From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry by Justin Pearson

1530 Words4 Pages

In Justin Pearson's memoir, From the Graveyard of the arousal Industry, he recounts the events that occured from his early years of adolesence to the latter years of his adulthood telling the story of his unforgiving and candid life. Set in the late 1970s "Punk" rock era, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry offers a valuable perspective about the role culture takes in our lives, how we interact with it and how it differs from ideology.

Explaining the relationship between Culture and Ideology in one of his propositions in Critical Practice, George Grinnell notes “Culture delivers an ideology that is dedicated to keeping the status quo more or less intact” (Grinnell 46). More than this, he goes on to advocate that cultural objects and practices do not necessarily have to be explicitly ideological, but that they may also "encode certain assumptions quite subtly" (46). Though I concede that culture can be ideological in the sense that it may inculcate certain principles’, is it accurate to say that culture and ideology are two in the same? In From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry, culture is our everyday lives, whereas an ideology is a set of values held by a particular group with the intended purpose of influencing the behavior of others. More than this, culture is the way in which we express ourselves, and how we share it with the world around us. In this sense, culture is also different from ideology in that the values retained within a specific culture are left open to interpretation and exploration, rather than being urged to be accepted by others. Take Jehovah's Witnesses for example; if you have ever lived in a community where religious practices are common, you have probably had one come to you...

... middle of paper ...

... of America was, for the most part, still centralized around the image of a rugged, Mohawk, wife-beater wearing Junkie.

Works Cited

Haenfler, Ross. Straightedge. 2006. Web. March 9th, 2014. Pp. 35-45 http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/books/9780813539911/ Grinnell, George C. Critical Practice. Web. March 11th, 2014. Pp. 45-47 https://connect.ubc.ca/bbcswebdav/pid-1745829-dt-content-rid-6443642_1/courses/SIS.UBCO.ENGL.153.101.2013W2.25500/Critical%20Practice%202013.pdf Pearson, Justin. From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry. Soft Skull Press, 2010.
Graff, Gerald; Birkenstein, Cathy. They say/I say. W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2010.
Montgomery, James. Cramps Singer Lux interior. 2009. Web. March 11th, 2014 http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1604336/cramps-singer-lux-interior-dead-at-62.jhtml Flexner, Stuart Berg. New Oxford American Dictionary. 2005.

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