Stuart Hall’s Cultural Hegemony, Folk Art, and Popular Culture Seen Through Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and CW’s “Gossip Girl”
The concept of hegemony was first coiled by Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, who primarily writes that hegemony is the total dominance of one group over another, which creates a social formation that continuously conforms to capital and its needs.[1] In essence, Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony is the underlying basis of “social authority, political sway, and cultural domination” of the subordinated class in a state of capital. Accordingly, following its capitalistic base, the complex sphere of the superstructures — society, family, political and religious parties — is in an unceasing state of expanding into not just a system of production, but a way of life.[2] In his own words through Gramsci, Hall describes that hegemony is a “state of play in the class struggle which has to be continually worked on and reconstructed in order to be maintained, and which remains a contradictory conjuncture.”[3] What he means by this, is that without class struggle, there would not be hegemony and vice versa. In other words, hegemony operates when class struggle is present. This creates an endless cycle of inequality between social formations “through the assertion and reassertion of power.”[4] Additionally, Hall also agrees on Gramsci’s understanding that hegemony is not a stable model of ideology, but it is rather a state of “unstable process of constantly shifting equilibria.”[5] Here, Hall reiterates the effects of hegemony towards cultural demobilisation,[6] and that with hegemony, one group will always be in power over another.
Moreover, hegemony works by combining both “coercion” and “consent” towards the subordinated group. The groups discussed are not just on the basis of the economic level, but also political, ideological, intellectual, and moral levels. Under hegemonic circumstances, Hall and Gramsci argues that consent of the dominated group for its leadership of the dominating group takes precedence over coercion. Hegemonic consent is accumulated by the action of modifying, harnessing, securing, and asserting the bourgeois ideologies onto the dominated group.[7] Hall writes that ideology here is not simply false consciousness, but a system of meanings, concepts, categories, and representation that instructs society on how to make sense of the world, and ultimately, how to live.[8] Put differently, it is consent that derives from the dominated group’s belief that they are best governed by the dominant group.
One classical American literature which always stands out amongst others due to its intense plot and content is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Written in 1925, the novel encapsulates the whole of Gramsci and Hall’s understanding of cultural hegemony through its characters and values. For brief context, the story revolves around the main character, Jay Gatsby, and his continuous journey of inserting himself into the world of the rich, all in the name of love for the unreachable Daisy Buchanan. Daisy is Gatsby’s love interest throughout the whole novel, however, complications arise between them, one of them being Daisy’s husband, Tom Buchanan. Tom and Gatsby represents two opposing worlds that capture the essence of the story, Tom as ‘old money’ and Gatsby as ‘new money’. This distinction is made geographically clear as well, with both living literally opposite each other with vast water separating them; Tom in the East Egg, and Gatsby in the West Egg.
Moreover, Gatsby was born and grew up poor, in fact, he was “a penniless young man without a past,” and had to lie his way into high society, until “eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.”[9] What is meant by this quote is that Gatsby never had the right to touch Daisy because he takes advantage of the moments that allow him interactions with Daisy, and vice versa, Daisy is taken enough by Gatsby’s false pretence that he continues to become a part of her life. However, in regards to Gramsci and Hall’s analysis that hegemony is an unstable shift of equilibria, Fitzgerald portrays the fluidity of hegemony and class through the close contrast between the ‘old money’ and the ‘new money’, showing that it is possible for the characters to move through different classes. For instance, even though Gatsby grew up poor, he was still able to work and cheat his way through the upper class society, while maintaining the heart of a humble lower class. In other instances, people of all classes were invited to go to Gatsby’s mansion, but only the rich were allowed to visit the Buchanan’s. The same way that Tom could easily party with Myrtle and her friends of middle class, but they were never invited to Tom’s.
Other than this, racial hegemony is also perpetuated throughout The Great Gatsby. During Nick’s first visit to Tom and Daisy’s, Tom made clear of his concerns when he discusses the book ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by an author called Goddard. Tom believes that “It’s up to [them], who are the dominant race, to watch out or those other races will have control of things… The idea is that [they’re] Nordics. I am, and you are, and we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization — oh, science and art, and all that.”[10] Here, Fitzgerald emphasizes on the dominance of the white and the dominated other. In this particular scene, Tom is worried of the possibility of other races gaining more power overtime, and argues that the whites must reinforce their superiority.
