Marxism in Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey is a show set in the 1910's at a made up estate with the same name.  From what I have seen, the show has a very interesting dynamic to it, due to the two different classes living at Downton Abbey.  There exists the upperclass Crawley family, consisting of Robert, Cora, Josephine, Edith, Sybil, Violet, Matthew, and Isobel.  Then, there is the entire staff.  While both classes live in the estate, they lead vastly different lives, and hardly interact with each other without the King-Servent dynamic present.

From a Marxist perspective when examining Downton Abbey, it is best to look at the show and how the society presented has a very clear "mode of production."   The "mod of production produces: (i) specific ways of obtaining the necessaries of life; (ii) specific social relationships between workers and those who control the mode of production, and (iii) specific social institutions (including cultural ones)" (59).  Further, from a Marxist view, this show presents a very clear "base" and "superstructure"

"The 'base' consists of a combination of the 'forces of production' and the 'relations of production'. The forces of production refer to the raw materials, the tools, the technology, and the workers and their skills, etc" (60).  In the case of Downton Abbey, this would be the servants, the vallet, and everyone who works for the Crawley family.  

There is a clear division between the "base" and the "superstructure".  The superstructure "consists of institutions (political, legal, educational, cultural, etc)" (ibid.).  In this scenario the Crawley family represents the "superstructure," because they own all of the land, the home, and posses all the wealth.  Because of this, they control the mode of production and make all of the major decisions.

Literary Devices in "Niteclub" by The Old 97's

Rhyme:
"Eighteen-hundred miles from this old nightclub 
A girl is turning 22 today. 
How am I supposed to entertain you? 
My fingertips are worthless when my mind's so far away. "

Here, we see an ABCB rhyme scheme, that rhymes 'today' and 'away'

Personification:
"The nightclub yawns and opens up it's doors." 
The nightclub is being personified, giving it the human trait, being able to yawn.


"Yeah this old nightclub stole my youth,
This old nightclub stole my true love,
It follows me around from town to town. "
Again, the nightclub is being personified, now possessing the abilities to steal and follow someone around.


Hyperbole:
"My fingertips are worthless when my mind's so far away. "
The word "worthless" is used here to exaggerate the singer's current state.


Pun:
"Well my angel of the morning is in mourning."
Here, both spellings of morning/mourning are used, both possessing different meanings.


Juxtaposition:
"Telephones make strangers out of lovers,
Whiskey makes the strangers all look good. "
Here juxtaposition is used to create a parallel between the effects of telephones and whiskey. (This is one of my favorite lines in all of music)

Is Tupac a feminist?

Tupac had spent much of his career building up his gangster image.  With 'Thug Life' tattooed on his chest, he wears a du rag, sags his pants, and can often be seen in pictures wielding a gun.  Despite this images, an argument can be made that if you only examine his song "Dear Mama" that Tupac Shakur is a feminist.  More specifically, Tupac's lyrics contain radical feminist ideas. 

Radical feminists believe that "women's oppression is the result of a system of patriarchy, a system of domination in which men as a group have power over women as a group" (135).  Throughout the song "Dear Mama," Tupac portrays father figures in a very negative light and does his best to paint a wonderful image of his mother.  For example, when explaining his regret for the struggles that his mother endured, Tupac says, "And even though we had different daddy's, the same drama
When things went wrong we'd blame mama."  Here Tupac implies that the absence of a father figure, produced the same result even though the fathers in question were different, implying that it was his mother's influence that had a real effect.  Another instance of this occurs at the beginning of the second verse.


"Now ain't nobody tell us it was fair
No love from my daddy cause the coward wasn't there
He passed away and I didn't cry, cause my anger
wouldn't let me feel for a stranger
They say I'm wrong and I'm heartless, but all along
I was lookin for a father he was gone"

Here Tupac expresses both his gratification for all his mother has done, but also his dislike of the patriarchy that let him down.  He expresses his anger that he was abandoned by his father and never had the opportunity to meet the man.  Here, Tupac rejects the patriarchy, stating that he feels no sorrow for the loss of his father, because his father was never there for him and was a stranger.  By rejecting the value of the patriarchy, Tupac indirectly builds up the image of his own mother.  He goes on to say that even though he experienced so much strife early on in life that "my plan is to show you that I understand, you are appreciated."

