A Consideration about “Materializing” Popular Culture for Teaching

From Discussions of Giroux and Buckingham

Abstract

This paper explores an educational practice by "teaching materialization" of popular culture. Traditionally, students are implicitly seen as passive victims of popular culture influence. However, both Henry Giroux and David Buckingham argue that students can acquire "critical" discourses on popular culture, and that they reconsider their relations to popular culture.

According to Giroux, the media and popular culture are "ideological apparatuses", by which students are oppressed. However, students also produce a new meaning in popular culture. He offers a new possibility of understanding how the production of the meaning is tied to "emotional investments" and "the politics of pleasures".

Buckingham says that students use popular culture for the purposes of making sense of their lives and of their positions in the world. The relationship between popular culture and students are mutual. He attempts to move beyond textual analysis. And he indicates the possibility of media production work in educational practice.

Giroux and Buckingham think that students experience with media production/consumption between their activeness and passiveness. From this view, this paper suggests that an educational practice by "teaching materialization" of popular culture should become a political practice with regards to identity of students.