Although completely fictional, Fitzgerald does not fail in portraying how the hegemonic ‘old money’ maintains their power “in every aspect of American society in the 1920s, economically, politically, psychologically, and culturally.”[11] As a way to regulate and assert bourgeois ideologies onto the whole of society, the ‘old money’ makes known the importance of commodities and materialistic status, as opposed to moral and political values. This can be seen by how the characters only ever discuss the glitz and glamor of the parties, the sparkling champagnes, and the shiny shoes. For Tom and Gatsby especially, it is apparent that their lavish lifestyle determines their relevance. Although not always together, but for most part of the book, Tom and Gatsby boasts and battles over their expensive hobbies, their high class Oxford and Yale reputations, and of course down to their choice of cars and engines.[12] It is apparent that this is the only thing that truly matters, and is even indicated in the small conversations between the middle-class characters throughout the story. For example, when Nick and Tom visits Myrtle’s apartment — noting that Myrtle is Tom’s mistress to which he provides for — Myrtle and her sister are frantically discussing fancy clothes, while the other guests are drinking. In another example, Gatsby proves his wealth by showing off his great mansion, the library, and his fancy clothes which leave Daisy in awe. The two examples show just how much the hegemonic bourgeois ideology is ingrained within people of all different classes, and it is in the book that the narrator, Nick, finally realizes the superficiality of the American society.
Without realising, Gramsci and Hall’s take on hegemony is still as relevant as ever in present day society. Taking from CW’s well known TV show Gossip Girl, the concept of hegemony is satirically eternalized throughout the whole six seasons. In the show, cultural hegemony is practiced within the everyday lives of the six main characters, four of which are considered as Manhattan’s ‘elite’ teenagers, and the remaining two are the Humphrey’s, siblings from a working class family residing in Brooklyn. Essentially, the show revolves around the lengths that the characters would go just for them to be accepted in the elite community, especially Dan and Jenny Humphrey. In his essay Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities, Hall adds that “Hegemony is not the disappearance or destruction of difference. It is the construction of a collective will through difference. It is the articulation of differences which do not disappear.” Hall also writes that “The subaltern class does not mistake itself for people who were born with silver spoons in their mouths. They know they are still second on the ladder, somewhere near the bottom.”[13] This can explain the reason for the Humphrey’s consistent obsession to being included into the inner circle, primarily because they know that they were not born with the privilege of inclusion and that they have to work harder to befriend the ‘elites’.
Gramsci and Hall’s understanding of hegemony can be symbolised through the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, mostly known as the place where the female elites would socialise before and after school. Throughout the show, the pretentious Blair Waldorf would always make sure that she sits above everyone else on the steps, and refuses to let anyone neither question or object her. This asserts the hegemonic ideology to the other characters, ensuring that only Blair is worthy of sitting at the top, and that no one else is honourable enough to sit alongside or above her. Apart from this, Gossip Girl also illustrates hegemony not just in terms of the economic and financial status, but also hegemony in race and orientation. All of the main characters of the show are unsurprisingly white, in fact, most of the students who go to the private schools in the show are white. Apart from this, almost all of the main characters are also heterosexual, demonstrating the cultural hegemony of class and race.
Just like Gatsby, the Humphrey’s are middle-classed, most of the time, they were still within the same circle as the upper-classed, displaying that one is able to move through different classes, proving that hegemony is not a fixed state of affairs, but that it is always in flux, as previously claimed by Hall. Nonetheless, Hall writes in What is “Black” in Black Popular Culture? that “Cultural hegemony is never about pure victory or pure domination,” it is instead “always about shifting the balance of power in relations of culture, not getting out of it,” with a “nothing ever changes, the system always wins” attitude.[14] This confirms that despite the fact that Gatsby and the Humphrey’s were able to move across the classes, it is impossible for them to be completely regarded as an equal to the upper-class.
