Popular Discrimination (Relevance) - John Fiske

Fiske points out that popular discrimination is different from critical or aesthetic discrimination. Popular discrimination stresses functionality over quality. The utility of any text can be approached by its:

• Relevance
• Semiotic Productivity
• Flexibility of Consumption

Fiske has defined popular culture existing on the boundary of everyday life and capitalism (or even imperialism). If a text can be appropriated for use in common social situations then it is relevant. The reader constructs the relevance and may internally produce a meaning beyond the economic intention of text or should even co-construct a meaning in a social context.

Fiske gives examples:

1. Advertising stimulating revolution (ECO (1986)).
2. School children appropriating the TV soap opera Prisoner (Hodge and Tripp (1986)).
3. Dallas leaving different meanings to Israeli Jews, Arabs, Dutch Marxists and Dutch Feminists (Katz and Liebes (1984, 1985, 1987)) and (Ang (1985)).
4. Charlie's Angels or Cagney and Lacey for white males.
5. Violence in video games for males who exist in oppressive situations.
6. Miami Vice for Hispanics enjoying the splendor of the drug barons.
7. Madonna having teenage girl fans and Playboy readers finding relevance in her image and escapades.

Fiske states that a text must be uttered by the author and uttered again by the reader in a social situation for the popular discrimination criteria of relevance to be met.

• Ang, I. (1985). Watching Dallas. London: Methuen.
• Eco, U. (1986). Travels in Hyper-reality. London: Picador.
• Fiske, J. (1987b). Television Culture. London: Methuen.
• Fiske, J. (1989). Reading the Popular. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
• Hodge, R., and Tripp, D. (1986).Children and Television. Cambridge: Polity.
• Katz, E., and Liebes, T. (1984)."Once upon a Time in Dallas." Intermedia 12 (3), 28-32.
• Katz, E., and Liebes, T. (1985)."Mutual Aid in the Decoding of Dallas:" Preliminary Notes from a Cross-Cultural Study," in P. Drummond and R. Paterson (eds.) Television in Transition (pp. 187-198). London: British Film Institute.
• Katz, E., and Liebes, T. (1987). On the Critical Ability of Television Viewers Paper presented at the seminar Rethinking the Audience, University of Tubingen, February.

Page Created January 22, 1998

Page Last Updated January 28, 1998