4 Production and Consumption of Culture

Dr. Saradindu Bhattacharya

Section 1 – Production of Culture: Meaning, Scope and Significance

The term “production” signifies, in its traditional commercial sense, not only the manufacture of goods and services for the purpose of making profit but also, in the more contemporary context of cultural studies, the generation and accretion of economic as well as cultural value to both material products and social practices and phenomena. In other words, the production of culture includes not just tangible goods whose value can be determined purely in terms of their market price but also intangible ideas and modes of social interaction that add value and meaning to the everyday lives of those involved in such processes. Historically, the Industrial Revolution in Europe marked the point at which the mass production of commodities gave rise to the possibility and the necessity of creating substantially large groups of consumers who could sustain and perpetuate the economic cycle of demand and supply. Unlike pre-Industrial subsistence economic systems, the modern captialist economies of the West are premised on the principle of making profit and are therefore geared towards constantly increasing the scale and range of production and consumption. The consequent transformation of the nature and the magnitude of production has moved the processes of production and consumption beyond the domain of economics and into the realm of cultural studies. In the first half of the 20th century, critics like Adorno and Horkheimer, influenced by Marxist theories of class struggle, a nalysed the mass production of goods as part of an oppressive and manipulative “culture industry” and the consumers of such goods as passive recipients. Their conception of such a culture industry was also informed by an underlying notion of art and culture as being somehow separate from and superior to the commercial processes and products of mass production. However, the economic aspect of cultural production predates the Industrial Revolution; in fact, what has acquired the status of “high” art in our own times is often found to have been the product of “low” culture driven by commercial concerns at the time of its “original” production. For instance, Shakespeare’s plays were performed in his own times for the purpose of monetary gain and not treated as instances of supreme artistic achievement. Even now, when Shakespeare’s plays are regarded as the benchmark of dramatic merit, his popularity translates into economic profit through the mechanisms of literary tourism and festivals, film and theatre adaptations of his works and so on. In fact, the canonization of Shakespeare may be said to have been both the cause and the effect of the perpetual “re-production” of his plays in myriad forms and points to the intrinsic link between the economic and the cultural currency of his brand name. Thus, the production of culture does not necessarily result in a finished product but is rather an ongoing process of meaning- making situated in very specific economic and cultural contexts of consumption. This intrinsic link between production and consumption of culture is a characteristic feature of modern capitalist societies where consumers are increasingly involved in determining the “value” of what they consume. For instance, flash mobs, which have become a trend with urban youth across the world, are a form of cultural appropriation of public space (airports, shopping malls, streets) and popular art (film music) by a group of people who participate in the “production” of collective performances that do not bring them any economic profit but do foster a sense of community. It is in the performance of such acts that the value of such cultural (re- )production lies. In this case, the participants are both consumers and producers of culture. In fact, in the contemporary global context, production has to be understood not merely in terms of goods that can be traded and sold within and across national boundaries but also in terms of cultural imports and exports. Production and consumption in the global market depends on a translatability of the currency of products and cultural ideas and phenomena. What this “translatability” signifies is that material goods create and bear cultural meanings just as abstract ideas are capable of generating economic currency within a consume society. Thus, for instance, KFC is able to market its trademark fried chicken across the globe, sometimes with minor local variations, as a typically.

American food experience; similarly, one of India’s most popular cultural exports, “Bollywood” functions as a somewhat amorphous, catch-all category that includes everything from official film screenings in theatres and festivals abroad to the unofficial use of colourful costumes, music and dance that are considered to be typical of “Indian” cinema. It is significant to note that in each of these cases, material goods, capable of generating economic profit, serve as markers of cultural identity, while the popularity of certain cultural phenomena is brought into the service of commercial transactions. The significance of studying “production” in cultural studies is therefore to be understood in terms of the blurring of the boundaries between economic and cultural values of goods, services and social phenomena within a global market economy.

Section 2: Ele ments of Cultural Production:

