We are the censors (II)

I agree with both of the comments about my post (regarding Chomsky and Abercrombie) — yes, wealth and power clearly control the media and everything else.

However, what i feel was omitted from the reading, was that society through mass share ownership controls wealth and power, therefore we are controlling the forces which repress us.  Abercrombie is a good example of this, because they mirror what society “tries to be,” — e.g. they mirror society’s fears of everyone escept the ideal, and they appeal to shame, thereby causing mass conformity in society; then their advertising money foists social conformity (even some would say fascism) on the population.

Many people complain about Abercrombie’s “explicit” nature, but really Abercrombie is the most right-wing kind of repression because it exalts a stereotypical ideal at the expense of 99.99999999% or possibly 100% of the real people.  Then, because Abercrombie is a share corporation, they and similar corporations use their money and power to silence both any media with honest sexuality, as well as any media which strays too far into anything which attacks the market — because Abercrombie is almost a pure representation of market forces.

It is too easy to attack “money and power,” but money and power are not just Thurston Howell III from Gilligans Island.  Money and power in America are a mass share-owning representation of ALL of us.

Peter C

The Propaganda is the Message?

 

Don’t believe everything you read.  That is the message I get from Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “A Propaganda Model” as they lay out their theory of who controls the media—the big money media barons, advertisers (e.g., corporate America) or the government—or as the authors bring to bear a combination of all three.  In looking at the boards of directors of media giants, the authors find that  “active corporate executives and bankers together account for a little over half of the outside directors of the ten media giants” (p. 285).    

McLuhan warns in his essay that a large media can be “ a powerful tool with which to clobber other media and other groups” (p. 138).  Is this not what Herman and Chomsky say is what is happening?  In fact has been happening since lack of funding shut down those three British papers in the 1850’s. 

Is the “message” as McLuhan calls it that same sound bite?  Fed to the media from the Pentagon for example and repeated on local, network and cable news each evening, and read them again in the newspaper the next morning.  The media, in this propagated world speaks in a seemingly singular voice, and it is a voice that has whispered in their ear, by a large corporation with an agenda and a threat to pull advertising dollars.  A board member with a stake in another company—and the clout to force the issue?  Or a branch of the government with a message fed at press conference—and the tacit threat of what would happen if a member of the press were to bite the hand that feeds him.

The propaganda can be subtle.  A recent example:  it is no mystery that many news outlets, particularly broadcast, use retired members of the military as paid “analysts”. A New York Times investigation in April of this year uncovered just how tight that connection is, detailing a “carefully orchestrated” junket to Guantanamo Bay in 2005.  Were these former military men tricked into delivering Pentagon talking points, or were they just trying to keep their relationships solid with the military and the defense contractors who ALSO pay them for their access to the military?  The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html

In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower coined the phrase in warning against  “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”. He was referring to influencing the government, but if you are to believe Herman and Chomsky—and the New York Times—it seems that’s exactly what’s happened. 

The Factory

Culture Industry is the idea that messages distributed through world-wide creative mediums is created, united, and regulated by the elite for the general public digestion. Mediums such as television, film, and radio must adhere to these ideas that are deemed easily digested by the public. Anything outside of these constraints, can be deemed a failure, and will not fit into the rest of society, if they are ever distributed. This industry feeds off of the rules of supply and demand. The public craves information, even if it is only a fraction of what they could receive, as it is better than receiving none at all. The result, information is pour out of a universal “factory” which can be identical, thus mis-leading, but must be and is accepted, unwillingly at times.

This is, in some way, similar to Herman and Chomsky’s view on the propaganda model.  The Propaganda Model focuses on the principals of regulation being filtered through several vices, which are used a controlling methods by the elite. Propaganda is more economically focused rather than cultural/technologically based. For example, if I were to make a documentary on my hate for vegetables and sold it to be NBC, under the Propaganda model, my message may be never make it to air as advertisers, supermarket tycoons, and Farming Unions would disagree with the message portraying to the public about their product. Not only would this create a potential loss in revenue for NBC, it could also cut important ties. Further, under culture industry, my message does not have the best interest of the masses, and would also be censored, especially if the government had been promoting broccoli.
Mcluthan theory is based more on the message and how it is conveyed through mediums. Propaganda deals more with what messages are chosen to conveyed and who controls these messages. The medium of which it comes through almost seems unimportant compared to filtered message.

