T

CHAPTER 3

THE CRITICAL
THEORY
TOOLBOX

The Right Toolfo r the Job

,1
In chapter 2 introduced the semiotic approach, which we will utilize
throughout this textbook to understand how popular culture is made
meaningful. The starting point for us in our considerations o f various
forms o f popular culture will always be to consider the signs before
us in terms o f their denotative and connotative meanings, as well as
their paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships. We will think about
how messages are encoded, transmitted, and decoded. And then we
will consider how signs function ideologically— how they seek to per­
suade us to think in particular ways, and how they naturalize certain
understandings o f the world, while challenging other ways of thinking.

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This chapter pertains to that final step: decoding popular culture as

congealed ideology. To do this, we will quickly survey various forms
o f critical theory, which we can think o f as reflective approaches to
cultural practices and artifacts that seek to unmask ideology that nat­
uralizes oppression. Developed in the first part o f the twentieth cen­
tury by the Frankfurt School (see chapter i) specifically in relation to
class-based oppression, the approaches and insights o f critical theory
have been adapted to address issues of gender, sexuality, race, and their
intersections. When applied as criticism, the various forms of critical
theory can be considered as special types of lenses that bring particular
aspects of culture into focus, allowing them to be scrutinized carefully
and their implications considered. The end goal, ideally, is always to
understand ourselves and our world more fully, with an eye toward
living better and more justly.

Marxist Theory and Criticism

Marxist theory and criticism, unsurprisingly, started with the nine­

teenth-century writings o f German philosopher Karl Marx and his
collaborations with fellow German thinker Friedrich Engels, so a bit
of background here is needed. While Marx is best known for his 1848
pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and his foundational work of eco­
nomic theory, the three-volume Das Kapital (1867-83), translated into
English as Capital: A Critique o f Political Economy, it is important to
distinguish Marxism from communism. Marxism can be understood as
a philosophy of history—by this, I mean that Marxist thought presents
a theory about the forces that shape how cultures develop and where
they are headed. Communism, in contrast, is a specific form or mode
o f cultural organization in which the means of production— the raw
materials, machines, and factories needed to produce goods and ser­
vices^— are collectively owned by everyone, no one gets rich off of the
labor of others, and private property doesn’t exist.
A t the core of Marxism and Marxist critical theory is the idea of
historical materialism, which asserts that the economic organization of

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a society (what is referred to as the base) influences everything else in

that society and shapes the way people think (everything that rests on
the base is called the superstructure). For Marx, a society’s economic
mode of production (capitalist, socialist, communist, etc.) fundamentally
determines the way that society is organized, how it functions, and how
it develops— the way the society is organized in terms o f economics
influences everything else in that society. This is obviously the case in
relation to social class. Capitalist societies are split into two primary
groups: the bourgeoisie who own the means of production and purchase
the labor power of others, and the workers, called the proletariat, who
do not own the means of production and are forced to sell their labor
power (that is, they are mostly forced to work for someone else to sur­
vive). Those who own the means of production accumulate wealth by
profiting off o f the labor of their workers— they sell a good or service
for more than they pay for labor and raw materials (the profit is called
surplus value). So, if it costs $10 to produce a chair— $8 to pay the
worker and $2 for the raw material— the factory owner then sells it for
$30 and pockets the $20 as profit. A t its most distorted, we end up with
a company such as Walmart, which made a 2019 profit of $514 billion
while paying many workers minimum wage (“Fortune Global 500”).
Marxist critical theory sees history as propelled by economics and
class struggle: those who own the means o f production and profit off
the labor of others seek to maintain that structure because it works to
their advantage— those making big bucks want to keep making big
bucks; the workers who struggle to make ends meet, in contrast, feel
alienated— disconnected— from their labor because they are just cogs
in a machine, and resent what they perceive as their exploitation by the
bourgeoisie who profit off their labor, so they may push to change things.
Workers may mount protests or go on strike and, Marx proposed, if they
get fed up enough and things seem entirely hopeless, they may burn
things to the ground: revolution. Marx in fact assumed the inevitability
o f working-class revolution within capitalist society due to growing
discontent. Marxism as a philosophy o f history maps out a trajectory
in which capitalism is ultimately a stage toward communism in which

