



S1: oh i don't have a microphone here. my name is Deborah and i'm a, uh researcher with the Communication Studies Department, and um, Professor Brody has, let me come into your class to recruit you for an experiment we're doing. um, what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna pass around these, these sheets, and they're eligibility forms, so if you could if um, if you're interested in (getting paid,) we pay you for participating it only takes about an hour. um, i'm gonna go ahead and pass out the sheets, and if you could, pass 'em back over to Nikolas and then Nikolas will collect them for me and give them to me. if you're eligible, we'll call you, um, and we'll set up a time for you to come in and uh give you the (xx) so, it's it's a pretty simple process you come in and, we have you do a task and like i said it only takes an hour and we'd pay you for it. so, we'd appreciate you coming in, and, participating. any questions...? okay then i'm gonna pass these down and if you could just give them over to Nikolas. thank you.
S2: um its a (free) announcement day so uh we have one more announcement before we get started.
S2: okay i'll give you a minute or two to fill out these forms for Deborah, and uh, then we'll get started. um okay uh guys could you pass them uh this way? <P :29> okay, it that, can you hear me? is this on? no? <P :05> can you hear me? no? yeah? thank you. that's okay i'll (xx) how's that? now? okay. alright, let's get started. um, the two songs that you heard at the beginning of class, um were both by Randy Newman, uh, one is a a song from a very great album that came out in nineteen seventy called Good Old Boys, and it's called Mr President Have Pity on the Working Man, and the uh, second one also by Randy Newman on his latest album, C-D, i'm dating myself, um, is a song about Karl Marx uh, which is why i played it, and it's called uh Life's Not Fair. uh, i'm playing these because today we're going to talk about Marxist analyses of the, of the mass media. i don't know how much any of you have read Marx or studied Marx, um what has uh become clear to us in the Department is that some pe- uh- is- tha- as- as (people) have been coming out of one-oh-one is just kind of a basic understanding of why Karl Marx and Marxism matters hasn't been good. so for those of you have already read Marx, uh my apologies, um for those of you who haven't, um, the basic thing that we're gonna try to do here today is get you to understand why Karl Marx matters, uh in the area of media studies. okay? now, so the first thing i wanna do, is we're going to_ I know that you all like my art work so much, so i thought i'd um put this nice triangle up here. now, this triangle, which is actually not even a very good triangle given what we're uh gonna be drawing, represents, kind of income distribution in the United States. okay? so, this is the bottom of the barrel, okay? and this is, right up here, see this person up there? that's Bill Gates, mkay? <SS LAUGH> alright, so that's Bill Gates up there okay, the richest person on the planet. alright, who else is up here...?
SU-M: (Abercrombie and Fitch)
S2: say it again?
SU-M: professional athletes
S2: okay, uh celebrities, right? especially, um the successful celebrities like professional athletes, very well-paid actors and actresses like Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, uh Demi Moore. yeah.
SU-M: politicians, i would say
S2: not not really, they're not quite up there, but they might be, okay if we're calling this a hundred thousand dollars so a lot of politicians would be like here right? [SU-M: yeah ] cuz a lotta politicians have made good, okay? alright, um, so, in_ up here we've got like, Oprah, Madonna, okay? Bill Gates. who else might be up here? yeah.
SS: (xx) 
SU-M: (Ross Perot)
SU-F: (xx)
S2: Donald Trump, uh Ross Perot, okay, sort of famous millionaires, right? um, and then there are people you guys haven't heard of probably much. i mean i know you guys have heard of Bill Knight. right? the the head of Nike. especially since a lot of you have been active in the anti-sweatshop movement on campus. so Bill Knight_ (if) Bill Knight's average, um, annual compensation, um, not counting stocks is, you know like one-and-a-half million, um, and that doesn't count other kinds of income, but, you know, there are other people like John Welsh, who you guys probably haven't heard of, the C-E-O of General Electric, whose, um compensation, in nineteen ninety-six was twenty million dollars. i think it's a good salary for running General Electric. um, Anthony Riley, the C-E-O of Heinz, okay, twenty-four million bucks a year. okay so, we have, C-E-Os certain C-E-Os up here as well, mkay? and they are like way above the hundred thousands. okay? now. this, we're gonna do this in nineteen ninety-five dollars because that's the most recent year that i have figures for, okay...? over a hundred thousand dollars, all the way up to Bill Gates, that's about seven, point-three percent of the population. okay? [SU-M: in America? ] and this is the United States, yeah. the United States. alright, now <P :05> who's in here...? between seventy thousand, hundred thousand. who'd we have in here? oh, let's not forget, my dears, anchormen and -women... like, um Diane Sawyer who makes a million bucks a year, mkay? okay, um, alright, then, so we have this very rarefied area where the very rich are, okay? who_ what would be next down here...? we also will have some, obviously we have some lawyers up in here, we'd have some surgeons up in here, (mkay?) how 'bout in here? seventy to hundred thousand...? some journalists, some college professors, some business people some middle management folks, right? some salespeople. [SU-M: college professors ] college professors, accountants some journalists okay. the group in here, this is about eleven percent. mkay? el- about eleven percent makes this (up.) mkay then, and, you know my drawing as you guys know is really bad so this pyramid does not really approximate any of the percentages but you get the idea, okay? alright now we go from forty-five thousand, to seventy thousand. okay who do we have in here? other college professors, other journalists, okay? um, small business people, te- hi- t- high school teachers, other, um, nurses, store clerks, some administrators, okay maybe some carpenters, okay. this is, uh twenty-one-point-eight percent mkay? earns this. <P :05> below this, is sixty percent of the population. <P :05> now way at the bottom, less than, ten thousand bucks, ten thousand bucks this is nineteen ninety-five money ten thousand dollars is as you guys know, nothing. okay? nine-point-six percent of the population. so nearly ten percent of the population, is trying to get by on ten thousand bucks or less, mkay. alright... lemme ask you something. there