Hartigan – June 29th
By nature of its definition, popular media is not only affected by mass culture but has a significant effect on mass culture itself. The significance of these effects has only increased with the proliferation of media by the Industrial and Information Revolutions, and as such it is reasonable to ask whether or not media sources should alter their output in the hopes of bettering society (whether morally, intellectually, or in any other way). Would it be feasible to impose such a responsibility on the media?Before we even suggest a change in the functions of media, an observation must first be made on its current mode of presentation concerning science, the arts, and so on. When looking at almost any form of media, a system that affects the presentation of almost all topics is revealed: this is the system of dichotomies, in which topics of interest are divided into the One Thing and the Other. Every newsagents will sell a series of magazines written "for women" and a series "for men", just as cosmetic products are similarly oriented. These are examples of what the post-structuralists have called binary systems, and – for whatever reason they emerge – they are prolific in society, and especially in popular culture. Such an opposition can be seen within the context of science, philosophy, and the arts: when there is portrayal of these topics in the media it is usually withdrawn to niche outlets, and when it enters the media of the mainstream, it is consistently presented as Object to the reader as Subject in a one-way system of spectacle, rather than a two-way system of discourse. As such, a responsibility for the media to educate their consumers in intellectual disciplines is a responsibility to subvert the culturally ingrained dichotomy of science and academic pursuits as Other. Is this too much to ask? That is to say, is it even possible? Normalised systems of culture are never codified; they exist immaterially (but sturdily) amongst the people of the culture and, as such, cannot be manipulated easily.
Perhaps there is an ethical obligation against imposing responsibilities on the media. Writers of the Chicago School of economics would be opposed to the idea, seeing the sole responsibility of a corporation (that is, the corporations that constitute mass media) as serving their shareholders. It is unlikely that the modification of media's mode of presentation in the aim of education is a benefit for shareholders. However, I don't agree with this: even if we assume that the shareholder theory is "correct" for the sake of argument, the media corporations that play a part in determining cultural values are more than simply corporations. The reason for this is precisely the fact that they determine cultural values, by impacting what qualities are deemed "normal", "other", "popular", etc. by society1. To place the shareholders of these corporations at the utmost executive position of power would be to put them at an executive position in society-at-large, pushing the capitalist world into a situation that is even more dominated by bourgeois morality. However, although this suggests that there should be certain responsibilities imposed upon corporations that have cultural impact, I will still argue that any such responsibilities that aim for education would be completely fruitless.
Mass culture fits its name exactly: it is for the masses. As such, concepts and values that are popularised in popular media become normalised, and enter the consciousness of mass culture as diluted, simplified manifestations of their original concept. This is observable in the mysterious concept of fame, a value which is certainly popular and common amongst mainstream media. But what is fame? It is of course not material, nor is it a measurable goal which somebody can reach – although Ludwig Wittgenstein is acknowledged almost universally within philosophy as one of the central figures of the 20th century, his name is not in the mainstream cultural consciousness. Can we really say that Wittgenstein is "famous" in the way we would say Kim Kardashian is? Clearly, fame is a concept of the sort that only exists vaguely throughout culture and language; its proliferation in mass media has reduced it to such an unclear existence. The same would happen to science or philosophy, if responsibilities were imposed on the media to educate people by popularising them – what the mainstream cultural consciousness would be left with is a vague, indefinable concept that is detached from the original concept itself. Because of this, it can be concluded that any sort of "duty" to be placed upon corporations, commanding them to popularise (and effectively commodify) intellectual and educational pursuits, would be useless if not harmful.
One last thing should be noted – exactly why is it that culturally normalised concepts are so indefinable? The answer lies in the very way that the culture industry (as Adorno calls it) works. To refer to an aforementioned example, why is it that people like Kim Kardashian are famous? To ask what these people do would be a mistake – the more accurate question asks what it is that the culture industry does to them. Many celebrities, even those who are famous for a particular profession, function as mere "containers" for the ideology of the culture industry. A celebrity can appear or perform publicly alongside a particular brand or, alternatively, their performance can be employed to spread popularity of a particular practice. For the culture industry, any normalised concept works in just the same way as these celebrities do: just as fame has become an indefinable concept for the media to use as it wishes, as could science, philosophy, or any other concept. This is similar to the way in which, during pre-modern times, theological concepts were used to supply simpler answers to complex questions (we see this in the way that many archaic theologians seem to beg the question of God's existence). If mass culture continues to proliferate concepts as it has done so far, society runs the risk of worshipping vague, indefinable concepts in just the way archaic society worshipped a vague, indefinable deity.
1 However, we may wish to consider this: do the corporations which we can roughly label "non-cultural" (e.g. accountancy firms, furniture production companies, and so on) have impacts upon cultural values that are simply subtler than those of "cultural" corporations? For instance, every corporation that is involved in managing people's money attaches certain immaterial values and functions to money, and certain immaterial functions and obligations for the people that manage money. Given that money is a central part of the society we live in, it can be argued that these immaterial qualities in turn affect the cultural subconsciousness.
