Christopher Pawling Popular Fiction Ideology or Utopia

IntroductionPopular Fition Ideology or Utopia? Christopher PawlingPopular assembly and Literary criticism Despite the growth of interest in favourite fictionalization, it has been toilsome to introduce courses on them in college and university syllabi because it is still not considered as mainstream writings, just a minor or peripheral device genre. The self-importance-definition of English literature depends heavily on what is absent from its field- its significant other- popular literature or paraliterature whose absence from the syllabus enables us to define the dominant literary culture.Paraliterature is a sort of taboo against which the self of literature proper is fashioned. Darko Suvin says that a discipline which does not take into account 90% of its domain seems to have a distorted vision in the smaller zone it focuses on. i. e. high literature. In the last few years, there has been an attempt to initiate interdisciplinary courses. The prejudice against popular litera ture has gone down because it garners the widest readership. It is withal more inextricably linked to other aesthetic modes of communication deal film and TV. Pop fic has been included in the curriculum since the 1960s.This is not a overstuffed option merely has generated a serious corpus of criticism predicated on theory. So reading pop fic is not as much of a peripheral preoccupation as was assumed earlier. Much of the secondary work on pop lit has been untheorised and eclectic. The prospective student has been faced with a) production, marketing and consumption of popular fiction which elude gists embodied in the text al-Quran edition themselves and b) Analyses using the tools of lit criticism to give an internal account of the themes embodied within the text or genre, that are unable to make connexions amongst the literary artefact and the social context.In such situations, the socio-historical context is seen as something external. Sociologists have dealt with texts of popular culture as head bearers of political orientation. Popular fiction reflects social meanings/ mores and intervene in the carriage of society by organising and interpreting experiences which have previously only been subject to partial derivative reflection. Pop fic, like all other cultural creations, interprets human experience. Genre Analysis Popular myths are not simple repositories of sociological data. They generate norms/ expectations on which the readers acceptance/ rejection of the text depends. See quotation from James Genres are essentially contracts. The narrative of the thriller offers a form of pleasure (uncertainty between hostage and adventure) that is different from that of womens romance. The relative autonomy of the narrative helps to define boundaries of different genres. These genres do not exist in a vacuum but they herald in specific social, cultural and historical contexts. We must acknowledge that our popular genres differ from those of other s ocieties so they cannot be seen within umbrella terms like universal archetypal structures. Narrative and Ideology Macherey and Goldman A breakthrough in cultural readings has been that the mediations between text and society are present in the text itself. Levi Strauss- Ideology is present in both the form and content of the myth as text and the narrative itself provides the crucial link between the external public of social experience and the internal meaning which is derived therefrom. Frederic Jameson- narrative is a form of reasoning about experience and society. Pierre Macherey starts with an analysis of the internal logic or problematic of the text before going on to reconstruct the ideological field which lies behind the narrative.The author tests out certain ideological propositions which form the fundament of the literary discourse. The narrative may thus reveal any contradictions inherent in those assumptions and then suppresses them through magical resolutions. The na rrative may get flaw if the author refuses this escape route and pursues the contradiction till they destabilize the text. Jules Vernes story, The Mysterious Island begins with a supposedly straightforward celebration of bourgeois recognition.It is subverted by superior Nemo who epitomizes a scientific spirit of enquiry untainted by social relations. This ideal image of science is finally rejected by Verne and Nemo rejected as an anachronistic figure whose illusions destroy him and his island. It helps to undermine the effect of an all-conquering science. Vernes story does not offer a conscious interrogation of the bourgeois image of science. Machereys reading reveals a flaw in the narrative which allows us to gain access to the repressed meanings of governmental unconscious (Frederic Jameson) of the narrative. Martin Jordins analysis of 1950s novel Wolfbane shows that the narrative of Wolfbane just does not reproduce given ideological assumptions about the role of science in so ciety but that it too puts that ideology to work testing, defining and reconstructing it in the process of interpreting the changing content of historical experience. Wolfbane reverses the science fiction formula by implying that science must first be liberated from its service to an irrational social order before it can become an instrument of human progress or produce a more free and equal society.During this period, the readership of SF (the scientific middle class) had to be subordinated to the take ups of the corporate economy. The text became a site of ideological try and not just a reflection of external social processes. The narrative constructs instead than reflects an ideological position. Jordins analysis of Wolfbane emphasizes the disillusionment with science as part of a creative interrogation of ideology within the text. Mellor concentrates on the way in which science fiction expresses the domain of a function vision of its readership, on its relative autonomy, kinda than treating it as a relatively independent entity.The flight from science reflects a process of fragmentation which is already detectable outside the text, in the exploitation world vision of the educated middle class. Mellor constructs an overall picture of SF as