are all these people down here, okay? and uh let me just_ to break this out a little bit, between ten thousand, and say twenty-two to five, is another nineteen-point-one percent so we got_ here we got thirty percent right here, okay? now, why is it, that all these people down here, say okay to this arrangement? they say, okay, there can just be a few, really rich people on the top, and all of the rest of us will stay on the bottom that's just fine with us. okay, why do people say that? and they do say that in this culture, in our society. well, this is the kind of question that Marxists ask. particularly Marxists who are looking at the role of the mass media in getting all of these people down here, to say, yes, to Bill Welsh making twenty million a year to Madonna making all the money she does to Oprah making all the money she does, to Michael Jordan making all the_ mkay Marxists wanna know what role do the media play, in getting all these people to say yes to what is clearly, clearly an unequal economic situation. and in this country it is profoundly unequal. mkay? lemme just give you a, um, a few more statistics... in nineteen ninety-two the number of poor people in the United Ste- in the United States, reached its highest level since nineteen sixty-four... okay? in the aftermath we've done these figures already <P :05> okay, in nineteen ninety-one, the richest, one-fifth, of households... got forty-six-point-five percent, of all, household income. <P :05> the poorest one-fifth, got, three-point-eight percent, of all income. household income <P :05> by nineteen ninety-five, the richest one percent, one percent, okay of the population, owned approximately forty percent, of private wealth. <P :11> let me just give you some uh, um increases in average income between nineteen seventy and nineteen ninety-five. and one of the things that especially happened, during, under Reaganism, was a t- a real tightening of the s- of the pressure on the middle classes. the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the middle class got really squeezed financially, uh beginning in the nineteen eighties. mkay, so, in a twenty-five period(sic) between nineteen seventy and nineteen ninety-five, the richest five percent, of the population saw their income go up fifty-four percent. mkay? so the richest five percent sees their income go up fifty-four-point-one percent... mkay, the top twenty percent saw their income go up fifty-three-point-four percent. and we'll just move down to the bottom twenty percent saw their income go up one-point-five percent... so you can see the rich were getting richer, and the poor were getting poorer, during this period. the median income in the United Stated in nineteen ninety-five, for men, was twenty-seven thousand nine hundred dollars. <P :10> mkay. for women, this is median now, for women it was twenty-one... we could do other kinds of divisions as well, along the racial lines for example, as well as g- uh geographical area. okay, so, media scholars who are influenced by Marx look at this situation, and ask why so many people on the bottom who predominate, in terms of population say okay to this arrangement and they look to the mass media to get ideas about the role that the mass media can play in getting people to indeed say yes. okay? so that's why we are going to learn about, uh, Marxism. okay, those who analyze how the media, help excuse and encourage unequal economic and political power relations have been profoundly influenced by Karl Marx. and they refer to their work as Marxist or Neo-Marxist. um, now Marxism has made absolutely crucial contributions to analyses of popular culture. so, first i want to tell you who Karl Marx was and uh why those of us studying the media uh need to know about him and his work. so the first thing i wanna do is distinguish between political Marxism and intellectual Marxism. okay...? okay, most of you probably know the term Marxism, as a dirty word. alright? um, as something that guided communism. communism has collapsed in the former Soviet Union, it's collaped(sic) in Eas- collapsed in Eastern Europe. it's certainly been very powerfully contested in China, right? and most, when most Americans hear the words Marxism, they don't think of intellectual Marxism, they're thinking of political Marxism. mkay? uh, political Marxism drew from Marx's writings, Marx and Engels' writings <P :12> and, drawing from Marx and Engels' writings, became a political program, that you guys know primarily as communism and socialism. a political program for popular liberation designed to produce a classless society in which all goods were socially owned. in other words, a political program to get away, t- to do away with that triangle that we just saw, right? say it again, a political program, and again this is on the web, for a popular liberation designed to produce a classless society... in which all goods are socially owned... there were, as you know enormous failures in political Marxism. it quickly became clear, after the Russian Revolution, certainly by the early nineteen thirties, that what existed in, in the Soviet Union was not the kind of communism that Marx and Engels dreamed of, they dreamed of a very utopian uh kind of society. instead what emerged in the Soviet Union by the nineteen thirties was totalitarianism, okay? not communism... communism was an effort to apply Marxist theories into practice, um and communism sought to overthrow um, the capitalist regimes that that existed although there was not really a capitalist regime in Russia in the teens, it was very much still a feudal society, very much of a peasant, agrarian society. but the idea behind communism, was that you would overthrow the capitalist system by revolutionary means, if necessary, and then establish this classless society. now socialism, which has in fact been mo- much more successful and exists in a variety of countries around the world, also very much influenced by Marxism, and advocates a system of collective government ownership, mkay. so what socialism, it does is_ socialism has not necessarily come about by violent revolutionary action. (it) has been more incremental and advocates a system, of collective, or government ownership... [SU-M: collective socialism? ] [SU-F: socialism? ] yeah, socialism, advocates a system of collective or government ownership, and the management, of the means of production, and distribution of goods. and yes i was saying (xx) advocates a system of collective or government o- ownership and management of the means of production... and distribution of goods... now, what countries are socialist to some degree? some of you have been to them. Canada is socialist to some degree, Britain is socialist to some degree although the socialism of Britain, was severely undercut by Margaret