Popular Culture as a Challenge for Interpretation (original) (raw)

2011

In this paper, I deal with the question of reading popular culture, while my attention is predominantly aimed on text and interpretative possibilities it itself gives to reader. The basic presuposition is that author, text and reader are of the same importance in processes of meaning-making and therefore they are analytically separable and analysis of each one of them is worthwile for more complex understanding. Despite of this, text sometimes seemed to be missed out of discussion over mass (popular) culture and was regarded mainly as tough product filled with ideology of Cultu-re industry (as in Critical Theory) or as unwarranted creation of individual recipients (as in cultural studies). In here, I base my argumentation on works of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Roman Ingar-den; text is treated as an three-dimensional entity, which can be interpreted differently according to reader’s state of mind (pragmatic, theoretic, aesthetic). With regard to background of postmo-dernism, all of these states of mind are perceived as equivalent ones, although they are dissimilar in their purporses, motivations and findings. After short introduction of these, I will more closely explain what aesthetic state of mind is and what its consequences in reading popular culture text could be. Finally, I will use these remarks to argue that the realms of „art“ and of „popular culture“ have similar inward structure with high, middle and low levels, which opens up more space for their comparison and helps to leave behind old prejudice.