Task 5 - The Gaze

‘according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’ (Berger 1972, 45, 47)

Discuss this quote with reference to one work of art and one work from the contemporary media.


In Ways of seeing John Berger discusses how the Nudes of European painting from the Renaissance to the 19th century influence how men see women as objects and also how women see themselves as an object to be viewed and owned.  In a Patriarchal society, most Nude painting were commissioned by wealthy men purely for their own viewing pleasure and as a representation of a 'prize' they owned.  These paintings sometimes have a mirror placed in them which became a symbol of the vanity of women. 
With regards to the Susanna and The Elders , Berger describes how Suzanna is viewing herself in the mirror 'picturing to herself how men see her.  She sees herself first and foremost as a sight; which means a sight for men.'  The painting also portrays the elders voyeuristically viewing Suzanna from a hidden place, just as the viewer of the painting does.  This painting is a good example of the 'pornographic' function of art which was disguised by the male Art establishment as 'beauty'.

Tintoretto, Susanna and the Elders, 1555-56.

Manet painted Lunch on the grass for very different reasons to the earlier nudes in Art history.  His nude paintings depicted 'prostitues' women who could be owned by men. Although one of his main reasons was to create controversy and to be noticed , he also was also exposing the  reality of sleezy sexual pastimes of well heeled Parisian men. Here in Lunch on the grass the woman looks back at us looking at her.  He forces the viewer to confront the sordid hidden truth.  

Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
Lunch on the Grass
1863
Oil on canvas

Dolce and Gabbana advertisement are often controversial playing on sexuality and nudity.  They often depict women as the 'passive nude' implying a sense of availability to men. 

'From earliest childhood she is taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.  She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others and particularly how she appears to men is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of the success of her life.'  Berger

In these Dolce & Gabbanna adverts Scarlett Johansson is described by the Mail  'She smoulders in front of the camera, all bust and hips and pale flesh, looking unapologetically curvy - and boy, does she look sexy.' 3

 As these adverts are for make up products whose target audience is women, they are even more guilty than traditional European Art of objectifying women and also persuading other women this is how she should look for other people and especially men.  These adverts exemplify Berger's 'Women watch themselves being looked at.' 

Their play on 50's glamour and poses takes us right back to a time when  women were still seen as a prize to be owned and to be owned was seen as success.  So Berger in the early 70's said, we are starting to question this convention but with adverts using successful actresses such as these, we are actually intensifying the lesson to young women of 'how men act and women appear'. 

Research

 YouTube John Berger's ways of seeing episode two (4 parts) Accessed March 2012

http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/tag/luncheon-on-the-grass/

3. . http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/beauty/article-1228053/Scarlett-Johansson-Dolce-Gabbana-ad-campaign.html#ixzz1q8cKIYg5

Exploring rhizomatic constructions

Exploring examples of rhizomatic constructions, I found a PDF copy by author Margaret Carmody Hagood of her Chapter 7 ' A Rhizomatic Cartography of Adolescents, popular Culture and Constructions of self'  (1)She explains how she uses Deluze and Guatarri's rhizomatic cartography method in her studies.


' According to Deluze and Guatarri (1987), the rhizome has certain characteristics, which include in rhizomatic cartography 


1. Points on a rhizome need to connect to something else
2. Rhizomes are heterogenous not dichotomous
3. Rhizomes are made up of a multiplicity of lines that extend in all direction.
4. Rhizomes break off, but they begin again wither where they were before or on a new line.
5. Rhizomes are not models they have no deep structure
6.  Rhizomes are maps with multiple entryways.



Built off the concept of a Rhizome,rhizomatic cartography works as a figuration of a rhizome, which differs from using a rhizome as a metaphor.  A figuration is an analytical tool used in work influenced by poststructural theory to move beyond coding and categorising data in order to re-describe and to represent concepts differently.  It is similar to a metaphor in that both are implemented to improve understandings of a concept; yet unlike a metaphor, a figuration attempts to provide freeing ways to think about a concept by attending to the complexity inherent within it.......Rhizomatic Cartography is an analysis perhaps best described as one of coming and going, of offshoots and new directions.  By definition, rhizomes constantly shift and change, growing simultaneously in all direction..


