Popular culture’s democratizing power
Popular culture is a form of cultural expression delivered through mass-manufactured cultural products – such as films, music, theater and books – meant for the pleasure and entertainment of people (Betts, 2004). It is culture that originates from certain section of a population and becomes widespread because of its mass appeal. It is mainly because of this “mass appeal” attribute of pop culture that gives people the impression that it can be used as a tool for democratization (Hoggart, 1990). However, the diversity of motivations behind the creation of pop culture products, the polysemic potential of its narratives and the unique ways in which people interpret them (Fiske, 1987), make predicting whether popular culture will indeed be a catalyst for democracy, a complex matter.
Can popular culture increase democracy in Singapore? Quite frankly, I think the answer is no. Singapore’s constitution describes the country as having a Westminster model of democracy, but scholars have offered alternative descriptors for Singapore’s style of government, variously labelling it as “authoritarian”, “semi-authoritarian” “Asian Democracy”, “illiberal democracy”, “communitarian democracy”, or “mandatory democracy” (Rajah, 2012).
The variety of descriptors point to the difficulty in pinning down what type of democracy Singapore is. Some observers argue that the state’s non-liberal reputation arises from its history of implementing laws that reinforce its political and cultural hegemony (Rajah, 2012).
Examples of such laws include the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act, the Media Development Authority of Singapore Act, and the Internal Security Act (Teo, 2005), all of which are part of a legislative arsenal that accords the state powers to punish anyone deemed to have disseminated subversive material (for example, in the form of popular culture products).
If increasing democracy means scaling down the powers of these laws, it seems far-fetched to expect that something as fluid and ephemeral as popular culture can accomplish the task.
Cultural Hegemony
The state’s cultural hegemony has made it difficult for people to use popular culture as a means of promulgating democratic ideals in Singapore. When Singaporean theatre company, Wild Rice Ltd, made socio-political commentaries critical of the government’s stand on issues such as censorship and media regulation, the National Arts Council (NAC) cut the company’s funding by 10 percent in 2010 (Ooi, 2011).
Then-NAC chief Benson Phua stated that, “the cut in Wild Rice’s funding was based on the theater group’s actions over the years and NAC wanted to send a message” (Ooi, 2011, p. 130). Wild Rice paid a price for using the popular cultural form of theater to lobby for democracy, because the state considered such expressions “disruptive and unproductive” (Ooi, 2011, p. 131) to its primary agenda of preserving political stability.
Looking at NAC’s decision to reduce funding in this case, one might get the impression that the statutory board was trying to discipline a group that did not fall in line with the state’s cultural agenda. Different people will have different views about the merit of NAC’s decision, but, nonetheless, government attempts to nip expressions of political dissent in the bud to preserve a sanitized cultural climate infused with its own texts will naturally wipe out pop culture with any kind of political purpose.
Commodification
There is also the sense that most people view pop culture offerings as commodities to generate revenue rather than as tools for political change, which is why cultural producers and consumers are generally more apathetic about the usefulness of popular culture for democratization.
A central tenet in Singapore’s cultural policy is the need to exploit creativity for revenue (Ooi, 2011). Artists are advised to abandon their “art for art’s sake” mentality and function like their counterparts in the media sector, which generates more earnings (Ooi, 2011). Hence, artists here tend to perceive their acts of creation as events that ought to serve a mass-production ethos. I am guessing that many Singaporean artists are convinced, though they will not admit it, that arts funders and sponsors are more concerned about how well the works sell in the marketplace than the intrinsic value of those creations.
By valorizing the production of popular culture as a money-making enterprise and as a fruitful source of labor, the state defines popular culture as a good to be created within an institutionalized structure containing what Max Weber referred to as inhuman and depersonalized bureaucratic processes (Heywood, 2004).
This state-assigned definition of popular culture, however, runs counter to the artist’s “ideal” of culture, which Williams (1961) defines as the state of human perfection based on universal values.
Ostensibly, the artist’s treatment of his popular culture product, say a piece of music, based on the “ideal” definition, would entail talking about universal values, which include, the protection of democratic rights.
But at a time when global markets are flooded with mostly American cultural products that promote neoliberal values that envision human beings as consumers whose democratic freedoms are best exercised by buying and selling, pop culture that touches on, for example, the topic of rights to free expression and tolerance to diverse opinions, might be deemed as being too heavy and boring for the mass market, and, it is difficult to make a strong sales pitch to funders interested in fat returns on investment, when an artistic product lacks mass appeal. In some countries, this could also mean a lack of government patronage (Ooi, 2011).
Power to provoke
Those who maintain that popular culture can be used as a political tool might be putting too much stock in its capacity to provoke meaning. Fiske (1987) notes that the multiplicity of ways in which individuals in a population digest popular culture texts and extract meaning from them, makes it impossible for any dominant class to ensure the primacy of its texts in the public sphere. Pop culture’s polysemic potential is capable of influencing people’s interior lives. While critics have described this influence as disparate fantasies of individuals that belong to the realm of escapism rather than to a set of coherent ideas that represent the collective will of the masses, Fiske (1987) argues that the interior experience of fantasy has political effectiveness, albeit a dispersed and deferred one. Through time, this interior experience can lead to representation – the transformation of abstract ideological concepts into concrete plans for social action – and expand the reach of democratic freedoms in the public sphere (Fiske, 1987).
Popular culture need not be seen only as a repository of ephemeral mass-produced cultural commodities that pass away once their shelf lives end. It could also be viewed as a series of cultural movements and ideas embodied in tangible goods that symbolize the best thoughts of mankind. It is through such a conception that popular culture will pave the way for the creation of meanings, fantasies and representations that edify a people.
Richard Philip - 24 September 2013
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