Thatcher and continues to be by Tony Blair's government even though it is a later government, okay? Sweden is a socialist country. Denmark has elements of socialism, so do France and Italy. in other words, a variety of countries in Europe have varying degrees of socialism meaning that the government provides certain kinds of services to the population, that the government manages certain key industries like say the railroads or the airlines or the public utilities or the broadcasting systems. in the United States, we had uh, the beginnings of a social welfare state that really began during the Depression and has been under assault, heavy assault, um in the last fifteen years or so. we have a much less socialist country uh, and in fact most would regard our country as not socialist at all. it has a few, tiny, elements, of sort of socialist practice, right? like Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, those sorts of things. but in this country, we believe in the sanctity of the market and private enterprise and private ownership. alright? now, intellectual Marxism is different, okay? and and it's very important that you understand this because uh in this country as i said before, since Marxism is such a dirty word precisely because Marxist political systems have come in- in a such disrepute there is a tendency to conflate that with trashing intellectual Marxism, okay intellectual Marxism is it's, is different. intellectual Marxism, has to do with an analysis of economic conditions, economic and political conditions. so it's, it is an intellectual activity. and let me be more specific about that. <WRITING THROUGHOUT UTTERANCE> intellectual Marxism is an historical and economic analysis <P :05> of how ownership <P :04> of the modes of production <P :06> produce different relations, different relationships, okay between workers and nonworkers <P :11> and also, cultural institutions, that perpetuate and justify inequality. i'll say it again. intellectual Marxism is an historical and economic analysis, of how ownership, and the modes of production produce, produces, sorry different relationships, between workers and nonworkers. and this means particularly workers and owners, okay workers and owners and different social, and cultural institutions that perpetuate and justify inequality. <P :09> mkay? it's it's also up on the web. okay, now i- you know some have taken the failures of communism and the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as a clee- a complete refutation of Marxist theories. others believe, of course that the central truth of Marx and Engels, the the central truths of the activities remain untouched, because of, the kind of communism that we saw for example in the Soviet Union was such a bastardization, of communism as envisioned by Marx and Engels. now, intellectual Marxists would also point out the following facts, that despite the resiliency of capitalism and capitalism has been an incredibly, resilient and productive economic system, right? but that despite the successes of capitalism, that the capitalist world, is still stalked by violence, it's still stalked by poverty. the capitalist world is stalked by injustice, and it's stalked by worker alienation. anybody who has ever read a Dilbert cartoon, knows the extent to which workers in this country, ma- millions of them are stalked by worker alienation. [SU-F: (can you repeat that?) ] i'm sorry? [SU-F: can you repeat that please? ] i sure can. intellectual Marxists would would point to the fact that despite the fact that, uh, capitalism has been very resilient, robust and successful way to managing an economy, a very successful robust economic system, that nonetheless capitalist societies are stalked still by poverty, by violence, by injustice, and by alienation. <P :04> and if we go back to our triangle, that's a triangle of the the pre-eminent capitalist the United States, ours. and what do we see? that capitalism's biggest failure, is to distribute the blessings of capitalism fairly. the blessings of capitalism are not distributed fairly. so we have a society here for example in which we have great wealth, and we also have absolute abject poverty. and this is a failure of this particular economic system. so i just wanna make sure that, um in our discussion, you know that what i'm talking about is intellectual Marxism, not political Marxism, okay? now, who was Karl Marx? Karl Marx was born in Germany in eighteen eighteen. he studied law, but he got_ earned his degree in philosophy, his PhD in philosophy in eighteen forty-one. Marx was from Prussia. uh for those of you who know old German maps, Prussia is the northern part of Germany that was the very large part of Ge- Germany that included Berlin, and during the time that Karl Marx was coming of age, it was run uh very autocratically, um it was run with an iron fist. freedom of speech, freedom of religion were not guaranteed. the government exerted strict censorship on publications in schools and um, Marx was also coming of age during the real explosion, in Europe of the Industrial Revolution, the real rise of industrialism, which was particularly taking hold in, uh uh Britain, and in Germany. now Marx supported himself by his writing, he was a newspaper editor in the eighteen forties, he also wrote, he was a stringer for the New York Herald Tribune, many Americans don't know this that Karl Marx actually wrote for American newspapers. he never made much money. Karl Marx lived in uh, very desperate poverty most of his life. um he uh married in eighteen forty-one. he and his wife had six children, three of them never made it to adulthood and um, and it was a very, hard uh life that he lived. one of the major ways that Marx survived was due to the generosity of his of his friend and lifelong collaborator, uh, Frederick Engels. now, Marx's writings and his political beliefs which became increasingly critical to Prussian authority and and increasingly radical made it impossible to stay in Germany. so Karl Marx emigrated to London in eighteen fifty. [SU-M: (emigrated where?) ] London, he went to London in eighteen fifty. and those of you who have ever been to, um the British Museum, you can go to the room where Karl Marx used to go and and and write, um, Das Kapital, a very famous thesis. now, Marx and Engels met in eighteen forty-two. Engels was able to support Marx through much of, uh well all of Marx's life, and he he came from a fairly well-to-do business family. and the reason this partnership worked so well was that Engels was the better writer, uh Marx was the deeper thinker. this was not to say that Engels did not influence Marx's thinking, he did. Engels wrote books on his own, but they collaborated, uh on a book that i uh i am especially gonna talk to you about today because it has had such an