When I did the Collection 100 brief last year this started with 100 album covers, and the research evolved into exploring lots of different links between Graphic designers, sub and counter cultures, photographers, musicians and the media including magazines like Frendz, International Times and NME. 


I started mapping this data out in quite a linear fashion across time as attached:

The data had become quite unmanageable so I decided to focus on one Graphic designer who had lots of links and influences; Barney Bubbles.  This was the Infographic of Barney's work, life and people he inspired.

Considering Deluze and Guattari's Rhizomatic analysis of identity I think it would be interesting to analyse the links between music, media and art sector in a Rhizomatic map.  The links and influences are certainly more in keeping with the Rhizome's definition 'constantly shifing and changing, growing simultaneously in all directions...'


(1) Leander K and Sheey M,2004, Spatializing Literay Research and Theory, New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, Peter Lang Publishing

Task 4 - Hyperreality

Write a short analysis (300 words approx) of an aspect of our culture that is in some way Hyperreal. Hyperreality is an awkward and slippery concept. Wikipedia defines it as follows-


Hyperreality is used in semiotics and postmodern philosophy to describe a hypothetical inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced post-modern societies. Hyperreality is a way of characterizing what our consciousness defines as "real" in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter an original event or experience.


Wikipedia cites the following examples to get you thinking (but please come up with your own!)
A well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal).
Any massively promoted versions of historical or present "facts" (e.g. "General Ignorance" from QI, where the questions have seemingly obvious answers, which are actually wrong).
Professional sports athletes as super, invincible versions of the human beings.
Many world cities and places which did not evolve as functional places with some basis in reality, as if they were creatio ex nihilo (literally 'creation out of nothing'): Disney World; Dubai; Celebration, Florida; and Las Vegas.
TV and film in general (especially "reality" TV), due to its creation of a world of fantasy and its dependence that the viewer will engage with these fantasy worlds. The current trend is to glamorize the mundane using histrionics.
A retail store that looks completely stocked and perfect due to facing, creating a world of endless identical products.
A life which cannot be (e.g. the perfect facsimile of a celebrity's invented persona).
A high end sex doll used as a simulacrum of an unattainable partner.[7]
A newly made building or item designed to look old, or to recreate or reproduce an older artifact, by simulating the feel of age or aging.
Second Life The distinction becomes blurred when it becomes the platform for RL (Real Life) courses and conferences, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or leads to real world interactions behind the scenes.
Weak virtual reality which is greater than any possible simulation of physical reality.

A McDonalds Happy Meal

Consider the following list of ingredients in McNugget “chicken”, Chicken (45%), Coating [Vegetable Oil (Rapeseed, Sunflower), Wheat Flour, Water (8%), Maize Flour, Modified Starch, Raising Agents (Disodium Diphosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate), Whey Powder (from Milk), Flavour Enhancer (Potassium Chloride), Egg Albumen (Free Range Egg), Ground Pepper, Breadcrumb (Wheat Flour, Salt), Salt, Dextrose, Ground Celery], Water (7%), Potato Starch, Vegetable Oil (Rapeseed, Sunflower), Natural Flavouring (from Free Range Egg), Flavour Enhancer (Potassium Chloride). Prepared in the restaurants using a non-hydrogenated vegetable oil  (1)

Cooked Chicken Breast (27%), Water, Wheat Flour, Vegetable Oil, Milk, Reformed Ham (5%) [Pork, Water, Salt, Glucose Syrup, Stabilisers (Di, Tri & Poly Phosphates), Preservative (Sodium Nitrite), Antioxidant (Sodium Ascorbate)], Cheddar Cheese (4%), Whipping Cream, Starches (Maize, Modified Maize), Soya Protein Isolate (2%), Semolina, Antioxidant (Potassium Lactate), Sugar, Egg White, Stabiliser (Methyl Cellulose), Salt, Yeast, Red Wine Vinegar, Oat Fibre, Natural Flavouring, Dextrose, Paprika, Rosemary Extract, Pepper, Soya Lecithin.