My hands felt just like two balloons

December 29, 2007 was an unremarkable day.  I woke around 8AM, feeling entirely uninterested in the day ahead of me.  I felt rather rotten, so I asked for the option to go back to sleep.  Unfortunately my request was denied and I sauntered out of my room and made my way to the kitchen.

I dropped some toast into the toaster and threw two eggs in a pan.  Eating quickly, I got dressed in baggy snow pants and a large winter jacket.  After piling all of my gear into the car, I left my home in South Burlington, and began the 45 minute drive to Smuggler' Notch where my family and I had a great day of skiing ahead of us.  As my father pulled out of the driveway I, being a college freshman, turned my iPod on and selected the song "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd.  As I listened to Roger Waters sing I couldn't help but think how this song resonated with me.

"Hello, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me.  Is there anyone home?"

As it was still early morning, and I was a bit ill, it felt as though Roger Waters was talking directly to me, asking if I was still alive.  Feeling tired, I took out my earbuds, turned off my iPod, and slept for the remainder of the drive.

Fast forward about nine hours, I was on the slopes, feeling like a God.  Skiing is a truly fluid activity which generates the most euphoric feeling.  Unfortunately, during my last run of the day, I payed to much attention to how happy I was, and not enough attention, to the heavier snow caused by warmer temperatures at the bottom of the mountain.  I hit a heavy patch of snow and landed directly on my right shoulder.  I stood up embarrassed and reached for my poles, which I had dropped.  I immediately realized I was in trouble when I couldn't lift my arm.  I skied down the remainder of the mountain and went directly to ski patrol who phoned my father and informed him that I needed to go to a hospital.

After the most painful drive of my entire life (cobblestones are an injured person's worst nightmare), I arrived at Burlington Hospital and was immediately taken for an x-ray.


The doctor explained that I had one of the worst broken collar bones he had ever seen, and immediately handed me two horse-pills, which should stop the pain.

As I left the hospital, things began to change.  I turned my iPod back on, and all of my pain began to disappear.  It was as though Roger Waters was speaking directly to me.


"O.K. just a little pinprick, there'll be no more aaaaaaah!"  Everything felt so surreal.  There was no pain, I was merely receding.  Everyone's lips were moving, but I couldn't hear what they were saying.

I had truly become, "Comfortably Numb"

Oh J-Zone, you so fly!

     J-Zone, in his post 5 Things That Killed Hip-Hop, exhibits a great deal of nostalgia toward the 1990's Hip-Hop scene.  In the first half of reason 1, 'Clans, Posses, Crews & Cliques: Who U Wit?' J-Zone claims that one of the reasons for Hip-Hop's decline is the necessity, as an artist, to have a "crew" and constantly collaborate with other artists.  He cites albums by Run DMC and Da Youngstas, as the first groups to do this, explaining that "it worked back then...  but it wound up being a cancer" (Petracca 68).  This type of fondness for the past is very similar to Richard Hoggart's fondness for his childhood displayed in his work The Uses of Literacy.  Hoggard talks about the "traditional working-class culture [of the 1930s being] under threat from the new forms of mass entertainment of the 1950s" (Storey 38).  Storey elaborates on this and explains that while Hoggard was writing the book he said "nostalgia was colouring the material in advance: I have done what I could to remove its effects" (ibid.).  This shows that nostalgia weighed heavily on the works of Hoggart even though he tried to avoid it.  In the introduction to 5 Things That Killed Hip-Hop, J-Zone actually provides an excellent example of how nostalgia can warp our opinions of the past.  He states that "For the record, the politics at major labels, press and radio are not listed here because they've been around since the beginning of time" (Petracca 67) implying that most would look at the past so fondly that they would overlook problems that were already in existence.

