Slunjski, Kristina.
(2018).
Influence of popular culture on contemporary Croatian children's novel.
PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Croatian Language and Literature.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij hrvatske kulture)
[mentor Kos-Lajtman, Andrijana].
Abstract
To discuss the influence of popular culture on a contemporary Croatian children's novel
is a complex task. The cause of this is the intertwining of different sociological, cultural and
poetic constructs and their effects. It is the interference of phenomena such as postmodernism,
culture, ideology, and popularity that influence the formation of popular culture itself and its
implications within literature.
The introductory part of the dissertation will present the methodology of work and the
aim of the research. The next chapter is related to postmodernism which is discussed from
different theoretical perspectives. It will offer definitions and insights into the features of
postmodernism. Namely, in postmodernism, there is a new poetic approach to literature, and
thus to children's literature, within which popular cultural elements come to be more
pronounced than it was before. Therefore, the understanding of the phenomena of
postmodernism contributes to the understanding of popular culture, and thus the detection of
its impacts within the children's novels.
Postmodernist literature, as well as the whole art, primarily seeks to achieve a better
audience reception by reaching for the occurrences with which the recipients meet every day
and that are accessible to everyone, and those are popular cultural elements. Thereby the
postmodernist art becomes populist, and consequently 'high' art does not occupy a privileged
space, that is, it clears the boundaries between 'high' and 'low'. Thus, the relationship between
postmodernism and popular culture is reflected in dehierarchisation and antielitism. Also,
postmodern discourse is often linked to new popular communication and information
technologies that simultaneously shape it by adapting it to their needs. For example, new
technologies are primarily oriented on popular.
Furthermore, postmodernist literature reaches for the elements commonly referred to as
trivial, which often appear as components of popular culture due to which popular culture is
well accepted by a large number of people. Some of the above mentioned elements are
certainly sentimentality, penetration ('stickiness'), that is a sense of delight stimulated by
sentimental experiences, imitation, clichés, banality and others, coupled with many popular
cultural products; from soap operas, movies, radio shows all the way to literature. Media
propaganda is also contributing to this, greatly defining the public's taste by allowing people
to flee from everyday efforts through the consumption of popular cultural creations. Of
course, marketing also promotes the creation of new, mostly material values, which contributes to the development of consumer culture, and profitability becomes one of the
features of postmodernist but also of popular culture.
In postmodernism the powerful exclude individuals, as well as entire collectives, from
their discourses, thus creating subordinate identities, that is the othernesses. However, popular
culture is often seen as a culture of subordinates, so it includes othernesses such as non-white
races, homosexuals, women who are the otherness of men etc. in its discourses. It is therefore
evident that postmodernist culture and popular culture have an ideological component, which
is why pluralism prevails as a coexistence of different interests and opinions within society.
New communication and information technologies are of great importance in the spread of
ideological intentions. They enable the transfer of information to a large number of people,
and accordingly, they can also serve for manipulative purposes by which ideologies are
transmitted through different cultural products (while capitalist interests often are in focus)
and people accept or neglect some of the available information in accordance with their own
preferences. Therefore, to understand the presence of popular culture within children's
literature, it is important to raise awareness of the mechanisms of production and spread of
ideological elements within the framework of contemporary global society.
As ideology is often used to indicate distorted images of reality, texts, and practices of
the powerful, it helps in understanding the nature of popular culture (cf. Storey, 2009: 2-3).
Namely, the ruling often supervise the production resources within the framework of politics,
education, literature and the media and thus create room for acceptance of their ideologies (cf.
van Dijk, 2006: 13). For example, in popular culture consumer practices are in focus, they
occupy the leisure time of people, so popular culture can be associated with a capitalist
ideology in which subordinates are not considered to be oppressed but 'voluntarily' participate
in spending practices. Therefore, ideology permeates the everyday life of people creating the
conditions for the continuation of capitalism and the consumable popular cultural products
contribute to that as well.
Because of their immaturity, children are subject to the acceptance of ideological
influences to a greater extent, and accordingly interpret different texts in different ways.
Therefore, in accordance with the personal perception of the world that depends, for example,
on the ideological influences that come from the family environment in which the child is
growing up and the educational system in which it participates, given the fact that the children
do not have sufficiently developed critical awareness. As consumers, they are exposed to popular cultural products and practices since childhood, and children's literature, in order to
achieve better reception and attractiveness, accepts popular cultural elements.