Chicken Breast (92%),Water ,Butter ,Whey Concentrate ,Maltodextrin ,Salt ,Parsley , Acidity Regulator (Sodium Diacetate) ,

100% Roast Chicken!

Fast food outlets such as McDonalds who supply Chicken McNuggets reinfored with the plethora of processed ready meals available on our Supermarket shelves are providing young people and children with a hyperreality of what chicken is, what it tastes like and how it should be consumed.


Chicken McNuggets and other battered/breaded products are a copy of reality, a simulcra.  Where children are eating only packaged fast food and ready meals these 'copies' provide their perception of 'food'.  Any connection to the reality of food such as the image of a live chicken which has been slaughtered, plucked and then roasted has faded.


Chicken McNuggets, although 45% chicken are reconstituted, flavoured and fried in batter which provide a simulcra of the taste and texture of 'chicken' which has no basis in reality. So the reality of the taste and texture of chicken fades and only the copy remains. Chicken McNuggett has become a 'sign' of chicken so for all intensive purposes it now is chicken.


The reason for eating food, that of sustaining our health, energy and well being, is lost in a world of colourful Happy Meals, with packaging advertising the latest Pixar movie and a free toy.  Children are not only associating food with reward but also expecting it to be perfectly packaged and formed.  McDonald's Restaurants are colourful, bright spaces which along with their advertising campaigns promote signs of fun and happiness, not necessarily food.


'According to Baudrillard, consumption consists of the exchange of signs. Signs and images supersede materiality and use value. This is not to argue that the products that we consume have no functional utility; rather, functionality itself is treated as a sign.' (2)  Thus when a child eats a Happy meal in a McDonalds Restaurant, he or she perceives this more a sign of happiness and reward rather than for its use value of 'food'.  




References
1.http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/product_nutrition.chicken.24.chicken-mcnuggets-6-pieces.html (Accessed March 2012)


2. LaFountain MJ,2008, http://www.crito.uci.edu/NOAH/paper/Postmodern%20Perspectives%20for%20Macromarketing.pdf (Accessed March 2012)

Some interesting Journals and Essays I found about Hyperreality

Specifically about Supersize me and Fast food:

'The self-referential relationship between signs produces “simulations”, which are the basis of “hyperreality”.  In hyperreality, signs do not exchange with nonlinguistic reality, or with the objective world.  They exchange only with each other in an “ecstasy of communication” that does not produce meaning or value.  What it produces is the frenzy of signs pointing to their equivalents.  Because the relationship between the sign and the objective world has been effaced and replaced by simulations, there are no referent points between signs and “the real” by which to establish value or difference.'

http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol-5_2/v5-2-marc-lafountain.html

http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/papers/2001-video-games/provenzo.html

Essay feedback

Bibliography

Bibliography – Separating popular music and political activism from the Warencharkter

Adorno, T (1991) - The Culture Industry, Oxon Routledge

Adorno Interview about Popular Music - YouTube (http://youtu.be/Xd7Fhaji8ow /uploaded 28 January 2007) Accessed January 2012

Barnard, M (2005) Graphic Design as communication, Oxon Routledge

Baldwin, J & Roberts, L (2006) Visual Communication London AVA

Benjamin (1936), W The Work of art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Hebdige, D (1998) Hiding in the light London Routledge

Gronstad, A & Vagnes, O (2010) Coverscaping: Discovering album aesthetics (2009) Copenhagen Museum Tusculanum Press

Storey, J (2001) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction  Essex Peason Education

Throgersen S & Powell A (1999) One hundred Best Album covers London Dorling Kindersley

Joan Baez

The Guardian 2009 available at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/6173753/Joan-Baez-interview.html (Accessed January 2012)

The Telegraph Joan Baez interview 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/6173753/Joan-Baez-interview.html (Accessed January 2012

BBC Vietnam: The music of protest 2005

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4498011.stm (Accessed January 2012)

BBC On this day 16 October 1967

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/16/newsid_2535000/2535301.stm (Accessed January 2012)