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human beings reject the class system, refuse to let people exploit the
labor of others for their own profit, and hold all things in common.
Capitalism has, however, proven remarkably resilient, if not always
especially adroit, when it comes to defusing working-class resentment.
Here is where Marxist critical theory comes in. What a Marxist
approach to popular culture focuses on are ideological messages about
class encoded in objects and practices— and, it is worth noting, that
examining what a text has to say and how it says it are not the same as
agreeing with it. Adopting a Marxist approach does not automatically
make you a Marxist. As mentioned above, those in positions of wealth
and power—the “ruling” or “dominant” class— inevitably seek to preserve
that privilege and have at their disposal various means to compel or
solicit the consent of the governed. As explained by French philosopher
Louis Althusser, the dominant class can compel the consent o f the
working class directly through what Althusser refers to as repressive
state apparatuses (RSAs)— the police, the national guard, the military,
the courts, the government—which work to maintain the existing social
order. However, there are also more diffuse means of coercing consent
from the working class, which Althusser refers to as ideological state
apparatuses (ISAs). ISAs include schools, religious institutions, the
media, social clubs and organizations, and so on that influence how we
think by naturalizing particular economic and social formations (the
process through which individuals internalize a particular set of values
is referred to by Althusser as interpellation). ISAs reinforce positions
that favor the dominant class and the existing order— and their role,
to put things cynically, is not only to influence people to accept the
existing social order as “the way the things are” but to convince them
to act against their own best interests (see Althusser). How do you get
people without health care, for example, to reject political candidates
and policies that would give them health care? And how do you get
people making minimum wage at two or three different jobs to think it
is OK for corporate CEO s to make $14.5 million a year? (“Highest-Paid
CEO s”). For a start, by repeatedly demonizing socialism— an economic
mode that primarily disadvantages the ruling class by putting the means

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of production into the hands of the community as a whole and in which

class difference is diminished.
The flip side to that equation then is to persuade people that they can
change their situations. As quoted in A Short History o f Progress (2004) by
Ronald Wright, the author John Steinbeck once quipped that “socialism
never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an
exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires” (124).
The problem from this perspective is not that CEO s make too much; it is,
rather, that working-class people make too little— and here is where the
idea of the American Dream does its most powerful ideological work. Tire
notion of the American Dream is that anyone, no matter how humble their
origins, can, through hard work and acting with integrity in one’s dealing
with others, rise to a position of wealth and prominence in American
culture. Belief in the American Dream quells the specter of class struggle
by persuading working-class people that they, too, can achieve money and
fame, and that they are responsible for their own advancement. And it is
certainly true that “average people” do hit it big now and again—we know
this because we hear about their stories all the time. What the myth of
the American Dream obscures is that inheritance is the quickest way to
wealth and that there are millions and millions of honest hard-working
people who will never overcome the conditions of their birth no matter
how hard they try and how honest they are. Indeed, for the overwhelming
number of working-class people, the class into which they are born is
their destiny—for them, the American Dream will remain forever that: a
dream. What would happen if all these people concluded that they were
in fact trapped with no way out of their situation?

Y O U R T U R N : Do you think the American Dream as described

above still exists? Why or why not?

ISAs (here including stories about average people becoming million­

aires) play a central role in helping the ruling class achieve hegemony
over the working class. Associated in particular with Italian philosopher
Antonio Gramsci, hegemony refers to the way a dominant group secures

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the consent of subordinate groups by making the ruling class’s values and
beliefs the norm for that society. Whoever is in charge works hard to pro­
mote and normalize their own views, which helps to secure their privilege.

Y O U R T U R N : In the last chapter, we discussed ideology. Thinking

back to that discussion, in what ways do you see particular ideological
beliefs that serve the interests of those in positions of power and
prominence normalized?

What Gramsci’s work helps us understand is capitalism’s resiliency.

Despite the best efforts o f the dominant class, subordinate groups can
develop a sense of class consciousness that causes them to chafe against
their positions and engage in acts of resistance. The dominant group then
seeks to put out the fire through an act o f incorporation that coopts the
resistance for its own purposes, arriving at what Gramsci refers to as a
compromise equilibrium. For example, as I’m working on this textbook
in early 2021, B L M has achieved unprecedented visibility. How cor­
porations have responded to B L M reflects the politics o f their CEO s
and boards o f trustees. However, many big ones, including Facebook,
Google, Walmart, and Amazon, have publicly attached themselves
to— or, in Gramsci’s term articulated themselves with— B L M . Why?
While the decision to support B L M may well be the result of sincerely
held principles, it is also a calculated business decision with the goal of
profiting. B L M resistance has been incorporated by capitalism and a
compromise equilibrium reached. B L M achieves greater visibility, but
its resistance has been coopted as a strategy to maximize profit by big
companies—businesses implicated in creating and perpetuating existing
class divisions, which are very much skewed by race. These companies
then package and sell the resistance right back to the protesters. Another
example: in the 1970s, punk rockers gave the middle finger to corporate
capitalism by wearing used, worn, beat-up clothing. Companies very
quickly sought to incorporate this resistance by selling ripped jeans in
boutiques and department stores. Punk became trendy, undercutting the
antiestablishment ethos that galvanized it to begin with.

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I ’m a punk rocker, yes I am

Y O U R T U R N : Can you identify other ways that dominant groups

coopt and seek to profit off of resistance movements?

