Critical Assessment of Conventional Interpretations of Reality in the Age of Mass Media - Essay Example

With reference to the work of Jean Baudrillard and/or Slavoj Žižek critically reassess conventional interpretations of reality in the age of mass media.   Below, we are discussing about the mass media and how it affects the thoughts and lives of masses. The origin of mass media is discussed which was in early twentieth century and how it grabbed the attention of people around it. Later we discussed about the work of Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and political analyst and Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher and writer and how they viewed the mass media and conventional interpretations of reality.   Mass Media Mass media is term used for a type of media that is approachable by a large group or number of the population of a particular nation. The audience of the mass media is very larger in size and they can easily reach and view the contents of the media. The definition of mass media is given below, “By definition, mass communication is a message created by a person or a group of people sent through a transmitting device (a medium) to a large audience or market.” There are many mediums which are used to transmit the information to public and the famous mediums in today’s world are television, radio and newspaper etc. Nowadays, mass media is usually consists of books, newspapers, magazines, radio, cinema, television, documentaries and the recently famous internet. The concept of Mass media was made up in 1920’s when the radio got popularity nationwide and people were amazed at the fast communication method of the medium. Then there was the emergence of the magazines and newspapers, which were considered as the public media. The world saw the growth of television and the way it got popular among the masses. If we look at the internet as a type of mass media, then it becomes quiet confusing and complex. Because anyone on internet can create their blogs and can publish them globally. There is no check and balance over this and neither is there any authenticity of this. In internet, there includes personal web pages, public forums, e-magazines and blogs. The most important thing in making any media a mass media is the audience. The more audience pays attention to a medium, the more famous that media becomes. And the other term used for the mass media is the public media, because it gets popular because of the public. Mass media is formed by the mass society, with few attributes that should be present in that media. The attributes includes the social connections and the influence of the media on public’s opinion and thoughts. The influence is usually drawn by the marketing and propaganda, but done in a smart way. The work of Jean Bauldrillar Jean Baudrillard was a French philosopher and sociologist. He is a well known political commentator or analyst as well. He did a great work as a sociologist and also gave theories on postmodernism and post-structuralism too. Along with these theories, his views and theories regarding the conventional interpretations of reality in the age of mass media is significant. He is a social scientist and critic and worked well in the field of technology communication. His writings and analysis are remarkable and his work affected people and help in the progress of society. He basically worked on the affects of modern technology on society and people, and how the common people view the modern development in the field of mass media. He discussed variety of topics and subjects, regarding gender relations, journalism and the different controversial topics as well. These controversial topics include AIDS, human cloning and blasphemy laws in different religions. The most controversial topics of today’s world are the Gulf war and the World Trade Center in the New York City. Jean Baudrillard work is considered as a part of a classical literature and social analyst. His work is comparable with the work of Gilles, Deleuze, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jacques Lacan, who are the prominent French philosophers. They all have worked great in the field of semiotics. 1 He worked on the relation of “signs”, that how the signification and meaning both differ from each other. The meaning we take out from any word or a particular situation depends upon the systems of signs that are actually working together and are helping us to evaluate a meaning out of it. According to Jean Baudrillard, the meaning of anything is taken by the absence of something in it. For example, “lion” means “lion”, the reason is not that the meaning of the word is lion but the reason is that it does not mean “bear”, “monkey” or “gate”. So this is the criteria upon which the meaning of the word can be justified. So here comes the concept of relation of one object with the other object. This is called the self-referential meanings. So this means that all the words and objects are related with other and in a sense, either it is absence or presence, it is related with the other word. Following the same rules, he gave theories and philosophies related to the society. And the base of these theories and philosophies is the self-referentiality of the relations and views. A true philosopher is the one who always search for the answers of the questions and the meaning of life and objects. Jean Baudrillard did the same in his work. According to Jean Baudrillard, humans are in search of answers about their life and this world, even about the behavior of other humans. But according to Jean Baudrillard, their search is not a constructive search and it leads to illusions. Men, from the beginning, are striving for the total knowledge, and they can never find total knowledge in this universe. To understand the objects and the items, they need to understand their significance with the other objects, because every object does have significance to the other objects and things in the universe. And to understand the significance of objects is not an easy task and can hardly be done by any person and this is the reason that they cannot get their desired result and output. The reason behind is that people have drawn themselves away from the reality and natural environment and understanding of the objects. Reality is an important component of strong