Entertainment supersystems in the perspective of a “non-philological” reading. Methodological notion

Abstract

The influence of market mechanisms on cultural texts and their function in society is more and more often stressed, especially by supporters of cultural studies and representatives of various stud-ies from outside the humanities. This shifting of attention from text onto possible contexts results from seeking the possibility of looking at the text through the prism of one’s own domain.
A completely different aspect is to what extent the economy (or more widely — social science) can really be a starting point for consideration over cultural texts, instead of being a mechanism regulating their function in society. These mechanisms can undoubtedly — especially in popular circulation — be considered through the prism of market conditions. Undeniably, considering thework aesthetically from the social perspective (therefore indirectly and economically), should sig-nificantly enrich the reading of the cultural text, which would be impossible to achieve only by means of aesthetic instrumentation. What is more, researching entertainment super systems (but also more widely: popular culture) from the non-philological perspective shows how complex a phenom-enon it is and that it demands a multidisciplinary approach. What is important is that this specific character of studies results not from the choice of methodology which stresses the socially-ideo-logical and market-driven implication of the cultural text, but more from the very character of the phenomenon itself. However, to make such research possible, giving consideration to the following issues is vital:
— instance of the perspective from which the entertainment super system will be analysed;— extent of the researcher’s jurisdiction, which is essential to a correct, from the scientific point of view, interpretation of the observed phenomena;
— possibilities and extent of adjusting the terminology of different scientific fields to the cul-tural phenomenon.