For our purposes here, Marxist critical theory becomes a lens

through which we can consider popular culture practices and artifacts
as distillations o f ideology in relation to class and class relations. This
involves asking questions about how issues of class and class relations
are represented, as well as whether the object or practice participates
in naturalizing or challenging class division. It is important to acknow­
ledge that sometimes the answer is not clear cut. And it is important to
acknowledge as well that what a text says may be wholly at odds with
its creator’s intentions for it— Hollywood studios can make billions off
of films critical o f corporations making billions, and Ticketmaster can
charge $300 a ticket to see Rage Against the Machine.

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Y O U R T U R N : Consider the underlying messages related to

class conveyed by the following examples. What values are being
promoted? And who benefits?

1. American "Black Friday" sales that start on Thanksgiving

Thursday
2. A TV commercial featuring a happy family enjoying fast food
in a restaurant chain
3. A narrative franchise with which you are familiar such as
Harry Potter, Star Wars, or Star Trek

Feminist Theory and Criticism

In the same way that Marxist theory and criticism focuses its lens on
class and class inequality, feminist theory and criticism seeks to under­
stand the nature o f gender inequality through a focus on the social
roles played by women in relation to men, how they have developed,
and the forces that maintain them. And, in the same way that Marxist
theory works to demystify ideology that supports a status quo in which
many are disenfranchised, exploited, and repressed, feminist theory
similarly attempts to identify and critique the mechanisms through
which women have been discriminated against and controlled in patri­
archal culture— cultures in which men have historically held positions
o f power and authority.
Two key dichotomies that have been central to the development
o f feminist theory and its deployment as criticism are the distinction
between sex and gender on the one hand, and between essentialism and
constructivism on the other. The sex / gender distinction has to do with
the difference between the physical body and the social expectations
that we overlay onto physical bodies. We can understand sex to refer
to anatomy and biology including genitalia and genetics. Western
culture has for a long time been accustomed to thinking o f human
biological sex as a binary opposition between two categories: male

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and female; in this binary opposition, men have a Y chromosome, penis,

and testicles, while women have two X chromosomes, a vagina, and
a female reproductive system. In reality, the situation is much more
complicated. To begin with, medical studies suggest that i out o f every
1500 to 2000 people is born intersexed— that is, having biological sex
characteristics that are not all male or female (see Blackless). In some
cases, intersex traits are visible at birth: some children are born with
incompletely developed or ambiguous genitalia or born with two sets.
What has typically happened in the past is that such infants were sur­
gically and/or hormonally assigned a sex in conformity with Western
culture’s insistence that one identify either as male or female with
corresponding anatomy. In other cases, intersex traits may not appear
until puberty or, in the case of some chromosomal variations, become
apparent at all— estimates, in fact, are that 1 out of every 100 people
has some form o f disorder of sexual development (DSD) in which
an individual’s anatomical sex is at odds with their chromosomal or
gonadal sex (see Ainsworth). In reality, biological sex can be thought
o f as a spectrum rather than a binary opposition— there are in fact
many different sexes rather than just two.

Y O U R T U R N : What do you think is at stake in maintaining the

belief that there are only two human sexes?

Gender can then be thought of as a kind o f code specifying the

social expectations that are overlaid onto the sexed body— the way that
a given culture expects biological males and females to act, think, look,
talk, walk, and so on. For example, those with male bodies are sup­
posed to act masculine, which historically has included being tough and
avoiding outward displays o f emotion: “act like a man!” Being feminine
then maps onto female bodies, and permits displays o f emotion and
affection. Gender is thus the point at which culture and biological sex
meet—which offers an excellent example of the semiotic proposition
concerning the arbitrary nature o f the sign. Below in Figs. 3.1 and 3.2
are two familiar signs: “businessman” and “housewife.”

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Figs. j . i and3.2 Sexual Stereotypes

W h y have modern men traditionally cut their hair short and worn
suits while women have styled their hair longer and worn dresses? The
answer is purely cultural convention. There is no inherent reason at
all for particular hair styles or fashion trends. We know this because
fashion differs from place to place and time to time. Scottish men wear
kilts while in some parts o f the world men wear thawbs or kandoras— a
traditional male robe. M en who practice Sikhism don’t cut their hair.

Y O U R T U R N : What are some other gender expectations that

differ from place to place or that have changed over time?

