Marxism and Media: Ideology, Consumerism, and Cultural Imperialism, Resúmenes de Sociología

¡Descarga Marxism and Media: Ideology, Consumerism, and Cultural Imperialism y más Resúmenes en PDF de Sociología solo en Docsity! PAULA VERA MORILLAS Chapter 6: Media as Manipulation? Marxism and Ideology FOCAL POINTS - Arguments about media as a purveyor of mass ignorance and distraction - Identification and critique of dominant meanings in media content - Case study of ideologies of consumerism in media - Cultural imperialism theories and the global circulation of ideology - Distinctions between cultural and political economc approaches to Marxism INTRODUCTION - Marx himself, Neo-Marxist approaches, Frankfurt School, European cultural studies and critical political economy. 1. The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory e The sociological view that the loss of support from objective religion and the disintegration of the last precapitalist residues, in conjunction with technical and social differentiation and specialization, have given rise | to cultural chaos is refuted by daily experience. 4 $ Bl e Culture today is infecting everything with sameness E - The Frankfurt School also specifically criticise the content of culture industry products which, as a result of profit maximisation are deemed to be wholly standardised. Products makes the process of consumption simple, repetitive and effortless. VIALEKUK der Aufklárung 2. Alienation and ideology in K. Marx We begin with an introduction to Marx himself, before examining key neo-Marxist approaches, including the early Frankfurt School, European cultural studies perspectives and critical political economy. According to Stuart Hall (1982), such perspectives are pluralist, in the sense that they focus on particular forms of influence but fail to address broader questions of media control or offer a critical analysis of the prevailing system of power. It thinks that the current socioeconomic system is basically a good thing and that, with the exception of certain problematic aberrations, media form a valuable component in its efficient operation. In contrast, Marxist approaches, including that of Hall himself, reject the broader capitalist system and regard media as purveyors of dominant ideology. + Lacking control over the purpose or product of their labour, workers are reduced to a commodity object themself, their labour sold to the bourgeoisie in order that the latter might profit from it. The only way the proletariat can own any of the objects they have devoted their life to produce is to buy them by paying their wages back to the bourgeoisie. For Marx, capitalism is defined by this class relationship — the power of the bourgeoisie depends on their exploitation of the proletariat and the more the proletariat sell their labour to the bourgeoisie, the greater their alienation and subordination. The ideology promotes falseconsciousness, blinding workers to the true nature of their exploited position by inverting capitalist arrangements so that they appear natural and inevitable rather than historically specific and changeable. For Marx, capitalism is characterised by the ownership of wealth and property by a small but allpowerful class group, the bourgeoisie, and the exploitation of the nonwealth-owning majority, or proletariat. The capitalist system perpetuates the power of the bourgeoisie, who control the means of production (factories, machinery, raw materials), and ensures the subversion of the proletariat, whose labour is hired in order to produce objects that generate wealth. The workers put most of their life into the production of objets and later be sold by their bourgeois employers. + (...) the power of bourgeois depends on their exploitation of the proletariat, and more the proletariat sell their labour to the bourgeoisie, the greater their alienation and subordination. - To Marx 'the mode of production of material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life". Marxs answer reflects his materialist approach to the relationship between dominant economic relations — which he refers to as the mode of production — and the realm of culture, politics and ideas. + For Marx, the dominant ways of thinking in a society always will reflect the prevaling mode of production and the interests of the ruling class (Hodkinson 2017, p. 100-101). - Another key focus for such neo-Marxist was the massive growht of mass media and popular culture, which increasingly were atributted a role as significant as that which religion had afforded for Marx in the nineteenth century. Religion, for example is deemed to act as 'the opiate of the people": this historical situacion is consider inevitable and induced by God's will. e To Marxs materialist insistence that the realm of ideas automatically mirrors the material situation of a given society. For Marx, in order to change dominant ideas, you had to change the economic system, not the other way around. Much of the approach rests upon a belief that the essential condition of humanity revolves around a particular version of individual self-determination, imagination and creativity 3. Reproduction of stereotypes: "... what continuously new it offers, is nothing other than representing itself in different forms of something equal" (Adorno, 1967). 