Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now

263 Pages·2007·1.45 MB·English

by  Paul A. Taylor

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CRITICAL THEORIES OF MASS MEDIA
“This is a welcome critical corrective to complacent mainstream C
accounts of the media’s cultural impact.” R
Prof. Slavoj Z˘i˘zek, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for IT
the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London I
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With the exception of occasional moral panics about the coarsening
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of public discourse, and the impact of advertising and television
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violence upon children, mass media tend to be viewed as a largely H
neutral or benign part of contemporary life. Even when criticisms are E
voiced, the media chooses how and when to discuss its own O
inadequacies. More radical external critiques are often excluded and R
media theorists are frequently more optimistic than realistic about I CRITICAL THEORIES OF MASS MEDIA
E
the negative aspects of mass culture.
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This book reassesses this situation in the light of both early and
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contemporary critical scholarship and explores the intimate relationship
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between the mass media and the disempowering nature of commodity
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culture. The authors cast a fresh perspective on contemporary mass
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culture by comparing past and present critiques. They:
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(cid:2) Outline the key criticisms of mass culture from past critical thinkers
(cid:2) Reassess past critical thought in the changed circumstances of E
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today
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(cid:2) Evaluate the significance of new critical thinkers for today's mass A
culture

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The book begins by introducing the critical insights from major theorists u
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from the past - Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, A
Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord. Paul Taylor and Jan Harris then . T
apply these insights to recent provocative writers such as Jean a
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Baudrillard and Slavoj Z˘i˘zek, and discuss the links between such l THEN AND NOW
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otherwise apparently unrelated contemporary events as the Iraqi Abu r
Ghraib controversy and the rise of reality television. a
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Critical Theories of Mass Media is a key text for students of cultural J
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studies, communications and media studies, and sociology. n
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Paul A. Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Communications Theory, University . H
of Leeds, UK. a
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Jan Ll. Harris is an independent scholar. s
ISBN-13: 978-033521811-0
ISBN-10: 033521811-3
Paul A. Taylor and Jan Ll. Harris
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Critical Theories of Mass Media:
Then and Now
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Critical Theories of
Mass Media: Then
and Now
Paul A. Taylor and Jan LI. Harris
Open University Press
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Open University Press
McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
Shoppenhangers Road
Maidenhead
Berkshire
England
SL6 2QL
email: [email protected]
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk
and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121—2289, USA
First published 2008
Copyright © Paul A. Taylor and Jan LI. Harris 2008
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose
of criticism and review, no part of this publication may reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency
Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be
obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House,
6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN:13:9780 335218110 (pb) 9780 335218127 (hb)
10:03335 218113 (pb) 0335218121 (hb)
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It comes as a shock to that first audience.
The street they walked in off just moments before
hangs pale on the wall…
and their hairs stand on end to a shimmer of leaves
or the movement of clouds, and the way the tense
has been thrown like a switch, where the land turns to dreams,
and where,
sad to say, we have been living since.
(Paul Farley, ‘Electricity’, from The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See
You
I was witnessing a time when most things, including hard cash and
our perception of reality itself, were about to be turned into an idea
of themselves… I began to notice the insistence of image over
substance and this insistence began to pester me, like a bad radio
station that you can’t afford to turn off.
…we were just that bit too old to buy into the rumble of a world
described by advertising and products…That was the world where
everything had turned into an idea of itself, where life no longer
had an inner life… It’s a process which just seems to have built up,
like an accumulation of fat around the heart’s weary muscle.
(Michael Bracewell, Perfect Tense)
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Contents
Chapter outlines ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
Part 1 Then
1 Walter Benjamin’s ‘Work of art’ essay 17
2 Siegfried Kracauer’s mass ornament 39
3 Theodor Adorno and the culture industry 62
4 Marshall McLuhan’s understanding of the media 85
5 Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle 107
Part 2 Now
Introduction to Part 2 131
6 The culture of celebrity 133
7 Banality TV: the democratization of celebrity 155
8 The politics of banality: the ob-scene as the mis-en-scène 177
Conclusion 198
Notes 215
Bibliography 223
Index 235
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Acknowledgements
Paul: warmest regards to the stalwart, and justifiably cynical, fellow
barrel-dwellers from The Eldon Club branch of the Diogenes Society
(past and present) – Kishore Budha, Allison Cavanagh, Richard
Howells, Azeez Lukumann, Diane Myers, and Nicholas Ray – dia-
monds in the midden.
Jan: for Maisie R.I.P.
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