yoshie, gar, others:
this is a bit of what i posted to gar a couple of days ago re: his query on maps, assuming in this instance that maps is not exactly a way to define the term meta-narratives.
"i'm not sure that i follow you here - how would a meta-narrative work in this context, or which one would you suggest?
and maybe we are thinking of two different things, but i would think a map is both impossible and unavoidable. realising it's unavoidable, rather than that which can settle meaning would be were i might begin. and i would probably end by realising its impossibilty, which is therefore no end at all. but this may not be what you had in mind..."
yoshie wrote:
>Others may stem from an idea that trying to look at a given piece of
art
>(be it Buffy or Shakespeare) using, for instance, a feminist theory
does
>violence to the specificities of the work that distinguish it from
all
>others and/or takes away pleasure and enjoyment.
i would think kind of, but this is too sweeping a definition, especially in a context where the phrases 'meta-narrative' and the 'aversion to grand theorising' seem to go hand in hand in many people's fevered imaginations, on both sides of the putative divide.
the question about the possibility or otherwise of meta-naratives goes to whether, when we sit down and read something, watch something, etc, we are capable of comprehending its meaning without reference to either the narratives contained within that particular thing or through reference to other narratives, ie., the 'inter-textuality' that people go on about. 'meta-narrative', on the other hand, assumes a narrative about how and why meaning is produced in the way that it is that is itself not a narrative, but only a way of speaking about them.
yoshie wrote:
>(Michael Pollak mentions some 'black vampire films,' but even their
titles
>gesture toward their anomalous status, thus relying on the audience
>knowledge that vampires normally don't come from Brooklyn, for
instance.)
and, this would be an intertextual reference, not a meta-narrative, since it does not refer to any knowledge of brooklyn demographics derived from either experience or science but by how brooklyn is figured in other narratives. ie., i know that this is a certain kind of vampire film, not because i know anything about brooklyn, but becuase i have watched countless tv shows and films which give this it's meaning for me. and, unless i keep this difference in mind, i could easily be led to beleive all the ways in which i've seen brooklyn figured are really brooklyn. just like if i watched buffy as an accurate depiction of a US suburb.
a meta-narrative would be something like if buffy did a piece to camera explaining why it is that a young, white girl has been made into a vampire for a television series at this time in the US according to an estimate of its potential to make money for the industry. it would be interesting and funny, but mostly becuase it would be impossibly jarring. and, it would be important to do this ourselves to explain the existence of certain cultural products and not others, but this doesn't exacty explain the ways in which those products produce (or not) certain meanings.
>Meta-narratives inhere in any close reading or even a casual reading.
>(Otherwise, a text doesn't 'make sense.')
texts can also make sense if they refer us to other texts. and, such referencing is never circular or closed, as yoshie noted in regards to genre, repetition, transgression etc. nowhere in yoshie's comments did i find a metanarrative though. gar, you will have to offer one it seems.
cultural studies bores me for the self-referentiality of its commentary, however. even though i might be interested in taking up a few of its insights, and i certainly read it on an ongoing basis, i think finally it can never really get itself out of the impasse of being a commentary on cultural products without asking why they take the form of products, or why enjoyment is delivered in these forms. the problem with the vast majority of cultural studies is not that it isn't empirical, but that it is too empiricist. i want my facts read against the grain, even whilst i still make use of both economic and cultural studies empiricisms.
angela
yoshie wrote:
>As to pleasure and enjoyment, much of it comes from our joy of
recognition
>of patterns as well as disruptions of them, in form and content. For
>instance, nursery rhymes and fairy tales give pleasure to us (esp.
>children) first of all because they are pleasantly repetitive, while
giving
>us variations. Any good artist knows how to repeat (and get that
groove
>going, in sounds, meanings, colors, visual metaphors, etc.), for
pleasure
>(including pleasure of transgressing the rules) is conservative (and
I
>don't use this word negatively).
>
>More specifically, for many readers/viewers who are
oppressed/marginalized
>due to race, gender, sexuality, etc., not much pleasure is to be had
from
>ordinary mass cultural products, unless pleasure comes from pattern
>recognition, for we are not only _not_ their intended audience but
also
>often pointedly put out of the picture (so to speak); worse yet, we
can be
>a butt of a joke (as Charles Brown said of jokes about 'spooks') or
an
>object of a racist agression fantasy (as in _Falling Down_). I can't
>imagine many black teenagers going ga-ga over Buffy, with a possible
>exception of cinephiles or incipient pop culture critics among them
(who
>may enjoy picking it apart or admire how cleverly it's put together).
>
>As to your mention of King Kong, of course, black viewers would not
>'identify with' him (as I would not 'identify with' obligatory
Japanese
>businessmen in many American films from the 80s or environmental
'pests'
>that Angela was talking about in another thread). That doesn't mean
that
>King Kong doesn't signify a white fear of a black rapist, for
instance,
>among other possible interpretations. For better or worse, we are not
>'interpellated' by Hollywood narratives in the same way that white
viewers
>might. (For instance, I think the white viewers who are not
anti-racist and
>do not think of race and representation, etc. wouldn't even 'notice'
that
>there are few blacks + non-whites in Buffy. They don't very often
'notice'
>our absence in the real world either.)
>
>Yoshie
>