The production and distribution of culture is enabled by a series of apparatuses that bring customers into contact with various goods and ideas, such as the technological tools of production, the means of promotion and advertisement, and industrial and governmental structures and regulations. These elements of cultural production not only determine the range of commodities and ideas available for consumption in the market but also shape popular taste and demand in consumer society. The technological means of production play a significant role in what reaches the consumer and in what form. Since technology itself evolves in response to varying social trends and contexts and not as an independent expression of scientific enquiry, the materia l goods and services produced by industries are also rooted in very specific cultural conditions of consumption. For instance, though the railways originally developed in 19th century England primarily as a means of transporting coal to factories located in suburban industrial towns, they soon became popular as a means of public conveyance. Similarly, in the 1990s, the internet rapidly developed into a means of global communication and networking from being originally a technological device meant for the US defense system. In each of these cases, the evolution of technology beyond its purported scientific goal has catered to as well as fueled a social and cultural demand for greater connectivity between places and people. In fact, the production and evolutio n of a particular kind of technology often has a ripple effect in other, allied domains of cultural consumption. Thus, for example, the British rulers in 19th century India replicated the railway system developed at home in order to connect the various regions of the vast territory of the colony and thereby achieve more efficient administrative control over them. Yet, what was once an instrument of colonial power has become, in post- Independence India, a strategic means of economic development and even a significant aspect of national identity. Similarly, the development of the internet as a means of communication has greatly impacted social and economic relations between individuals and groups. Thus, the internet has rendered personal contact between the buyer and the seller redundant to commercial transactions; similarly, personal correspondence between friends now takes place on online social networking sites. In fact, the lines between the production and consumption of culture have been blurred in the digital age, where acts of communication (such as sharing pictures on Facebook, posting comments on Twitter or videos on Youtube) themselves constitute both cultural production and consumption. The changes in the popular perception and reception of cultural a rtefacts, effected and aided by technological means, are also an integral part of the process of production and consumption. For instance, digital technology has now made it possible for anyone to possess a Da Vinci painting, provided s/he can afford to buy it. Such re-production of a cultural artefact extends, enhances and transforms its cultural currency by making it available to a larger audience. This form of cultural production also brings into question notions of the “original” and the “copy”, as technology now enables the appropriation and dissemination of practically any art form to a culturally diverse, geographically dispersed but globally networked audience. In fact, the appropriation and adaptation of already existing cultural products has become a prominent aspect of cultural production and consumption in the postmodern age. Thus, parodies and spoofs of popular music, cinema and politics are becoming increasingly popular in digital media, as they offer consumers of culture opportunities to participate directly in the act of responding to, rather than passively receive, what they see and hear. For instance, in India, “Faking News”, a website that offers a satirical take on national politics and journalistic practices, critiques mainstream news media and represents a popular disillusion with the official structures of governmental power. Similarly, a recent Youtube video advertising a testicular fairness cream offers a parodic, subcultural resistance to the mainstream industrial and cultural obsessio n in India with a fair complexion. The mechanisms of publicity and advertisement also play a crucial role in cultural production, as they mediate the space between the consumer and the product. With the mass production of goods in the 20th century, it has in fact become essential that manufacturers engage a variety of promotional tools to catch the attention of the potential customer by making a particular product look unique amidst a variety of often very similar commodities. The visual and auditory codes that advertisements employ – logos, signature tunes, slogans – familiarize the customer with the product even before s/he has purchased it. Thus, Pepsi’s “Yeh dil maange more” (the heart craves for more) campaign in India in the 1990s targeted a young, urban audience even as the advertisement created the image of such a customer by associating the consumption of the soft drink with qualities of youthful energy and adventure. Culture is, in fact, available to us not simply as commodities and ideas that are consumed independently but as ‘signs’ that derive their meanings from one another and bear a social significance over and above the material satisfaction they offer to the consumer.

Section 3: The System of Cultural Sign:

The space between the producers and the consumers of culture in contemporary society is mediated by ‘signs’ that function, on the one hand, as promotional tools for the goods and services they represent and constitute, on the other hand, an integral aspect of the consumption of those goods and services. In fact, in the age of mass media, consumer culture depends as much on the circulation of such ‘signs’ in the public domain as it does on the actual production of cultural commodities. Thus, the advertising industry constantly generates images that saturate popular media (television, newspapers, the internet, billboards, mobile phones) and bombards (potential) customers with audio-visual and verbal ‘signs’ of products they may or may not be interested in purchasing. The ‘market’ in contemporary consumer society has, in fact, encroached upon the space and time that one would otherwise consider private or personal. Thus, promotional messages on e- mail and mobile phones for a variety of goods and services, ranging from taxi services to property investments, render the domain of an individual’s home into an arena for the distribution and consumption of culture. In fact, the integration of technologies – that of internet services and cellular phones – facilitates the expansion of the such promotiona l strategies and enables cultural ‘signs’ to pervade various domains of everyday life. The pervasion of these ‘signs’ is indeed a hallmark of contemporary media culture, wherein the spatial and temporal domains of work and leisure become blurred and spaces of relaxation also double as sites of cultural distribution and consumption. The trailers of upcoming films or the latest travel deals that pop up on the screen while one is at work on the internet are instances of how media technology enables the constit ution of an audience for cultural commodities beyond the immediate and obvious context of their production and consumption. Similarly, watching a television show at home or a movie at a theatre essentially involves being exposed to an array of advertisements that become a part of the entire experience of watching the particular show or the film. In fact, such advertisements, from being merely ‘signs’ of the commodities they seek to promote, often contribute to the pleasure derived by the audience from leisure activities and are themselves transformed into objects of consumption. Thus, in a culture saturated with such ‘signs’, what audiences increasingly consume are images rather than real objects. This has been described by critics like Jean Baudrillard as a feature of cultural consumption in postmodern societies, wherein the ‘signifier’ (the various audio-visual and verbal codes) breaks free from the ‘signified’ (the objects such codes stand for) and circulate freely within the public domain as carriers of meaning only in relation to one another. Baudrillard cites Disneyland as the perfect example of such cultural consumption – a world populated only by ‘simulations’ that do not refer back to any external ‘reality’ beyond the relation they bear to one another. This argument can be extended to the various forms in which goods and services are promoted and distributed to audiences through mass media and technology, as they become the primary objects of cultural consumption in a context where ‘signs’ supplement a nd sometimes even supplant material objects.