Billy Bragg and The Clash

Bragg, B (2011) Why music needs to get political again available at

http://www.billybragg.co.uk/blog/?p=192 (Accessed at January 2012)

Henely, J (2011) Are you ready for a revolution available at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/jan/01/billy-bragg-saturday-interview (Accessed January 2012)

Letts, D (2001) DVD The Clash Westway to the world DVD Sony Music

Essay submission

Separating Popular Music and Political Activism
from the Warencharakter


'I believe, in fact, that attempts to bring political protest together with ‘popular music’ – that is, with entertainment music – are for the following reason doomed from the start.
The entire sphere of popular music, even there where it dresses itself up in modernist guise is to such a degree inseparable from the Warencharakter (1) from consumption, from the cross-eyed transfixion with amusement, that attempt to outfit it with a new function remain superficial
And I have to say that when somebody sets himself up, and for whatever reason (accompanies) maudlin music by singing something or other about Vietnam being unbearable…I find, in fact, THIS SONG unbearable, in that by taking the horrendous and making it somehow consumable, it ends up wringing something like consumption-qualities out of it.’
A transcript of an interview ‘Adorno about popular music’


In this interview, Adorno is referring to a Joan Baez performance of ‘oh, freedom’. The interview must have been recorded between 1967 and 1969, given the nature of the footage and also due to the fact Adorno died in 1969. Joan Baez, an American recording artist, had been using her music as a form of political protest in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice since 1963 when She sang ‘We shall overcome’ at the March on Washington for jobs and freedom.


This is not an argument that Joan Baez is the best example of popular music and political protest coming together, quite clearly looking through her back catalogue although a songwriter she is more known for being an interpreter of other people’s music. She has however throughout her career remained true to her belief in non-violence and as such has used her music to promote this by connecting with both the subject in the real world and also with her audience.
Instead the essay aims to prove that bringing together political protest and popular music creates authentic culture, which in turn promotes active listening and opens up its meaning and significance thus separating itself from the ‘warencharakter’. This argument will be supported by an analysis of certain Album Covers and how their ‘paratextual’ qualities contribute to this authentic culture.


Adorno qualified his assertion that popular music and political protest are doomed ‘even when it dresses itself in Modernist guise’; meaning even when the intention is to improve people’s lives. This suggests he may have been aware of Baez’s dedication to social justice to this point. She had been vocal about her disagreement with the Vietnam War since 1964 when she publicly endorsed resisting taxes by withholding sixty per cent of her 1963 income taxes. In 1967, she was arrested and imprisoned for ten days for taking part in a sit-in at a military induction centre. In 1972, she attended a peace delegation travelling to North Vietnam and was caught in the eleven-day bombings of Hanoi. (The Guardian 2009 and BBC news archives)


There is strong evidence to demonstrate that her motives for singing in the context of the Vietnam War were in fact to raise awareness and promote action against the horrendous nature of the Vietnam War and not to sell more ‘entertainment records’.
On the whole her album artwork has not been expressive of her political activism apart from 'Blessed are' (Vanguard, 1971) and ‘Come from the shadows' (A& M Records 1972). The black and white cover photograph of Come from the shadows (Figure one) documents an elderly couple being arrested at an anti-war protest, holding hands and flashing peace signs as they are led away. This signifies that the protest is not just part of a sub-cultural movement but is supported by middle class America too. These two serious, diminutive rain soaked figures provide a rousing juxtaposition in front of the much taller, stronger, helmeted arresting Officers. The young man in support in the background proudly displays his CND badge and strides almost triumphantly to his arrest.
Joan Baez quoted from the back of the Album cover (figure two):
“.... In 1972 if you don't fight against a rotten thing you become a part of it.
What I'm asking you to do is take some risks”. ….... “in short, sisters and brothers, arm up with love and come from the shadows " –(Come from the shadows, Joan Baez A&M records 1972)


