EL OJO DE LOS DIOSES

The motif of the paper is an overview of popular fiction as a product of popular culture. The paper will have passing remarks from a Mexican novel as illustrations to various points. But before we delve any further, a word about the essential features of culture. According to anthropologists, the word culture is used to describe all forms of life and social expression. It is how we live nature, including our own biology. To a more observant eye, culture is political. As point out Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan in their Introduction: The Politics of Culture: Culture is both a means of domination, of assuring the rule of one class or group over another, and a means of resistance to such domination, a way of articulating oppositional points of view to those in dominance.1 To a student of literature, culture is not something embodied in a particular text that can be made to signify; it is the practises and processes of making meanings with and from the texts we encounter in our everyday lives. Now popular fiction is enormous as an entity and represents millions of readers of diverse classes. For this reason it is intended to serve as a mirror of the society and hence, worthy of our attention. One of the principal characteristics of popular fiction is its sensitivity to the dynamics of the market. This close relation between popular fiction and market forces has its impression on culture. In other words, it is money that dictates meaning in our society. So popular fiction can be seen as a key site for the production and the reproduction of cultural hegemony. That is,

Rivkin, Julie, and Ryan, Michael, Introduction: The Politics of Culture, pg. 1025

Owned by large corporations and largely run by men, the media and the entertainment industry in general cannot help but assist the reproduction of the social system by allowing only certain kind of imagery and ideas to gain access to mass audiences.2 In this paper, it shall be my endeavour to touch upon three such ideas with the help of illustrations from the novel El Ojo de Los Dios or The Eye of the Gods. Now a word about the novel. Written by Grazietta Salcedo DCrescenzo and published in 2007, The Eye of the Gods is the story of Ah AkTun, a Mayan priest born in the town of Mutul in the year 673 A.D. After the loss of his father at a very young age, Ah AkTun is entrusted into the care of his grandfather Itzam Ik, a great priest of his time. The novel narrates how the grandfather passes on all his wisdom to the young prodigy and helps his grandson take on his legacy after his death. Products of mass culture are essentially identical. All forms of entertainment, whether hit songs, soap operas or movies, tend to be repetitive and get rooted in popular consciousness. Such contents change only as matters of exception. In case of books, there is the reutilization of arguments, characters and stylistic resources. Most works of popular fiction subscribe to a formula, which serves as a conventional system for structuring cultural products3. The result is a uniform response with no room for imagination. In spite of the predictable plots, these books enjoy large readership due to the generic nature of popular fiction. In case of The Eye of the Gods, the year 2012 on the cover page immediately attracts attention. The date 21st December 2012 marks the end of the astronomically precise Mayan calendar and hence hints at the end of this civilization. In the prologue of the novel the author informs the reader that it is his profound respect for the beliefs of the Mayans that made him write the book. Thus, the implied idea of an impending disaster
2 3

Rivkin, Julie, and Ryan, Michael, Introduction: The Politics of Culture, pg. 1026 Cawelti, G. John, The Concept of Formula in the Study of Popular Literature, pg. 119

which, by injecting an element of psychological fear, heightens the formula despite the book lacking in the general conventional parameters of romance or intrigue. There is the presence of detectable utopian impulses in mass culture4 and there is enough evidence in the Mexican novel that supports this argument. By utopian I mean removed from everyday reality and where everything is rosy and perfect. A happy ending is pre-ordained i.e. young Ah Ak Tun grows to be a model priest under the guidance of his grandfather. When the town of Mutul is hit by a calamity, the tone of the event is fatalistic, that it is simply Mother Natures anger against her children. Even the gruesome Mayan ritual of human sacrifice is shown spiritual rather than horrifying. As a whole, the book recommends a retrograde step, a back to the roots, back to Mother Nature kind of a discourse; something unattainable in todays world. This brings us to the process of devaluation of popular culture. The famous French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu categorizes taste in three groups which roughly correspond to educational levels and social classes5: Elite taste, Middle-brow taste and Popular taste. He argues that the cultural products belonging to the third category undergo a certain of amount of devaluation due to the popularisation. This argument runs true for the novel under scrutiny. The study of the rich Mayan civilization presupposes a patient and sophisticated mind. However, in the book, the author presents a distorted Mayan history with the intent of bringing history to the masses. The Mayan civilization is depicted as an exotic one. The Mayans are reduced to people living with the nature. Also, the author alludes to contemporary trends and issues like vegetarianism and theories of climate change and projects them as part of the Mayan culture.

4 5

Rivkin, Julie, and Ryan, Michael, Introduction: The Politics of Culture, pg. 1026 Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction, pg. 1031

All centres of cultural production function with every appearance of neutrality6. They advocate passive and spurious participation7 by the people. It is also true that pleasure reading is aimed as an escape from the monotony of daily life, a mode of relaxation, and not an academic exercise. However, it is the responsibility of the reader to accept everything with a critical mind. We must never turn a blind eye to the fact that genres and sub-genres of popular fiction cater for the needs, desires and intentions of the readers. For example books like The Eye of the Gods feed on the psychosis of the people regarding the end of the world. The emotions- fear and anxiety- are important elements of our everyday lives. Extensive studies have been carried out in various fields like medicine, anthropology, psychoanalysis, theology etc. to map out its roots, triggering factors, forms of manifestation. Nightmares of the end of the world have always plagued humanity. Never is the fear of death more breathtaking than in disasters, even impending disasters. In recent times the Mayan prophecies have taken up the spot light. There is news of expeditions being planned by tourist agencies to a number of sites of ancient America for the 21st of December 2012. Industrious entrepreneurs are already beginning to prepare 2012 survival kits, a Complete Idiot's Guide to 2012, and T-shirts bearing slogans such as "Doomsday 2012" and "Shift Happens." Hence it not surprising that the hysteria about 2012 has not escaped the attention of the entertainment industry. The Hollywood blockbuster 2012 was released last year with the tagline We Were Warned. True, fear and anxiety form part of our existence, but as people of the market-place it is imperative to ensure that these are not allowed to become springboards for commercial enterprises. Passive acceptance in all spheres must be avoided. It has been aptly said,

6 7

ibid, pg. 1034 ibid, pg. 1034

The attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favors the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system and not an excuse for it. 8 It is without doubt that the capitalists exert much influence on the ideology of contemporary culture. But we as readers are not without power as we have the choice to decode cultural messages different from those intended. It is best to conclude with the words of the renowned culture critic John Fiske: The subordinate may be disempowered, but they are not powerless. There is a power in resisting power, there is a power in maintaining ones social identity in opposition to that proposed by the dominant ideology, there is power in asserting ones own subcultural values against the dominant ones. There is, in short, a power in being different. 9

8 9

Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor, The Culture Industry as Mass Deception, pg. 1037-8 Bordo, Susan, Material Girl: The Effacements of Postmodern Culture, pg. 1106

References:
- Rivkin, Julie, and Ryan, Michael, Introduction: The Politics of Culture - Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor, The Culture Industry as Mass Deception - Cawelti, G. John, The Concept of Formula in the Study of Popular Literature - Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction - Radway, Janice, Reading the Romance - Bordo, Susan, Material Girl: The Effacements of Postmodern Culture

Electronic References:
- http://www.archaeology.org/0911/2012/ - http://people.tribe.net/hoopes/blog/1d95e99a-6805-45b2-b746-fca06c27d20e - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111341700 - http://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/index.html - http://research.famsi.org/aztlan/uploads/reviews/Aveni_2012_rev.pdf -http://www.enhouston.com/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=1482&catid=40:houston-museums - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear