from putting their own life experiences in critical scenes. Spivak, an Indian-American critic, was born in India, where he finished high school, then finished college and worked in the United States. As an American minority female critic, she felt three pressures: the pressure of being an oriental minority, the pressure of being a woman facing male-dominated discourse, and the pressure of being a third-world immigrant being speechless in front of the first-world discourse. As a colony of the west, India's history is narrated in the western world. For example, there are many religions in India, but western scholars call them "Hinduism" (except Buddhism and Islam). Westerners interpret Hinduism by the importance of its Christian Bible teachings. In fact, the core content of Hinduism is not doctrine, but religious rituals and customs, which are self-evident and can only be understood. In his book "The World of the Other", spivak hopes that he can rename the "vassal" Indian culture. [6] But when she worked so hard, she felt embarrassed. She was doing this work as a scholar in the first world academic hall, and her work goal was to rename the nature of objects. But this new life should follow the principle of "following the master", so she is not familiar with the foothold of Indian culture, even after colonization, so are Indian scholars. She can only express this intention in western academic discourse, and the result still falls into the perspective of western narrative, and only in this framework can she get the opportunity to speak. ? Yarn play? What's the matter with you? Nai; What happened? What is the grade of the pen? Br> It can be said that cultural criticism is not a "literary" method, but a method of other disciplines or interdisciplinary, which cannot be created by critics themselves, but needs to be widely sought.

Thirdly, the situation of criticism: the possible space of cultural criticism.

Cultural criticism is based on a broad space for criticism activities, which includes the multidisciplinary nature of the theories adopted and the multifaceted nature of the criticism methods, so there are many possibilities for criticism space.

The most important or critical aspect of this possible space lies in that it excavates the internal factors of this text or phenomenon by reading literary texts and literary phenomena, so that literary criticism activities are not only about the meaning level of the text, but also into the exploration of the role of the text in people's unconscious fields, so the criticism activities have gained gains beyond the meaning level and have another meaning. Of course, this "thing with another meaning" is not invented by critics out of thin air, but the result of the comprehensive effect of the context of text expression, the mentality of the receiver and the influence of the author's right to speak. Bourdieu, a French thinker, pointed out the power influence of creative activities. He said, "Cultural producers have a special power and corresponding symbolic power to express things and make people believe in these performances. This symbolic power is also manifested in cultural producers. They remind the natural world and the social world of more or less chaotic, vague, unsystematic and even unexplained experiences in a clear and objective way, and give those experiences a reason to exist through this expression. " [7] This right to speak is not to force people to do or not to do anything, but to tell the world an order. Even if this order is justified, there are still differences in looking at the problem from different angles. The right to speak is to take the order recognized by the author as a true expression, while other orders that others may have are in a secondary or subordinate position. Most of our thoughts and actions must have one? Mulberry? What a stupid mother? What's the story? Why don't you stop killing quails and make an appointment with them? What about neon baking? Knock for the second hour, the scheduled day? Suck quail and tan it? What's the trouble with Naifang Garden? Br> The direction worthy of cultural criticism is not to provide reference resources for literary appreciation or literary creation, but to engage in cultural criticism and social reflection on the literary situation. This kind of work seems to be far away from literature itself, but only through this kind of work can literary works truly integrate into society. Literary and artistic works can be regarded as treasures in the ivory tower and a way of social discourse. Perhaps, cultural criticism focuses on the latter way.

The "Vietnam War Movie" produced by Hollywood provides the critics with the material for cultural analysis. In the 1960s, the United States was involved in the Vietnam War. The number of American soldiers killed in this war reached more than 50 thousand, exceeding the number of soldiers killed in World War II. Moreover, the United States failed to achieve the goal of preventing "Vietnam * * *" from infiltrating into the south, and finally Laos and Cambodia were also included in the "industrialization" circle. So that when George H.W. Bush directed the "Desert Storm" attack on Iraq and achieved the expected results, the first expression was that this action washed away the lingering shadow of the American people for many years.

The United States experienced a de facto failure in Vietnam, but it achieved success in narrative behavior at the discourse level. There are also movies about this war. In Viet Nam, there are films such as "The Girl's Forest" translated into China, but they are poor in art and production technology, so I'm afraid not many people are impressed. On the contrary, the United States has deer hunter, First Blood and other blockbusters with world influence. In this narrative, it tells us that Vietnam was originally a strange country, and then the Americans went, something happened, and then the Americans left, leaving some heavy memories. Here, Vietnam is just an object to be told. It doesn't matter when Americans don't go; When the Americans are gone, this is also insignificant. Vietnam only makes sense when Americans "discover" it. Thus, the United States, which failed on the battlefield, gained a dominant position through this narrative. So what is the success of this narrative in the United States? Relying on America's vast market, advanced technology, abundant capital and the central perspective inherited from Europe, that is, the world seen from the American perspective represents the basic form of the world, while the world seen from other perspectives only belongs to some aspects or even illusions.

John Staley understands this problem from the perspective of so-called Orientalism or Post-colonialism. He said: "The main form of Hollywood's handling of oriental issues is:' explain it, admit its point of view, describe it and tell it'. Hollywood movies "fictionalize" Vietnam as "comparative image" and "substitute and … potential noumenon" of the United States. Hollywood movies-together with other discrete practices, songs, novels, TV dramas, etc. -Successfully created a very powerful discourse about the Vietnam War: telling the United States and the world what happened there through a series of' truth programs'. These things happened because Vietnam was like this. " [8] Storey believes that this narrative has the reflection of the United States on this war, but behind it is an alternative compensation from the United States, that is, the United States no longer has "jurisdiction" over Vietnam, so it can get the positioning of the relationship between the two through this narrative. From this, we can see how the entertainment mode of literary and artistic expression enters the requirements of national ideological interests. Here, cultural criticism includes social criticism, political criticism, psychological criticism and other aspects, but it is different from any of these criticisms. The key is that it is multidisciplinary or even interdisciplinary, and it is close to people's daily life experience and common sense, rather than focusing on changing people's common sense.

Cultural criticism is not the dominant literary research type in the world. However, today, when globalization has penetrated all over the world and contemporary science and technology may become a new ideology to construct the myth of the times, cultural criticism can give us a scalpel for thinking after all.

note:

[1] Complete Works of Einstein, Volume I, Commercial Press, 1976, p. 309.

[2] mark poster's Information Model-Post-structuralism and Social Context, The Commercial Press, 2000, p. 150~ 15 1 page.

[3] hillis Miller's The Role of Literary Theory in Today, see The Future of Literary Theory, edited by Ralph Cohen, China Social Sciences Press, 1993, p. 12 1~ 122.

[4] "Post-modernity and Fair Play-Interview with Lyotard, Letters Collection", Shanghai People's Publishing House 1997, p. 1 104.

[5][8] John stahly's Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, Nanjing University Press, 200 1, pp. 65 438+06 54 38+04 ~ 65 438+06 54 38+05, pp. 133.

[6] spivak, Gayatri C.: In another world, p. 267, new york: Lu Trecci, 1988.

[7] "Cultural Capital and Social Alchemy-An Interview with Bourdieu", Shanghai People's Publishing House 1997, p. 87.