enormous influence in media studies... now, what they did is they began uh, studying and writing about the exploitation of factory workers, by factory owners. and what Marx and Engels did for example is they compiled, uh a lot of data, uh from um uh income uh information in England, in the nineteenth century to show that in fact as England had become more industrially wealthy, that the workers were actually more emiserated(sic) than ever. mkay, so the world that Marx was seeing, was one of increased worker exploitation, and Marx believed that as this worker exploitation became utterly unbearable, that the workers would unite, workers of the world unite, and they would stage a revolution <P :07> they also began their more theoretical analyses <COUGH> excuse me, of how capitalism, as an economic system worked. and uh, there's a word that some of you have already heard, some of you will hear, political economy <P :05> um, (xx) sorry... which is the analysis of how the state and the corporate sphere interact. political economy looks at the relationships between, corporate sector and the state, to see how that interaction, shapes business practices, shapes regulation, shapes cultural institutions <P :04> now, a part of their work was the claim that how a society produces its means of existence, its mode of production, okay? put this on here again. <P :05> ultimately deters- determines the political, social, and cultural shape of that society. okay? so at the heart of their work this uh is a claim that how a society produces its means of existence. its mode of production, ultimately determines, the political, social, and cultural shape of that society. <P :08> that, how a society produces its means of existence, its mode of production, determines the political social and cultural shape of that society. so, lemme give you some examples. here are different, modes of production. feudalism is a mode of production, alright? you have, uh the big guy with the castles, okay the aristocrats, and you have peasants, that's one mode of production. there have been slave societies that have basically been slave-master uh societies. there are industrialists and workers, in an industrial, uh, capitalist mode of production. <P :04> in other words, what they're, um what they're really emphasizing, is that the economic arrangements, okay the economic arrangements of a society drive that society. it's the economic relations <P :04> that determine the nature of that society. <P :12> now, what we're gonna do, today, this is the <P :08> uh, lemme just get a sense of where folks are at here, how many of you have already done this stuff on Marx? okay, just you. okay... it's very um, w- we all struggle here not to do overlap, but sometimes it's unavoidable. alright... let me talk to you about the the the most sort of important, sets of notions here that shape people's (xx) ideology based in superstructure_ can everybody, can you guys in the back see this? [SU-F: is this one on the web? ] i'm sorry? [SU-F: are you putting this on the web? ] it's on the web. yup. okay. the base, these of- the the base refers to the forces of production, and the relations of production. these are two, th- th- it sort of encompasses two things okay...? the forces of productions are things like the raw materials the tools the technology, um the workers themselves and the workers' skills. okay these are all th- the uh, forces of production. but the base also includes relations of production that emerge from these forces of production and how they're set up. mkay, the class relations of those engaged in the production... so in other words, each mode of production, and we talked about this uh just a minute ago with agricultural industrial, produces particular relations of production, master-slave, lord-peasant, bourgeois, capitalist versus proletariat. one's class position then is determined by one's relation to the modes of production. okay? <P :05> the other major, uh, element of society then is referred to as the superstructure. these are the various institutions, political religious, educational cultural <P :07> and the forms of social consciousness that arise from the basic mode of production in other words, these are institutions, that emerge as a result of the mode of production. so that certain kinds of cultural institutions Marx and Engels would argue, would arise from a feudal peasant society and different kinds of institutions would arise from an industrial society. but that the nature of those institutions is determined by the mode of production. <P :04> so the superstructure expresses and legitimizes the base... while the base, determines the content and form of the superstructure. okay, that's not up here so the base determines the content and form of the superstructure... so let me just elaborate a little bit and then we'll get to false consciousness. so the economic base, produces the kind of superstructural terrain. but the form of the activity that takes place there, is determined it's determined not just by the base but also by the interaction of those other institutions so as you guys, know, if you look at an educational system, the media, um religious institutions, there's often powerful interaction among these institutions that are part of the superstructure... but what matters here for y- for you guys in sort of classic Marxism, this is classic Marxism, is that culture, can never be the primary force (in) history. okay? <P :06> it can be an active agent in social change culture can be an agent of social change but it (can) never be the primary force of history.<P :07> okay, do you have any questions about base and superstructure? <P :07> alright, why does this matter why do you in Com one-oh-one need to know about (xx) superstructure? because the argument is, coming out of classical Marxism, that what you_ this is how this argument gets extended. that what you need to know most, when you turn on your television set or open a magazine, or go to a movie, what you need to know most, is who made that product and how they're benefiting from it. in other words Marxism asks you constantly to think about the base as a driving force you know the economic modes of th- uh, organizing a society, the particular forces of production, how those shape what you're seeing culturally. now one of the arguments that merged out of classic, Marxism was the notion of false consciousness... do mo- do most of you have this written down yet or are you still working on it? [SU-M: (still working on it) ] got it? okay. lemme give you a little background on this. i just wanna give you a few quotes. this all comes from, this is on the web, but that's not here. a very famous book <P :05> which some of you may have already read, The German Ideology. okay, The German Ideology was written by Marx and Engels, and