A Study Of Douglas Kellner’s Cultural Marxist Theory

Douglas Kellner is a renowned American social and cultural theorist whose critical theory of culture,based on the theories of the Frankfurt School and the British School of Cultural Studies,has been widely influential in the American academy.Kellner believed that the media is both a medium and a spiritual production,and that media culture has a great influence on traditional culture,social morality and various values in terms of communication content,media form and communication technology,and that it produces and reproduces the culture of human society in a unique way.Based on the Marxist dialectic,he has conducted an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of media culture in American society,forming his highly critical socio-cultural theory,which provides a useful reference for the development of cultural studies in China.At a time when society is undergoing a post-modern transformation,Kellner stands in the context of the times between modernity and post-modernity,combines multiculturalism theory,continues the cultural thought of Marxism,critically inherits the cultural theory of the Frankfurt School and the British School of Cultural Studies,and conducts research on the phenomenon of media culture in the United States,forming a highly personal and critical cultural Marxist theory.Calling his cultural theory media culture theory,Kellner broke the artificial boundary between media communication and cultural studies and achieved a harmonious development of the two.Drawing on classic American examples,Kellner’s media spectacle theory critiques the politics and ideologies reflected in texts and cultural works and explores how media culture exacerbates social inequalities.Through the creation and dissemination of spectacle-like images to appeal to the consumer psyche,the media has been able to grasp the lifestyles of the masses as a whole,penetrate into the realm of their everyday lives,give rise to an infotainment society and push capitalist development towards a techno-capitalist society combining capital,technology and the infotainment industry.The media,as promoters,constructors and co-conspirators of the consumer society,have transformed real consumption into illusionary consumption,and consumption is no longer just about satisfying the material needs essential to life.Kellner explores the ways in which the existing problems of cultural studies in the face of technological change can be resolved.Firstly,he analyses the nature of conflict and struggle within the field of communication and argues for the deconstruction of the rigid distinction between cultural studies and communication studies,emphasising that culture is a vehicle for communication and is also shaped by communication,and that the two are inextricably linked.Kellner critiques the current state of contemporary cultural studies and points out that the retreat of political economy analysis in cultural studies has led to a text-centric tendency in cultural studies,which overemphasises audience initiative and overly pursues audience pleasure,resulting in "no text outside reception" and the fragmentation of cultural studies from the social context.He stresses the importance of political economy analysis in cultural studies,insists on the historical dialectic between economy and ideology,analyses texts and audiences in a broader context of time and society,corrects the postmodernist false-critical tendency in cultural studies,and restores the radical and political character of cultural studies.Kellner takes a dialectical materialist stance,a diagnostic critical approach and a multi-perspective interdisciplinary research methodology to critically interpret media culture.However,in the construction of cultural theory Kellner never breaks through the limitations of his own class and is unable to fully escape the confines of his political position.Kellner is too sure that human emancipation and social progress can be achieved through cultural dissemination or ideology alone,and in his argument culture is no longer an adjunct to the economy,but an all-purpose weapon with utopian potential.Although Kellner’s cultural Marxist theory has not yet formed a complete theoretical system,he has certain implications for contemporary cultural studies in China,providing Chinese scholars with a methodology for analysing and studying the current state of media culture in China.