MEDIA THEORY Haga clic para introducir Week 2el título del tema Media & Modernity Introduction Historical Context Main Authors This work is under licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial- CompartirIgual 3.0 España. Assumptions Key Concepts Arguments Critique
Historical Context Rise of mass media Radical change in the modes of transmission of cultural contents (Benjamin) Political context of incipient democratizationand market economy The term culture becomes ambiguous The cultural object enters into the economic sphere to become commodity
Historical Context Commodification of culture Process of change in society s relationship with culture/art In the 18th and 19th Bourgeois society began to use culture for its own particular purpose: Self-education Self-esteem Social position Culture was a value, a social commodity in circulation, interchangeable for all sort of goods
The Mass Culture s Debate in 1950 Concepts Assumptions Discipline Arguments Authors and Schools Mass Culture Idealindividualism Literature, Art Criticism Mass culture against Art MacDonals, Greenberg, Leavis Mass culture Culture Industry Rationalcollectivism Sociology, Philosophy, Culture Critism Mass Culture = Commodity Adorno y Horkheimer (Frankfurt School) The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1947) Culture, Mass Society Nonrationalism Philosophy, Cultural Theory Mass Culture does not exist as such: Entertainment Arendt Hannah Arendt: The Crisis in Culture, Its social and political significance (1961) Popular Culture Mass Art Popular Art Racional- Collectivism Idealism, rationalcollectivism Idealcollectivism Sociology, Literary Criticism Philosophy, Culture Criticism Art History Culture as Ideology Mass Culture = politics Mass Culture = new contemporary art Williams (Birmingham School) Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1955). Panofsky Meaning in the Visual Arts
Authors The Frankfurt School Max Horkheimer Theodor Adorno Text The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1947) Walter Benjamin (a contemporary but not part of Frankfurt School) Jürgen Habermas (later)
Authors M. Horkheimer & T. Adorno Second half of the twentieth century Capitalism and industrialization Philosophical reference: K. Marx Associated with the Frankfurt School (Critical Theory) Intellectual people migrated to USA Critique of instrumental reason and empiricism of social sciences Saw themselves as ideological alternative to mass communication research
Assumptions Cultural materialism A theoretical position that has its origins in Marx Culture is determined by external forces; culture is not autonomous Cultural activities respond mechanically, objectively, and predictably to environmental stimuli a given socio-historical and coercive context To explain cultural phenomena the researcher must look at the material forces that culture reflects
Key Concepts Culture industry Reflection of economic rationalism The modern ethos or the prevailing social behavior» How modern man chooses and justifies his choices and actions in his collective environment Actions based on analyzing and anticipating effects on consumer behavior Examples: pop music and film formulas Art becomes located in the orbit of consumption
Key Concepts Mass culture versus Art (with capital A ) For Adorno and Horkheimer, mass cuture is the antithesis (the opposite of) Art (High Art) ELITE ART Serious Authentic MASS CULTURE Light Artificial Original Exclusive No profit motive Copy/Derivative Repetitive Profit-seeking
Key Concepts Mass culture versus art Antagonistic view shared by other modern authors Point of departure is the Kantian idea of aesthetic judgment» Uniqueness, universality, and disinterestedness» These characteristics are applied to the work of art to be classified as Art» Art is essentially X, and everything that is not X is not art Mass culture = entertainment, commodity
Key Concepts From Adorno and Horkheimer s The Culture industry (pp. 66 and 68) Cultural product as commodity Art becomes commodity, worked up and adapted to industrial production, saleable and exchangeable ( ) It is so completely subject to the law of exchange that it is no longer exchanged; it is so blindly equated with use that it can no longer be used
Arguments The Role of Mass Media Instruments of social control through which economic power manipulates individuals to accept the established social order Modern forms of ideological indoctrination through simplification and repetition of content Mechanisms that facilitate social stability modeling collective behavior, so prevent any profound change in social relationships of production and consumption Instruments of cultural degradation
Arguments Media effects Powerful, noxious, pernicious and alienating The Cultural Industry
Arguments The Role of the Audience Individuals do not perceive the whole process of manipulation carried out by mass media Individuals can not fight against this process because they are not aware of it if they were, there is a huge difference between the strength of each individual and the socio-economic structure Consumers become objects and no subjects of culture industry
Economic determinism - Materialist reduction of cultural sphere to the market sphere Critique Work of Art, Cultural Object and Commodity WORK OF ART Capra film comedy Culture Sphere Social Consumption Sphere CULTURAL OBJECT TV Fiction Reality Show CONSUMER GOOGS
Commodification of Culture: An application NETWORK: Commercial television in the U.S. or "neo-television" in Europe a public service TV that has accepted the free market rules TV programing Inserting contents into a rational flow to be consumed by audiences TV, an entertainment factory Edward Murrow s speech Good Night, And Good Luck by George Clooney
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late EDWARD R. MURROW RTNDA Convention Chicago Downloaded from http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/hiddenagenda/murrow.html October 15, 1958
How would you relate the image of Citizen Kane to María Luengo Image courtesy of eliburford on Flickr the last edition of News of the World? modern theories of the media?
Real-life examples Orson Welles Theories of media & modernity Adorno and Horkheimer Citizen Kane (Charles Forter Kane) (1941) Mid-20th Century Williams Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) Rupert Murdoch (News Corp s Boss) (1931- ) News of the World Mass media corporation and Economic/Political Power Yellow Journalism (News Gossip, funny stories) The decline and fall of the old mass media conglomerates? Culture industry Economic rationality applied to the cultural world Cultural product entertainment, consumption, and escapism