A quickie introduction to cultural criticism for the purposes of JMC 309 Analyzing Mass Media Messages at Humboldt State University. Thanks to Purdue's Online Writing Lab for summaries of cultural theories.

1. Cultural criticism
A practice in which you look for the way-deeper meaning
in a cultural text, from road sign to commercial to viral
video.
Then you look for the meaning of the meaning. And you
try to figure out what that means, how it means, why it
means.

2. Many theories and critical modes
 A reader response mode of criticism allowed for
individual ways of thinking about a text. Remember
the English maxim that “there is no right answer”?
This is that way of thinking.
 But reader response criticism was too mushy for folks
who preferred a more structured, almost scientific
approach to the cultural text.
 Formalists suggested that a text contained within it all
the needed clues to an exact interpretation.

3. More theories
 Other critics and scholars tried to ascertain what the
media maker intended to say with her or his work by
putting it in historic context.
 Scholars tried to tie works to the media maker’s own
life, using a biographic criticism.
 Marxist critics looked at economics, critiquing the
capitalist forces that drive the narrative (and sales of
the media).

4. And even more!
 Deconstructionists studied how meaning could be
derived only from contextual oppositions, always in flux.
 Psychoanalysts studied the text as a revelation of our
inner psyches.
 Archetypal critics read a text like it was a deck of tarot
cards.
 Phenomenologists looked for the epiphanous moments
and barbaric yawps.
 (Many critics would now accuse me of being reductive, with
regards to their sophisticated and complex theories.)

5. A 1990s list of influential critics
(What do you notice?)

6. The critics are white guys.
Except for British anthropologist Mary
Douglas, of course, of course.

7. The problem with Eurocentrism
 Eurocentrism as the term for an ideology was coined
by Samir Amin in the 1970s.
 A Eurocentric view privileges Western culture
(European and Euro-based U.S. and Canadian
cultures).
 Critics develop analytical systems from their cultural
perspectives.
 More perspectives = a richer, more inclusive criticism
– for us, a wider, more useful understanding of the
role of mass media messages and their influence on
our thinking and our actions.

8. A fresher list
of theories for
cultural
criticism
From Purdue’s
Online Writing Lab

9. Feminist criticism
 Feminist critics look at how texts – mass
media messages, included, reinforce the
economic, political, social, and psychological
oppression of women" (Tyson 83).
 For cultural criticism, feminist criticism
examines patriarchal (male dominated) media
messages and aims to expose misogyny.
(From Perdue’s OWL.)

10. Critical Race Theory
 “Critical Race Theory, or CRT, examines
the appearance of race and racism
across cultural expressions including
mass media messages.
 “CRT scholars attempt to understand
how victims of systemic racism are
affected by cultural perceptions of race
and how they are able to represent
themselves to counter prejudice.”

11. Derrick Bell (1995)
From “Who’s Afraid of Critical Race Theory?”

12. Ecocriticism
 Ecocriticism embraces a principle of “relevance” in
literature, which can began looking at texts as stored
energy – renewable, sustainable
 “The problem now, as most ecologists agree, is to find
ways of keeping the human community from
destroying the natural community, and with it the
human community.”
 “Energy comes from the creative imagination.”

13. Branches of ecocriticism
 Ecocriticism, a kind of literary ecology way of looking
at texts, sprawled out into its own sub-fields of
criticism, including:
 Ecofeminism
 Ecocriticism and social justice
 Eco-phenomenology
 Eco-psychology