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How mass media effects american culture
How mass media effects american culture
How does media influence the perception of contemporary society
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Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976) is a satirical film that attacks the American society created by the television industry in the 1970s. The main protagonist of the film, Howard Beale, is an aging UBS news anchorman with poor ratings. After learning that he is going to be fired, he announces during one of his broadcasts that he is going to kill himself on live television. Though the outraged network fires him immediately, Beale is offered a chance to apologize to the American public. However, once on air, he proclaims that life is “bullshit,” and is met with unexpected agreement and high ratings. After another segment where he inspires audiences to stand up for what they believe in, UBS rehires him and gives him his own talk show. As “the mad prophet of the airwaves,” Beales rakes in more ratings than any other show on the network. In turn, UBS—one of the few television network conglomerates—cynically exploits him in an “attempt to outstrip [other networks] to satisfy audience desires for the shocking, the profane and the rebellious” (Hesmondhalgh, …show more content…
2007, p. 4). However, once Beale proves detrimental to the network’s profits, Diana Christensen, the ratings-obsessed director of programming at the network, authorizes a plan to kill him. Though meant to be satirical, the takeaway of the film is that the commodification of news and the depreciation of truth and morality go hand-in-hand with a media-dominated society. In the movie, Beale vocalizes the troubles and desperation of the average American. Although the people find solace in his sermons, Horkheimer and Adorno would argue that the audience gives in to the idea of “false consciousness.” According to the two German philosophers, celebrities are influential due to the fact that “they are powerless in themselves but deputize for all the other powerless individuals, and embody the fullness of power for them, without themselves being anything other than the vacant spaces taken up accidentally by power” (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1944, p. 181). Even though Beale seems to be articulating all of their woes, he is really doing so at the network’s gain. By exploiting the American public’s need for expression, Beale’s rise to the top perfectly embodies how the “bottom-line profit pressures set the framework for programming decisions” (Croteau and Hoynes, 2014, p. 55). Further, because it is important to “[minimize] the risk of losing money on programs” (Croteau & Hoynes, 2014, p. 55), UBS must orchestrate a way to get rid of the talk show host once his ratings begin to plummet. Logically, of course, the only answer is to assassinate Beale. Under the network conglomerate hegemony, society carries on.
Horkheimer and Adorno argue that “It is not the portrayal of reality as hell on earth but the slick challenge to break out of it that is suspect” (1944, p. 182). Unaware that he is being exploited for the network’s financial gain, Beale truly believes in what he was preaching. Every taping, he gets in front of a live audience and expresses his concerns for the doomed society. Though in vain, he attempts to implore the American public to get up and do something about the world they live in. The public trusts what he says, and rise up to vocalize their needs and wants. This effort to break from the industry’s ideology is naive, as the network is only profiting from their viewership. Therefore, the challenge to break out of the reality that is portrayed as “hell on earth” is untrustworthy. The public is fighting against itself, and in the end, hegemony always
wins. Though meant as a satirical piece, the film’s message still rings true forty years later. In a media-dominated society, the commodification of news and the depreciation of truth and morality are inevitable. Despite their reputation as being pessimistic, Horkheimer and Adorno were right to accuse media of turning us into credulous beings, indifferent to the way that society shapes us. Network (1976) illustrates this for us, and leaves us left curious as to if we have any free will at all. Though created in the 70s, the film is eerily prophetic, and makes us wonder whether or not a man could be killed in today’s society just because he had lousy ratings. I do not know about you, but I would hope that our morality has not depreciated that much.
In the article, “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs,” American author and cultural critic Mark Dery creates a definition for culture jamming while popularizing the term. He explains how culture jamming disguises itself in mechanisms that are used for social control. In the section, “Empire of Signs,” Dery focuses on a mechanism from a 1975 segment called “Media Burn,” which involved the collision of two American cultural symbols, the television and the automobile, to alleviate the frustration of television. The segment was extremely shocking to viewers due to it smashing and burning an idolized object in American society (Dery). Dery continues by defining other forms of culture jamming techniques, such as sniping and subverting, media hoaxing, adjusters, audio agitprop
The authors both making sweeping statements about the political nature of the United States, but Ames addresses a more concentrated demographic of American society than Hedges. The latter points the finger at the venal egotism of celebrity culture for entrancing the public into complacency, and at America’s political leaders for orchestrating the fact, but he also places substantial blame on the people at-large for allowing themselves to be captivated by the entertainment industry. Ames discusses an issue in which the Millennial generation stands as the focal point, but she speaks directly to the teachers of these adolescents due to their position of influence. Although today’s youth are proven to possess a spark of political energy through their own volition—displayed through their generation-wide interest in dystopian literature—an environment of learning and in-depth analysis provides the best opportunity for the novels’ underlying calls-to-action to strike a chord with their young
The 1976 film "Network" is an acerbic satire of television's single-minded obsession with mass ratings.One of the film's main characters, Howard Beale, is called the "Mad Prophet of the Airways," and his weekly harangues produce a "ratings motherlode"--yet he constantly admonishes his viewers to "Turn the damn tube off!"During one such rant Beale berates his audience as functional illiterates: "Less than three percent of you even read books!" he shouts messianically--and then promptly collapses from a sort of apoplexic overload.