Furthermore, before contemplating the popular culture, it is necessary to consider
culture as a phenomenon as well as the phenomenological aspects of popular in order to better
analyze and understand the popular cultural features and the relationship between popular
culture and children's novels. As in the case of postmodernism and ideology, it is impossible
to offer a generally accepted view of the culture and meaning of the popular. However, it is
noteworthy that culture usually relates to phenomena of knowledge, laws, habits, beliefs, art,
social heritage, patterns of behavior, etc. Raymond Williams (1976) has offered several
meanings of popular, but Stuart Hall (2006) notes that all meanings of popular cannot be
linked to popular culture. Hall concluded that something is called popular primarily because it
is something that a mass of people consume and enjoy it (cf. Hall, 2006: 304). In the
dissertation, Hall's statement will be accepted as popular cultural products are close and
attractive to children for which they consume them, but Williams' (1976) definition of popular
will also be taken into account, according to which popular implies all that serves to attract
people because, for example, children’s novels precisely for this reason contain popular
cultural elements that shape the worldviews, behavior and appearance of characters, introduce
current topics and current language, play with the novelistic structure in order to achieve a
better reception but also authenticity and persuasiveness, that is similarity with reality.
Furthermore, apart from the various approaches to popular culture, its recognizable
features, such as the satisfaction that it stimulates with the recipients, spectacularity,
obviousness, clichés, availability, emotionality, intertextuality, etc. will be considered (cf.
Fiske, 2001) and the contemporary novel will be discussed in the context of popular culture.
The main part of the dissertation will primarily include guidelines for selecting the
novels needed for the analysis. In order to better analyze the interaction between popular
culture and children's novels, it is necessary to determine the children's novel as such, that is
its key determinants. It is important to point out the approximate upper age limit of the
recipients of children's literature, to try to determine when contemporary time begins, given
that the dissertation is about contemporary novels, and to keep in mind the relationship
between children's and adolescent literature. After presenting different opinions about the end
of childhood and the beginning of adolescence, to determine the age of the recipient the fact
that the duration of childhood, that is, the beginning of adolescence is not determined solely by biological factors but by social factors as well will be taken into account and 15 years of
age will be accepted as the approximate upper age limit of the recipients of children's
literature because the boundaries between childhood and adolescence are flexible and relative.
Also, the proposals of children's and adolescent literature researchers on the factors that
would help separating children's literature from adolescent literature will be presented. But
also, given the individuality of each child, it is obvious that readers of the same age have
different reading preferences, different ability to understand the readings, etc. Consequently,
(children) readers can also reach for works intended for younger adolescents, therefore novels
that could be included in both literatures according to individual segments will be presented in
the analyses.
Around the year 1970, a new poetic approach begins to overcome in children's
literature, that is, postmodernist features such as language games, ironicism, genre-based
indeterminacy, connecting with popular culture, etc. can then be noticed in children's
literature (cf. Hranjec, 2008) and the 70's are precisely what will be considered the
cornerstone of contemporary children's literature.
After a more detailed definition of the guidelines according to which the novels needed
for analysis were selected, the analyses conducted on the corpus of 30 contemporary Croatian
children's novels will follow. Popular cultural elements are analyzed at the level of characters,
at the thematic-motive level, at the linguistic-stylistic level and at the level of the novelistic
structure.
At the level of characters, popular cultural influence is observed within the worldview
context through the construction of the appearance of characters and the phenomena of leisure
and consumption that shape the characters, within gender stereotypes and through the
emergence of new characters.
Namely, popular culture through public persons and contemporary media promotes a
certain look. Consequently, in the novelistic characters one can notice dissatisfaction and
obsession with appearance, which is why they apply, for example, different weight loss
methods and reach for popular cosmetic products that will enable them to achieve the goal,
that is, the imposed beauty ideal. Of course, their dissatisfaction is also reflected in the lack of
self-confidence because of which they compare themselves to others or measure them. They
are also preoccupied with clothing, and they are constantly striving to possess new, modern
and 'branded' fashion accessories. It is noteworthy that even male characters are occupied with their appearance, so examples of this can also be extracted. Namely, they exercise, practice
healthy eating, all just to achieve good looks.
Furthermore, spending is an indispensable practice of contemporary times, which is also
reflected in the ways in which characters spend their leisure time. They often visit shopping
centers, cinemas, concerts, go to vacations, etc. If leisure time is not spent on spending, they
dream about it and sometimes feel excluded. Also, characters spend their free time watching
TV programs, playing computer games, reading Internet contents and other popular readings,
such as biographies of celebrities and various magazines.
Within gender stereotypes, there is a noticeable shift of male-female roles in the
household, but also wider. Female characters do not appear stereotypically as housewives, but
are also presented as highly educated and enterprising characters. They usually appeared as
gentle characters fallen under the domination of male characters, but the popular cultural
influence in this respect is apparent in the rebuttal of such stereotypical representations of
female characters that are now appearing as characters that do not tolerate harassment and
orders coming from male characters. Apart from the aforementioned, there are also examples
of female characters that are in many aspects more dominant, intelligent and more ingenious
than male characters, thus questioning the stereotype that male characters prevail in
intellectual segments.