has had enormous impact on certain sectors, um it was written in uh eighteen, forty-five, forty-six okay? now what they do in part in The German Ideology is really lay out, a a a kind of theoretical train about what kind of ideas come to be sort of the common sense of the times. alright? and here's what they said. and this is a very uh, famous claim, the ideas of the ruling class, are in every epoch, the ruling ideas. okay, i'll say that again. the ideas of the ruling class, are in every epoch, the ruling ideas. in other words, anybody can make it to the top. anybody can become a millionaire. anybody can become pregnant. people who are poor, they deserve to be poor. they're lazy. people who are rich, deserve to be rich. they earned it. okay? these kinds of uh, American platitudes, a Marxist would say, benefit elites, alright? because they don't interrogate unequal, uh monetary economic relations. they just ac- accept them as the natural order of the world and then if people accept them as the natural order of the world, right? then nobody's going to challenge, the position of those people who inhabit the top one percent. everybody will just say, that's how it is. we're rich, they deserve to be rich, poor people deserve to be poor, if i just work harder, i can make it to the top. okay? that's what they mean by the ideas of the ruling classes being the ruling ideas. in other words ideas that benefit the ruling classes according to a Marxist, become so naturalized and are just so taken for granted that everybody buys into them even though they are ideas that do not benefit the vast majority, of the society. so even though in fact, it is not true that anybody can become a millionaire. it is not true that anybody can become president. it is not true that poor people deserve to be poor, or that all rich people deserve to be rich. many of them were lucky, many of them inherited it, okay? even though many of these things are not true, the belief system is very powerful and works to help us see the way things are. that triangle that we saw, as uh taken for granted when you're looking at the world. okay? now let me just read you a- another, um a quote from, The German Ideology. what they argue is that the class that has_ that controls the means of material production, the classes who control the factories, alright? that build cars that build trains that build cities, that class, also has at the same time, control over the means of mental production. in other words according to this argument those who control, the industrial production of the country who are the wealthy people who basically build things and have money, also control the mental production of a country. those who lack, mkay, those who lack those kinds of financial resources, also lack the ability, right? to have their ideas come out and be s- be uh, considered on the same level. because they don't have the resources to get their ideas out in the same way they don't own the newspapers, they don't own museums, later on, long after Marx is dead they don't own radio stations they don't own television stations they don't have advertising agencies (xx) mkay? so in other words, the predominant ideas common to a capitalist society, are those of the ruling class, according to Marxist analysis. now these might not be the only ideas, but they are the ruling ideas that dominate the consciousness or actions of those outside the ruling class. <P :04> okay... now what the ruling classes are compelled to do under these circumstances, is represent their interests as the common interests of all society... and why is this so compelling? well, people do wanna think that, maybe i could become a millionaire. maybe i can make it to the top and then i'll have all those benefits that those other people do. there's something very attractive about this narrative about this story that is a story of possibility, alright? it's a story of possibility any of us can do it you know? we don't live in a caste system in this country. it can happen to anybody so there's something very compelling about this particular narrative. now, one of Marx's uh key metaphors for ideology is uh uh false consciousness. this is the irrational or illusory thinking produced by class (xx) and social formation i know this sounds really jargony. um, but basically it refers to the ideas imposed on the majority are the (workers) of society. let me give you um, just something close to home i can give you lots of examples of false consciousness. a Marxist (xx) might, um look at my position for example and say the following, you think that what you are is an educator. you think that what you're doing is enriching, the minds of young people and, uh influencing their lives and you're doing this uh, uh very noble good thing, trying to change the world but really what you are is a worker in a knowledge factory. that's all you are, a worker in a knowledge factory. and that you have an illusion, that gets you, you know through the day, but it's merely an illusion. it's false consciousness... just one example of of a variety. okay <P :06> false consciousness tries to explain why workers, have frequently been in support, of the very system that exploits them, alright? or have stayed removed from labor unions, or class struggle. false consciousness tries to explain why it is that people on the bottom of that triangle go okay. and they go okay because they believe in the belief system that promises them, access to the top... now the_ Marx's uh uh very famous example of this which you_ i i'm sure you all know, is that religion is the opiate of the masses. you've all heard this. um, that religion was a kind of narcotic, uh that substituted dreams of happiness in the hereafter, for demands for social justice right now, alright? and there have been Marxist critiques for example, of the role of Christianity a- in slavery, in keeping uh s- African-American slaves in the United States, wedded to their position by using Christianity to promise them, a noble wonderful glorious life in the hereafter, mkay? now uh what people subsequent to Marx have looked at, especially as the power of religion has declined and the power of the mass media (had) increased is how the mass media have become the opiate of the masses. alright? that it's the mass media really that lull us into, a sort of distracted, happy, deluded state where we're not gonna go to (m-) um the socialist meetings, we're not gonna go to anti-sweat shop activist meetings, we're not gonna ch- really try to change the world. it's like you know tired i'm gonna go watch Party of Five. mkay? so what Marxist media critics do in part, is look at the way in which media products, um divert people away from political, knowledge, divert people away from political historical knowledge, that would, for example connect