a genre, whereas Jordin concentrates on the narrative mechanics of one flake of change and thus is bound to privilege the more autonomous features of the text. But the authors share the same philosophy. The Popular/ Elite Dichotomy Lowenthal and Cawelti Macherey breaks with established literary criticism in his refusal to tell apart the sphere of literature between elite literature (an autonomous realm which is somehow free from ideology), and popular or mass literature (supposedly a direct reflection of ideology and therefore not amenable to the sophisticated analysis given to canonic texts). Macherey says a text is literary because it is recognized as such, at a certain moment, under certain conditions. It may not have been recognized as such before or after. Machereys highlights the relativity of literary value and he need to problematize categories such as popular and high literature. Verne has been added to the curriculum since Macherey, so we can conclude that the canon is a historical construct, rather than a fixed entity, and that is open to revision. He challenged that a science fiction work by a minor author is not a literary text and has been proved right in a subsequent era. There are no separate mode of analysis for the study of popular fiction and real literature. This dichotomy leads to a reductionist approach.According to Tony Bennett, non-canonized texts are necessarily collapsed back into the conditions of production from which they derive. Popular fiction is often limited to an account of marketing strategies industrious in promoting bestsellers. Or mass fiction is studied as a component of the culture industry. Leo Lowenthals book Literature, Popular Culture and hostelry says that since the division of literature into art and commodity in the eighteenth century, the popular literary products can make no claim to insight and truth.The emergence of a market economy has profound implications for the kin between author and reader. Yet even high art or serious literature is not so impervious to markets, consumption patterns and economic profit as to warrant assessment only in terms of what Pierre Bordieux calls symbolic profit. (See Randal Johnsons discussion of Bordieuxs argument about economic vs. symbolic profit in Pierre Bourdieux on Art, Literature and Culture- Editors Introduction to Pierre Bourdieux, The orbital cavity of Cultural Production Essays on Art and Literature. Cambridge Polity Press, 1993, p. 15. ) John Caweltis Adventure, Mystery and Romance argues that popular fiction is intrinsically more ideological than its elite counterpart. For Cawelti, formulaic fiction has the function of reproducing cultural consensus, in contrast to mimetic (elite) fiction which confronts us with the problematic and contrasting reality of the world. Mimetic literature represents life as we know it while the formulaic reflects the construction of an ideal world without the disorder, ambiguity, uncertainty and limitations of the world of our experience. Formulaic literature is an artistry of escape which makes it popular. The tensions, ambiguities and frustrations. mystery (p. 9) This work attempts to defend popular fiction by assigning it to the realms of escape and distr live up to. There is no place in Caweltis scheme for a literature of original innovation, or for one of informal underground education. That is confined to the domain of mimetic literature. If popular fiction is conventional in an artistically conservative sense, all literature is concerned with the manipulation of narrative expectations in some way, and even the most sophisticated literary subversion inevitably sets up generic patterns after a while.Even an arch modernist such as Theodore Adorno has recognised that formulae (which he terms as stereotypes) are an essential element in the organisation and anticipation of experience. It would be wiser to necessitate under what conditions specific literary genres become rigid and lose their creative potential while acknowledging that this is a question which applies to both popular and elite fiction. Cawelti privileges the consensual role of popular culture. Formulaic lit, he says, assimilates new interests into conventional imaginative structures. The black-oriented action stories of the early 70s use a handed-down formula- the hard boiled thriller- but fill it with new content. The conventional forms of fantasy they use are not very different from the adventure stories that have been enjoyed by American audiences for several decades. Caweltis functionalist theory has its origins in mainstream American sociology. American culture, he believes, embodies a set of core values which grad ually spread outwards to the periphery of society and in the end embrace marginal groups such as the black minorities.But this model takes certain values for granted and assumes that culture is a homogenous entity rather than seeing it as a site of struggle which is marked by contradictions. But while the black action stories tend to make the black man an initiator of action , they also glorify a machismo image with the result that the cultural integration of the male section of the community takes place at the cost of the woman, who experiences a doubled subordination. While Lowenthal condemns pop fic as a purveyor of false consciousness, Cawelti tends to extol this function in a rather uncritical a manner. Cawelti highlights the harmonising, normative function of formulaic narrative whereas when we look at the ideological conflict within each text, it becomes clear that it is also potentially subversive of that consensus. Popular Fiction and Common thought the Influence of Gram sci Even the most banal narratives illuminate the material reality which lies behind the ostensibly unified, conflict-free world of ideology.Rosalind Brunts chapter on Barbara Cartlands romance stories highlights a contradiction in the narrative, between the intended message which focuses on the role of woman as a transcendent, spiritual being, and the actual process of narration which concentrates on the more mundane reality of love and marriage- historical necessities lead women to pursue men and to turn love into an economically rational career. Therefore virginity is seen