Placing the Aesthetic in Popular Culture:
Quality,
Value, and Beauty in Communication and Scholarship
An International Communication Association
Pre-conference
Co-sponsored by the Popular Communication, Philosophy
of Communication, and Visual Communication Divisions
26th May 2011, Boston, MA
For many within the correlate fields of media, cultural, and
communication studies, art, beauty, and aesthetics are highly problematic,
heavily loaded terms. Critical theory posited the evaluative schemas on which
such terms rely as discursively constructed and as frequently laden with
culturally chauvinistic politics, and cultural studies in particular offered a
firm rejection of the notion that the study of culture should begin with a
favorable judgment of the text in question. Yet aesthetics never went away.
Even if unaware, many scholars continued to select research projects
based around
judgments of a subject matter's aesthetic prowess or poverty. More
importantly,
though, the discourse of aesthetics, quality, and beauty never went away for
audiences and the media industries, as seen in discussions of "quality
television," for instance, or in the valorization of "independents" and "art
house" production in film, in the debate regarding whether videogames are art
that is currently heading to the US Supreme Court (with the future
of videogame
regulation hanging in the balance), or in the continuing denigration of
aesthetic forms associated with marginal groups, such as certain forms of hip
hop.
The aesthetic in popular culture may even be at the center of
significant cultural transformations associated with new media and the
reconfiguration of existing mass media. For instance, do the commentary and
rating options on popular Web 2.0 websites represent a democratization of
aesthetic judgment, or even the creation of a participatory aesthetic "public
sphere" based around open discussion, advice, and support? And to what extent
are such developments paralleled (or exploited) by the rhetoric of natural
talent and the apparent validation of audience opinion on TV shows
like the Idol franchise? We in communication
studies may not tackle aesthetics head on, but it is always there, whether as
discourse, rumor, debate, or control mechanism.
This one-day preconference will approach the place of aesthetics in
popular communication studies. Treating it as a problematic, not as a given,
the preconference will create room for vigorous debate about the actual and
potential place of aesthetics in our scholarship. The point will not
be to find
yet more ways to romance the text, but to interrogate aesthetics and
to advance
popular communicative approaches to its observation and analysis. We
will ask where one finds discussions of aesthetics
and what they represent, but also consider possible ways that aesthetics might
find its way into our scholarship in the future.
Individual panels or contributions could address:
The distinction between
"quality" media and the mundaneHow aesthetics is tied to
specific industrial imperatives and economic modelsThe
morality and ethics of
aesthetics, and of studying aestheticsThe political uses of
aesthetics, and the politics of aestheticsAesthetics' relationship
with the popularSingular vs. collaborative
constructions of "authorship" Comparative contexts for
the discussion of aesthetics across mediaComparative contexts for
the discussion of aesthetics globally How aesthetics are to be
studied methodologically
Format:
The preconference will be designed to put discussion front and
center. Panelists will be asked to circulate short two-page position papers
beforehand, and will then have approximately five minutes each to introduce
their ideas. Panelists will then be invited to discuss amongst each other,
before opening the discussion, at the half-way point, to discussion with the
room. Thus, while panelist spots will be limited, this format allows for the
entire room to take part actively in the day's proceedings.
Call:
We invite 500 word abstracts from those wishing to be panelists to
be submitted to Jonathan Gray ((jagray3 /at/ wisc.ed))
by January 9, 2010. Panels will be assembled by the conference planning
committee, with notification to follow in February, 2011. Remember that
panelists will only have five minutes to introduce their ideas, and thus
submissions should be tailored to the discursive format, not to monologic
delivery.