Moving on, The Great Gatsby also takes on Hall’s concept of popular culture and incorporates it with his concept of folk culture. It can be understood that The Great Gatsby embodies the bridge between folk culture to popular culture, in what is introduced by Fitzgerald as the Jazz Age. The term ‘folk art’ originated from “the anonymous folk culture created by the industrial classes after the Industrial Revolution, when they were shut out from official ‘high culture’ by the barriers of class, money, literacy, and education.” ‘Folk’ art then became a cultural movement which was part of communal ways of living or ‘organic’ communities, focusing on traditional music, games, dances, and crafts. [15] In ‘folk’ culture, the arts and the way of life were so nearly interchangeable, meaning that one could hardly exist without the other. Hall also writes that “The desire to return to the organic community is a cultural nostalgia which only those who did not experience the cramping and inhuman conditions of that life can seriously indulge.”[16] The Great Gatsby reflects this perfectly, as most of the upper-class society desires to experience ‘folk’, however, neglecting the painful conditions that are attached to it. In the book, ‘folk’ art is enjoyed in the everyday lives of the characters, with the music played in the bars, the radios, and at home.
This bridge that connects ‘folk’ art to ‘popular’ art is characterized as the music hall in Hall’s writings, the place where ‘folk’ culture have been individualized from being the art of the community to becoming the art of the performer. It was also the place where ‘folk’ art stopped representing the “poor and second-rate” and instead, emphasized on the closeness of the audience and the artist according to shared experiences and moral attitudes.[17] In jazz, the art was no longer created by the “people from below” and was instead replaced by the performer which inhabits distinct, personal styles. Although the art was no longer a direct product of the organic community, it was still a popular art from and for the people.[18] One should note that this transition from ‘folk’ to ‘popular’ art also includes the transformation of art making from being a necessity to becoming a leisure.
In The Great Gatsby, modern jazz is essentially the background music of the whole book, completely omnipresent and transcendent through class, race, and culture. In Gatsby’s parties, jazz performers ranging from dancers to singers and musicians define the parties themselves. However, one must also consider how jazz has always been tightly bound to signify black American cultural production, which means that every time Fitzgerald invokes jazz, he is simultaneously invoking blackness.[19] In this way, perhaps Fitzgerald aimed to dissolve the social barriers defining class and race, seeing how in Myrtle’s apartment, Tom, who comes from the upper-class; Nick, who is middle-class; and Myrtle, who is of lower-class, gathers together in leisure to enjoy and dance to jazz. Hall suggests that modern jazz was “a deliberate attempt to get away from the primitive or ‘folk’ quality of earlier jazz,” and that it has as much expressive intensity as ‘folk’ art. Although jazz is still categorized as minority music, the 1920s was a time when jazz was at the same time popular in the sense that it represented the people, no longer exclusive to the exploited industrial community. It was also a time when young people deliberately felt that they were not meant for high culture due to its sophistication, and therefore, popular art was an easy way to articulate their experiences through it.[20] This can be seen in Fitzgerald’s classic, as the characters pay no attention to any high art, culture, nor politics, prioritising their attention to the material lifestyle.
Gossip Girl also visualises Hall’s concept of popular culture, because it expresses the reality of the world that we live in today. According to Hall, popular culture is a “conventional art which restates, in an intense form, values and attitudes already known; which reassures and reaffirms, but brings to this something of the surprise of art as well as the shock of recognition.”[21] Hall also writes that popular art is judged by its capacity to confirm and reassure us,[22] which tends to comfort us. With this in mind, Gossip Girl is a form of popular culture, as it is based on the core values of which we already know and experience, making it easy for the audience to relate to the show no matter their social background. Again, Hall restates that popular art is an art which “thrives only when widely varied audiences find something in common and commonly valued in their appreciation of it.”[23] Therefore, the relationship between the art and the audience is emphasised to be significant.
Hall affirms that popular art functions to bring the artist more “immediately in touch with his audience,”[24] promoting intimacy and connection, once more, agreeing to the previous claims. Alongside the growth of the media, a great deal of popular culture depends not only on intimacy, but also impact and immediacy.[25] Hall also expresses the importance of personal style in popular culture, to which he describes as a medium to “delight the audience with a kind of creative surprise.”[26] Even though Gossip Girl first aired thirteen years ago, its main character, Blair, still remains to be one of the biggest fashion and personality icons in television culture. Ascribing to Hall’s concept of personal style; without Blair’s headbands and preppy clothing, perhaps Gossip Girl would not have been as popular as it is today. Conceivably, another aspect that verifies Gossip Girl as a popular culture is the fact that it reflects the popular curiosity — what it is like to be an elite socialite. The whole show gives the audience a supposed insight of the rich and famous, something that most of us would like to experience in some way.