4. Passive consumer: "the consumer is not sovereign, as the cultural industry would have us believe, itis not his subject but his object" (Adomo, 1967). 5. "Society is always the winner and the individual is only a puppet manipulated by social norms (Adorno, 1954). The Frankfurt School's contention, then, is that media and culture have been incorporated into an all-encompassing socio-economic system dominated by instrumentalism, rationality and objectification. The result is an industrialised version of cultural expression, whose enticing, standardised form numbs the minds of the population, crushing their capacity for independent thought and distracting them from the development of real solutions to their alienation. 6. "The spectator does not have to work by himself: the product prescribes every reaction (...). Every logical connection, which requires intellectual flair, is scrupulously avoided"(Horkheimer - 1997). 5. The Frankfurt School and critical theory 1. Lofty enlightenment ideals about expansion of mind and enhancement of the human condition had failed to materialize, itwas argued. 2. People were reified, they argued, or reduced to objects: cogs or pulley of the system (...). Instead of liberating humans, the project of reason and rationality had been incorporated into capitalist economic relations, taking on a pragmatic, instrumental logic focused upon maximising efficiency, profit and control, something that was suffocating critical thought, creativity and human subjectivity. 3. The emphasis is developed further by Marcuse (1964), who argues that the superficial lure of such objects generates “false needs (...) superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression. 4. Standardization: *...the hit will lead back to the same familiar experience and nothing fundamentally novel will be introduced (1990:256). The result of this standardisation, according to Adorno, is the inducement of mindless modes of listening, dominated by enslavement to rhythm or escapist forms of emotional identification. What is true of music is deemed equally true for other media. - In labelling every cultural industry product as standardised and dismissing all apparent variants as pseudoindividualisation, the Frankfurt scholars under-estimate the possibility that the pursuit of profit might in certain circumstances encourage innovation and difference.y. For Adorno it is this appearance of difference that makes standardisation acceptable to people: concentration and control in our culture hide themselves in their very manifestation. Unhidden they would provoke resistance' 5. (...) the whole is pre-given and pre-accepted before the actual experience of music starts. Pre-digested in order to slip down easily with minimum fuss, such products can be compared to baby food, argues Adorno (1991). 'No independent thinking must be expected from the audience', he and Horkheimer explain, the product prescribes every reaction' (1997: 137). - Frankfurt School theorists carried out little analysis of how the institutions which produce and distribute culture actually work. Also fail to provide evidence for their claims about the negative impact of mass culture on audiences. As Thompson puts it, 'Horkheimer and Adorno try to read off the consequences of cultural products from the products themselves' 6. Pseudo-individualization (Hodkinson 1997, p. 102-103): whereby standardised commodity objects are presented with an illusory veil of difference and diversity. Pseudo-individualisation might also relate to the construction of apparently distinctive stylistic identities for artists through the cultivation of image and identity — or what we would now term celebrity. This veil might take the form of unexpected twists within standardised film plots, or passages of apparent originality within formulaic songs. The Frankfurt School Their certainty about the universally passifying impacts of mass culture sits uncomfortably with the ability they bestow on themselves to criticise it. On the one hand they insist that the whole population has been incorporated by the all-encompassing pragmatic-rationalist machinery of the capitalist system and its culture industry, crushing any capacity for independent thought or critique, but on the other they claim for themselves the unique ability to see how the system works and respond to its cultural products in a different way to everyone else. This has prompted some to claim that the Frankfurt School are essentially elitist: they assign to themselves a penetrating discemment and taste deemed to be lacking among ordinary people. 