In the twenty-first century, Western women can wear dresses or

pants, and may choose to cut their hair short; it remains unusual, however,
to see a conventionally masculine man in a gown— but, strange as it
may sound, that could change if men began wearing dresses consistently.
Dress expectations are part o f a cultural code; they are arbitrary and
naturalized over time via repetition— that men wear suits and women
wear sundresses only seems natural to us due to its familiarity. The arbi­
trariness o f fashion, however, doesn’t mean that all trends are innocent.
M any fashion trends for women, from bustles and corsets to high heels,
for example, have had the effect o f constraining movement— and a
 CHAPTER 3 | THE CRITICAL THEORY T O O L B O X

component of what has been called First-Wave Feminism of the nine­

teenth and early twentieth centuries was dress reform: a movement to
permit women more practical and comfortable clothing. In fact, until the
twentieth century, women’s clothing lacked pockets because pockets on
dresses interrupted the aesthetic or “look” of the outfit—which makes
sense if one considers the primary role for women to be objects to be
looked at. Part of the dress reform movement, which advocated more
functional clothing for women, was in fact the push for pockets— in 1910,
something called the “Suffragette suit” came equipped with six o f them!
In any event, at least until relatively recently in the twenty-first
century, gender expectations were tightly coupled with the biological
sex binary opposition: male and female bodies were supposed to act in
what the culture considered masculine and feminine ways. Here (see
Figs. 3.3 and 3.4) we can think of gender expectations as semiotic codes:

Fig. j . j Male / Female Icons and Fig. 3.4 Traditional Gender Stereotypes

Traditional Gender Stereotypes

Male Female
Aggressive Passive
Independent Dependent
Dominant Submissive
Not nurturing Nurturing
Insensitive Sensitive
Logical Emotional
Strong Weak
Silent Talkative

One o f the more interesting twenty-first-century developments has

been the extent to which conventionally rigid gender expectations have
increasingly been challenged. Although discussions o f gender often
conflate biological sex, gender, and sexual orientation, social media plat­
forms and other venues soliciting personal information now in many

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cases permit a variety o f options for self-identification ranging from

“cisgender” or just “cis,” meaning that one’s gender identity matches
their sex assigned at birth, to “transgender,” meaning that one’s gender
identity or expression differs from the biological sex assigned at birth,
to “androgynous” and “gender-fluid.” The fact that such options exist
demonstrates a growing social awareness that there is no inherent con­
nection between anatomical sex and gender. This suggests that Western
culture is moving away from gender essentialism.
Closely tied to the sex / gender distinction has been the essen­
tialism / constructivism debate, which raises questions as to whether
or not there is some male or female “essence.” Gender essentialism
is the belief that men and women naturally think and act in particu­
lar ways and are better or worse suited to particular avocations and
activities because o f their biological sex. Such thinking attributes
an “essence” to men and women— something universal that defines
what it means to be a man or woman— and this has been the basis
for stereotypes such as that women are “naturally” nurturing, emo­
tional, and domestic, while men are “naturally” aggressive, logical, and
independent. The constructivist side o f the debate takes the contrary
position that, as second-wave feminist Simone de Beauvoir famously
put it in her important 1949 book, The Second Sex, “One is not born,
but rather becomes, a woman” (152). Femininity for constructivists
like de Beauvoir—and, we could add, masculinity as well— is not
directed by some womanly core or essence, but rather is the product
of environment: nurture rather than nature.
For those committed to expanding opportunities for women and
leveling the playing field between men and women, overcoming essen-
tialist thinking about gender has been crucial as essentialist arguments
have often been the basis for denying women opportunities extended
to men. The idea that women are “naturally” better suited to childcare
and domestic duties, for example, has been used to prevent women from
moving into the workplace. The idea that women are “naturally” more
emotional and less rational than men has been used as an argument to

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prevent women from holding positions o f authority— the word “hysteria”

in fact derives from the Greek word for uterus, hystera, and remains more
closely tied to women than men. Indeed, essentialist thinking about
gender has been especially pernicious in that it naturalized discrimination
against women in the name o f protecting women: when men deprived
women o f opportunities for adventure, personal growth, and self-expres­
sion, it was often couched in the language o f being for their own good.
This does not mean that biology does not influence at all the way we
think and feel. It does mean, however, that there is immense variation
from person to person. Some women are more aggressive than some men,
while some men are more nurturing and sensitive than some women.
Further, biology is so inextricably intertwined with culture that it is
incredibly difficult to separate the two. I f gender codes associate being
“womanly” with being emotional and “manly” with being stoic— and
conforming to those codes is considered important— then it is not at all
surprising that women will be more emotional than men. As a thought
experiment, one could image a society in which masculinity was asso­
ciated with being emotional, and femininity with keeping emotions in
check. In such a society, it would be “natural” for men to cry and unseemly
for women to do so, and, no doubt, men would cry more and women less.
Anatomy is only destiny if we believe and insist that it is— and, as was
noted in the last chapter concerning ideology, this approach to popular
culture would have you cultivate an attitude o f suspicion toward any
claim that something is “naturally” one way or another, because disguis­
ing history as nature is exactly how ideology functions— and ideology
inevitably serves the interests o f particular groups.
This then brings us to feminist theory and criticism. A feminist
approach to popular culture considers popular culture representa­
tions, practices, and artifacts in light o f the messages they convey and
assumptions they make about women, with an eye in particular toward
how those messages, assumptions, and representations participate in
supporting cultural inequities between men and women. Am ong the
questions such an investigation may include are:

