(One opinion on) How to write a cultural studies paper.

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I consider the OBJECT, the QUESTION and the LENS to be the fundamental elements of a strong cultural studies paper.

First, the disclaimer: You also need to know that I more or less made up these terms, based on conversations with teachers, colleagues and editors over the years. If anyone is reading this and thinks I should give them credit for this terminology, I'm happy to. Just drop me a line.

If you know me, you know that I don't think this object/question/lens business is some big universal truth of good analytical writing. Nevertheless, I'm not a big fan of driving without a road map. Unless you can persuade me that you have a better plan for constructing your paper, we will be going with this one.Fair enough? Below, I explain what I mean when I speak about the object.

THE OBJECT

By "object" I mean the topic you wish to write about.In general, an object (which is in other courses called a "text") can be EITHER a specific finished product (such as a painting, book, film or musical recording, or television commercial) OR a social phenomenon (such as the use of "heroin chic" in the fashion industry, the rise of caller id in private homes, or the rise in "blue screen" acting techniques.)

I thought Melinda had an outstanding recommendation regarding picking an object for your mid-term. In her words:

I know we all ask ourselves questions about why certain things are the way they are- this is what you need to focus on. Is it music, socializing, shopping, fucking, eating, whatever- how does our world affect the way we do these things? Why does it seem like there is always an unexplained answer, but we go along with it anyway? Is my reality the same as your reality? I think this may be a start.

OBJECT: Regarding its size (and size does matter.)

Now that Melinda's got you thinking big, I'm going to shrink things down. The smaller the object, the more controllable your paper will be. For example: (And I apologize in advance for using a body image thing as an example!)

OPTION 1: "I want to talk about how messed up the advertising industry is." For our purposes, this is too broad an object.

OPTION 2: "I want to talk about how it seems that people are always encouraged to be thin in advertising." This is okay, but still needs refining.

OPTION 3: "I want to talk about this time when I was working at a modelling agency and I witnessed my bosses picking models for a specific shoot based on whether they could see the models' ribcages through their shirts.

Option 3, in my opinion, is a nicely sized object for a paper. Can you see why this would be?

OBJECT: Regarding the Importance of Narrative Progression.

Though there are many exceptions to this rule, most essays require a beginning, middle and end. Consider the following:

Option A: "I want to talk about my internal debate over getting caller ID"

Option B: "I want to talk about how my housemates began screening calls once we got caller ID installed"

Option C: "I want to talk about caller ID as a dehumanizing phenomenon."

In this case, I would suggest that Options A and B are "strong objects" for us, whereas Option C is weaker. Why? Because the "personal" examples have a logical trajectory (ie "before caller id, after caller id, my thoughts about the phenom. of caller id") than the "universal" example. Also, options A and B will naturally lead to a discussion of larger social questions.

Please note that I'm NOT saying you can't write in the style of Option C. It is just more difficult to do so. Contrary to what many expository writing teachers believe, I think it's troublesome ot begin with some huge statement and "shrink down" to the particular. To begin an essay with the statement "Technology X is dehumanizing" begs too many questions, from "Dehumanizing for whom?"to "Who are you to decide what constitutes a 'human' approach?"

If you simply MUST write inthe style of Option C, I am going to ask you to confer with me first, to avoid pitfalls.

OBJECT: On situating your narrator.

What else is good about option 3, above? Well, it nicely situates the narrator of the paper. In the case of Option 3, we know the speaker isn't some Grand Authority; rather, he's the employee of the advertising agency. This is going to effect his perspective, of course. Also important: a writer may have multiple roles in the stories they tell, and this matters HUGELY.

For instance, in Option 3, we know the person is an employee, but he may also be a student, an aspiring model himself, etc. All of these roles are going to effect what he sees in his analysis, and what he does not. When you choose your object, you are going to have to state and explore your position, as well.

Again, this is why I think stories are useful. Stories often include your position as the narrator, and de-stabilize the notion of you as The Authority. When you begin with a personal story, you are taking the rhetorical position not of the Expert, but of the individual with a incident to share.

For example: Think of Bryce's recent story on the mailing list about being in the examining room with her doctor and asking about advertsing and medicine. Consider her use of detail to demonstrate her position as the young female patient ("sitting half-dressed") versus the position of the older male doctor ("the doctor was open and available to my questions about my general health, but when I began to talk about ads he wouldnt' speak to me", etc.)

NOW think of how different Bryce's argument ("Doctors tend to silence discussion about advertising and medicine") might be if later on she disclosed that she was a doctor herself, or a writer for Consumer Reports, or considering taking a job with a major pharmaceutical advertiser after college.

(Please note: Some will argue that there are HUGE problems with the lie of the "ordinary person with an ordinary story" routine. The biggest problem critics have with this is that the "ordinary person" IS declaring him/herself an expert, just by the ACT writing on a topic. And what's more, s/he protects him/herself in a way an expert cannot: that is, by hiding behind the cover of "hey, I'm just an ordinary person." If you want to see this in action, check out Rush Limbaugh, for instance, or pretty much any moron on AM radio.