Adorno & Horkheimer

I really enjoyed reading this piece because it gave me a lot of insight to how today’s society, culture and industries operates and what the future could look like. I think that the idea that Adorno and Horkeimer have that culture is an industry in itself and runs society is undoubtedly and sadly true. I believe that popular culture today such as certain movies and music is an industry. Today most of the time, movies, art and music are not about the artistic values, morals, and meaning, it is about money. What is popular makes money, which is why today’s culture is an industry striving for dollars. Like Adorno stated, “Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce.” (72). 

 

It really scares me that if you are not a producer of media you have to accept what you are given, it’s like you are an individual in society without a voice and has to take what you are thrown. In the reading Adorno discusses Kant and how his formalism allowed for individuals to discuss back, but today’s culture industry doesn’t allow this concept .” The sound film, far surpassing the theatre of illusion, leaves no room for imagination or reflection on the part of the audience, who is unable to respond within the structure of the film.” (75)

 

The whole definition of what is personality today is ironic because people like things that we are given. No one is really unique in this world because we really are controlled by this “cultural industry”. If I say I like watching The Hills, is that what I really like? Or do I just like it because I was shown it and like it. There is a difference because if The Hills wasn’t introduced to society then I wouldn’t know what it was and like it. Did it’s popularity get me interested in watching it? Thus lead to a bigger audience, more seasons and money for these creators…CAPITALISM

In essence we as individuals in society are products because we are what listens to music, we are who wears brands such as Pacific Sunwear, so we are walking products of manufactures.

I think that Chomsky and Herman’s Progaganda Model is similar in thinking of as Adorno and Horkheimer because Chomsky and Herman believe that what we are given by corporations are bias and filtered, so what we as individuals in society are given is just what we are given, it’s our culture industry and the news that “our” culture has to follow. (we are controlled by industry)

Cultural Industry

In the text from Horkeimer and Adorno, the cultural industry is an authority that leaves consumers or audiences utterly defenseless in its attempts to gain control and gain more economic strength.  Though Horkeimer and Adorno claim that we as consumers are powerless, we are given a false sense of control through the products we purchase, the music we listen to, and the movies we watch, etc. We are all seen as target markets to the cultural industry. The industry only provides what is deemed a need to consumers. Even audiences who are resistant or in opposition to the industries practices are seen as a target market themselves. The cultural industry is an inescapable entity.

The text also makes an interesting statement in that the cultural industry is not shy about its brazen practices at times and that we as the public are aware of this and yet still succumb to its ultimate agenda.  The industry runs on the ideology of what Hokeimer and Adorno call “just business” (71). They are aware that the public knows their intentions.  It seems that we are all cognizant of the fact that they are in the business of mass production.

Where Herman, Chomsky, Horkeimer, and Adorno are in agreement is on the topic of industry and power or control. All address within their texts that those with the greatest economic stake in the media industry ultimately retain dominance.  It is these stakeholders that set the trend and cycle for the consumers. Chomsky and Herman, unlike Horkeimer and Adorno go more into detail of the socio-political influences in media and the various mediums.

In relation to McLuhan’s idea that “the medium is the message”, McLuhan is more concerned with the concept of the content within the medium and what message it is distributing. The readings from this week are more concerned with the idea of the medium as a source of power or control over the audience and how these messages are constructed and formulated.

We are the censors

From my personal experience, speaking as the editor of a counterculture magazine — i.e. the largest gay youth magazine in the world — everything that Chomsky writes is absolutely correct and mirrors my own experience. Of course, Chomsky’s essay is a few years old, so it is a little out of date (e.g. it talks about anticommunism, rather than antiterrorism, which is the same thing) but the general areas are spot on.

I am particularly interested in Chomsky’s tridactic look at concentration of ownership, and the way that this interacts with both advertising and shareholder fealty. Only a high school journalism student (if even that) must truly believe in “objectivity” and “the separation of the editorial and business end” when advertisers and shareholders so clearly control editorial direction.  This is even true in the New York Times (in another class, I am researching the way that this supposedly liberal paper is out for blood on certain stories which are the pet peeve either of advertisers or shareholders).