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• Are women present in or presumed by the text at all? (The absence

of women can send as powerful a message in many cases as their
presence.)
• If women are present, how are they described, depicted, or
presumed to be?
• What roles do women play? Are women central or ancillary?
• Are women active or passive in their roles? Do they think and act, or
are they simply there to be looked at?
• Do women conform to or defy stereotypes? To what extent is the
object, practice, or representation coded in terms of traditional
feminine associations?
• Are there essentialist assumptions conveyed about women's "nature"?
• How do the representations of women compare to that of men within
the same text?
• What messages, finally, are conveyed about the nature and abilities
of women?

In seeking answers to these questions, it is important to bear in mind that

texts may not be entirely consistent and that there may be disagreement
over whether a representation or message is empowering or inhibiting.

Y O U R T U R N : Use a feminist lens to consider the following

popular culture images. What messages about women do you decode
and how do you arrive at your conclusions?

Figs. j.y, j.6 , and j.y Images o f Women

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Feminist theory and criticism arguably can be accommodated

under the broader umbrella o f gender studies— a rubric that, ironically,
feminist theory helped to create. W hat gender studies does is to take
de Beauvoir’s proposition that “one is not born, but rather becomes,
a woman” and extend it to gender identity in general. Thus, one can
talk, on the one hand, in terms o f women’s studies, an interdisciplinary
enterprise sometimes referred as the “academic arm o f the women’s
movement” (Howe) that draws on feminist theory to explore, among
other things, how ideas o f femininity have developed and shifted, how
gender impacts the lived experience o f women, and the contributions
women have made to society. On the other hand, one can also now talk
about masculinity studies, which examines how understandings o f mas­
culinity are constructed and maintained. We, therefore, can ask the same
questions concerning masculinity and popular culture representation
that one asks o f femininity: how are men represented? Is some essence
o f masculinity assumed? W hat messages are conveyed about what it
means to “be a man”? H ow do the representations o f men compare to
those o f women? Whose interests are served by such representations?
A recent development in masculinity studies is the concept o f toxic
masculinity— the idea that certain cultural norms associated with being
masculine such as the need to dominate others, the refusal to compromise,
and the resolution o f conflict through violence, have been harmful to
women, children, society, and, indeed, men themselves.

Y O U R T U R N : In what ways can codes of masculinity be con­

sidered as harmful to men?

Closely tied to gender studies is sexuality studies, which, like gender

studies, is an interdisciplinary enterprise focused on how sexual identity,
sexual orientation, and sexual desire are produced, maintained, and
policed. As with sex and gender, sexuality has often been thought o f as a
binary opposition between heterosexuality (sexual attraction to someone
o f the opposite sex), naturalized as normative, and homosexuality (sex­
ual attraction to someone o f the same sex), often construed as aberrant.

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And as with gender identification, sexual identity has been shown to be

much more complicated than a simple hetero/homo opposition. Other
recognized forms o f sexuality include bisexuality, asexuality, and pansex­
uality (attraction toward people regardless of sex or gender identity),
and some have suggested that sexuality exists along a continuum from
exclusive attraction to the opposite sex to exclusive attraction to the same
sex. While homosexuality was declassified as a mental disorder by the
American Psychiatric Association in 1973 and has achieved significant
levels of visibility and acceptance in Western culture in the twenty-
first century, stigmatization of homosexuality nevertheless doggedly
persists within particular populations. In the complete absence of such
stigmatization it is interesting to conjecture what percentage o f the
population would actually identify as bisexual or pansexual. Adopting
a sexuality studies approach to popular culture, one can ask a series of
questions concerning how a given text or practice encodes messages
about sexuality. The beginning point is with these two:

• Does the text or practice naturalize heterosexuality as the only option?

Are other sexualities represented or implied in any way at all?
• If other sexualities are represented or implied, are they depicted or
characterized as viable and equal possibilities? Or are they depicted
as deviant, exotic, and/or comic?

