This sort of agenda setting presents the question as to what extent the media has power over us, to do or believe what they choose. Although a fine distinction, it is generally held that the media do not necessarily tell is how or what to think, but shape our minds, providing a frame of reference for the topics in our brain Gramsci backs this up in his concept of force versus content. Whilst in Nazi Germany, propaganda was used to generate and enforce ideals into the heads of Hitler’s enslaved nation, a much more subtle approach is now taken. Hegemonic ideology uses role models, ideals and the filtering of oppositional ideas to create consent in its audience.
However it is not just the news that is holding us captive, but other features of the culture industry that grip us tighter. The extent to which television has become such an institution has made theorists realise that it has an “almost religious dimension” (Berger 1995: 66), cultivating and reinforcing certain values and beliefs in it followers. Perhaps Nietzsche’s notion of the death of God, and the radical reduction in the reliance of religious support over the last few decades has forced or enabled people to turn to new figureheads for direction in life. The media has become our primary story teller in life, and perhaps a viable replacement for God. Sorlin (1995: 149) contends that whilst our ancestors interpreted the world by obeying a king or god, we now interpret through television and magazines. This provides a link to Luventales “reign of terror” (look for reference). Due to the lack of religion, the masses have begun to realise the insignificance of their lives, so to avoid the existential crisis they face, they flee to the media for escapism in the obsession of commodification and celebrity. The media, in their quest for profit realise the exploitative value of this and have created the concept of abstract desire for us to feed on. Rojek (2001: 90) backs this up as he argues “celebs are part of the culture of distraction today – distraction from the inequality and meaninglessness of existence following the death of God.”
This creation of abstract desire is the main argument for the dupification of the audience under the culture industry. Sorlin (1995: 90) believes that “the mass media are there to fullfill a precise function: they are designed to convince those who use them – to believe, to buy, to conform.” Advertising is seen as the greatest triumph in the culture industry in this respect. Our lives are so consumed by adverts that there is almost nowhere to look without being bombarded with slogans, signs, and brand images, but how much does this really affect us? The American Association of Advertising Agencies estimate that of the 3000 ads we see every day, we notice only 80, and react to only 12 (Twitchell 1996: 3), so perhaps the vast sums of money spent each year are not going to economical use? It is however ensuring that our minds are relentlessly concentrated on the commodification of life. Douglas Kellner (1997:1) argues that “the media culture keeps individuals gratified and subservient to the logic and practices of capitalism.” It is this encouragement to consume that has created the cultural alignment we have become oppressed by, and as Adorno maintains, the cause of the “homogeniz(ation) of mass culture and the reifi(cation) of its audience as cultural dupes” (Cook 1996: 190)
The answer reporters, editors and media bigwigs alike give for the proliferation of low brow art in the media, is that they are purely bowing to the whims and wants of their audience. Does this not then pose the question as to the extent of the influence of the masses over the media? The concept of the masses – although not necessarily geographically united, must have significant weight to determine what they watch, read and listen to. Berger proposes that the incredible number of individual radio stations and television channels, each catering for particularly individual tastes and preferences, suggests the influence over the media must be significant. After all, the media is primarily concerned with profits, and hence sales or viewing/listening figures, so its prerogative is surely to please its consumer. It could not merely show exactly what it wanted without considering the opinions of its audience. Cook (1996: 124-125) argues that “the products of media culture are aimed at gathering audiences and thus must resonate to audience experiences, desires and hopes. Consequently if there are progressive images and ideas circulating in society, the culture industries will appropriate them, occasionally advancing the discourses of movements like the 1960’s counterculture, the feministmovements, the anti-nuclear movements, civil rights groups, and other new social movements.”
The media has often pursued the goal of encouraging a greater level of individualism, which some argue has resulted in a homogenous mass of individuals pursuing the same goals; however, occasionally such behaviour has brought about dramatic and significant changes in society. When the insurgence of the feminist movements began to appear with the Suffragettes, the media helped to proliferate their image to the rest of the world. Feminism was suffering a crisis that provoked a massive reassessment of popular culture: Naremore and Branlinger (1991: 256) report that “the women’s movement emerged with an intransigent hostility to mass culture, denouncing, satirizing and criticizing the popular paraphernalia of the feminine such as beauty pageants, fashion, Hollywood cinema and advertising.” It sought “new forms, new languages and new images for women’s experience to construct new public spheres.” It is feats of individualist culture that bring about a realisation of the “pseudo-individualism, stereotypes and baleful effects of cultural commodification and reification” (Kellner 1997: 1) that the media proliferate. But are these effects such a challenging hurdle for people to see through? Statistics suggest we are aware of the discrepancy that exists between what goes on around us, and what is reported. The idea that we are simply duped into believing everything is deconstructed by Lagerfeld’s study of voting behaviour. He found that very few citizens change their voting intentions despite massive media driven election campaigns (Lazersfeld, Berelson and Gaudet 1968). The work of social scientist Michel de Certeau focused on the way audiences resist the constructions of reality preferred by the mass media, and construct their own, often oppositional meanings for media texts. In his study known as ‘reception analysis’, he suggests “that audiences are active producers of meaning, not consumers of media meaning. They decode media texts in ways that are related to their social and cultural circumstances” (Totosy do Zepetnek 1999: 1). There is a great impression by the general public and those who are professionally involved in the industry that the mass media has a dramatic direct impact on its audience, yet the considerable amount of empirical research aimed to prove this, has upturned very little evidence (McGuire 1997: p.279).
Some argue that the notion of the masse is incorrect, and that the mass is simply an abstract creation of the culture industry. Williams (1983: 300) claims that “there are no masses, but only ways of seeing masses.” Fiske develops on this argument in his stark denial of the mass man and his enslavement to the culture industry: “a homogenous, externally produced culture cannot be sold ready-made to the mass: culture simply does not work like that. Nor do the people behave or live like the masses – an aggregation of alienated, one-dimensional persons whose only consciousness is false, whose only relationship is to the system that enslaves them as unwitting (if not willing) dupes. Popular culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry” (Totosy do Zepetnek – web).
The supply of news has become as necessary as the supply of food or fuel, and its supply is met, and distribution organized in much the same way. The problem is that there are not other sources other than the media, so the power available to those in control is often theorised as a media conspiracy to make us act in a certain way or adhere to certain values aside from those of our better judgment. The ease with which we can move decontextualised information over such vast distances has given the media the ability to create and distort information without the audience even noticing. Their manufactured novelties and planned sensations have given rise to a climate of such hyperreality that perhaps we have forgotten what is really real, or conceivably the real has distorted to become what we now believe it to be. The media is effectively a language – a means of communication that due to its arbitrary nature has such a range of implications, subtexts and overtones. Culture may be a distraction for some of us from seeing the true state we live in, but we all have the power and freedom to interpret the media as we like. Many of us do see past the distortion the media likes to create, yet statistics show “that belief in large media effects cannot be supported” (Berger 1995:73), “it may (however) be best to assume that we simply have not yet been able to figure out how to prove or accurately measure these effects” Berger 1995: 75).
“We cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of an artificial medium” (Cassirer 1956: 43), and the “media of communication (is always going to be a dominant influence on the formation of a culture’s intellectual and social preoccupations” (Postman 1987: 9)
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