I’ve been looking forward to seeing the film The Damned United - the story of Brian Clough’s 44 day tenure as manager of Leeds United in 1974. The film has received generally positive reviews, helped by Michael Sheen’s uncanny impersonation of "Old Big ‘ead", and the laughs and knowing references to seventies popular culture it contains – it offers a kind of upbeat nostalgia fest for those with misty-eyed memories of a time when men were men, smoking was obligatory and everything else was either brown or orange.

The film contrasts markedly with David Peace’s novel (The Damned Utd), from which the film is adapted. The book doesn’t have many laughs. In fact it is uncompromisingly dark, bleak and dystopic. The book largely takes place inside the mind of Cloughie, who recounts his various fears, hatreds and obsessions; mainly his fear of failure, hatred of Don Revie and Leeds United, and obsessions with money, power and fame, all conducted through an expletive-strewn fog of whisky and cigarettes.

Brian Clough [image © copyright BBC]

But the release of the film has reignited some of the controversy that surrounds the book. The Clough family reacted strongly to Peace’s portrayal, with wife Barbara objecting vehemently to seeing her late husband represented as a "chain-smoking, obscenity-shouting and selfishly driven man". Ex-Leeds player Johnny Giles (who appears in the book as the sullen and duplicitous character "The Irishman") called the book "outrageous and wrong" and won damages against the claim in the book that he had played an instrumental role in Clough’s sacking.

What are we to make of this? On the one hand, the pain and upset caused by the book (published shortly after Clough died, and therefore rendering Peace and his publishers immune to a libel suit from the great man) should not be discounted - think how we might feel if we were represented in this way - but, at the same time, there is the issue of artistic freedom to consider. The Damned Utd is described by Peace as a "Yorkshire Fairy Story" and a "fiction based on a fact" – not a reportage or replay of what actually happened.

Critics have tended to argue that what the book is "really" about is (variably) failure, redemption, vengeance, loneliness and despair; others have read it as a specific evocation of the "problem" of the North at a particular point in time - with the fictional character of "Brian Clough" merely providing the vehicle through which these various issues are explored. I tend to sympathise with this position; however, such aesthetic justifications can appear hard to defend when fact and fantasy are combined and real people get hurt.

The debate raises some important questions for social science. What is the social duty of art and authorship? How far can we hold authors responsible for their texts? Further, for those of us who are students of media studies, it raises issues that routinely crop up as central concerns in the context of our OU course, DA204 Understanding Media; namely, What is the nature of celebrity? To what extent is it possible to define a fixed and "authentic" meaning of a text? What is the relationship between text and audience(s)? How is our reading of a text shaped by our knowledge, values and beliefs?

These are well-established questions which obtaining clear answers to has proved difficult – not that Cloughie would have struggled, he always got things done; as he said: "Rome wasn't built in a day. But I wasn't on that particular job."

About the author

Mark Banks is Reader in Sociology at the Open University. His research interests include the cultural and creative industries, popular culture, cities and urban space.

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When I did my degree in Communication Studies the bits I loved best were in an emerging academic field called cultural studies. This had a far wider definition of culture than just the mass media. In cultural studies, culture was considered as a whole way of life, or to put it in an even stronger form, everything was culture.

The so-called ‘cultural turn’ was driven partly by a theoretical development that was happening throughout the humanities and social sciences. Academics began to take seriously the idea that rather than the world simply existing and then being reflected in language, the world and its objects were produced through language – as well as visual systems like painting and photography. In this new conception, then, what we know stems from what we think, say and represent rather than from the nature of the world ‘out there’. Once this step is taken, the characteristics of the particular culture we inhabit become hugely important, shaping our world. In fact, there is no longer one world, but as many as there are different cultures.

Punk at a demonstration.
[image © copyright BBC]

These developments weren’t only theoretical. Cultural studies was driven too by a radical politics, a sense that huge areas of culture, especially the popular, were treated with contempt and excluded from serious consideration. During the 1970s, pioneering research at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies showed how working class youth – mods, rockers and punks – actively engaged in making meaning and alternative values. A decade later this approach had been extended to the teenage girls who read Jackie magazine, and women viewers of soap operas. Today, all manner of popular cultural activities are the object of study. It would be hard to think of anything that people get up to outside work that hasn’t been redeemed by cultural studies.

I’m not so sure I feel the same way about the field now though. Most of all I doubt the political claims that are still implicit in much cultural studies work. For one thing the cause of ‘reclaiming the popular’ seems to have been won. Popular culture is widely acknowledged, and cultural studies academics have even become media pundits. For another, the politics of popular culture itself now seem rather weak. The recession brings this home. For instance, the democratic implications of reality TV shows like Big Brother look pretty shaky in the light of economic meltdown. Can popular culture really be said to be liberating when you’re out of work and your house has been repossessed?

The return of the material that we’re witnessing has a further aspect I ought to mention. Claims for cultural relativism – the idea that cultures create their own worlds of meaning and value – appear much less certain in hard times when millions of people across the world are facing the same problem, imminent poverty. In other words, the recession helps us to see that human beings have a common existence and face common problems. That doesn’t mean we should abandon the politics of cultural difference and recognition, but it does suggest the need to think in a much more universal way than cultural studies has done so far.