I am especially interested in Chomsky’s assertion that reporters “even can convince themselves” that they are objective in spite not just of evidence but of logical impossibility that this is or could be so.  However, unlike Chomsky, I am not so innocent to believe them when they claim possession of angelic qualities — I have seen the reality of Abercrombie and Fitch and how they control the agenda of youth publishing.

Chomsky, though, seems not to notice the complete-loop nature of culture and censorship. He, like most theorists in my view, does not note that that the censors are the censored.  Over the past decade especially, our so-called “share-owning democracy” has seen not just concentration of media owenership, but a mass purchase of media stocks by mutual funds (e.g. gigantic retirement funds like CALPERS) which are in turn held en masse by the great masses of middle-of-road shareholders.  The resultant conformatizing, blanderizing, hence stagnant point of view, means there can be no freedom of the press — if freedom of the press only belongs to the man who owns one, and nobody owns one, then there is no freedom of the press.

Horkheimer only partly gets this when he says, “under monopoly all mass culture is identical.”  He also questions the conflation of “economic power” and “quality”; of “poverty” with “amateurness”; and gives mucho examples of blanderization and the cruelty of economies of scale.  However, what both writers still don’t see — which by the way “The Merchants of Cool” did see — is that the buyer is the bought. That is to say, we are the censors; we are a nation that lives in fear of its own passionate expression; when we wear Abercrombie we are the enforcers of the bland social uncharacteristics of fear that we bemoan; we are the censors who adopted the repression we published for ourselves.  There is no “profiteer” when AOL-Time-Warner-Viacom-Vivendi IS us.  The problem is that we cannot not censor until we see that we are the censors.

P.S. After I wrote this, I watched “manufacturing consent,” and the whole thing was so true. I particularly agreed with Chomsky that even from childhood, many examples of language foisted upon children as mere “examples” in fact harbor in inherent “degeneracy.”  That was a conformatizing link I hadn’t thought of by name, but which I find very disturbing and even makes me question the inherent morality of our species.

P.I.C.

Challenging the Culture Industry

Although Horkheimer and Adorno paint a very extremist picture in their depiction of the “culture industry”, I think their theory addresses some very poignant issues.  They explore a technological determinist’s world in which we are completely enslaved by the system.  Where media and government are one in the same and control everything that happens in our lives and in our world.  They describe (and this is way I say extremist) a complete destruction of true individuality in exchange for a bourgeoisie-formulated concept labeled as individuality.  Although very abstract and a little over-the-top, this idea of breeding well-constructed ideals into our minds brings me back to our discussion of the Merchants of Cool video and their formulation of the idea of “cool”.

Horkheimer and Adorno claim “individuation has never really been achieved”.  I would argue, however, that individuality is not meant to be thought of as a holistic archetype.  In fact, I would say it is quite the opposite.  It is many different attributes that are specific to different people and because they vary so widely, cannot be defined definitively at all, much less be constructed into a complete persona.  I see this consistent attempt to generalize very abstract concepts as the major flaw throughout Horkheimer and Adorno’s writing.  However, they sometimes employ such severe generalization that I am left wondering if this is not somewhat intentional.  The piece’s exaggerated nature does give it a little more spunk than some of the other theories we’ve read thus far.

With a very specific focus on effect, Horkheimer and Adorno avoid delving very far into the causes of this rigidly controlled society’s existence.  And this is where Herman and Chomsky pick up.  They attempt to take an in-depth look at the inner workings of the media system and the corporate powers who control our thoughts, actions and surroundings, according to the culture industry theory.  They explore corruption within the system and how that keeps us from receiving accurate information.  I am slightly skeptical of this piece as well (even with its ten pages of end notes).  Although I do not doubt the existence of corruption within the government and the media nor the monopolization of ownership within the media and in other industries, I seem to find some of their reasoning to be a bit of a stretch.  I say this specifically about their discussion of media ties to the government and the weapon and nuclear power industries.  But perhaps it’s just my naïvely idealistic unwillingness to believe that the system is so intricately constructed to censor information along every step of the way.

But overall, I found the readings quite interesting and complimentary of each other.  They provide opposing views to McLuhan’s theory, focusing much more on content – the people behind the medium and what they put into it.  But still build on the control issue and the theme of media as power.