Additionally, popular culture has become not only the dominant form of global culture, but also the scene of commodification and circuit of power and capital, as well as “the space of homogenization where stereotyping and the formulaic mercilessly process the material and experiences it draws into its web, where control over narratives and representations passes into the hands of the established bureaucracies.”[27] This can easily be applied to both The Great Gatsby and Gossip Girl, as both highlights the significant role that commodification plays within the lives of the characters. Although forms of ‘folk’ culture and jazz is kept alive in The Great Gatsby, it is no doubt that the heart of the era lies in the emergence of popular culture, indicated through the “money can buy everything” attitude that Gatsby is known to have. Quintessentially, Gatsby genuinely believes that he would succeed in neglecting his unfortunate past with the help of money and commodity. Whereas, in Gossip Girl, it is no surprise that the ‘elites’ end up getting out of any trouble, even when it comes to the law. Another example for this is when Serena and Nate was easily accepted to the prestigious Ivy League universities due to their connections and family heritage.
In both works, Hall’s concept of popular culture and commodification can also be understood by the way the book and TV show ultimately translate into money. Ironically, both have become commodities, falling into the hands of Hollywood productions, with The Great Gatsby especially having to be turned into major motion pictures featuring famous celebrities multiple times, contradicting to Fitzgerald’s own decrying of hegemonic ideologies. To a certain extent, The Great Gatsby and Gossip Girl is well admired because it illustrates the underlying cultural hegemony of class and race that still lives among us today. With this, it is safe to say that Hall’s tying of the concepts of hegemony and popular culture creates something that is perennial in the world of media and culture, effortlessly relevant and adaptable.
NOTES:
[1] Stuart Hall, “Rethinking the ‘Base and Superstructure’ Metaphor (1977),” In Essential Essays Volume 1 (London: Duke University Press, 2019), 164.
[2] Ibid., 165.
[3] Stuart Hall, “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance (1980),” In Essential Essays Volume 1 (London: Duke University Press, 2019), 205.
[4] James Lull, “Hegemony,” In Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 35.
[5] Stuart Hall, “Class, Race, and Articulation,” In Essential Essays Volume 1 (London: Duke University Press, 2019), 104.
[6] Brennon Wood, “Stuart Hall’s Cultural Studies and the Problem of Hegemony,” The British Journal of Sociology 49, no. 3 (1998): 405. doi:10.2307/591390.
[7] Hall, “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance (1980),” 205.
[8] Ibid., 208.
[9] F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (London: Macmillan Collector’s Library, 2012), 151.
[10] Ibid., 19.
[11] Hasnul Insani Djohar, “The Power of Hegemonic Classes in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,” Buletin Al-Turas 19, no. 2 (2013): 299.
[12] Ibid., 301.
[13] Stuart Hall, “What Is This “Black” in Black Popular Culture? (1992),” in Essential Essays Volume 2 (London: Duke University Press, 2019), 79.
[14] Stuart Hall, “What Is This “Black” in Black Popular Culture? (1992),” in Essential Essays Volume 2 (London: Duke University Press, 2019), 86.
[15] Hall and Whannel, “Minority Art, Folk Art and Popular Art,” 52.
[16] Ibid., 53.
[17] Ibid., 56.
[18] Ibid., 59–60.
[19] Gabrielle Bellot, “What The Great Gatsby Reveals About The Jazz Age.” JSTOR Daily, May 8, 2019.
[20] Hall and Whannel, “Popular Art and Mass Culture,” 71–73.
[21] Ibid., 66.
[22] Hall and Whannel, “Minority Art, Folk Art and Popular Art”, 59.
[23] Hall and Whannel, “Popular Art and Mass Culture,” 65.
[24] Hall and Whannel, “Minority Art, Folk Art and Popular Art,” 58.
[25] Ibid., 60.
[26] Hall and Whannel, “Popular Art and Mass Culture,” 69.
[27] Stuart Hall, “What Is This “Black” in Black Popular Culture? (1992),” 88.