I agree with this critique. Still, for our purposes, I still think the "ordinary person" approach is the way to go, particularly since we WILL be interrogating our own perspectives vis a vis our "question", which I will discuss in a moment.

OBJECT: Before we move on...

Okay. Before we move to the next section, ask yourselves to define the following terms from this essay. If you can do so, you have understood me.

1. What is an Object? What is the object I want to examine ?

2. How am I making sure my object is of an appropriate size for a the page-length I'm being asked to produce?

3. What does it mean to provide "narrative progression" in my paper? What is the beginning, the middle and the end of my paper as I envision it right now? (note: this may change during the writing process.)

4. How am I understand myself as the narrator in my paper topic? Am I an employee in my story, or perhaps a student, or a friend, or a brother, or a television fan, or a number of these positions? How are these positions going to effect what I see or don't see as true, real, authentic, false, etc?

Now you can go on to The Question section.

THE QUESTION

After you locate your object, you'll want to come up with your question. For many of you, your question and your object will be intimately connected. For others, teasing out your question may take some work.

The "question" portion of your essay strategy is most easily dealt with by asking yourself, "What about my object fascinates me? How can I formulate my fascination as a one or two line interrogation?"

Let me give an example of what I mean, here.

QUESTION: How to ask a question of an object.

Recently, Bryce posted a story about an experience at her doctor's office. She related that as long as her questions were explicitly about her health, the doctor struck her as forthcoming in the extreme. Yet, when she began to ask about the relationship between advertising and medicine, the doctor refused to speak. We also know from the story that Bryce is young, and female, and that the doctor is older and male.

Now, there are a number of different questions raised by this story (which we'll call the "object").

For instance:

QUESTION: Possibility #1: The Spectacle Question.

"How does the spectacle of the medical examination open the way for some types of questions from patients, and yet close down others? How do good and bad questions define the power relationship of patients to their doctors?"

Note: The spectacle question asks things like "What comes to be treated as legitimate and illegitimate, in the scenario I'm describing?"

The "medical spectacle" is a huge topic right now for patient advocate communities I read on the Net. Especially with 'hard to treat' disorders like schizophrenia, the space between professional medical diagnosis and corporate advertising for the best new drug is actually quite blurry. I know many MANY ill people who get news on Internet support groups, often months before their physicians do. Yet those people often get ignored by doctors until findings come out in "proper" medical journals. Now, sometimes there are good reasons for this. Sometimes not. Do you see how someone could EASILY spend an entire paper discussing the spectacle question??

QUESTION: Possibility #2: Agency Question.

"How is Bryce's positioning in this story as a "half-clothed young woman" disabling her authority as a interrogator of the doctor? Would the situation have been different if the doctor were closer to Bryce's age, or a woman herself? How or how not? Many women have written about being comfortable with nudity everywhere EXCEPT in the doctor's office. How does power and spectacle work to make this so?"

Note: The agency question usually concerns our positions of power within the spectacle: as consumers, producers, listerners, patients, authorities, etc. In this example above, you might call the agency question the "woman's question," but I hope you see how it could be reworked with regard to any position. If, for example, a person without health insurance in a public clinic were asking these questions of a harried doctor, there might be a constellation of other questions to be dealt with, regarding class and power.

QUESTION: Possibility #3: The Market Question.

"Has doctor collaboration with advertisng agencies risen over the last ten years, or lessened, or stayed the same? Have any doctors spoken out about the kinds of problems Bryce is citing? What has their reception been in the medical community?"

Note: The "market" question stretches a personal situation out, and examines it as a social phenomenon. The Marxists call this "dialectical materialism." Sometimes, you'll get in a situation and want to know if it's you, or if this is something that's going on all over the country, or the world. Studying how the market has functioned with regard to your object can often help you answer this for yourself. Of course, once you figure out how the market functions in a spectacle, you will naturally want to ask yourself where YOU fit in, which leads to questions of agency, above.

MORE DISCLAIMERS AND A CAVEAT

Before I end this essay on the question, I want to make a few things clear.

First, these notions of "spectacle", "agency" and "market" questions are categories of my own making. If they are useful to you, use them. If not, please come up with questions of your own. There are many many MANY more types of questions you could use. Don't be afraid to try stuff. We can always refine things during private meetings.

Finally, to the coffee achievers in the crowd:YOU ONLY NEED TO ASK ONE SET OF QUESTIONS, NOT ALL OF THEM!!

Next up: The Lens!!

THE LENS

After the object and the question, the lens is our final element of paper preparation. The "lens", as I define it, is your demonstration that you know who else is thinking in your field. I liked Taylor's description of the lens very much. She wrote:

If the object is the thing/issue/problem that you want to investigate, then the lense is the medium through which you choose to view your object, i.e. what theories, etc. "

Consider this: your friend calls herself an innovator, and in a bar she tells you about her latest cool invention: a disk on which you play music. But when you tell her that the CD has been in production a decade now, she looks baffled, and then starts talking about how she "can't be expected to know everything." How weird would that be?