you guys, to long enduring histories or youth movements in the twentieth century, many of which've been radical, to workers' movements in the twentieth century to ani-war activism, to civil rights movements and feminist movements etcetera. okay? Marxist arguments would look at how the media kind of obliterate that kind of history. and so in fact you don't know much history, you don't wanna know much history. what's in it for you, right? right? and a Marxist would say that that kind of eradication of history that would tie you to other young people like you and tie you to a history, that might resonate with you, is a very effective and potent use of the mass media to depoliticize you. okay? that the mass_ one of the f- the functions of the mass media is to depoliticize you, make you not care about politics at all <P :04> that in fact, what a Marxist would argue is that the main function of the mass media is to reaffirm the status quo. the status quo is great, oh there may be some problems. but basically the status quo is great. this is the best economic system in the world. we should all be happy and shut up, and go (xx) mkay? <P :04> now, uh, as you remember from the very beginning of class, when we talked about definitions of ideology, this is the other thing that Marx and Engels put on the table they didn't want us to think about ideology as some kind of programmatic set of beliefs or propaganda. right? th- they wanted us to think about ideology, as the commonsense values and attitudes, that sustain unequal power relations. so that's where a lot of this um thinking, new thinking about ideology came from. now, if um, there are debates about the extent to which Marx and Engels were economic determinists, we've use the word technological determinist before but the extent to which they were economic determinists meaning that always and only in the last instance, it's the economy that drives everything. you know wh- huge debates in the academy about this. but somebody who only looks at um, these kind of economic interests, let's say (xx) the mass media for example, argues only from economic interests, could be called, a vulgar Marxist. okay? because, they're doing a kind of a very mechanistic reading, of Marx. it's always a good insult to hurl at somebody, you vulgar Marxist. um, alright. now if you wanted to make a case for Marx and Engels, uh of a- analysis as applied to the mass media you'd begin with the following. okay, you'd say, look at who owns the media, right now. look at who owns the media right now. who owns the media right now? owned by a few huge, uh, international, global media monopolies. okay? the very rich and the very powerful. Rupert Murdock. Disney. Time Warner. okay? a few major corporations. very wealthy corporations own almost all of the media outlets in the United States. radio stations television stations the studios that produce programming advertising agencies magazines books, record companies they own it all. okay? so first of all you'd look at who owns the stuff and say, this is all concentrated in the hands, of a few capitalist very wealthy capitalist owners. okay? so that would be step one in your argument. therefore, you would argue, since they own the stuff, it's their ideas, that are gonna receive much greater prominence than the ideas of other people. and even though some of what they produce might seem like, it's you know geared to, uh, disaffected women, or people of color or seeks to show, uh poor people a little bit. that that's all kind of a mask. okay, it's all sort of a mask that really, what's getting out there over and over, because they own the stuff aren- are their ideas. and their ideas predominate, would the argument go. and therefore third part of the argument, because of that, then, this ideological domination, comes to sort of surround us all. that we're all (xx) this ideological domination they produce. and what that means then since we all buy into it, is that it maintains the existing system, of class inequality. which allows that triangle to exist. mkay? so, A they own it, B because they own it, it's their ideas that predominate, other kinds of ideas not consonant with those ideas don't get much air play C because their ideas predominate most of us that's, our imaginations are kind of stunted. if that's what we come to believe, we don't get much other alternative ways of looking at the world. and therefore the status quo which benefits them, is maintained. mkay? that would be like a classic Marxist argument about the media <P :05> okay. um, lemme just give you a few examples of how Marxists might um, uh take on uh various aspects of the media, um, and i wanna talk about pseudo-individuation, too. it's up here, pseudo indonat- individuation, the standardization of media forms and audience tastes, through patterned predigested and endlessly recycled cultural entities, okay. i will unpack that for you... what's the difference between In Sync, Ninety-Eight Degrees, the Backstreet Boys, The New Edition, and New Kids on the Block? [SU-F: the New Kids are the best? ] say it again? [SU-M: they're popular. ] [SU-F: New Kids on the Block are the best ] i can't hear you, sorry. [SU-F: i just said that New Kids on the Block are the best ] New Kids on the Block were the best is one answer we have down here. what are the differences? look, they are all, these cute boys who can dance. most of them don't play instruments. mkay? what they play is the audience, okay? they are each socially differentiated, so that, the presumptive female fan can identify_ she can choose her New Kid or her Backstreet Boy whether it's Howie or i don't have all (their) names right okay? <SS LAUGH> sorry. you know. Howie's not bad i have a ten-year-old so i know that. um, but basically, here's what a Marxist pseudo-individuation argument would say. this is the same damn group. same group, from New Edition, New Kids on the Block basically rip off New Edition, and a lot of other types of black music and black culture, come out, they're androgynous, they're cute, they dance, they're not threatening, they showcase a kind of feminized masculinity, they're a huge hit, then, you know, you know they get dumped on and we get another one. now what's happened? a Marxist would say the following. there is a new (xx) of young girls in the United States just ripe for the picking. and there's plenty of room, for a couple of these bands, In Sync, Backstreet Boys, etcetera and throw in a few girls too, like Brittany Spears. okay...? they're the same band but it doesn't matter because what a capitalist culture industry does according to a Marxist argument, is it produces the same thing that it knows works, over and over and over and over just recycles it over and over. you might have slightly different embellishments, um, for example i if if