Cultural Studies.

Culture is generally define as a shared beliefs, values and ideas among a certain community or a group of people. Cultural studies is, however, concerns on studying of what people do in their everyday life, how an individual's perception becomes an ideal meaning for everyone and more importantly, on the cultural differences among a society. Therefore, this post will discuss the key concept of culture in terms of; representation, discourse, ideology and politics, by using 'America's Next Top Model' (ANTM) as a text for this study.


Culture, according to Hartley (2011, p.77) is the production, circulation, experience and transformation (over time and space) of meaning, identity and relationships, to which he refer each respectively as; language, consiciousness and social networks. Whereas Storey (2003, p.3) defined culture as "the practices and processes of making meanings with and from the 'texts' we encounter n our everyday lives... cultures are made from the production, circulation and consumption of meanings. To share culture, therefore, is to interpret the world - make it meanigful - in recognisably similar ways". 


In cultural studies, visual culture is included to understand cultural studies more in the prespective of media such as through; Television and printed materials. Visual culture means, its shared meaning by a group of people or community through the world representation of visual, aural and textual are due to the engagement with symbolic and communicative activities (Sturken and Cartwright, 2009, p.3).

Representation stands as the equivalent of something in the material world or it is also known as a 'referent'. America's Next Top Model or ANTM, was established and started its first cycle back in May 2003. ANTM became part of American Culture as it represent how women should look like through modelling for 'Vogue' magazine and cosmetic commercial.


Discourse refers as cultural framework, or "framework of interpretation". Moreover, it also act as a system to create a social shared-culture. Fairclough (1999, p. 310) defined Discourse as, "the language used in representing a given social practice from a particular point of view". This means that, discourse interacts with a social groups by sending the sturcture of words or images to make dominate their beliefs towards a particular topic. If the word 'Goal' or 'Offside' is a discourse of football, then when any individuals hear 'You wanna be on Top?'; they would know it is referring to 'America's Next Top Model' or ANTM. On the other hand, Griffin noted, Ideology is "Those images, concepts and premises which provide the frameworks through which we represent, interpret, understand and 'make sense' of some aspect of social existence". In other words, a certain idea that we understand as a commonsense to which it shapes our perception as an ideal meaning. The main ideologies for ANTM are; Flawless or unique face and body, which is highly required in a fashion as well as media industry. The show often portray girls in sexy clothes with pretty make-up combination; according to the theme chosen for each episodes. 


Both discourse and ideology often comes hand in hand together; where there is discourse there is ideology. However, the major problem with ideologies in a discourse is that they do not represent the whole truth. The reason for this is initial existence of the counter-discourses and counter-ideologies, in the sense it has been implemented in our minds. This is supported by Hartley's (2011, p.132) statement, "Ideology is seen as the practice of reproducing and social relations of inequality within the sphere of signification and discourse." Therefore, if the ideology of ANTM is being flawless then the counter-ideology of it would be, possessing a flaw or being imperfection.


Stuart Hall defined Politics in term of media as "struggle over meaning". In the case of ANTM, the show has the power to promote the politics of materialistic, fashion, consumerism as well as being beauty conscious. With that being said, ANTM use its authority to shape any individuals in the society, in making young women especially, to do what it takes to achieve the ideal face and body which ; for example, practicing of 'bulimia'. Another way to see it, being fat is wrong. This therefore create a conterversy of the true meaning of 'beauty'.


As a result, Cultural Studies allows us to understand how an idea or concept shared can become a practice for the masses and how it brings everyone to understand of the created social shared-culture. In the case of ANTM, it did create a social community and bring them together in a common understanding of the show; fashion and beauty. However, the ideology of the show can be quite controversial in the media industry as it influence the young ones to appear how the society culture expect of them instead of letting them be who they look like. This is where the politics play it roles in whether to positively or negatively influence the audiences of the show, as they have the power to direct the audiences perception. 
















References List;


Griffin, E. (2009). A First Look At Communication Theory (7th Ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill.


Hartley, J. (2011). Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts (4th Ed.) New York; Routledge.


Fairclough, N.(1999). Critical Analysis of Media Discourse. In Marris, P. and Thorham, S. (1999). Media Studies; A Reader (2nd Ed.).


Storey, J. (2003). Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture.


Sturken, M. and Cartwright, L. (2009). Practices of Looking.