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Arts & Communication Bakhtin and Groys: Pop culture and hieratic senses

relevance of the video clip to our discussion, particularly in art that hieratically contests the consecrated status of art
light of Bakhtin’s hypothesis: certain genres can dominate itself.
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entire cultural epochs, drawing other forms into their This emphasis on the tension between the sacred and
orbit and shaping the creation of meaning. Just as Bakhtin the profane, rather than on the media character of culture,
identified “novel-ness” as a symptom of modernity, the mirrors a key aspect of Bakhtinian thought. Bakhtin
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video clip may be seen as a symbol of the postmodernity, similarly identifies this tension as a constitutive dialectic
we continue to inhabit, a trend evident today in the in medieval popular culture, whose worldview, governed
relentless fragmentation of meaning exemplified by reels by Christianity, proposed a hierarchical structure that
and posts on social media platforms such as TikTok and subordinated everything to the sacred laws of high and
Instagram. In Groys’s terms, low forms, and their corresponding binaries (earth/
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There is no doubt about it: today video has heaven, hell/paradise, earthly/ideal, etc.) . Popular art
replaced text and has become the main vehicle undermined this sacred/profane dichotomy, becoming
for the transmission of information of all kinds. its very vehicle, particularly in the novel according to
It is no coincidence that today radical religious Bakhtin, and in cinema according to Groys. Cinema,
movements use video, and not text, to spread their a medium destined for mass appeal despite attempts
convictions. MTV videos determine the evolution to deify it (such as its canonization as the “seventh
of contemporary pop culture, and, with YouTube, art”), exemplifies a paradigmatic operation in a culture
the home video format has imposed itself as the that has ostensibly lost its sacralizing power in Groys’
primary medium through which anyone can share interpretation. Yet, it seems that certain hieratic values
their ideas or images with the entire world. 23, p. 5 persist within pop culture, subtly continuing to function
in some capacity.
However, Thinking in Loop – an essay its author defines
as conceptual art – is constructed using microvideos, a This aspect can be understood by examining how Groys
seemingly random collage of film fragments, television applies the concept of iconoclasm to describe the actions
series, and clips ranging from Madonna’s iconic Like of modern art when it fiercely critiques the status quo of a
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a Prayer (1989) to movies such as The Passion of the culture. In Groys’s view, iconoclasm also characterizes the
Christ (Gibson, 2004). This carefully curated repertoire struggle against prevailing values, a struggle embodied in
foreshadows the religious undertones that will permeate carnivalesque forms as Bakhtin reveals in his studies. For
Groys’s exhibition, which is divided into three parts instance, the destruction of old idols to create new icons
(Iconoclastic Delights, Religion as Medium, and The is a mechanism of semiotic renewal that frequently recurs
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Immortal Bodies) and presented as a nomadic installation across cultures (e.g., the avant-gardes of the 20 century or
across various global locations. It is important to note, even recent pop culture with its fashion cycles). According
however, the challenges in fully grasping the premises to Groys,
Groys articulates in these three critical audiovisual Bakhtin described the carnival as an iconoclastic
exercises, whose cryptic and diverse arguments seem, celebration, but not for being serious, pathetic, or
broadly speaking, to diagnose certain symptoms of the revolutionary, but for its festive climate. The carnival
current cultural media landscape. does not hope to substitute the desecrated icons of
Despite these challenges, we can attempt to articulate the old order by the icons of some new order, but
a reading that, through these three video critiques, seeks instead, it invites us to celebrate the downfall of the
to underscore their overarching contribution: namely, the status quo. Bakhtin also writes about the general
assertion of an era “in which the sacred is disseminated carnivalization that has occurred in the European
in profane space, as well as its democratization culture in Modernity, which compensates for the
and its globalization.” 23, p.15 To elucidate this critical decline of the “real” social practice of carnival until
23, p.9
operation, we may recall Pellicer’s observation of the our days.
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significance of Lyotard’s texts in Thinking in Loop, where Given this perspective, it appears that, in Groys’s
she identifies Boris Groys’s video collages as “three understanding, films – a medium that has “earned the right
paradigmatic examples of postmodern micronarratives. to act as the icon of secular modernity” 23, p. 7 – are emblematic
These micro-narratives revisit the grand meta-narrative of the struggle that every popular (mass?) product wages
of Christianity.” The sacred/profane tension thus serves against other “sacralized” genres upheld by social elites,
as a central axis in Groys’s theory, an idea further such as painting, theater, or sculpture. Moreover, this
substantiated by his theoretical obsessions with the work confrontation persists because, as Groys suggests, it
of Duchamp – a quintessential example of avant-garde continues a modality of the vita contemplativa: these
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Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 6 doi: 10.36922/ac.3978