Post One: Recapping Important Information

With only two weeks into the new semester, it’s safe to saythat we’ve covered some extremely important topics about the current mediaculture. Between reading Lucy Lippard, Guy Debord, John Berger, Bell Hooks,etc, we may have come across many terms that may or may not be familiar. Let’sbegin analyzing some key expressions from our readings.

The notion of consumer/consumption is continually reiteratedwithin each of our readings. For example, Berger states that “Publicity is theculture of the consumer society,” (page 139). Berger also adds: “Publicity isaddressed to those who constitute the market, to the spectator-buyer who is also the consumer-producer from whom profits are made twice over as a worker and then as a buyer,” (page 142) “Publicity turns consumption into a substitutefor democracy” (page 149).

What is Berger talking about when speaking of aconsumer/consumption? That publicity markets certain goods to a potential buyer(aka the consumer). It is the ways in which the media publicizing such saidgood that attracts the consumer into thinking that they need that product; that in order to be cool and considered normalthey need to purchase the productbeing advertised. Yet, it is how the consumer consumes materials that call fora demand in supplies, thus causing the consumer to also be a producer. Withoutthe need to supply, a corporation or advertiser would have no need to usepublicity. It is by the demand of an item that there is a supply.

Another importantexpression from our readings is “ways of looking”. We can especially note theimportance of the different ways of looking at someone or something with LucyLippard’s writing of “Doubletake”. In “Doubletake”, Lippard tries to“deconstruct” an image that fascinates her. After coming to the realizationthat the picture she looks at has a different meaning than she had anticipated,Lippard writes: “In works like this one, some of the barriers are down, orinvisible, and we ha eth illusion of seeing ourselves, the way we never would see for ourselves, which is whatcommunication is about” (page 90). It is through Lippard’s experience and herwriting that we can realize how each person looks at an object in a differentway. How we perceive something is different than how someone else perceives something– changing the meaning of what we see completely.

Berger also touches on how we see certain things by ways ofpublicity. It is the “dominant” culture that controls how we look at things andthus changing the reality of what that certain object is and the meaningassociated.

The same dominate culture that Berger and Lippard touch uponalso deal with the term popular culture. In the passage from her book Arts and Leisures, Barbara Kruger statesasks: “But doesn’t so-called popular culture have the ability to do some of thesame things: to encapsulate in a gesture, a laugh, a terrific melodic hook, apowerful narrative, the same tenuously evocative moments, the same fugitivevisions?” (page 6). What Kruger is trying to express in terms of popular cultureis that pop is no longer considered leisure. She makes the point ofdistinguishing the need of categorizing popular culture as either “high” or“low” within fine arts.

Popular culture is theblend of poems, dances, music, readings that the majority of a society enjoysor discusses in large numbers. For example, Justin Bieber could be consideredpart of the pop culture of America. While some wouldn’t consider Bieber’stalents and music as fine arts, many other people would. People might feel theneed to categorize Bieber in either one group or another, but that isn’tnecessary because it person has his/her own perceptions and ways of seeingthings.

When discussing popular culture andconsumer/consumption one word becomes key in understanding how our societyworks – the word power. Who has power? What is that power? How does that poweraffect those who have no power? Well, according to Barbara Kruger, “In asociety rife with purported information, we know that words have power, butusually when they don’t mean anything” (page 3). Kruger mentions that howpeople communicate holds power which can also be compared with Gustave Le Bon’swriting in “The Era of the Crowds”.

Le Bon explains in his writing how thepower once held by royalty or authorities is now being held by the masses.Crowds now can petition, riot, and demand products that they want supplied. LeBon writes: “the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces, andof which the prestige is continually on the increase,” (page x). What does thismean? That the power of the masses is growing each day. Le Bon continues toexpress his sentiments towards crowds having more power than authoritiesstating, “Crowds are only powerful for destruction,” (page xiii).

Le Bon also touches upon the topic ofpedagogy. As we progress as an educated civilization our studies on the waypeople live and function increases. Le Bon writes:

“It is only byobtaining some sort of insight into the psychology of crowds that it can beunderstood how slight is the action upon them of laws and institutions, howpowerless they are to hold any opinions other than those which are imposed uponthem, and that it is not with rules based on theories of pure equity that theyare to be led, but by seeking what produces an impression on them and whatseduces them,” (page xiv)

Le Bon illuminates the idea of learning howcrowds process and think in order to know what makes them so violent.

Another aspect of society to consider isthe notion of sexism. It is an obvious fact that advertisers and producers leantheir gaze more towards what’s sexy and who is sexy than of equality of thesexes. With images of women underneath men or simply applying lipsticks andhugging vacuums – it’s easy to see how the medium places stereotypes and rolesin a segregated-gender society.  

Berger touches upon the topic of sexism,writing: “The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself,” (page 134). Women areconstantly being told what make up to buy, what clothes to wear, and what newgadgets they need in order to be considered part of a society and in order tobe happy with themselves. Publicity tries to sell to women the idea of “glamour”and that such glamour will cause envy and thus make women happy to be enviable.

This “gaze” of society is not onlyconsidered in gender but also ethnicity and appearance. Bell Hooks explains thegaze of females in movies as well as the gaze on the stigmas the medium imposeson the black community. 

And what does all this add up to? All these important terms revolve around, what is known as, the spectacle.Guy Debord explains in his book "Society of the Spectacle" how the spectacle has replaced what is considered real. What does this mean? That now the imaginary is the representation of the real, making a fake world that people buy into. He states: "In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of lifepresents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everythingthat was directly lived has moved away into a representation".

Debord also relates marketing with religion, stating that both are very similar to one another and even touches upon the topic of "the gaze" of sexism within the media. 

Debord makes it a point to try to communicate to the readers of his work that we must turn off what we are watching and stop buying into the consumer media that is in fact consuming our lives into something that isn't real. 

Learn more about how media functions by checking out this YouTube page and this playlist.