The most straightforward way to naturalize heterosexuality as “normal”

and “right” is to render other sexualities invisible, which was in large
part the mainstream media practice for much o f the twentieth century.
I f all one ever sees is conventionally masculine men pursuing conven­
tionally attractive women, all other possibilities are marginalized and
implicitly construed as deviant. Where characters coded as non-hetero
did appear in twentieth-century media, they tended to be villainized or
comic— e.g., the murderous man-hating lesbian or the female protag­
onist’s gay friend. The twenty-first century has seen a proliferation of
non-hetero characters in literature and media presented in ways that
seek to avoid and undercut sexual stigmas.
 CHAPTER 3 I THE CRITICAL THEORY T O O L B O X

In raising questions about the naturalness of gender and sexuality,

gender and sexuality studies often engage in a strategy o f queering.
When used as a verb, to queer something is to look at it in such a
way that it becomes strange, and this often involves questioning the
foundations on which a belief or idea rests or reading a text or practice
“against the grain.” Connected to queer theory, a branch of gender and
sexuality studies that emphasizes the social construction and mainten­
ance of ideas of normalcy and deviancy, the practice of queering can be
applied to a range of practices and texts to highlight how they seek to
naturalize certain ideas especially as related to gender and sexuality. For
example, a queer approach to activities or practices generally considered
as hypermasculine, such as aggressive sports, could consider them as
means through which men are permitted to touch in a culture that
stigmatizes physical displays of affection between men.

Ethnic Studies, Postcolonialism, and Critical Race Theory

In the same way that women and members of the LG B T Q IA + com­

munity fighting for recognition and equality have developed strategies
to critique and contest the politics of oppression and exclusion, members
of other historically disenfranchised groups have similarly sought to
highlight the richness of their histories and traditions while challenging
forms o f discrimination. The shape that these approaches have often
taken within the world of academia is, as we have already seen, often in
the form of “studies”— programs or departments with a particular racial
or ethnic focus. Thus, one can speak of Black studies, Africana studies,
or Africology programs; Latino, Chicano, and Raza studies programs;
African American, Asian American, and Native American studies pro­
grams; Jewish and Arab studies programs; and so on. Outgrowths in the
US of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, these
programs can generally be accommodated under the umbrella o f what
is termed ethnic studies and, implicitly or explicitly, share the goal of
challenging the Eurocentric bias of traditional approaches to education,
as well as o f Western culture more broadly. As explained by Alvaro

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Huerta, “As an interdisciplinary scholarly field, ethnic studies is about

self-respect and self-determination. It’s about racialized groups— work­
ers, students, scholars, organizers, and others— refusing to be viewed or
gazed upon from a Eurocentric paradigm as inferior or less than. It’s
about rejecting the scholarly practice o f being objects o f studies. Instead,
we demand to be the subjects in this equation” (Huerta).
And, in the same way that women’s studies programs find their basis
in feminist theory, contemporary ethnic studies programs draw to varying
degrees upon the approaches and insights of what is known as postcol­
onial theory and criticism. As summarized by J. Daniel Elam, postcolonial
theory, which developed in the second half of the twentieth century, con­
cerns itself with “the political, aesthetic, economic, historical, and social
impact of European colonial rule around the world in the 18th through
the 20th century.” “Postcolonial theory,” continues Elam, “takes many
different shapes and interventions, but all share a fundamental claim:
that the world we inhabit is impossible to understand except in relation­
ship to the history of imperialism and colonial rule” (Elam). Intimately
intertwined with issues of race and ethnicity, postcolonial theory and
criticism has sought to explain and explore the cultural dynamics and
legacy created by one group subordinating another. In a seminal work
of postcolonial theory, the French West Indian psychiatrist and political
philosopher Frantz Fanon explored in Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
the psychology of the colonized and how they are persuaded to accept
their own inferior status. In Orientalism (1978), another foundational
postcolonialist study, cultural critic Edward Said considers how Western
ways of imagining “the Orient” as exotic and irrational facilitated imper­
ialist politics. Fanon, Said, and other postcolonialist theorists and critics
have therefore explored how dominant groups seek to perpetuate their
hegemony through securing the consent and compliance of subordinate
groups. Ethnic studies programs, in turn, have drawn on these insights
as approaches to “decolonizing” the thinking of program participants
by recovering overlooked histories, celebrating the richness of culturally
specific practices and traditions, and highlighting how ideology circulates
and hegemony functions to preserve the status quo.

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In the twenty-first century, the insights o f postcolonial theory and

criticism also inform critical race theory (CRT), an approach to culture
that focuses on systemic racism— the ways in which racism is deeply
entrenched in contemporary social structures. Emerging out o f legal
studies, C R T began by critiquing the notion that the US legal system
is colorblind, asserting instead that the American legal system (and, by
extension, the legal systems of other predominantly white countries)
has been and continues to be skewed by attitudes about race— facts put
into stark relief by the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of the
police in Minneapolis, which added new urgency to the B L M movement.
C R T scholars have explored the ways in which US laws and policies
are biased against people of color and the ways that legal institutions
reinforce that bias. According to the U C L A School of Public Affairs,
“C R T recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of
the American society ... [and] that institutional racism is pervasive in
the dominant culture.... C R T identifies that these power structures are
based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the
marginalization o f people of color” (“What Is Critical Race Theory?”).
Now having extended well beyond legal studies, C R T has been utilized
to investigate the racial structures of everyday life. “Opposing racism,”
assert Omi and Winant in their study of US racial history, “requires
that we notice race” (Omi and Winant 159).
C R T scholars, it should be pointed out, as well as womens and ethnic
studies scholars, also emphasize intersectionalily— the idea that forms o f
social stratification such as race, class, sexual orientation, age, disability,
and gender do not exist separately but are interwoven together. People
are not just one thing— white or black, male or female. Instead, people
are complex combinations o f features and affiliations subject to various
forms o f privilege and exclusion. One, therefore, must be careful to avoid
sweeping generalizations about “women,” “men,” “people o f color,” and
so on because the experiences o f those thus categorized will be radically
different depending on other factors— an upper-class white woman and
a poor woman o f color are both women, but their experiences navigating
American culture are likely to be dramatically different.