6. Case Study: Consumerist Myths (Marlboro and Nike) Contemporary culture is saturated with messages that promote consumerism and the desirability of commodities It is for this reason that Kellner, alongside other analsts (e.g Williamson 1978), has sujected advertisements to ideology- critique, elucidatinf in particular how such texts establish products as symbols for culturally desirable concepts related to identity, fulfilment, happiness or freedom. For Kellner media increasingly subjects us to buying or consuming, and that in order to achieve happiness and status, we should stirve to maxime our consumption. Example: - Malboro ( cowboy: smoking it cigarettes with tradition, independence and rugged masculinity) and Virginia Slims ( smoking cigarretes with a modern, glamorous feminity). What it is to be male and female, become traits to be acquired primarily through consumption. - Consumer Magazine: wome's fashion and beauty magazines by Ellen McCraken: reinforced versions of femininity that revolved around discerning consumption of clothes. - Sell consumer products to us through endorsements of particular products : celebrities present us their consumerist fantasies in the form of attractive. But underlying it all is a reinforcement of the notion that we should all,, look to transform our individual lives and identities through attention to our consumer practices. For neo-Marxist critics, media distract us from the possibility of achieving such goals through radical social change. And they also mask how the production of consumer goods themselves is premised on capitalist exploitation. For example the wine in France as a great nation. - Commodity fetishism: the symbolic separation of commodities from the social conditions in which they were produced. Naomi Klein's (2000) analysis of the global cultivation of consumer brands highlights various instances of this, not least the huge investment by Nike in the construction of an imagen associated with individual human achievement and exellence but the items were produced — often in poor developing countries — were rendered invisible. Political E There are critics that study media content in isolation from the economic and material relations in which it is produced . In contrast, critical political economists concentrate on the economic dominance of the wealthy and powerful. They replace the culturalist emphasis on meaning as a site of intellectual struggle, then, with a materialist stance that locates ideology as something centred on the context of media production and control. An example of this approach is : Herman and Chomsky's book, Manufacturing Consent. English language music. Thus, for Peet, the export of mass culture is intrinsically linked to the global spread of capitalism itself as a material and social system 8. Criticism to Cultural Imperialism + Political Economics versus Cultural Approaches Ideology critique via textual analysis is often associated with a culturalist or cultural studies approach to Marxism, (Althusser, Gramsci, and Hall), while critical political economy takes a materialist (Marx's). - For political economists such as Nicolas Garnham, the cultural sphere is subject to “ultimate determination by the economic', something which means that it is the operation of the structures of ownership and control which provides the most fruitful site for analysis. - For their part: Culturalist approach criticise what they regard as the deterministic stance of political economists. - In spite of exceptions such as Dorfman and Mattelart, theories of cultural imperialism tend to draw bold conclusions about the swamping of local cultures by standardised, ideological mass cultural products from the West, largely on the basis of a macro analysis of the functioning of the media industry and global capitalism. - — Culturalist perpectives suggest even if communications are materially dominated by powerful, globalised capitalist interests, the dominant ideas that this is liable to give rise to will always be accompanied by the potential for marginal forms of culture to emerge. Louis Althusser (1971), suggested that although an economic base determines culture and ideas 'in the last instance', the latter nevertheless have "relative autonomy'. For Althusser, the economic system relies on control of dominant thinking through ideological. (religion, schools, family) But the principle of relative autonomy introduces the possibility that there might be some diversity, disagreement and struggle within these spheres and that dominant ideology might be challenged. Under the right circumstances, then, culture and ideas may have the capacity to be changed independently of the underlying material or economic system. Gramsci coined the term hegemony to refer to the predominance of taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world that strengthen the interests of the dominant political group. By an ongoing struggle ( the intellectuals have a crucial role) between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic ideas. Taken together, Gramsci and Althusser open up the possibility that social theorists might, themselves, play a role in social change. For Stuart Hall, media constitute the primary site for the playing out of the 141 kinds of struggles over meaning outlined by Gramsci. For Hall, whether it emitted deliberate bias or not, media discourse rarely stepped outside of a set of underlying, unquestioned frameworks and assumptions that served dominant interests.Drawing heavily on Gramsci, Hall also focuses on the ways the dominant system would respond and adapt in the face of challenges. Barthes, is also of great importance to the development of a tradition focused on the deconstruction of ideological messages within media texts. Through his emphasis upon “mythology', he emphasised