a s a commodity which secures the crampfishine an economic place in the world through a good marriage.Cartlands novels show womens involvement in a patriarchal commodity market that is incongruous with her romantic idealism. The spiritual union of marriage is always celebrated at the end of the novel but the impulse of the narrative is towards a materialist account of gender relations. Brunt focuses on the co ntradictions in the text. Her feminist reading shows that the authors intentions are partially subverted at an unconscious level by a material reality that cannot be wished away by the magical resolutions at the end of the text.Cartlands novels can be interpret in a way that renders them potentially subversive of the authors own intentions, They do not generate an alternative view of female identity. In fact, they endorse values opposite to those of the womens movement and Cartland undoubtedly opposes any move towards greater social and cultural equality for her sex. Gramsci terms the Cartlandian approach to her readers as common sense (the space between hegemonic ideology and material reality).Women are naturally subordinate to men and they know it. They have to operate in a different manner if they are to succeed as women. Women, therefore, are socialised into existing gender relations. Everything is enclosed within a circular narrative. The heroine has to decide between marrying for love or money. The choice has to be based on common sense, and there is no suggestion that there is a third choice- that of not marrying at all. Her dependence on marriage as a route to economic security is acknowledged unquestionably. There are contradictions in the world of lived ideology- rock age elements combine with principles of a more advanced science, prejudices from all past phases of history and intuitions of a in store(predicate) philosophy. Here Gramsci highlights the dialectic between ideology and utopia which is so crucial in the making of popular fiction. A Stone Age element in Cartlands fiction is, for example, is the fascination with the aristocracy. The intuitions of a utopian future are free from contradictions. Most formulaic fiction in normal times, says Gramsci, have a predominance of Stone Age elements.At times of intensified political and cultural struggle, common sense adopts a more utopian outlook. At those times, there is an active popular demand for literature which embodies alternative values. Popular Fiction Ideology or Utopia? What is the relationship between popular fiction and cultural politics at certain key moments in the post-war period? The seesawing dialectics between ideology and utopia has to be seen in this context. In the late 50s, British society was moving towards the morality of affluence. The fear was that an old world of authentic value, associated with the pre-war working class, was on the door of extinction. In Stuart Laings Room at the Top, the vision of a romantic haven based on an alternative reality- the relationship between the hero and the heroine- amidst the rat race collapses with the heroines death. At the end, there is a cynical acceptance of the present and the inevitable values of affluence. In the 60s, there was a counter-culture which highlighted the need to reframe relationships within the frame of the perquisites of political change. Middle class pressure groups at the time attempted to make society live up to its stated ideals, rather than movements with a concrete vision of the just society. The counter culture was hardly a mass movement in the classic sense of the word because it was more often than not confined to the middle class. But it did have a populist outlook, rejecting cultural divisions and celebrating popular art as an arena of cultural struggle. Chapter by David Glover- concentrates on that moment in the 1960s when certain writers of fantasy- Tolkein, Peake, Burroughs and Moorecock, acquired a cult status among the counter-culture.Each of these authors reached maximum exposure and circulation through the medium of mass market paperbacks. Fantasy gave expression to the seem for utopian alternatives. The taste for anti-realist texts among the among the counter-culture can be seen as a kind of literary equiavlent to the alteration of consciousness, suggesting new ways of perceiving ones relationship with others, society in general and the natural wo rld. The content of these utopian tales offered the vision of a human proportions, an organic society based on the small joint and the needs of the individual.Glover concludes that the enclosed world of utopia/ fantasy provided a touchstone for a critique of existing social structures and the construction of alternatives, social models prefigured in the achievements of literary technique. reproduction culture was a spent force by the early 70s. Popular fantasy developed instead in a cult of the sword and sorcery. The world vision of the counter culture had been inspired by the past, a need to recover a world which had disappeared with industrialism. There was a strong plea for traditional political values, not a mere revival of pastoralism.Adams novel signalled that return to tried and tested conservative values. That was to prove an important component of political rhetoric in the 1970s. This book does not offer a comprehensive introduction to the study of popular fiction. Ther e is an emphasis in Pawlings book on studies which concentrate on the meanings which form around texts, genres or authors, rather than analyses which might examine the way in which those meanings have been understood by particular groups of readers. The assimilation on the point of production rather than consumption is the outcome of a moment in cultural studies.The process of reception has been highlighted in determining the meaning generated by individual texts. Texts can have different meanings for different groups of readers. A work cannot merely be collapsed into its various moments of reception. It is necessary to focus on the text as a source of meaning creation. This allows the student to test his/ her reading of popular fiction against the various approaches on offer here. The function of a book like this should be to encourage others to embark on their own analyses.