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Foreshadowing the Dissolution of Domestic Containment: Inarticulate Desires in “Our Readers Write Us” in Ladies Home Journal, 1945-1955
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31
41
. The study takes on Lipsitz’ dialogical approach to examine how popular culture texts
arbitrate tensions between dominant patriarchal meanings of womanhood and emerging women’s discontent. The dialogical approach seeks to find meanings not in forms themselves but in “how forms are put into play at a given moment to re-articulate or dis-articulate dominant ideology.”
41
In
this approach, a practice of popular culture is considered as an ongoing dialogue between society and people. What concerns this dialogic approach is not whether popular culture is oppressive or co-optive but how it accommodates tensions between opposition and co-optation at a given historical moment.
41
See George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular
Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 107-11. See the discussion of dialogic approach By exposing—consciously or unconsciously—contradictions and ambiguities of motherhood and housewifery, popular culture provided a site of struggle between a dominant and competing ideology. See Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” 24. Frederic Jameson argues that popular culture texts contain a utopian element with the possibilities for happiness conjured up by imagination. He also argues that popular culture offers a way of indirectly expressing alternative values and beliefs that may not be acceptable in the mainstream society. See Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (London: Fontana, 1974). Raymond Williams argues that the nature of television is not as dichotomous as other scholars have argued and the exploration of tension between socially oppressive and resisting forces in television has often revealed conflicting social problems and sometimes “unforeseen consequences.” Popular culture may be seen as both a mode of resistance and oppression, as argued by many scholars. See Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic, 1994). Jackson Lears argued that popular culture, especially advertising, has been used as a tool of oppression and maintenance of the status quo. See introduction of Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia UP, 1999). Nan Enstad has argued that consuming popular culture, such as dime novels and cheap ready-made clothes, in the early 20
th
century actually helped working-class
women find self-identity. The existence of contradiction and ambivalence about women’s identity in popular culture gives more room for women to construct their own identities. See Lawrence Levine, The Predictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History (New York: Oxford UP, 1993), 295. Defining popular culture as widely popular, accessible, and accessed, a historian Lawrence Levine criticizes how the notion of popular culture has been misunderstood: “What we call Popular Culture has been used . . . to signify the mudsill of culture, the lowest of the low—and in this sense it has been a very misleading term which has made it virtually impossible to perceive that Shakespearean drama or opera were Popular Culture in the 19
th
century United States.”
42
. May, See introduction.
43
. Ibid.
44
. Ibid., 166.
45
. Ibid., 166.
46
. Ibid., 102.
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31
41
. The study takes on Lipsitz’ dialogical approach to examine how popular culture texts
arbitrate tensions between dominant patriarchal meanings of womanhood and emerging women’s
discontent. The dialogical approach seeks to find meanings not in forms themselves but in “how
forms are put into play at a given moment to re-articulate or dis-articulate dominant ideology.”
41
In
this approach, a practice of popular culture is considered as an ongoing dialogue between society
and people. What concerns this dialogic approach is not whether popular culture is oppressive or
co-optive but how it accommodates tensions between opposition and co-optation at a given
historical moment.
41
See George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular
Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 107-11. See the discussion of dialogic
approach By exposing—consciously or unconsciously—contradictions and ambiguities of
motherhood and housewifery, popular culture provided a site of struggle between a dominant and
competing ideology. See Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” 24. Frederic Jameson
argues that popular culture texts contain a utopian element with the possibilities for happiness
conjured up by imagination. He also argues that popular culture offers a way of indirectly
expressing alternative values and beliefs that may not be acceptable in the mainstream society. See
Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (London: Fontana, 1974). Raymond
Williams argues that the nature of television is not as dichotomous as other scholars have argued
and the exploration of tension between socially oppressive and resisting forces in television has
often revealed conflicting social problems and sometimes “unforeseen consequences.” Popular
culture may be seen as both a mode of resistance and oppression, as argued by many scholars. See
Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic,
1994). Jackson Lears argued that popular culture, especially advertising, has been used as a tool of
oppression and maintenance of the status quo. See introduction of Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls
of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
(New York: Columbia UP, 1999). Nan Enstad has argued that consuming popular culture, such as
dime novels and cheap ready-made clothes, in the early 20
th
century actually helped working-class
women find self-identity. The existence of contradiction and ambivalence about women’s identity
in popular culture gives more room for women to construct their own identities. See Lawrence
Levine, The Predictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History (New York: Oxford UP, 1993),
295. Defining popular culture as widely popular, accessible, and accessed, a historian Lawrence
Levine criticizes how the notion of popular culture has been misunderstood: “What we call
Popular Culture has been used . . . to signify the mudsill of culture, the lowest of the low—and in
this sense it has been a very misleading term which has made it virtually impossible to perceive
that Shakespearean drama or opera were Popular Culture in the 19
th
century United States.”
42
. May, See introduction.
43
. Ibid.
44
. Ibid., 166.
45
. Ibid., 166.
46
. Ibid., 102.
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