They spark many questions about just how far this power can be taken and whether or not we have the ability to ever gain any kind of control.  I also think that the development of the internet as a public medium greatly influences these theories and perhaps even deconstructs them to some degree.  This brings into play McLuhan’s idea of specific ages being defined by their medium.  Have we reached an age in which we can voice our opinions freely and overcome the culture industry?

The Culture Industry and A Propaganda Model

In “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno defines the culture industry as that vehicle of society that regulates and homogenizes all things, including media such as films, magazines and radio. In Horkheimer and Adorno’s view these mediums, “… make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part.” (72). Like a sophisticated machine on an automotive assembly line that consistently cranks out streamlined, identical parts, such as cylinders, the “culture industry” cranks out sterilized, watered down, innocuous media products, palatable for mass consumption.

“It has made the technology of the culture industry no more than achievement of standardization and mass production, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of the work and that of the social system.”

The culture industry absorbs pure art and manipulates it into a standardized product. Also, in order to succeed, the artist him/herself must be absorbed and assimilated; socially edited—so to remove all coarseness, true originality and innovation, in order to fit into a model of success (72).

According to Horkeimer and Adorno, the culture industry is totalitarian, self-policing and has a built-in system of reinforcement. It strengthens itself the more it grows and the general public, in fact, likes its system of filters and controls and has come to rely on it. At the helm of the culture ship is ruler, or führer; the most powerful force in the system being those parties with the most capital. “The people at the top in the culture agencies, who work in harmony as only one manager can with another … have long since reorganized and rationalized the objective spirit.” Capitalism confines the consumer to the serving class, and therefore limits he/she from receiving the whole picture—or seeing the forest for the “filters” that are at work upon him/her (79).

This is similar to the power at play in “A Propaganda Model” as outlined by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, but not identical.

“A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power in its multi-level effects on mass media interests and choices,” Herman and Chomsky write (280).

Herman and Chomsky propose a multi-tiered system of control in which news/communication is filtered so that only what is “safe” to the reputations, bank rolls and perpetuation of those in power is delivered to the public. But instead of framing this form of manipulation as iron-fisted, totalitarian and practically omnipotent, Herman and Chomsky break it down into five filters which they define to be not as overtly fascist, though potentially just as forceful and manipulative.

The five filters that Herman and Chomsky discuss are 1.) “Size, ownership profit orientation of the mass media.” That is, the clear concentration of wealth and media resources which belong to an elite, uber-wealthy segment of the population. Namely, about two dozen families and a handful or other “outside directors.”

2.) “The advertising license to do business.” That is, the persuasion of advertiser dollars over the slant of the content. For example, editorial staff in a form of media dependent on ad sales for revenue, such as a newspaper, might hesitate to run a story in which an interviewee criticized the business practices of one of the newspaper’s ad clients, let’s say, such as The Gap, for fear that the client would cancel ads and therefore forfeit revenues (289-292).

3.) “Sourcing mass-media news.” Because media outlets are limited in budgets and staff numbers to gather news, they rely on a set group of “official,” “available” sources, such as press agents from the U.S. armed forces, church and special interest groups and government officials. Collecting news from these sources inherently allows the debasement of objectivity, for information provided comes from the vantage of the sources and is most likely slated to protect the source’s own best interests. (292-298)

4.) “Flak and the enforcers.” Flak is the negative responses generated sometimes by advertisers, the government, religious interests, other media outlets, etc. in response to statements or programs generated by a media source. For example, an editorial run in a newspaper deriding The Gap for abusing its workers in unregulated sweatshops. Flak could be the corporation’s response to the editorial in the form of scolding, writing a response column denying the abuses, or withdrawing the purchase of pre-negotiated advertising space. Flak can not only tarnish a media outlet’s reputation and hurt subscription numbers or affect viewership, it can cost actual dollars if/when advertisers withdraw ads in response to flak fallout. (298-300, 302-304)

5. “Anticommunism…” as fervor and national religion. Herman and Chomsky show how making examples of the communist plight can be set in motion to instill fear of anything or anyone who is perceived as different, pro-Socialist, or critical of Capitalism (i.e. dissidents) (300-302).

Herman and Chomsky conclude by defining who uses propaganda models and for what reasons. For example, they cite the presses failure to cover the torture of Turkish political prisoners and break up of trade unions in Turkey in 1980 because of a concealed U.S. government interest in supporting the “martial-law” state in Turkey (302). Conversely, Herman and Chomsky discuss the way the American press jumped to cover rights violations of Polish trade unions at a time under Reagan’s presidency when the U.S. government wanted to appear pro-business and pro-Free Trade (303).