my memory serves me correctly, uh well there were like certain kinds of hairdos, that the New Kids had that are probably different from the hairdos that the Backstreet Boys have, alright? (xx) some of them, one guy has, you know, this very clearly laid out sort of facial hair marker and another one doesn't. these are stylistic flourishes that seem to distinguish the Backstreet Boys from everybody else, but they're simply stylistic flourishes meant to mark difference where no difference exists... and what we get, hey the New Kids worked, the Backstreet Boys worked In Sync worked, so let's keep cranking this stuff out. and what happens_ this is just one kind of example so what do we get according to this argument? a very standardized kind of popular music with very sort of standardized, modes of address to the audience, and standardized ways for this particular kind of male band which is a very particular kind of defined male band right? to beha- to behave and perform, and that this is just one example of the endless standardization that confronts people in popular culture, and when you are uh, basically surrounded by, this this kind of pseudo-individuation in music, and then you turn on television and what's on? here are the shows that are on. there are a bunch of friends living in an apartment in New York City. about five of those kind of shows. there's a young woman working in publishing, with some sort of smart ass s- staff around. another kind of show Just Shoot Me Suddenly Susan right? they're all the same show all the same show mkay? um, back i- before you guys were born, there were there were these cop shows. i don't know if you've ever seen any of these in rerun. Starsky and Hutch, uh Kojak Simon and Simon um they were all the same show too. it was two guys, there was a slightly homoerotic charge there <SS LAUGH> they um, had cute different outfits maybe they'd have an odd pet but it was the same show. it was two guys solving crimes. alright so what is the argument here from a Marxist perspective about pseudo-individuation? here's what a Marxist could say. and again, i'm laying this out for you all i am not asking you, to necessarily adopt this view cuz there are criticisms, there are important (inventions) that we'll talk about Thursday into Marxism. i want you to understand what it is, okay? so, what a Marxist would say is the, cumulative effect, of all of this like pseudo-individuation, the same stuff, over and over and over and over okay? is that your imagination becomes stunted. you can't even imagine, sort of other ways of thinking about the world, or engaging in storytelling. or engaging in music making, and already, your, your uh, you know, radar detector should be going up given what's happening, all of the various things that happen in music that are very much in opposition to say Brittany Spears. right. okay but the argument would be that your imaginations in this kind of culture industry in which it's very much in the owner's interest to keep giving us more more more of the same same same that is happy, your major goal in life should be to be happy. um, if you're happy, you'll go buy more stuff, you won't be thinking about much of anything else because you'll be on the sofa watching Caroline in the City, okay that your imaginations your political imagination as well as your intellectual interest and ability, in thinking differently about the world is suffocated by pseudo-individuation. okay? that's the argument. um, let me just give you um, a f- one or two other arguments, and then i wanted to set something up really quickly before we go away. okay um, it was, let's see you all were, how old were you guys when Desert Storm happened? [SS: eleven ] eleven? ten? yeah? okay. alright. so you remember the butcher of Baghdad, right? the butcher of Baghdad. and, uh let me just give you again a Marxist reading of Desert Storm. this is child's play, by the way, since news management by the U-S government was so rigid and censorship so utterly and totally complete, that various publications filed a suit in f- in federal court, against pri- uh charging prior restraint by the government. that the government was only letting out you know certain kinds of images of uh Norman Schwartzkopf et al, other kinds of images didn't get out but it was a very very carefully orchestrated, quote unquote war. so what would a Marxist say about this? okay first of all, it was in the U-S government's interest, to present Desert Storm, as a quick and just victory, in which the United States' clear military and moral superiority were demonstrated without question, right? that's what was in the U-S government's interest. so, we get Saddam Hussein now if you wanna mobilize public feeling around this war what do you need? you need a really bad enemy, right? a really bad guy. so Saddam Hussein becomes, Hitler. he's the butcher of Baghdad, and in fact on certain pu- on certain publications his mustache was altered by air brushing so it was_ looked more like Hitler's mustache. um, the news was carefully managed now he- and you know some of the stories we went in we kicked butt we got out. okay? now, what didn't get reported? the news that U-S forces had killed over one hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers, many of them still teenagers, was buried from government press releases and buried from much of the nightly news. also, not really covered, um were yo- you know that there's still the United States still has imposed an embargo on Iraq and by the way i am not holding up Saddam Hussein as any paragon of virtue okay? this is not about suggesting that S- Saddam Hussein, is anything but what he is. but it is about the use of government propaganda to, um, mobilize public will and to give the American public only some information and not others so that it will go along with what the government wants. this embargo, okay as of nineteen ninety-six this was three years ago, now you know what this embargo does. it doesn't allow water purification to go_ any kind of water purification systems to enter Iraq. it's an embargo on pure water. it's an embargo on insulin and other kinds of medicines. it's an embargo on pain relievers, and anesthesia. now, what is the effect of this? and what was the idea behind the embargo? oh if the United States has the embargo of course the Iraqis are gonna rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein. well what's the real result of the embargo? that a half-a-million children by nineteen ninety-six a half-a-million kids under the age of five died, because of the embargo. okay? another kind of, piece of information that was not played up, in the national news. so a Marxist would look at this constellation of how Saddam Hussein was presented, what kind of news was foregrounded about military success, what