The Album Cover does not seek to promote itself, being deliberately low key and completely black and white. The title and artist name are set in a small point size typewriter style font, which would have been commonplace at this time. In Coverscaping ,the authors suggest an album cover, ‘simultaneously embodies commercial, indexical, ekphrastic, narrative and paratextual qualities’ (2010, p11) They use paratextual as Genette’s literary notion ‘ a zone not only of transition but also transaction’ (p10). The ‘Come from the shadows’ cover uses paratextual and ekphrastic qualities, particularly in a historical context, over and above a commercial function.
This Album cover analysis and also the contextualizing of Joan Baez’s life provides a strong case that her primary objective has been to raise awareness and promote change, in other words contribute to the creation of ‘Authentic Culture’.
Authentic’ Culture is defined by Horkeimer, a fellow theorist of Adorno from the Frankfurt School. John Storey explains Horkeimer’s Authentic Culture ‘as a function… to keep alive human desire for a better world beyond the confines of the present.’ (2001, p86)
Also contrary to Adorno’s own ideas that popular music promotes ‘passive listening’ and acts as ‘social cement’; by raising political and social issues in popular music, musicians create a ‘desire to change the status quo’ in their audiences.
The Clash, a pioneering Punk band formed in the Summer of 1976, are credited with advocating radical politics in their music. Joe Strummer, the front man and rhythm guitarist, explained how the Notting Hill Carnival riots influenced them
‘We were there at the throw of the very first brick…. This was one time where people went we’ve had enough. This was what gave rise to the song ‘white riot’ because we participated in the riot but I was aware all the time this was the black people’s riot i.e. they had more of an axe to grind and they had the guts to do something physical about it.’( Westway to the world DVd 2001)


Billy Bragg explains this further ‘Their first single, ‘White Riot’, was an explicit attempt to make a connection between the frustration faced by unemployed white youth and their black counterparts whose employment prospects were blighted by racism.’ (Bragg, 2011)


Their first Album, The Clash (CBS 1977) and subsequent Albums have featured authentic and thought provoking imagery on the covers. The back cover of The Clash (figure three) features a photograph shot by Rocco Macauly, of police charging towards black youth under the Westway. This photo was chosen for its paratextual qualities and can be viewed as authentic given Strummer and Simonon, the bass guitarist were both at the riot. The design’s graphically raw feel is enhanced by the image apparently being ripped from a newspaper and the use of an uppercase typewriter style font. In this way the cover lends the same authenticity and rawness to the lyrics.


Their third album London calling (CBS, 1977) designed by Ray Lowry, is a homage to Elvis Presley’s debut album and features a photograph of Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar, shot live at The Palladium in New York by Pennie Smith (figure four). In Coverscaping, Sigrid Lien describes the image ‘it radiates young energy and untamed vitality - ideals that represent the very core of the punk aesthetic’ (2010, p160). Similar live shots of the other band members’ feature on the back cover. In keeping with the Punk aesthetic, Smith prides herself on taking ‘authentic’ portraits of musicians and deliberately uses documentary black and white to strengthen this.


Bragg cites it was The Clash that spurred him to take part in his first act of Political Activism at the Rock against Racism concert in 1977. He went on to front Red Wedge in 1986, a group of musicians using their music as a platform to engage young people with politics. To quote a recent article in The Guardian ‘With love songs and folk anthems and an unshakeable commitment to democratic socialism, Bragg and his guitar have been preaching a modest, very English kind of revolution from stages up and down the land for more than three decades now.’ (2011)
Political protest in the form of popular music does not necessarily change the world however in the words of Billy Bragg ‘ it wasn't the Clash that changed my world. It was the audience. In the office I was working in at the time, there was a lot of casual racism. I didn't like it, but I wasn't big enough to say anything. But then I went along to Victoria Park in Hackney one afternoon, and there were 100,000 kids there who felt exactly like me. So I went back to work on Monday morning, and I knew I wasn't alone. My world hadn't changed, but my perception of it had. And that's the role of the musician."