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Disability Studies

In keeping with the other forms o f critical theory introduced in this

chapter, disability studies is an interdisciplinary scholarly discipline
that focuses its attention on the ways in which disability has been
defined, how disability has been represented in various media, and its
consequences for individuals characterized as or who identify as dis­
abled. According to the Society for Disability Studies, the goals o f the
discipline include “challenging the view o f disability as an individual
deficit or defect,” studying definitions o f and responses to disability
from a cross-cultural perspective, and encouraging participation in aca­
demia by disabled students and faculty (“W hat Is Disability Studies”).
Adopting an intersectional model, disability studies emphasizes the
ways that other factors such as race, class, and sexuality can influence
the experience o f disability.

Y O U R T U R N : What popular culture representations of persons

with mental and/or physical disabilities can you think of? Focusing
on one or two representations, in what ways do you see them as
either reinforcing or challenging stereotypes?

Conclusions

This chapter has offered a condensed overview o f different forms o f

critical theory and criticism that can be used to help us understand
what popular culture is and what it does. A reasonable question you may
be left with, however, is which approach to utilize in a given situation.
The not especially helpful answer is: it depends. It may be that you
have a particular interest, such as popular culture and gender, that you
wish to explore in a variety o f different contexts. I f so, that’s fine— you
can certainly explore the gender politics o f just about any aspect o f
popular culture, from the marketing o f toys to children to Halloween
costumes to song lyrics. In other cases, it is often useful to allow the

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text you are analyzing to direct you toward the approach— a film such
as Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) seems to lend itself to a critical race
theory approach, for example, while a Marxist approach to punk music
and subculture might be a fruitful direction to take. In some cases, with
an eye toward intersectionality, critical approaches can be combined,
although in shorter essays the danger may be attempting to cover too
much. I f you become interested in a particular approach— and my over­
views here have been quite “bare bones”— suggestions for additional
reading are provided below.
The overarching goal of this section— and, indeed, of this approach
to popular culture as a whole— is to provide tools that can assist with
honing critical thinking skills that allow us to appreciate popular culture
texts as inevitably encoding messages about our world. In some cases,
these messages reinforce conventional understandings and participate
in shoring up the status quo— the way things are. In other cases, these
messages may be subversive, asking us to rethink or reject aspects o f
our reality we may previously have taken for granted. In still other cases,
we may receive mixed messages— a text may be “progressive” on race
while being conservative in relation to gender. The first step, however,
in becoming someone who acts deliberately rather than someone who
is acted on and directed by cultural forces is to begin to see the ways in
which ideological messages about how we should think and act bom­
bard us constantly. It’s a revelation that can be exhausting. But it is a
necessary preliminary step toward actualizing a better reality.

Suggested Assignments

1. Compose a reflective essay that uses one of the critical approaches

outlined in this chapter as a lens through which to consider your
own life experience. How has a component of your identity such as
race, class, or gender identification shaped your experiences? Here,
you may also wish to think in terms of intersectionality.
2. This chapter has outlined critical approaches to popular culture in
broad strokes. Research one particular approach that appeals to

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SECTION 1 | THE PO P CULTURE T O O L B O X

you in greater depth. You may wish to consider who the primary
figures in the field are, how the field has developed, and debates
within the field. (The "suggested additional reading" section below
may serve as a starting point.)
3. Use one of the approaches outlined in this chapter as a lens through
which to explore a popular culture object or practice with which you
are familiar as congealed ideology. What assumptions about class,
gender, physical ability and so on are encoded in and naturalized
by the object or practice?

Works Cited in the Chapter

Ainsworth, Claire. "Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic."