    J-Zone began briefly to discuss the idea of "taste" in this work and made some excellent points while doing so.  He explained that what the Hip-Hop industry needs is to chill out.  Not everybody needs to be seen as a drug-dealing thug, with a '64 Cadillac sitting on 26" rims.  It is okay for an artist to have fun with his work and and discuss funny or silly ideas in their lyrics.  There is a great deal of good music out there today, that exhibits artists having a good time, but as J-Zone points out, most of it gets buried within the swarm of thugnificent, gangstalicious, murderizing, hood-music.  When seen in his neighborhood, located down the street from where 50 cent was born, J-Zone was confronted by a fan who proclaimed, "Yo I ain't know you was in it like that, yo why you ain't tryin to pump your shit out here and let people know, you should rep the hood? 50 did it" (Petracca 70).  His response could not have been better.  "Why should I." I completely agree with him; why should he discuss topics that he feels are overused and uninteresting to him.  I, like J-Zone, view music is an escape from everyday life, so if he wanted to write a song about how much he loves unicorns, then why the hell not?

Weeks Pass and Confusion Rises

As this course progresses, I feel that everything is becoming less black and white.  Each new definition of culture provides us with a different way of examining culture, not just through the eyes of Arnold or of the Leavisism.  This week we examined the works of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, E.P. Thompson, Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel.  Each of these people had a different way of defining culture and I felt a stronger understanding for and agreement with Raymond Williams's definition, or rather definitions.  In 'The Analysis of Culture' Williams gives us three general categories to define culture: Ideal, Documentary, and Social.  I would prefer to examine only the Ideal today.

The Ideal defines culture as "the discovery and description, in lives and works, of those values which can be seen to compose a time-less order, or to have a state or process of human perfection, in terms of certain absolute or universal views" (Storey 44).  I originally had great difficulty understanding the second half of that definition, so for clarification I wanted to break it down and create my own definition.  The following was how I went about creating my new definition.

According to Storey, "the roll of cultural analysis, using this definition is ... to have permanent reference to the universal human condition" (ibid.).  I would like to break down what this means into smaller segments.  Let us look at the last seven words of this definition; "permanent reference to the universal human condition." First, we must consider the words "permanent reference." I take these to mean an everlasting allusion, or more simply a mention that carries over an indefinite amount of time.  Next, we look at the term "universal"  which means applying to all cases.  Last, we examine the definition of the "human condition" which is defined by Dictionary.com as "the positive and negative aspects of existence as a human being." Putting them all together, we reach the following definition: "An everlasting allusion pertaining to the whole set of positive and negative aspects of existence as a human being."  This new definition that I have constructed may not feel as wieldy to some as it does for me, but breaking it down into pieces really helped to understand what Williams tried to originally convey.
       
Having exhausted my brain and my fingers, I bid you farewell.

Week 1 Excitement

Having completed my first class period I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable a class titled "Survey of Popular Culture" could be.  I was very engaged and was really surprised at the depth that a single term can have:

Popular Culture.

Culture for the populous and by the populous.

Pop Culture is a term with a variety of definitions.  Having examined four of them in class, one that really stuck with me was "defining popular culture as 'mass culture'" (Storey).  Storey further elaborates that "those who refer to popular culture as mass culture want to establish that popular culture is a hopelessly commercial culture (ibid.).

This is a feeling that I can definitely relate to when I sit down and ponder the sad state of the music industry today.  For example, let us examine the fine works of Mr. David Guetta.  I admit that I have enjoyed some of his works when the time is right, however there is no denying that his music has a certain "cut and paste" feel to it.  Two of his most recent works "Sexy Chick" and "Where Dem Girlz At" have virtually the exact same tune.  Second, the subject matter is nearly identical.  Lastly, both songs leave me with the feeling that I need a shower and that I should seek council with my priest.

I had previously thought was the only definition of popular culture, which is why I was stunned to discover that the works of William Shakespeare could be considered popular culture.  If an alternate definition is used, defining popular culture as "the culture that originates from 'the people'" (Storey).

This is all exciting and new to me but I am left feeling like my friend here.

Found at http://science.memebase.com/tag/i-have-no-idea-what-im-doing/

With that, I bid you a fond farewell.