Why I fear Cultural Studies

My fantastic life is torn between two (wonderful) worlds: the academic flurry of Glasgow University and the dynamic energy of the CCA. Behind me sits Sha Nazir, from Black Hearted Press, a constant source of enthusiasm and inspiration: on my desk are a selection of books on semiotics. It doesn't take much to make me happy.
As a student of Dramaturgy, I've noticed that theatre is approached, sometimes, through the prism of 'cultural studies,' an intriguing hotch-potch of quasi-scientific and sociological analyses. Much as I love the books and essays (as long as I understand the jargon), I worry that it misses something essential about the theatre experience - and it is the very part that the critic wants to discuss.

Cultural Studies can be all about the context: the careful study of texts to reveal the social assumptions that they carry, hidden deep in the weft of the words. In the old days, art tended to be examined in terms of quality - and the theatre critics still carry a torch for this romantic vision of creativity. Cultural Studies doesn't always worry too much about the quality. It's all about the significance of the art within the wider society.
I love semiotics (pending comprehension), but I don't want to see theatre - or comic books - reduced to mere aspects of a culture system. Examining a performance in terms of the political meaning subtracts the core experience - the one when the audience member engages with the art and finds meaning. There's a sense of flattening out the art to explain social values, ignoring the creative process (although that too can express a social value) and the emotional experience.

For comics, the danger is that the real advances made in format, style and content might be ignored. Instead they become objects, and the difference between Laptop Guy and The Beano is reduced to a series of jargon-heavy observations about cultural capital. The impact for theatre is equally worrying: a lived event is boiled down to a series of themes and ideas, with no recognition of the skills needed in the production, or the production's ability to perform the functions of entertainment and education (whatever that may mean).

I love me some Debord, some Phelan, some Deleuze and Guattari. But more than that, I love talking about the way Miss Julie or School of the Damned made me feel. Does that make me hopelessly conservative?