Adorno’s idea that Popular Music is inseparable from consumption takes no account of the critical and discriminating audience or the meanings they can take from the music. Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ offers a much more positive analysis of technological reproduction in culture.
‘The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object produced.’ (Benjamin, 1936, p3)


Benjamin suggests that meaning is produced at the moment of consumption; significance is determined by the process of consumption, regardless of the mode of production. Storey explains this further ‘meaning is no longer seen as unique but open to question, open to use and mobilization’ (2001,p94)
Returning to The Clash, the fact they had to ‘sell out’ to CBS in order to distribute their politicised lyrics did not weaken their meaning and significance but armed their global audience with questions and led them to find solidarity with other liberation movement such as the Anti-Nazi League. The Anti-Nazi league together with bands like The Clash and journalists set up ‘Rock against racism’ As Hebdige observed in Hiding in the light ’RAR…was extraordinarily successful in mobilising a popular front to counter the threatened resurgence in the late 1970’s of racist political parties’ (2002, p213)


The interpretation that there is a role for political protest in popular music also brings into question an idea promoted by another Frankfurt School theorist Herbert Marcuse.


‘The idea of art has been turned into a business and all art as gone. As we consume the mass culture ie TV shows and songs this can code us into thinking a certain way about the world in a one dimensional way. Reduces our capacity for free independent thought.’ (Marcuse, 1968, p26-28)


There is no doubt that popular music on many levels is just a business and delivers a form of escapism and one dimensional thinking. Kiss, an American Rock band from the 1970’s are famous for embracing consumer culture, not only selling their music but also licensing a Kiss brand with dolls, comics playing cards and films. Thirty years later, the ‘Kiss Army‘ still travel around the world to see the band at Kiss conventions, shows and trading in merchandise.
On another level some popular music can be authentic in expressing and representing the attitudes of a generation and in this way increase their capacity for free independent thought beyond the institutions they have been brought up in.
Storey, explains how the Cultural study of Popular culture emerged from the work of The Birmingham School. He describes Hall and Whannel ‘The main thesis of the Popular Arts is that in terms of actual quality…’the struggle between what is good and worthwhile and what is shoddy and debased is not a struggle against the modern forms of communication but a conflict within these media.’ (2001, p51) He goes on to explain how they take the idea that our mass media is pre-digested from Greenberg (who took it from Adorno) and use this to discriminate between good and bad popular culture. They define good popular culture as being able to re-establish the rapport between the performer and audience that was lost with industrialisation. On this basis, the use of political protest within popular music can also be differentiated from the mass; Joan Baez and The Clash were able to re-establish the rapport with their audiences that led to active production of culture rather than its passive consumption.


Although Adorno defined his ‘Culture Industry’ and wrote his critical analysis of popular music around seventy years ago it was obvious from the views expressed in the interview that his ideas had not changed towards the end of his life. This was despite the huge cultural changes that were occurring in part because of music with the advent of Rock and Roll since the fifties.
So it makes for a paradoxical conclusion, that with the benefit of historical context, political protest brought together with popular music can be differentiated from mass culture and the ‘warencharakter’ using The Frankfurt School own set of rules; its real and multi-dimensional and promotes active consumption, individual creation and imagination. (Storey 2001, p 93)


Note 1: a commodity character

Figure one

Figure two

Figure three

Figure four

Lecture 12 - Globalisation, Sustainability & the media

Youtube Confronting Current

Stanford Encyplodia is a good reference point for dissertation

In this new world its not so much a shared culture but more an Americanisation of all cultures. The values and processes of American capitalist businesses dominate the world.   Macdonaldisation Impos 'Macjob' menial work broken down to task

Thought of the Guru of media theory. 1960's foretold the impact of the radio.  New technologies extend our own senses and allows us to see and hear further. Communication extends the senses.  We can see events on a Global scale.

Marshall Machluan came up with the:

The world shrinks and everyone is interconnected.  His theory has not happened even though we can see almost immediately as things happen.  The media has almost de-sentizied us to war and violence.

This has not happened we are still an Individualist society.

If anything we are actually moving further away from Individualism and unification as America spreads Capitalism both financially and through land and oil grabbing.  No an Anti-Capitalist ideology emerging

Who controls the Global system and why should they control?

Do we loose National Identity and heritage?