that semiology should not be limited to the isolated analysis of particular texts but should identify the repeated activation and reinforcement in such texts of broader prevailing ways of understanding the world. One of the primary focuses in Barthes' work and that of more recent critics of ideological media content has been the operation of myths relating to consumerism. * Complex Communication Flow and Consumer Resistence - Whilst the notion of the cultural sphere initially was deployed as part of a project dominated by exposing the workings of ideology or hegemony within media texts, culturalist perspectives have in recent times become associated with greater doubts about the value of Marxist approaches to ideology. - Theories of cultural imperialism arguably under-estimate the range and complexity of cultural products that are transferred around the globe (Tomilson) - Emphasis on the diversity and multi-directionality of cultural flows has become particularly influential in light of recent shifts towards a digital media climate with a vastly increasing range of content and services, increasing interactivity and blurring distinctions between consumers and producers (Jenkins 2006). - — Firstly, an increase in the quantity of content does not automatically equate to an increase in the pervasiveness of counterhegemonic forms of expression. Secondly, powerful media organisations continue to control substantial proportions of the culture most of us consume. The implication of such arguments is that, even if media are dominated by large-scale profitmaking interests and/or by standardised or ideological content, we ought not assume that users necessarily will be manipulated or homogenised. e Conclusion: Avoiding Easy . CONCLUSION: AVOIDING EASY DISMISSALS The arguments against Marxist notions of media, power and ideology are enticing, persuasive and often difficult to disagree with. It is heartening to think of members of society, ourselves included, as active, critical users, drawing creatively from a vast range of content, influencing how it is distributed through our online sharing and even producing some of our own. In contrast it can be profoundly uncomfortable to suggest that ordinary people are manipulated, ignorant or suffering from falseconsciousness. Such an approach is often labelled as patronising and elitist, sometimes justifiably so. Yet there is a danger that the desire to avoid being regarded as patronising, together with the convenience of legitimating our own popular cultural tastes, might lead us towards a complacent celebration of a status quo in which the media remain thoroughly dominated by powerful corporate interests. Marxist approaches may be open to criticism, then, but we would be well advised not to dismiss their critical approach to questions of media, power and control too easily 9. PRESENTACIÓN: MIKE WATSON - The Culture Industry As Mass Deception Of great importance to neo-Marxist analyses of media are a group of theorists collectively know as the Frankfurt School, whose work was mostly completed in the United States after an escape from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The rise of fascism was to influence the work of scholars such as Theodor Adomo, Max Hockeimer and Hebert Marcuse, but their primary concern was with the apparent triumph, within the West, of capitalism, which had apparentyly seen off a range of destabilising moments, not least the Russian Revolution, world wars, general strikes and the great depression of the 1930s. In spite of all these, capitalism had managed to develop and thrive, its logic so firmly embedded that the prospect of significant working-class opposition in counties such as the. United States appeared to have faded. The result of this continual growth of the system Marx had predicted would be overthrown, was that the ability of indivisuals to think and act freely, imaginatively and creatively- to be human as the Frabkfurt in seeking to understand how the population had been introduced to accept such objectification, the Frankfurt School tumed to the ideological role of consumerism and mass media. While Marx regarded ideology as a discermable set of ideas which emerged from capitalist relations, the Frankfurt School's analysis of the ideological role of media and culture envisages something more all-pervasive. Describing the rise of what they term the culture industry, Adorno and Horkeimer (1997) argue that, like everything else, human expression and creativity had been subsmed into capitalist logic and surrendered to its relentless processes of instrumentality and rationalisation. From their point of view, art in its pure form represents everything important about human subjectivity, including creativity, freedom and independent critical thought. Under capitalism, however, art had become a mass commodity, little different from the range of other industial product of the market. For Adorno, culture ceases to be a creative social relationship between artist and audience, thn, and becomes reified into a set of anonymous consumer objects exchanged for money. This emphasis is developed futher by Marcuse (1964), who argues that the superficial lure of such objects generates "false needs” in the mind of