Stuart Hall is famous mainly for his cultural studies that take a look at the way humans interact with the media. One of his major ideas is that people don't only read and accept text, rather they encode and decode the text to decide whether they agree or disagree with an idea or argument that the author has made.
An interesting point that Hall makes, is that some people will agree with an argument made, while another person from a different lifestyle or culture will disagree on the exact same argument. This is all based on their beliefs and norms in their life.
Hall uses this idea to interpret how we react to the different types of media in our life. Hall explains that even when the author writes a text, the idea received by the reader/viewer, will be decoded at least a little bit different than the author intended.
An example could be seen with this video of the Liverpool soccer team. The video says that Liverpool is the greatest team in the world, but if you live in America, than you would not agree with the title. Of course, naturally, we tend to be biased towards the country we are from.
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4 comments:
I never thought about sports being culturally biased, or inherent because of a common norm- obviously they are. Andy, this clip is a great example of the stereotypical hero, value, etc; usually you don't think of 'football' as a culturally developed ideology, but it is. It's just as concrete as any other foundation developed through history, and you're right- each culture has it's favorites, in this case, it's Liverpool's athletes. How many Americans can agree with that?
Myself being a former soccer player at a high level and having been to European matches and witnessing the fans rioting an going crazy you realize it's encoded in them as soccer fans to do this kinda of stuff. Europeans are pretty much bred to be soccer fans thats why it is so popular over there,and that's why you don't see it in this country, we soccer is advertised here, but we are bred to be baseball,football, or basketball players. America main concept as a country is to be diverse that is why you see a variety of different sports commericals. Europe has different sports but mainly it's just soccer they love it and it's there past time. L
this is a great example of how even something like sports can be culturally biased. the norm in Liverpool is that there soccer team is the best, but the people in Manchester don't think that. And of course us Americans don't think that soccer is the best sport because we grow up in a culture that promotes baseball and football. in the rest of the world soccer is the number one sport but our culture in America is different then the rest of the world.
Andy I thought this clip was great. It all honesty it made me laugh the most, "We are Liverpool, la la la la la, the best football team in the world." Honestly that's hysterical and Becca's right that this is a great example of Hall's theory and cultural studies. Liverpool thinks their football (soccer) team is the best in the world just like I think the Pittsburgh Steelers are the best football team in the nation because I was born and raised in Pittsburgh.
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