In “Wires and Lights in a Box,” the author, Edward R. Murrow, is delivering a speech on October 15, 1958, to attendees of the Radio-Television News Directors Association. In his speech, Murrow addresses how it is his desire and duty to tell his audience what is happening to radio and television. Murrow talks about how television insulates people from the realities in the world, how the television industry is focused on profits rather than delivering the news to the public, and how television and radio can teach, illuminate, and inspire.
Media is a powerful tool that can be used to influence the majority and the distortion of truth in media has a rippling effect that may prove to be dangerous. Good Night, and Good Luck is an extravagant film that exposes the truth of media. The main protagonist in the film, Edward Murrow, makes attempts to caution the audience about the power of media. In the film, Murrow says “We have 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 use 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.” (Heslov & Clooney, 2005) Which is
The media plays a key role in The American President. Throughout the movie the president struggles to keep high approval ratings during primary season. The media has tremendous control of this because they are a major source of information for voters, and they can choose what kind of light to shine on a situation. Although, in this situation it was not exactly the media that attacked the president, it actually was the person running against the president, Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld denounced the president, and Sydney ...
Tuchman, Gaye. The TV Establishment: Programming for Power and Profit. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., l971.
McLeod, Michael. Does TV Kill?. Production of Oregon Public Broadcasting for "Frontline". Videorecording. PBS Video, 1997.
Throughout “Harrison Bergeron”, there is an emphasises on how controlling media can be in modern times. A majority of the story is told through the television in the living room of Harrison Bergeron’s parents, Hazel and George, as they watch their own son trash a news studio and eventually die. Hazel and George’s reactions have a lack of panic while they watch the events unfold, showing that today we are numb to the to the tragic events that are told on the news because it is norm for us to see those types of things in media. The media in “Harrison Bergeron” and the media of today have controlling effects on people, telling us who to vote for, warping the way people think about a certain subject, and how to to feel about those subjects. The only difference between the our society and the “Harrison Bergeron” society is that our society is not a utopia, but some people wish it could
Technology is growing fast, as is the new generations branching off with new forms of media and devices that provide us with the news. News and politics have had difficulty when informing its public and community of the events that happen in their community. Now the media and news are growing to reform to the earlier generation’s way of receiving the news and events related to them, by using media and popular culture. According to Wodak, for politics to air and to engage and intrigue its public, it must need scandal, rumour, and speculation (45). The West Wing, is a clear example of where the news and politics enter into the world of entertainment, but still informing its audience of the political world and events they may face. I will be analyzing The West Wing television series in relation to the representations of gender, race, and politics with support from examples and scholarly sources.
We, the audience, are entertained and interested by the interviews, the balls and the featured persons. bell hooks sees audience enjoyment as exploitative and says, "...It is this current trend in producing colorful ethnicity for the white consumer appet...
John Frow, in his criticism of White Noise, rightfully focuses on television as the defining medium of the Simulacra in DeLillo's America. Television, of course, by definition is a copy; it is a broadcast of something that has been filmed; it is viewed in millions of homes worldwide, each television flickering the same image into the sub-conscious eye. Frow presents a close reading of a speech Murray gives to his students:
Jones, Jeffrey P. Entertaining Politics: Satiric Television and Political Engagement. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Print.
One of the greatest exports of American culture is American media. American media is one of the most widely distributed and consumed cultural forms from the United States. This means that not only do Americans consume large quantities of their own media, but many other countries in the world consume American media, too. People in other countries will not interpret or understand the media in precisely the same ways that Americans will and do, nonetheless, many aspects of American culture and American reality are communicated to numerous viewers as part of the content in the media. The media is an important tool in the discussion of race, class, and gender in America. It takes a savvy viewer to discriminate between and understand what media accurately represents reality, what media does not, or which aspects of experience are fictionalized, and which elements ...
O’Shaughnessy, M., Stadler, J. (2009)Media and Society: An introduction. Dominant Ideology and Hegemony. London: Oxford.