Lastly, I think we need to challenge cultural studies’ hard core constructionism – the idea that what we know is constructed through language and representation. If we’re to make sense of crunch culture we have to bring back reality. This can’t be a naïve version whereby we simply see things for what they are, but a conception of the real which acknowledges complexity, depth and the fact that while society is indeed produced by humans it is by no mean under fair and democratic control.

Anyway, next week I’m going to put my head between the lion’s jaws and make this argument at a symposium on Culture after the Crunch (244k PDF). The other speakers are cultural studies’ luminaries including my OU colleagues John Clarke and Tony Bennett. Grrrrr … .

About the author

Jason Toynbee is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at The Open University. His research interests are in creativity, copyright, and ethnicity - mainly through music - and his new book, Bob Marley: Herald of a Postcolonial World? is just out.

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 ‘Where any view of money exists’, wrote William Blake, ‘art cannot be carried on’, giving lie to this claim is Danish artist Lars Kraemmer who founded the Bank of International Artmoney (BIAM) in 1997. Situated in the Copenhagen suburb of Frederiksberg, the ‘Bank’ is both gallery and clearing house for the production and circulation of ‘artmoney’, an alternative currency now traded by around 1000 artists, buyers and businesses around the globe.

Struck by the recognition that everyone is trying to ‘make money’, but no-one literally does, Kraemmer saw the production of artmoney as a practical means of stimulating trade amongst struggling artists who couldn’t otherwise afford to pay their rent or buy art materials – a modern revival of traditional bartering.  But also critical of the cold and objective nature of conventional transactions, Kraemmer devised artmoney as a means to a more humanised and ‘expressive’ type of monetary exchange. Not only was each artmoney to be designed as a unique work of art, but was intended to bring people together in affective, rather than impersonal, forms of trade.

Artmoney can be produced by anyone registered with BIAM and, like conventional currencies, has some standard rules of design. Artmoney must measure 12x18 cm (in order that it resembles a banknote) and only durable materials may be used. Each piece of artmoney must show a serial number, the year of production, the url for BIAM and the name, signature and nationality of the artist. The only other proviso is that artmoney must be an original work of art. Like conventional currency, artmoney has a market price. Each piece of artmoney is purchased for 200 Danish Kroner (about £20 or 26 Euro) and increases in value by 5 Euro per year for 7 years, with the increase in value being redeemable only when purchasing art from artmoney artists. When spending artmoney in other places, each piece retains its original value, regardless of the year of production – inflation being accounted for by periodic revaluations (when launched ten years ago each piece was worth 100 Kroner).

Once produced, artmoney can then be used like standard currencies. It can be used in exchange for goods and services (Kraemmer claims to have bought his stereo, computer and fridge with artmoney and used it to finance a trip around America).  Currently around 50 registered businesses (including cafés and bars, galleries, various retailers, even a psychotherapist) also accept artmoney as part payment for goods and services, at a rate determined by the individual business. There is also a host and guest programme where artmoney can be used to pay for travel accommodation.

But why would conventional businesses accept non-legal tender? According to Kraemmer, traders may be motivated by the opportunity to own a piece of original art,  touched by a desire for more meaningful exchange relations or simply amused by the quirkiness of the concept. As the BIAM website idealistically claims, using artmoney to pay for goods and services ‘will help bring people together in an intimate private situation’, offering ‘the chance for new friendships among strangers from all over the world’. And while it might be some time before we see Asda and B&Q accepting artmoney, the number of firms buying into this sentiment is steadily rising. 

the purpose of artmoney is to make art accessible and money meaningful

But is artmoney art? There is no denying the beauty and craft of artmoney (and that exhibitions of artmoney have proved popular with the critics and attracted collectors) – but since anyone can produce it (providing they stick to the given rules) there is plenty of artmoney in circulation in which even the most generous of critics would struggle to identify any artistic merit. For BIAM, such concerns are beside the point – the purpose of artmoney is to make art accessible and money meaningful. Bringing art into the hitherto mundane world of exchange helps overcome the modern separation of ‘art’ and ‘everyday life’ and also restores a sense of creativity, uniqueness and humanity in the exchange relationship. Stimulated into conversation by simple acts of ‘natural’ exchange, people become part of something communitarian and internationalist in focus – in this respect individual artistic ability is less important than using art to enhance sociability and communication.

Currently, however, it seems artmoney is in fiscal crisis. The project suffers from a surfeit in the ‘money supply’ but a shortage of ‘aggregate demand’ - indeed the project is in some danger of folding. Funds are also required since BIAM is currently embroiled in legal disputes with Danish authorities over the legitimacy of its use of the term ‘Bank’; a problem which highlights that the (now jail-threatened) Kraemmer has achieved at least one of his aims – to expose the politicised character of finance by challenging the state monopoly on the production of money.

So while in this time of credit crunch and impending recession, the idea of playing the currency markets might not appeal, people could speculate on a little artmoney. They would be helping artists and may well get themselves a mini-masterpiece - and if not they could always try and spend it on something else.

For further information see www.artmoney.org.

About the author

Mark Banks is Reader in Sociology at the Open University. His research interests include the cultural and creative industries, popular culture, cities and urban space.

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