Whatever thoughts we are having on any topic, the chances are DAMN good that somebody else, probably somebody smarter than us, has been thinking about them somewhere else. It's your job to find those folks, and converse with AT LEAST ONE of them in your paper. By converse, I don't mean ring the poor people up. I mean dialogue with their ideas.

LENS: Use Search Engines to find Them.

The first thing I recommend that you do is start looking up keywords for your object on juicy Web search engines like http://www.google.com

I especially recommend searching by phrase type, like "authentic rock icons" or "rise of caller ID." Also search by Boolean terms like "caller idenfication AND depersonalization." See what comes up. Read any essays that catch your eye. Keep looking for people who are struggling with the sort of stuff that interests you. Tell me what you wind up with.

Remember, anybody smart can have a thought. The difference between a random smart person and a scholar is that a scholar is responsible for knowing WHO ELSE is thinking along the same lines they are. If you are struggling, I recommend the little essay I wrote on search hints for beginning cultural studies scholars.

LENS: Use Terri to find Them.

Sometimes it's hard to know where to begin to look for experts on the topic you want to investigate. Do not worry, because this is where I come in. Once you have at least tried to do some web searching, come to me for help, either in email or in person.

Remember, it is my JOB to help you find people to read on your topic (ie. Guy Debord, Luce Irgaray, Karl Marx, Simon Frith, Gilles Deleuze, Susan Bordo, Augusto Boal, etc etc etc. ) What's more, it's my job to help you define the intellectual genre in which these folks work (i.e. Situationsists, Feminists, Rock Music Critics, Riot Girls, Medical Activists, Advertising theorists, etc.)

LENS: A Final Word.

Your choice of lens will PROFOUNDLY AFFECT how you see your object. For instance, Edward Said (famous pro-Palestinean scholar) would write about the recent shooting we discussed with a very different lens than would a Pro-Israeli journalist. Different still might be a recently widowed mother from the West Bank who just wants all fighting to stop. All of these "authorities" can be found by doing a web search on the incident in question. All of them give vastly different readings of the same reality. This is something we will discuss together in our private meetings. I just wanted to give you a "heads up."

LENS: TO SUMMARIZE:

The "lens", as I define it, is your demonstration that you know who else is thinking in your field. Once you find at least ONE person to dialogue with in your paper on your topic, you safely can say you have your "lens" established.

Remember, you don't need to know everything written about your interests, but you do need to know *something* beyond your own thoughts.

WRITING YOUR PAPER in FOUR EASY PIECES

At the risk of giving an android-esque definition of a "good cultural studies paper", here goes:

PART ONE: Introduce yourself, your object and your questions.

Do not get overwhelmed or nervous. Remember, just TELL YOUR STORY to begin your paper. Many of you will find that your object and questions quite naturally rise out of the story-telling.

PART TWO: Answer the questions you raise, using your lens and your own thoughts.

Most people think they "get" stuff in popular culture. But what they don't understand is that were they to REALLY WRITE OUT their thinking, they would find out that this stuff is FAR more complex than they are led to believe. So get to it!

Start working on answering your own questions. If you get stuck, try talking about how other people have answered your questions. This is where your lens can come in handy. You can talk about other people's answers to the questions you raise, and compare them with your own views.

PART THREE: Check over your work to see that your thinking is demonstrating dialectical motion.

Since we've discussed dialectical motion at length before, I won't go into now. For our purposes, dialectical motion can be described as that experience a thinker has that goes:

"On the one hand, X (thesis). But on the other hand, the opposite Y, is the case at times (antithesis). And hmmm, now that I think of X and Y together (synthesis), that brings me to think Z (new thesis). This raises point A (new antithesis) and B (new synthesis).

Etc. Etc. Obviously you must stop the "endless march" somewhere, but you must know that this end is always a fiction of a sort. In truth, demonstrate that you are sophisticated enough to understand that things continue change, deteriorate, reconfigure with regard to your topic.

Part Four: Based on your answers, formulate your new questions, and then end that paper!

Everyone understands that a paper entirely made up of questions isn't acceptable. But what you might not understand is that a paper that consists of only ANSWERS won't work either.

The best cultural studies essays (in my opinion) begin with a question, or a series of questions, attempt some answers, and THEN raise even MORE questions at the end of the paper. One way to do this is to try to answer the question, "What have you learned from thinking about this topic, and what NEW questions are you left with?"

And please, I beg you, try to answer that question with non-boring prose. Nobody likes to read 30 essays that go, "What I learned is blah blah,and what I still wonder is blah blah." You know? Please attempt to be a LITTLE more creative than that.

Finally, at least *attempt* a snappy ending.You've come this far; you might as well give it a shot. If you get stuck, I suggest returning back to your story for final thoughts, quotes or plot twists. Returning to the story often re-grounds the reader: they think, "Oh wow, that's right, this did start with a story. Then we went on a magical mystery tour, and now we're back to where we started, only we're not back. We're somehow different than when we began."

And then you are FINISHED!

Questions? Comments? Lay them on me.

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