This week’s course reading was “Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony
Walkman”. The reading discusses why and how cultural practices have come to play a major role in our lives. It also introduces concepts involved in performing cultural studies. The reading use’s the example of a Sony Walkman. The walkman is a cultural object and is analyzed through a cultural circuit. Mentioned throughout the reading are five major cultural processes that together constitute a cultural circuit that can be used to study any cultural text or artefact. These five major cultural processes are; representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation. The point of this research is to discover how cultural studies can be used to make sense of everyday life.
The Walkman was chosen to illustrate a cultural object because it was a typical cultural artefact at the time. The article examines how the walkman was produced in the present day, how that object is produced technically and how it is produced culturally (p.5). Although my generation was fairly young to clearly remember the impact of a walkman however, I do remember having one and being amazed by its capabilities. This article is fairly old considering it was written in 1997, but its knowledge can be related to current social culture today.
We can see that in today’s society the walkman is now considered old and not up to social standards. The common question you will now hear is, “Do you have that song on your IPod”? Currently I have a Sony Mp3 player that is about two years old and I feel a sense of humiliation when I have to glance at my Mp3 player while people everywhere are fiddling with there IPods. Although I had an IPod but it suffered from severe water damage, I could automatically feel the difference between two simple listening devices. One allowed me to blend in with culture, while the other makes me an automatic out-cast. Clearly the new typical artefact in today’s culture is the IPod. Culture is used to refer to the particular and distinctive way of life of a specific social group or period (p.11). The IPod is presently a distinction of today’s culture. It is so innovative and electronically up-to-date that it is now representing both oral and visual language as the walkman did in the past (p.5).
Previously it was the radio; then it was the walkman, soon after we saw the CD player which then led to the Mp3 Player and now the IPod. The IPod today is essentially an Mp3 Player but also provides you with the capability of viewing a music video. With the technological advancement in society such as 3d Movies, TV’s, Smart Phone etc, we can see that as technology advances our social culture also grasps new innovations and moulds them into present culture. Culture varies upon what an individual is surrounded with. What one may find culturally defining another may not.
