Haga clic para introducir el título del temaWeek 2

Media & Modernity

� Introduction � Assumptions

MEDIA THEORYM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

This work is under licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-

CompartirIgual 3.0 España.

� Introduction

� Historical Context

� Main Authors

� Assumptions

� Key Concepts

� Arguments

� Critique

• Rise of mass media

• Radical change in the modes of

transmission of cultural contents

(Benjamin)

� Historical ContextM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

• Political context of incipient

democratization and market economy

• The term “culture” becomes ambiguous

�The cultural object enters into the economic

sphere to become commodity

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

� Historical ContextM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

• 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

Adorno y Horkheimer(Frankfurt School)

“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (1947)

Concepts

MacDonals, Greenberg, Leavis

The Mass Culture’s Debate in 1950

AssumptionsAuthors

and SchoolsArgumentsDiscipline

“Mass Culture”

Mass culture

Culture Industry

Ideal-individualism

Rational-collectivism

Literature, Art Criticism

Sociology, Philosophy, Culture Critism

Mass culture against Art

Mass Culture = Commodity

Mar

ía L

ueng

oM

edia

The

ory

2013

Deception” (1947)

Benjamin “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1955).

Arendt

Hannah Arendt: The Crisis in Culture, Its social and political significance (1961)

Panofsky “ Meaning in the Visual Arts”

Williams (Birmingham School)

Culture, Mass Society

“Popular Culture

Mass Art

Popular Art

Non-rationalism

Racional-Collectivism

Idealism, rational-collectivism

Ideal-collectivism

Philosophy, Cultural Theory

Sociology, Literary Criticism

Philosophy, Culture Criticism

Art History

Mass Culture does not exist as such: Entertainment

Culture as Ideology

Mass Culture = politics

Mass Culture = new contemporary art

� The Frankfurt School

• Max Horkheimer• Theodor Adorno

� AuthorsM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

– Text “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (1947)

� Walter Benjamin (a contemporary but not part of Frankfurt School)

� Jürgen Habermas (later)

M. Horkheimer & T. Adorno

– Second half of the twentieth century• Capitalism and industrialization

– Philosophical reference: K. Marx

� AuthorsM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

– 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

• 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,

� AssumptionsM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

– 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

– Culture industry

• Reflection of economic rationalism

– The modern ethos or the prevailing social behavior

» How modern man chooses and justifies his choices

� Key ConceptsM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

» 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

ELITE ART MASS CULTURE

– Mass culture versus Art (with capital “A”)• For Adorno and Horkheimer, mass cuture is

the antithesis (the opposite of) Art (High Art)

� Key ConceptsM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

ELITE ART MASS CULTURE

Serious Light

Authentic Artificial

Original Copy/Derivative

Exclusive Repetitive

No profit motive Profit-seeking

– Mass culture versus art• Antagonistic view shared by other modern

authors– Point of departure is the Kantian idea of aesthetic

judgment» Uniqueness , universality , and

� Key ConceptsM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

» 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

� From Adorno and Horkheimer’s “The Culture industry” (pp. 66 and 68)

• Cultural product as commodity

� Key ConceptsM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

“Art becomes commodity, worked up and adapted to industrial production, saleable and exchangeable” (…) It is so completely subject tothe law of exchange that it is no longerexchanged; it is so blindly equated with use thatit can no longer be used”

The Role of Mass Media

• Instruments of social control through which economicpower manipulates individuals to accept theestablished social order

• Modern forms of ideological indoctrination through

� ArgumentsM

aría

Lue

ngo

Med

ia T

heor

y20

13

• Modern forms of ideological indoctrination throughsimplification and repetition of content

• Mechanisms that facilitate social stability modelingcollective behavior, so prevent any profound changein social relationships of production and consumption

• Instruments of cultural degradation

Media effects• Powerful, noxious, pernicious and alienating

� Arguments

The Cultural Industry

Mar

ía L

ueng

oM

edia

The

ory

2013

� Arguments

The Role of the Audience

• Individuals do not perceive the whole processof manipulation carried out by mass media

• Individuals can not fight against this process

Mar

ía L

ueng

oM

edia

The

ory

2013

– because they are not aware of it– if they were, there is a huge difference between the

strength of each individual and the socio-economicstructure

• 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

Mar

ía L

ueng

oM

edia

The

ory

2013

WORK OF ART

CONSUMER GOOGS

CULTURAL OBJECT

Culture Sphere

Social Consumption Sphere

Capra film comedy

TV Fiction

Reality Show

• NETWORK: Commercial television in the U.S. or"neo-television" in Europe – a public service TV thathas accepted the free market rules –

– TV programing

Commodification of Culture: An application

Mar

ía L

ueng

oM

edia

The

ory

2013

Inserting contents into a rational “flow” to beconsumed by audiences

TV, TV, anan entertainmententertainment factoryfactory

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,

Mar

ía L

ueng

oM

edia

The

ory

2013

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 lateEDWARD R. MURROW

RTNDA ConventionChicago

October 15, 1958Downloaded from http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/hiddenagenda/murrow.html

María Luengo

Mar

ía L

ueng

oM

edia

The

ory

2013

Image courtesy of eliburfordon Flickr

How would you relate the image of Citizen Kane to

� the last edition of News of the World?

� modern theories of the media?

Orson Welles

Citizen Kane (Charles Forter Kane)

Williams Randolph Hearst (1863-1951)

(1941)

Real-life examples Theories of media & modernity

Mid-20th Century

Adorno and Horkheimer

Mar

ía L

ueng

oM

edia

The

ory

2013

Rupert Murdoch (News Corp’s Boss)

News of the World

(1931- )

� 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 productentertainment, consumption, and escapism