Event Highlights: Philosophy of Popular Culture: Skepticism, Care, and Ordinary Life – A Lecture by Sandra Laugier
The Boston University Center for the Study of Europe was honored to host a talk by Sandra Laugier, Professor of Philosophy at Université de Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne and Scientific deputy director at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (INSHS, Institut des sciences humaines et sociales) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Her specialties include writing on J.L. Austin, L. Wittgenstein, and multiple facets of American philosophy (Emerson, Thoreau, Quine, and Stanley Cavell) to French readers. An avid writer, she has a column in the publication Libération, focusing on moral philosophy, ethics of care, and popular culture.
In her October 23rd talk, Laugier reflected on popular culture techniques such as film and television and their incredible impact on the shape of their audience—the public. “Research in 1939 reflected on the techniques of mechanically reproducing visually and musically a piece of art,” Laugier begins. “It is true that film, and now television, are the main part of association and articulation of the public.”
While noting the relativity of the idea of “popular culture,” Laugier expresses how staying power in the media uncovers more than just critical acclaim. “There is a cultivation of self that takes space through sharing and conversation [about new media], and this material is integrated into our popular culture. What might even be more important to understand about popular culture and the philosophical remnants of film is not only what the critics have to say about them, but the fact that this film has maintained contact with the public and somehow empowered the individual to connect his own experience.”
Laugier also shares her remarks regarding the difference between film and television, two forms of media that are often, including in academia, lumped together. “There is a huge difference between film and television. TV shows are much more like 19th century novels you used to read, because you have this quality of duration. It’s completely different.” Whether that is the direct cause of the switch to television or merely an effect, Laugier does not say. She does, however, ruminate on the question of the rise of television as a popular medium.
“Maybe [the switch to television] is marked by the change of attitudes of the world. Television series are now seen as spaces where artistic authority can be appropriated by viewers, and viewers can be empowered by constituting their own unique experiences.” Further delving into this notion of the shape of public space, she quotes Robert Warshow. “We are all self-made men culturally, establishing ourselves in terms of the particular choices we make from among the confusing multitude of stimuli that present themselves to us.”
“These TV shows call your attention to ordinary behavior, everyday micro-choices, and also to the characters and their way of expressing themselves and making their claims.” Laugier expresses how in today’s popular culture, the most well-loved and successful characters follow a set of features that make them successful: they are morally guided, well anchored, not archetypes, and available to the imagination of each. This is because they spark moral conversations; they are essentially, reflecting what society deems as right. “What is the object of moral conversations? It’s really the only thing that is comparable to the onus of these things is in the shaping of the public ethics.”
When it comes to the process of creating and consuming these pieces of media, Laugier comments that essentially, every person involved in either the production or consumption plays an equally important role. “It’s democratic in many ways,” Laugier notes. “There exists a kind of collective intelligence that form this kind of community of all these people who are viewing, producing, and directing.”
Laugier concludes with the moral transformation of the audience, citing Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an example. “[Buffy] was really meant to give an education to young women, [Joss Whedon] wanted to show to the teenage audience a young woman that was really a completely ordinary character, but who was really capable of being a very strong woman who can kill vampires. It was a type of inversion of the stereotype of the nice girl next-door, the girl who dies first in the beginning of a horror movie. It was a way to morally transform the audience.”
This is really this kind of education of these shows is something that is permanent in most of the interesting shows that we hear about now, partially because that’s what the public wants to see. They want to be able to connect to their characters, they want to learn something, and they want to be able to feel good about their choices of television.
“Just as with philosophy, in popular culture you always need to bring your language and life into imagination.”
– Toria Rainey, ‘18