Section 4 – The Levels of Consumption: Discourse and Imagination

The consumption of culture includes, but is not restricted to the purchase and use of commodities. As we have already discussed, the relation between the product and the consumer is mediated by modes and mechanisms of publicity. The intervening time and space between production and consumption is mediated, first and foremost, at the level of discourse. Discourse signifies any sustained use of language (any system of words, sounds, visuals) that purports merely to represent a particular object, person or phenomenon but in the process also creates specific ideas about the same. The consumption of products is enabled by means of creating and reinforc ing popular discourses around them. For instance, the huge market for fairness creams for women in India banks on the equivalence of a light complexion with feminine beauty in the public imagination. Thus, one of the leading brands of such creams, Fair & Lovely, consistently produces advertisements that portray dark complexioned women as being unhappy, unsuccessful and somehow lacking in confidence and self- esteem; upon using the fairness cream, they not only become light complexioned but also gain respectability in their personal and professional relations. Such advertisements align women’s identity and worth along perceived notions of beauty, often also invoking ancient Indian knowledge of natural herbs as well as modern scientific innovations in skin care technologies. Thus, a multiplicity of discourses, of beauty and gender, tradition and modernity, is brought to the service of an underlying patriarchal ideology that values women’s individual and social identity and role exclusively in terms of their physical appearance. Thus, the product not only draws from but also feeds into pre-existing cultural notions of womanhood and thereby initiates the process of its consumption at a discursive level. Similarly, the state-sponsored “Incredible India” advertisements employ images that highlight the natural beauty and cultural heritage of India that derive their currency from the centuries-old European ideas about the subcontinent being a land of wonder and mystery and render it to the service of the tourism industr y. The conscious elimination of other popular ideas about India as a land of heat, disease and thieves points to the discursive construction of the nation as one that is welcoming to outsiders. Thus, the economic profit derived from marketing India as an appealing tourist destination depends crucially on the generation of a discourse that prompts the consumer to focus on particular aspects of the natural and cultural landscape of the country and deflect attention from certain others.

The process of consumption also involves the customer’s imagination, wherein the perceived benefits and satisfaction of purchasing a particular product or using a form of service lies, at least in part, beyond the actual event and experience of such consumption. This is part icularly evident in cases where the “images” of products are made available to customers even before they come into existence. For instance, real estate owners often seek to attract customers by employing digital technologies to offer what is purportedly a “realistic” picture of what housing complexes and apartments would look like when they are fully constructed; yet, what these visuals represent are essentially projections onto the imagination of the customers of spaces that would come into being only in the future. In fact, in such cases, the appeal of the product lies to a great extent in the creation of this imaginary space as it offers a contrast to the actual circumstances of the customer’s existence. Thus, most real estate advertisements in India promise potential buyers a living experience that eliminates the routine problems of urban life (pollution, traffic, power cuts, lack of open spaces) while offering the amenities that are considered to be the markers of modern living (connectivity to important centres in the city, safety within the limits of the gated community, easy access to hospitals, schools and shopping malls). Thus, in investing in such a “product” on the basis of such representation, the buyer essentially consumes an enhanced, augmented version of “reality” projected onto an imaginary frame. Another instance of projection and consumption of the product in the realm of the imaginary is the rhetoric employed by medical and life insurance companies. These are cases where the customers’ fears for their own health and their families’ security are transformed into current economic profit. Though the benefits of investing in an insurance policy lie in an indeterminate future and often also beyond the limits of an individual’s lifetime, the purc hase of such a “product” is located firmly in the present as the customer is urged to look beyond the here and the now. The consumption of such products is based on a principle of deferred returns and creates a vision of a secure future. The appeal of this kind of “vision”, based as it is on notions of personal and familial responsibility, thus enables the sale and purchase of a product whose value is determined only imaginatively in a cultural context where risk and uncertainty are turned into driving forces for economic activity.