kind of news was repelled or played down or didn't get any play at all, and look at the way in which the state, powerfully controlled, people's, understanding of that war. and therefore contained, people's criticisms of that war. the other thing a Marxist would say, is would look at_ there were actually a lot of anti-war protests around this war, and they were not covered uh on national news. so a Marxist would look at how the anti-war movement, the anti-war response to Desert Storm, was simply brushed aside and not even covered so if your television is your only source of information, all you would know was that this was a whopping success, hardly anybody got hurt, there was no opposition in the United States, war over. mkay? now, i wanna just give you two different_ i want to now contrast Marxism with liberal pluralism because i wanna give you an alternative framework to think about. <P :13> and yes this is up on the web. <P :15> are we okay? oh we have time to do this okay. now, let's do the Marxist over here first, because this is what we've just done and then i wanna contrast it with liberal pluralists. these are two different categories, of media uh scholarship and media scholars. now for Marxists, society is characterized by class domination. okay? that the ultimate control in society is increasingly concentrated in monopoly of capital, that all uh, societies particularly industrial societies are class based societies... that the media organizations in those societies might have the illusion of autonomy in other words A-B-C or C-B-S, or N-B-C might think that they are autonomous news organizations but in reality, they are deeply dependent on, and bound by, i'm sorry bound to the state, you know by the state they mean government interests, and corporate interests, for their income and information. <P :11> mkay? we have society at least? <P :04> alright... when thinking about control of the media, okay, so, um... i'm sorry these are i- this is the wrong label it shouldn't say um, control it should be media um, uh worker, you know people who (are) media professionals. so whe- where it says um control of media it should say media professionals... so media professionals, they also have an illusion of autonomy too. uh, Sam Donaldson, uh Dan Rather, they think that they are independent journalists but in reality according to a Marxist, they are socialized uh into and they internalize the norms of dominant culture. okay? so they think they're autonomous but they aren't really because there's just been such a powerful socialization <P :09> okay now audiences, in this schema, sometimes negotiate and contest media frameworks, but they really they lack ready access, to alternative meaning systems, that would, you know allow them to see the world differently, okay? that will allow them to reject the definitions offered by the media in favor of alt- oppositional uh definitions. so, aln- in other words according to a Marxist, some audiences at some time, you know might be able to talk back or say i don't believe this or contest what they're seeing, but that for the most part they really can't do an engaged sustained um, oppositional talk-back, because they don't have other meaning systems that would allow them to do that, mkay...? and finally the media themselves, according to a Marxist, relay interpretive frameworks, that are consonant with the interests of the ruling classes. so however Desert Storm is interpreted, however airlines' crashes are interpreted, however political campaigns are interpreted, or riots or demonstrations, their dominant interpretive frame is consonant with the interests of the ruling classes, a Marxist would argue. okay? now, the Marxist tradition just to um... emphasize this, i- it comes very much out of a European intellectual tradition. it's um it's a much more of a European intellectual tradition that has come to the United States, and the Marxist approach to thinking about the media, um, emerged i- in in, uh sort of disguised form a little bit in the nineteen fifties but really took hold in the nineteen seventies in the United States. now, by contrast we have liberal pluralists, and they have a different view of society and the media in that society, mkay? they see society not as constant class domination, with elites always on top, but they see a complex of of competing groups and interests, so that society, you know i- there's constant struggle and negotiation, and some groups are dominant sometimes and other groups are dominant other times. so they might look at a period when, labor unions were very a- uh very active, and very powerful in the United States, gaining their power say in the nineteen thirties and forties, and say look this was a time when management was relatively weak given the power of labor unions, and then, things began to change again in the nineteen seventies. or they might look at, uh the difference between democrats and republicans, or other kinds of groups. media organizations, then according to a liberal pluralist do en- enjoy an important degree of autonomy, okay? they are autonomous institutions. they are, uh they talk back to the state they talk back to corporation. they keep them in check, a liberal pluralist would argue. again, i apologize for this control of the media this should say media professionals, right here. it should say media professionals. okay they constitute an autonomous managerial class, okay? and they have flexibility, they have control, they have a lot of power to shape what comes out of the media according to liberal pluralists <P :04> audiences, then, are not um, you know either dupes, or passive, but audiences engage into a voluntary relationship, with the media, on relatively equal terms let me move this up... and they can challenge the media in all kinds of ways right? you can turn off your radio turn off your T-V set not buy the magazine, not go to the particular film, you can reject what you see so in this view audiences have s- some power to negotiate. and the media, themselves, constitute a place where various class views are fought out but none predominate all of the time. okay there's much more of an image here of contestation, but there isn't a dominant class that always wins whose world view, constantly prevails... so these are, as you can see, uh somewhat different ways of thinking about the power of the media and the media's relationship to society, alright? and what you will find, what i want you all to think about, as, you are looking at advertising or watching television, um or engaging in whatever kind of media consumption you engage in, start thinking about, what your, view is of how the media operate how much power you think it has, and which framework, makes more sense to you. see you Thursday. 
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