Scientific American, 22 Oct. 2018, [Link]
com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplisticl /.
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." Lenin and
Philosophy and Other Essays, translated by Ben Brewster, Monthly
Review Press, 2001, pp. 121-76.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. 1949. Translated by Constance
Borde, Vintage, 2011.
Blackless, Melanie, et al. "How Sexually Dimorphic Are We? Review and
Synthesis." American Journal o f Human Biology, vol. 12, no. 2, Mar.
2000, pp. 151-66.
Elam, J. Daniel. "Postcolonial Theory." Oxford Bibliographies, 15 Jan.
2019, [Link]
9780190221911 /obo-9780190221911 -[Link].
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. 1952. Translated by Richard
Philcox, Grove Press, 2008.
"Fortune Global 500." Fortune, [Link]
Gramsci, Antonio. The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-
1935. Edited by David Forgacs, New York UP, 2000.
"Highest-Paid CEOS." AFL-GO: America's Unions, [Link]
paywatch/highest-paid-ceos.

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Howe, Florence. Editorial in Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 7, Summer

1979, p. 2.
Huerta, Alvaro. "The Right to Ethnic Studies in Higher
Education." Inside Higher Ed, 15 May 2020, https://
[Link]/advice/2020/05/15/
why-students-should-be-required-take-ethnic-studies-opinion.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States.
2nd ed., Routledge, 1994.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. 1978. Vintage Books, 1979.
"What Is Critical Race Theory?" UCLA School o f Public Affairs, https://
[Link]/what-is-critical-race-theory/.
"What Is Disability Studies?" Society for Disability Studies, https://
[Link]/[Link]/about-sds/what-is-disability-studies/.
Wright, Ronald. A Short History of Progress. Carroll & Graf, 2005.

Suggested Additional Reading by Topic

M arxist Theory and Criticism

Eagleton, Terry. An Introduction to Ideology. Verso, 2007.

. Marxism and Literary Criticism. University of California Press, 1976.
Nelson, Cary and Lawrence Grossberg, editors. Marxism and the
Interpretation o f Culture. Macmillan, 1988.
Simon, Roger. Gramsci's Political Thought: An Introduction. Lawrence &
Wishart, 1982.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford UP, 1977.

,
Feminist Theory Gender and Sexuality Studies

Adams, Rachel and David Savran, editors. The Masculinity Studies Reader.
Blackwell, 2002.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion o f Identity.
Routledge, 2006.
 SECTION 1 | THE PO P CULTURE T O O L B O X

Connell, Raewyn. Gender: In World Perspective. 3rd ed., Polity, 2014.

Cranny-Francis, Anne et al. Gender Studies: Terms and Debates. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003.
Franklin, Sarah, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey, editors. O ff Centre:
Feminism and Cultural Studies. Routledge, 2017.
Gottzen, Lucas, Ulf Mellstrom, and Tamara Shefer, editors. Routledge
International Handbook o f Masculinity Studies. Routledge, 2019.
Lips, Hilary. Gender: The Basics. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2018.
McCann, Carole and Seung-kyung Kim, editors. Feminist Theory Reader:
Local and Global Perspectives. 4th ed., Routledge, 2016.
Naples, Nancy A. Companion to Sexuality Studies. Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.
Richardson, Diana and Vitoria Robinson, editors. Introducing Gender and
Women's Studies. 5th ed., Red Globe Press, 2020.
Saraswati, L. Ayu and Barbara L. Shaw. Feminist and Queer Theory: An
Intersectional and Transnational Reader. Oxford UP, 2020.
Saraswati, L. Ayu, Barbara L. Shaw, and Heather Rellihan. Introduction
to Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and
Intersectional Approaches. 2nd ed., Oxford UP, 2020.
Wade, Lisa and Myra Marx Ferree. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions.
2nd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Ethnic Studies, Postcolonial Studies,

and Critical Race Theory

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Studies: The
Key Concepts. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2013.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, editors. The Post-Colonial
Studies Reader. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2006.
Baker, Brian, et al. Introduction to Ethnic Studies. 3rd ed., Kendall Hunt
Publishing, 2011.
Crenshaw, Kimberle, et al. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That
Formed the Movement. The New Press, 1996.
Critical Ethnic Studies Editorial Collective. Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader.
Duke UP, 2016.

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Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.

3rd ed., New York UP, 2017.
Huggan, Graham, editor. The Oxford Handbook o f Postcolonial Studies.
Oxford UP, 2016.
Yoo, David, Pamela Grieman, and Charlene Villasenor Black, editors.
Knowledge for Justice: An Ethnic Studies Reader. University of
California Los Angeles American Indian Studies Center, 2020.

D isability Studies

Berger, Ronald J. Introduction Disability Studies. Lynne Rienner Publishers

Inc., 2013.
Connor, David J., et al. DisCrit—Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory
in Education. Teachers College Press, 2015.
Davis, Lennard J., editor. The Disability Studies Reader. 5th ed., Routledge,
2016.
Goodley, Dan. Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. 2nd ed.,
Sage, 2016.
McRuer, Robert. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs o f Queerness and Disability.
New York UP, 2006.

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