Section 5 – Social Significance of Consumption: Lifestyle, Identity and Community

In contemporary consumer culture, what we buy and use defines who we are. The patterns of consumption of an individual determine what is popularly known as lifestyle, which comprises the choices s/he makes in spending money on certain categories and brands of food, apparel and personal grooming products, technological gadgets, modes of travel, and means of entertainment and leisure. Lifestyle is not only about the amount of money one spends on basic necessities but about the kinds of products one consumes in conducting and ordering his/her everyday life. Thus, the difference between a person who spends, say, Rs. 5000 on groceries per month and ano ther who spends the same amount on a single meal at a high-end restaurant is not much so much about the amount or even the nutrinional value of food consumed by them but about their lifestyle. Similarly, the difference between a person using public transport to travel to her/his workplace and another driving a car for the same purpose is not so much that of economic sense or efficiency but of individual choice of expenditure and consumption, i.e. lifestyle. The element of individual choice is crucial to the functioning of the modes and mechanisms of production and consumption within a capitalist economic systems, as the goods and services one chooses to consume become invested with symbolic currency and meanings over and above their economic value. As notions of taste and class become associated with the consumption of certain kinds of products, an individual’s identity is determined by the choices s/he makes as a consumer in their everyday life. For instance, a person who regularly wears Fabindia sarees or kurtas to work projects an image of herself as having a taste for ethnic Indian textiles and designs and is also perceived as being affluent enough to purchase and use such products. In this context, it is useful to note how the consumption of certain products becomes a marker of social status by virtue of the fact that only a tiny proportion of the consumers can afford to purchase such products. Commodities like designer clothes and accessories, customized bikes and cars, latest models of technological gadgets like laptops and cellular phones, are far more desirable to customers for their exclusivity than their utilitarian value and represent a form of conspicuous consumption. While such consumption patterns give the individual a sense of her/his identity as being unique and subject to personal choices, they also locate her/his identity in relation to others who consume similar products. In fact, certain products are marketed in ways that create and promote a sense of a common identity between its consumers that elides over and sometimes overrides other distinctive markers of individual and social identity such as religion, age and location. Thus, the advertisement of Red Label tea shows a (presumably Hindu) man and his wife locked out of their own apartment being invited over for a cup of tea by their Muslim neighbour; in spite of his initial reluctance to accept the offer, the man succumbs to the aroma of tea and is shown to enjoy it so much that he asks for another cup, thereby overcoming his religious prejudice and forging a bond of friendship with his hospitable neighbour. The consumption of a beverage that is popular across every section of Indian society thus becomes the fulcrum for the particular brand to foster among its consumers the idea of a commun ity based on their liking for the product. Similarly, the promotion and use of mobile phone applications like Whatsapp and social networking sites like Facebook are instances of cultural consumption that work on the principle of the creation of a community of users even as they offer each individual member a chance to express her/himself. The performance of one’s personal and social identity depends on their participation in and consumption of such community building exercises. In urban Indian centres, the ritualistic aspect of the consumption of products on the occasion of festivals has now been appropriated by brand outlets and shopping malls for the purpose of increased sales. Thus, Diwali and Christmas sales, publicized as “shopping festivals”, have beco me a common feature in malls across Indian cities. The shared cultural and religious experiences on which the celebration of such festivals is based is thus rendered into an impulse towards greater collective consumption and the building of a community of consumers. In fact, the act of going out shopping with/for family and friends has become an integral part of the celebration of such festivals for urban, middle-class consumers and is reflective of the ways in which consumption forges and maintains social ties in contemporary Indian culture.

Story boarding

Section 1: Definition of production – types of production – economic and cultural aspects of production – evolution of the process of cultural production

Sections 2: Elements of cultural production – meaning and mechanisms – role of technology in cultural production – media tools as means of adaptation and appropriation of culture

Section 3: The system of cultural signs – the role of mass media and advertising in the distribution and consumption of culture – the pervasion of cultural ‘signs’ – the transformation of the ‘sign’ into the object of consumption

Section 4: Levels of consumption – discursive construction of products – the appeal to the customer’s imagination in the act of consumption

Section 5: Relation between consumption and lifestyle – consumption as a determinant of individual and social identity – role of consumption in community formation

Audio-visual Quadrant

“Consumer Culture/Materialism” – A Lecture by Prof. Hollie Martin, Department of English, Glendale Community College, California < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BuVopxGbJ0>

Advertising and the End of the World by Sut Jhally, University of Massachusetts, Amherst <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8gM0Q58iP0>

REFERNCE:

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• Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation (1981). Trans. Sheila Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
• Bolin, Goran. Value and the Media: Cultural Production and Consumption in Digital Markets. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.
• Bordieu, Piere. The Field of Cultural Production. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993.
• Falk, Pasi, and Colin Campbell, eds. The Shopping Experience. London: Sage, 1997.
• Featherstone, Mike. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage, 2007.
• Lury, Celia. Consumer Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011.