Reflection on Rampley and In-Class Assignments

Reading Matthew Rampley’s “Exploring Visual Culture”, I was taken by the breadth of the author’s scope and grasp on the subject of culture. Whereas our in-class reading concentrated on how “we make meaning of the material world through understanding objects and entities in their specific cultural contexts”, Rampley’s discussion focuses more on the definitive and fundamental elements of culture – what it is and how it affects us (Sturken and Cartwright). We learn that culture is the means by which each of us develops a “set of rules about how to express and interpret meaning”, but how then can we discern which set of rules are the correct ones to use? (Sturken and Cartwright)

Through our in-class exercises we learned that our views and interpretations of the real world are subjectively influenced by what we hear and see. In addition, our environment influences our analysis of cultural data we absorb and must interpret on a daily basis. Rampley observes that there is certainly a social divide in what is considered “high” or “low” art in western society, with the upper crust favouring the traditionally “antiquated” and the lower stratospheres of society left to comic books, video games, and trashy airport romance novels. Thus, certain groups within society might seek to establish an order of nobility and hierarchy to the arts, in order that their tastes and aesthetics might retain preeminence.

But taste and value judgements are inherently subjective. The feelings an individual discerns when examining a piece of art will differ from those another experiences when looking at the same piece. Culture is a malleable creature – it is constantly morphing into something new as people change their value judgements and new technology evolves to help facilitate the ease of global mass communication. As more people from different backgrounds exchange ideas and cultivate relationships, the concept of culture becomes more and more malleable.

Although certain sects of society seek to impose their value judgements on others, nobody can take away an individual’s ability to think for him or herself. Ultimately, I must agree with Johann Gotfried Herder's assessment that, as Rampley lays it out, "a culture grows not by reference to some artificially imposed standards drawn from elsewhere - classical antiquity or France - but spontaneously according to its own impulses." (Rampley) Individuals have widely varying preferences and tastes – so long as the cultural attitude does not display antagonism or intolerance towards cultural plurality, there can be no real ordered ranking of cultures, or their values, over one another.

Rampley, Matthew. “Exploring Visual Culture: Definitions, Concepts, Contexts”. Edinburgh Press.

Sturken and Cartwright. “Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture”. Oxford University Press. New York, NY: 2009.