A short introduction books

Every culture in the world is trying to live up to the values of certain Western cities

Forcing ou culture on other people  Media theorists Schiller/Chomsky.

The mass media is the vehicle for Western cultural imperialism.

Increasingly the Global village is not unified but instead are being take over by western culture done through the Media.

Media is a Powerful weapon.  The idea that the Media is free and unstructured is rubbish as every organisation are part of Mass Media Oligopolies 

Everything can be traced back to one of six companies.

EG Time Warner is the largest own Companies all over the world incl cinemas, internet technology, magazines, Bable TV, Warner Brothers, CNN factual news. All these disparate elements are conrolled by one CEO... One way of thinking about the world an American capitalist value thinking.

The way it is spread is uneven.  The Media divide the world into categories of important focus on where they can make money.  The interests of North America are focussed on the most.

The free market is rigged aroun the inerests of capital

Schiller -  A new form of American Imperialism forced onto countries who cant really afford.

Big brother a western style with a particular set of value that being a celebrity its desirable and achievable through no talent or hard work.  Pushed oto otehr countries and these country think they should like it because they are popular in western country.  

Western Sitcoms, Sopa operas, internet, media  - the effect of this is Cultural Assimilation.  Highest selling product is skin lightening scream! 

This media system is a giant system of propaganda for Western capitalism Noam Chomsky

Make people agree with the Social system we have ' false consciousness',

The News is far from factual and without an agenda but is biased.

The BBC have their own manifesto saying they are neutral however they are not.

'Misleading' and subjective

Funding - 

Sourcing where they get their info.

Communism had just fallen in the eighties.  A lot of news stories showed communism as flawed.

Influences governments 'The Sun wins elections'

News of the World is now The Sun on Sunday.

Rupert Murdoch owns a large percentage of the nwe s info in this country and also other countries.

11.7 million people reached through TV

So he can set the agenda

News stories are not aired if they dont reflect his interests.  He wont put anything positive out about the Labour party 

The information we receiving through the news is only as good as the events that they are allowed to report.   The Government gives press confrences but this is only a mall view of what is really going on. 

Media/TV Corps funded by advertising so need to keep large co happy.

Business and Political pressure groups effect the tone of what the media says.

Globate Climate Coalition control the Media coverage of Climate change. 

You Tube Global Warming - Energy

You Tube Global Warming - Glaciers

The news is used to demonising other ideology to legitimise our ideology

The Media is a powerful vehicle dominated by US capital.  Activists are trying to work within it to push our agenda.  You Tube.

Al Gore says it is a moral issue not political - this film is political.  His solution is to release less CO@

The two countries who  refuse to be carbon neutral - eg US and China.  they create the most polution in the world.  Kyto tried to limit the amount of Carbon emission per country but you were allowed to trade these limits. 

The solution  to the problem created by capitalism to to buy more things?

A definition of sustainabilty

Sustainability and growth are a contradiction.

Example of a failed Sustainable capital venture 

More expensive to produce.  Massive factory to produce the biodesel built in poorest area of Hamilton. Next to communities rivers and air was polluted by the process.

The environment is a serious issue.  So companies are now buying into this to make more money.  They use the media to give themselves as a caring company 

MacdonAlds rebrand from red to green was done to make themesleves look greener

'Eco boost' less polluting no difference just a marketing tool.

KIMERLEY CLARK LARGEST PROGRAMMES OF DEFORESTATION.

a sustainable system/saving the planet is impossible under a Capitalist system.

Environmentalists see that they can save the planet but keep the system as is.

Ecologism the deep green movements believe that we can only save the planet by overthrowing the whole system.

Media appartus' facilatate this

The Internet, going back to Macluhan, has brought peope together.  tweeter is used directly to combat the 'spin' in the media.  So 'Control' and 'Sourcing' is not an issue for the Inetrnet.  Activists are mobilising

Even in Amercia there are visible signs of opposition.  the Occupy movement started in US.  We are the 99 percenters.

Global resistence.  TheMedia is a system is a system we can use for our own ends.

Street art at Occupy.