societies. The society cannot stay stronger and longer unless and until they find the realities and develop their firm believes on them, as philosophy is all about the realities.2 Jean Baudrillard worked on the Gulf War and gave his theories on that war as well. His Gulf Theory is an important theory as a political analyst and philosopher. Here he discussed the role of media in detail and told people about his views about this tragic incident. According to him the war “did not take place”. He continued as saying that the Gulf War was not “the continuation of politics by the other means” but rather it was “the continuation of the absence of politics by other means” and if we think deep into his words, he is extremely correct in his thoughts. Gulf War was fought between the allied forces and the Saddam Hussein but Jean Baudrillard said that it was not the Saddam Hussein was in a war with the alliance but actually he was sacrificing his army and warriors to protect his power (p. 72, 2004 edition). According to Jean Baudrillard, it was the war created by media and mass media was on a constant propaganda spreading scheme. He gave an example of the allied forces, which were using their full power to show that their enemy was a great danger to them and he got huge reservoirs of ammunition and can harm them a lot by his massive army (p. 61). But in real the scene was different. The western mass media was on a continuous propaganda and was given live twenty four hours coverage to the war, which in real was not even happening. According to the media, the allies, under the command of US were fighting their worst enemies Iraqi Army but this was not the reality. According to the Jean Baudrillard, Saddam Hussein never used his complete and full military capacity against he allied forces. He did not use his Air Force, and has saved his other military as well as the political power too. He, as he did in past, curbed the Kurdish uprising during the war and like this in a broader scenario, it was clear that the war brought no change in the Iraq and the country remained the same, with same ruler, people and the same system. So according to Jean Baudrillard, the Gulf War did not even occur in the first place. He wrote in many newspapers as well, including The Guardian of Britain and the Liberation of France. He wrote an article on the Gulf War as well. And his work was published in the leading newspapers before the war, during the war and after the war. And he continuously repeated this thing that “The Gulf War did not take place”. Though it was not appreciated by people as they call it a denial of reality, that war is happening and still he cannot see this and he was accused of “cynical skepticism”. In this way he criticized the role of the modern media on people and society. Many people criticized him and said that he is drawing the public attention to the unnecessary matters. Merrin said in his book that the Baudrillard did not accept the reality and he tries to give reasons and covers to hide it. He keeps on asking questions about the war and how a war can be conducted which quiet was misleading for the people. The mass media, according to him, must be studied and observed in the terms of form and type and not in content. There is a possibility that the media is advertising ignorance and propaganda and usually there is no philosophy or ideology behind the medium of any mass media and they are formed on commercial basis. According to him, mass media “fabricate non-communication” (169), the reason given for this is “are what always prevents a response, making all processes of exchange impossible…this is the real abstraction of the media. And the system of social control and power is rooted in it” (170). Here the basic term that he used is the “social control”, and it means that the mass media in today’s world is controlling the society and has gripped people’s mind and thoughts. Now the public opinion is same what the media wants them to think, this is height of propaganda. Here the main medium of mass communication he mentioned was television. There is no proper check and balance on television, they can give advertisements on commercial basis and also see their benefit which is usually the commercial benefit, without thinking that what would be the affect of their propaganda or the commercially successful programs on public and their thoughts and opinions. The television reporters can spy on people and can tell people about the personal life of famous people and this creates a lot of problems and complications for them in their personal life. According to him, Graffiti is also a medium of mass communication, because it also reaches the masses in an affective way. He commented that Graffiti “simply smashes the code” (184). And he is very right in his statement. The concept of mass media is very controversial itself. When the media becomes a mass media which means that people started to rely on the source of information that they provide, then there comes few responsibilities that should be shared by that medium and if the media does not care about those responsibilities, it means that it does not qualify as the mass media. "Can one ask questions about the strange fact that, after several revolutions and a century or two of political apprenticeship, ... there are still ... a thousand persons who stand up and twenty million who remain passive -- and not only passive, but who, in all good faith and without even asking themselves why, frankly prefer a football match to a human and political drama? ... power manipulates nothing, the masses are neither mislead nor mystified. Power is only too happy to make football bear a facile responsibility, even to take upon itself the diabolical responsibility for stupefying the masses. This comforts in its illusion of being power, and leads away from the much more dangerous fact that this indifference of the masses is their true, their only practice, that there is no other ideal of them to imagine, nothing in this to deplore, but everything to analyze as the brute fact of a collective retaliation and of a refusal to participate in the recommended ideals, however enlightened," (13-14). And at another place he says, "The only referent which still functions is that of the silent majority. All contemporary systems function on this nebulous entity, on