MEDIA WORLD
Behold the power of the press. The American public is quick to revere the press...yet, ironically is equally quick to criticize the press as well. As I read from the book Media Literacy (2nd edition) I discovered that not much of what it contained seem surprising. What I read was well written and supported by lots of polls, studies, and research. Unfortunately, much of the supporting data was old. I didn't find anything published since the year 2000 and some sources were over 10 years old. That was about the only thing I could find at fault with the text though.
As I read about news myths and the commercialization of news I was reminded of an interview in a movie relative to the topic. In Michael Moore's film "Bowling for Columbine" he has a brief interview with Marilyn Manson and I must admit that eventhought I am not a fan of Mr. Manson's music I was blown away at what he had to say (this can be found at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0310793/quotes) about the media.
"Marilyn Manson: The two by-products of that whole tragedy were, violence in entertainment, and gun control. And how perfect that that was the two things that we were going to talk about with the upcoming election. And also, then we forgot about Monica Lewinsky and we forgot about, uh, the President was shooting bombs overseas, yet I'm a bad guy because I, well I sing some rock-and-roll songs, and who's a bigger influence, the President or Marilyn Manson? I'd like to think me, but I'm going to go with the President.
Michael Moore: Do you know that on the day of the Columbine massacre, the US dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other day?
Marilyn Manson: I do know that, and I think that's really ironic, that nobody said 'well maybe the President had an influence on this violent behavior' Because that's not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you're watching television, you're watching the news, you're being pumped full of fear, there's floods, there's AIDS, there's murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they're not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl's not going to fuck you, and it's just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that's what I think it's all based on, the whole idea of 'keep everyone afraid, and they'll consume.' "
posted by Dimitri | 9:27 PM
5 Comments:
Even though it’s a bit lateral of the topic, I too was impressed by how eloquent Marilyn Manson was during that interview. I wholeheartedly agree that we live in a society of fear and consumption, and it’s abused so frequently that it’s a downright perversion of our entire system of government. It’s unfortunate that product companies and news companies so eagerly resort to exploiting the lowest, most negative forms of human reactions to sell their products. You expect a certain amount of salesmanship from the Nikes of the world, but when the line between them and news media is so distorted that you’re only vaguely aware of which channel you’re watching, something is very wrong.
This topic reminds me of another documentary, “The Merchants of Cool”, which can be viewed online here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/
The basic premise of The Merchants of Cool is that corporate America is investing vast sums of money in an effort to research, define, and market whatever is considered “cool” by the teenage generation. They do this by using so called “culture spies” to track the tastes of popular teens, by having their corp image be cool to win teen credibility, and by using endless hours of marketing research to understand their fans, etc. The end result is that the documentary makes a valid argument that teenagers aren’t creating their own culture anymore, but are buying a pre-packaged one from corporate America. Corporations are very scientific in their approach of marketing to teenagers, and they get better at it each year. It’s frightening to realize how much energy is spent selling products to teens; and if a society is that willing to aggressively exploit a young generation, you can be damn sure they’ll do whatever it takes to sell to everyone else too.
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It seems to me rather amazing the extent to which the media will look to people within the public's eye, such as Marilyn Manson and others that can be so ealiy laid to blame, explicitly blame them for actions taken by others, all while turning a blind eye to the constant, unwaivering and totally graphic pictorial influences (the media itself) presented by those in "command" of this country. Yes, Columbine was a tragedy, but seriously, was Manson to blame? He didn't work to relax gun conrol laws... he isn't sending hundreds of thousands of troops into another country or dropping bombs on HUMAN BEINGS. If anything, Manson is merely a marketing genius; a man who knows how to present himself in such a way that he can make a living selling his music. The media, however, doesn't pick up on this. The media... in all it's bias and greed, tells us instead what they think we want to hear... they spread to us a fear of those within and from outside of our "sactuary of freedom" telling us that death, destruction, mayhem and chaos all reign... but we're fine, 'cause it's his fault, or it's hers, or theirs... but not ours... never ours. I guess my bias against the media is rather prominent here... at least I'm neither forming mine as a way to gain popularity, nor trying to gain money from outward expression of said bias.
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