In the emergence of new characters, the pervasion of popular culture and children's
literature is particularly evident. Accordingly, there are characters of aliens, robots, stuffed
toys, characters following the lives of celebrities or who are already famous, characters of
homosexual orientation, characters of children with developmental difficulties, etc.
At the thematic-motive level, popular cultural presence is expressed through the
emergence of love, science fiction, criminal and taboo themes, but it is also visible within
smaller thematic complexes that segmentally permeate through novels, that is, within
microthemes, as regarded to in the dissertation.
Popular culture has contributed to the spread of love themes by means of media content,
and they are also interesting to children because they encounter the first experiences of falling
in love. The occurrence of science fiction themes was inspired by the informatization of
society, but also with current, provocative questions, such as the existence of extraterrestrial
beings. Also, the informatisation of the society has enabled the opening of new areas for carrying out criminal activities with the convenience of anonymity, of what the popular
culture speaks through its products, such as criminal series. Therefore, the currentness of
criminal topics and children's interest in solving mysteries prompted the spread of criminal
topics in children's literature as well. The general availability of information within popular
media has enabled the breaking of taboos of certain topics, so children's novels also often deal
with them.
Pluralism, that is the coexistence of diversity, one of the features of contemporary time,
has caused the emergence of smaller thematic complexes within larger thematic complexes. In
that sense, children's novels include issues of ecology, sexuality, various forms of addiction
and violence, economic inequality, death, etc. Namely, in contemporary time, awareness of
issues such as environmental pollution, addictions, violence, inequality based on financial
situation, sexual orientation, etc. is growing, and, accordingly, children's literature discusses
these topics. Of course, children's literature introduces children with popular cultural genres
such as horror as well.
The intertwining of popular cultural influences and children's literature is evident at the
language level itself and the stylistic aspects of its literary formulation. The popular culture
influences the formation of everyday communication, which is reflected in the linguistic
formulation of children's novels and is evident in the novelistic taking on of the language used
by young people on social networks (for example Facebook), in correspondence with peers
(for example SMS messages, chat), in the use of economical abbreviations that are a
component of contemporary fast communication, etc. In the novels there are also language
games and buzzwords whose role is to point to the rather small fond of words used by
contemporary children influenced by popular media and genres, foreign language words,
jargonisms, neologisms, words belonging to dialects, etc. The emergence of fictional
languages that correspond to the appearance of new characters, constructs of popular culture,
such as robots and extraterrestrials, and flirtation of the novel with the publicistic style of
expression that is present in the everyday life through the popular media and print media is
particularly emphasized.
At the level of the novelistic structure, the influence of popular culture is sometimes
seen at the level of the entire novelistic structure, for example, when the novel is structured as
a computer game or written as a diary that, of course, did not yield from popular culture but
was popularized by it through numerous screenings of diary forms. Sometimes the forms that do not originally belong to the novelistic structure are inserted in it, such as SMS messages,
publicistic texts, songs of media exposed performers, etc. The aforementioned results in one
of the fundamental features of contemporary novels, the hybridity of discourse, which is
realized differently through individual author poetics.
After the analysis, the conclusion of the dissertation will follow. The conclusion will
primarily indicate that to study the relationship between popular culture and children's
literature it is not advised to perceive popular culture as a separate phenomenon, that is as a
phenomenon independent of social and cultural changes. Furthermore, it will be shown that
popular cultural elements certainly influenced the formation of children's novelistic discourse,
but their presence in each of the analyzed novels is not necessary on all studied novelistic
levels. The presence of popular cultural elements within the novelistic discourse varies from
novel to novel, which means that in some of the analyzed novels they can be noticed in almost
all of the novelistic levels studied in the dissertation, and sometimes in only a few levels. In
general terms, the popular cultural influence is most noticeable at the level of characters and
at the thematic-motive level, while at the linguistic-stylistic and structural level it is
sometimes harder to notice it.
Thus, the conclusion will summarize the obtained results that will contribute to a better
understanding of the interaction of popular culture and contemporary Croatian children's
novels, the reasons for reaching of children's novels for popular cultural elements and the
function of popular cultural elements within the children's novels will be considered. This will
point to the two-way process between popular culture and children's literature, that is to say,
the insights will be given that show that literature is involved in shaping popular cultural
elements just as popular culture participates in shaping children's literature, thus closing the
perpetuating process of their interaction.
At the end of the dissertation, a list of scientific and professional literature will be
presented, as well as a list of analyzed Croatian children's novels.
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