Again, as in the Horkheimer/Adorno reading, those in power, or those who held the greatest wealth would be at the reins of a propaganda campaign. Samely, the filterization of information and the ad hominem forced adherence to a culture standard lies in the hands of those with the greatest power and wealth, who stand to benefit the most, from controlled responses of the general public (and preordained, orchestrated buying patterns).

Culture Industry or Propaganda Model

The Culture Industry, as described by Adorno and Horkenhiemer, is everything connected with the creation and distribution of what we essentially call commercial media. Mass media creation and distribution have created a  flattening of all cultural goods because the technology behind modern mass media requires such a large number of people and management organization. The result is a low quality cultural product.  This sameness perpetuates a mind numbing effect on the populace who is moronic and defenseless. This ultimately, leaves them open for absorbing totalitarian propaganda through the same means without even noticing.

The Adorno/Horkenhiemer conception of Culture Industry is clearly rooted in fears about Facism  as it is largely focused on how the Culture Industry sets a populace up to be open to accepting, without little or no protest, a totalitarian rule. They are primarily concerned in this text, with how Culture Industry effects they way a populace perceives of themselves as individuals and in relation to the whole. In this view people are essentially pleasure seeking, creatures of habit and needs basically, children. In modern society people have become so alienated that they easily adopt stereotypes as real and in fact model themselves after them as a substitute for actual individuality and emotional experience.

The Culture Industry as a structure has trained the populace to happily eat pabulum and to in fact beg for it and feel fulfilled by it. The fear is that people become used to this and the content itself has become so meaningless that it can be replaced with anything without anyone so much as noticing only clamoring for more. The Culture Industry makes even languages useless sets of patterns and into signs so childlike they are just that, signs.  Freedoms to choose exist but the choices offered are so irrelevant that it is just the feeling of freedom that persists. The Culture industry absorbs dissent, fine art, personal freedoms, personality. Anything can be almost instantly co-opted and flattened by it and replaced by a commercially sponsored cardboard pop-up simulation. All of this occurs so seamlessly that the consumers don’t even feel it they in fact, feel empowered by it.

Chomsky and Herman also believe that the structure of  system that creates the cultural product is of great importance. Their propaganda model is essentially discussing the same thing as the Culture Industry only Chomsky and Herman see it not as some mastermind plan for totalitarian control but rather a set of circumstances that interlock and create a model which is so efficient at reproducing the same circumstances that keep it in perpetual motion, that is difficult to break or significantly alter. Ultimately they offer a  bigger picture of the structure so we can perhaps begin to take pragmatic steps to dismantle is or to make use of it differently.

A few questions I am left with:
Adorno and Horkheimer are not fans of the popular culture created by a mass media but also call out bourgeois art for being elitist and doing nothing to benefit common people. What manifestations of culture woul Adorno and Horkenhiemer find worthwhile?
Adorno is  deeply disturbed and angered by the effectiveness of Hitler’s propaganda machine on his own German people and their culture. How are the personal perspectives of Chomsky and Herman v. Adorno and Horkenhiemer coloring their take on propaganda through popular culture?

“Culture Industry”

According to Horkeimer and Adorno, even today older houses outside the concrete city centers look like slums, and the new bungalows on the outskirts are one with the flimsy structures world fairs in their praise of technical progress and their built-in demand to be discarded after a short while like empty food cans. Yet the city housing projects designed to perpetuate the individual as a supposedly independent unit in a small hygienic dwelling make him all the more subservient to his adversary – the absolute power of capitalism. According to them this is what culture industry is all about. Further explaining the control and influence over the population, they say that because the inhabitants, as producers (and as consumers) are drawn into the center in search of work and pleasure, all the living units crystallize into well-organized complexes. They further say that movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. No, the culture industry phenomenon is not the same as the propaganda model explained by Herman and Chomsky. There they discuss how the mass media serves as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace.

 

The relation between the propaganda theory and the idea that “the medium is the message” is obvious as both speak about different mediums one could use to reach out to the public or the end user, whether it involves using various technologies, media embedding or other means of corresponding with the audience.