this floating substance whose existence is no longer social, but statistical, and whose only mode of appearance is that of the survey ... They dont express themselves, they are surveyed," (19-20). The main thing that he asked about the mass media was the ideology behind the mass media. What is the philosophy or the ideology of mass media? And if there is any ideology, then does it follow that ideology or not? He says, "It has always been thought -- this is the very ideology of the mass media -- that it is the media which envelop the masses. The secret of manipulation has been sought in a frantic semiology of the mass media. But it has been overlooked, in this naive logic of communication, that the masses are a stronger medium than all the media, that it is the former who envelop and absorb the latter -- or at least there is no priority of one over the other. The mass and the media are one single process. Mass(age) is the message," (44). So the ideology of mass media should be viewed clearly and as he said that masses are stronger than all the media is very correct and people should know their importance and worth. It means that they should not let the media control their mind but media should be controlled by the masses, and that is why it is called mass media. The work of Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian socialist and philosopher his work of art and media is recognized all over the world. He served in politics as well and worked as a political analyst and critical but his major work is in the field of art. Slavoj Žižek is a researcher and worked for the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He also gave lectures in different universities of US and Europe as a visiting faculty. Slavoj Žižek life and work depicts the earlier political instability of Yugoslavia. He was thrown out of his job only because he was “non Marxist”, and they cannot tolerate any non Marxist in a socialist republic. He attained the status of internationally famed philosopher and political thinker after the publication of his first book in English, “The Sublime Object of Ideology”. Through this book he was recognized as the foremost and famous social scientist and thinker. Since then there was no looking back and his career as a socialist grows and his books were mostly read too. The most read and discussed book of Slavoj Žižek is “The Ticklish Subject” (1999). This book is been criticized as well and it takes a firm position against the Habermasians, cognitive scientists, feminists and deconstructionists too and Slavoj Žižek openely criticize them by saying that these all theories and ideas are the New Age ideas or the “obscurantists”. In the same way he criticized the role of media as well. According to him the media today is getting a lot of attention from people and this is the reason that it is called mass media. But there are few responsibilities which come along this fame and popularity and today’s media is simply ignoring these responsibilities and working on its own propaganda. All the things and views that are being shown in media are purely on commercial basis and they never cared that what affect it puts on the minds and thoughts of people who count media as a part of their daily life. He worked on the cultural studies as well and followed the footsteps of French “liberator” Freud. Not only on culture, his work on philosophy, politics and literature, art and cinema is remarkable. He wrote about all these things and wrote very well and his multidimensional skills have made him popular and he had let his imagination flow in a right direction. He had always followed the liberal ideologies. But his liberal views are different from the New Age liberal views of media and feminists especially. He believes in true liberalism and wants to work hard to demolish the false and excessive liberation that is making its way in our society. According to him, man dint realized the true and hidden coordinates of life and in search of the real coordinates; man is going on a wrong path. There is a need for proper guidance to people so that they can take a right track. Here he criticized the modern capitalism as well and he blamed the capitalism for the problems that the mankind is facing right now. He says that men are far away from the Real. And according to him Real is a fragment, which cannot be achieved easily by everyone. It is sometimes known as a fantasy as well. So the need is to realize the Real and in search of Real, people should not go into the wrong directions. He worked on the large gestures, like meta-Real, which includes the reality of universe and he goes deep in thinking this. He says, “This resistance is the answer to the question Why Lenin?: it is the signifier Lenin which formalizes this content found elsewhere, transforming a series of common notions into a truly subversive theoretical formation” So the search of Real took him to the new horizons and as a philosopher he believes on thinking and making his work much better. Conclusion The mass media is of great importance in our life and need of time is that media should realize this and should feel their responsibilities as well. Only then the media can be a good to society otherwise it is taking people’s mind and thought to a wrong direction. The importance of mass media should be felt by the people and masses should control it not the media should control the masses. Bibliography 1. Best, Steven, and Kellner, Douglas (1991) Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. London and New York: MacMillan and Guilford Press. 2. Butler, Rex (1999) Jean Baudrillard: The Defense of the Real. London and Thousand Oaks: Sage. 3. Gane, Mike (1991) Baudrillard. Critical and Fatal Theory. London: Routledge. 4. Rokek, Chris and Bryan Turner (1993), editors Forget Baudrillard. London: Routledge. 5. Salvoj Zizek (2004) Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction, Ian Parker, London: Pluto Press. 6. Taylor, P. A. & Harris, J. Ll. (2005) Digital Matters: The Theory and Culture of the Matrix, London: Routledge. 7. Taylor, P. A. & Harris, J. Ll. (2007 [in press]) Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now, London: McGraw-Hill. 8. 2002, Revolution at the Gates: Žižek on Lenin, the 1917 Writings, London: Verso. 9. http://www.ff.uni-lj.si/oddelki/filo/english/staff/zizeka.htm Read More