Bourdieu

‘The Field of cultural production, or: The Economic World Reversed’

Bourdieu essentially maps the field of cultural production placing mass production (production for the populous) and restricted production (production for producers) at opposite ends of the scale. In this model monetary capital and cultural capital also sit in opposition, suggesting the different intentions of producers of popular and elite cultural artefacts. Here are some interesting quotes:

‘There is a specific economy of the literary and artistic field, based on a particular form of belief… The work of art is an object that exists as such only by virtue of the collective belief which knows and acknowledges it as a work of art’.

’The production of the value of the art work… has to consider as attributing to production not only the direct producers of the work in its materiality (artist, writer etc.) but also the producers of the meaning and value of the work – critics, publishers, gallery directors…’

‘The literary or artistic field is at all times the site of a struggle between the two principles of hierarchization: the heteronomous principle, favourable to those who dominate the field economically and politically (e.g. Bourgeois art) and the autonomous principle (e.g. ‘art for art’s sake’)’

‘In an artistic field which has reached an advanced stage of this history, there is no place for naifs; more precisely, the history is preeminent to the functioning of the field’.

Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Field of Cultural production’.

Is journalism in the field of mass production and art in the field of restricted production?

Does art have no meaning or value to those who are uninitiated? Is the mass media driven by monetary gain? Can artists elude restricted structures (the gallery, institution, etc) and still achieve recognition; can artists infiltrate structures of mass culture or create their own structures that disrupt this normative model?

If in fact the model exists, when does a cultural product (whether a book, a song, an image) switch between being in either the mass or restricted fields and how could producers and consumers transform this field all together?

Kurt Cobain

Che Guevara T-Shirt

Big Brother

Big Brothe Logo

‘Big Brother is a TV show that began in the Netherlands in 1999, ‘it has been produced in 42 territories and has been a prime time hit in 70 countries’.

Germaine Greer ob Big Brother

Jade goody and Shilpa Shetty on Big Brother

Before Big Brother, the idea of ‘reality TV’ or just filming what happens – may have been associated with the documentary genre. Reality TV adopts some of the forms and conventions of ‘ informing’ genres and catapulted them into the context of the prime time entertainment industry.

Bertold Brecht

images: Munich production of Mother Courage and Her Children starring Therese Giehse in tht title role, Munich, 1951

– Claire Bishop on Brecht in ‘Introduction /Viewers as Producers‘ to Participation, ed. Claire Bishop, Whitechapel: London and MIT Press: Massachusetts, 2006, pp. 11:

‘As Benjamin explains, Brechtian theatre abandons long complex plots in favour of ‘situations’ that interrupt the narrative through a disruptive element, such as song. Through this technique of montage and juxtaposition, audiences were lead to break their identification with the protagonists on stage and be incited to critical distance. Rather than presenting the illusion of action on stage and filling the audiences with sentiment, Brechtian theater compels the spectator to take up a position towards this action.’