Page 185 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Bodies and Things 169

was kitschy because it imitated more serious drama. It invested everyday
life issues with meaning for my mother. And the statues probably had a
similar function; here was a statue of a woman who was looked up to and
revered – a very different reality from that of my mother, who was trying
to raise four children alone on very little income. The statues probably had
a healing function, a way of making routine existence seem valuable.
Indeed, the very kitschy quality of the objects – that they were not originals
but were imitations that were likely similar to those owned by a much
larger group of people – in all likelihood was the key to their value: they
afforded a sense of community, of belonging to a group that all possessed
the same things. They were a way of curing loneliness.

Student Exercise

Choose an example from either physical culture or material culture
and interpret it. For physical culture, you might consider weightlift-
ing or cosmetic surgery. For material culture, you might consider
something like a particular kind of toy, some common object in
home decoration such as figurines, or a popular cultural object such

as the artwork on private buses in cities like Calcutta.
Another possibility would be derelict buildings or houses – what
do they signify? How do they preserve evidence of past cultures that
no longer exist? What do they tell us about social and cultural
change?

Sources

See Helen Sheumaker and Shirley Teresa Wajda , eds., Material Culture in America:
Understanding Everyday Life ( Santa Barbara, Calif. , 2008 ); Ian Woodward ,
Understanding Material Culture ( London , 2007 ); Karl Cappett , Thinking Through
Material Culture ( Philadelphia , 2005 ); Jennifer Hargreaves and Patricia Vertinsky ,
Physical Culture, Power, and the Body ( London , 2007 ); Shari Dworkin , Body Panic:
Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness ( New York , 2009 ); Philip Hancock , ed.,
The Body, Culture, and Society ( Buckingham , 2000 ); Samantha Holland , Alternative
Femininities: Body, Age, and Identity ( New York , 2004 ); and Sam Binkley , “ Kitsch
as a Repetitive System , ” Journal of Material Culture 5 , no. 2 ( 2000 ): 131 – 152 .