mass-communication-theory

Chapter 11 Media and Culture Theories: Meaning-Making in the Social World 349
Commodification-of-culture
question:
theorists provide many intriguing answers to this
1. When elements of everyday culture are selected for repackaging, only a very
limited range is chosen, and important elements are overlooked or consciously
ignored. For example, elements of culture important for structuring the experience
of small minority groups are likely to be ignored, whereas culture practiced
by large segments of the population will be emphasized. For a good
illustration of this, watch situation comedies from the 1960s like Father
Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver. During this era, these programs provided
a very homogeneous and idealized picture of American family life. They might
make you wonder whether there were any poor people, working women, or
ethnic groups living in the United States in the nineteen sixties.
2. The repackaging process involves dramatization of those elements of culture
that have been selected. Certain forms of action are highlighted, their importance
is exaggerated, and others are ignored. Such dramatization makes the
final commodity attractive to as large an audience as possible. Potentially
boring, controversial, or offensive elements are removed. Features are added
that are known to appeal to large audience segments. Thus, attention-getting
and emotion-arousing actions—for example, sex and violence—are routinely
featured. This is a major reason that car chases, gunfights, and verbal conflict
dominate prime-time television and Hollywood movies, but casual conversations
between friends are rare (unless they include a joke every fifteen
seconds—then we have comedy).
3. The marketing of cultural commodities is undertaken in a way that maximizes
the likelihood that they will intrude into and ultimately disrupt everyday life.
The success of the media industries depends on marketing as much content as
possible to as many people as possible with no consideration for how this
content will actually be used or what its long-term consequences will be. An
analogy can be made to pollution of the physical environment caused by food
packaging. The packaging adds nothing to the nutritional value of the food
but is merely a marketing device—it moves the product off the shelf. Pollution
results when we carelessly dispose of this packaging or when there is so much
of it that there is no place to put it. Unlike trash, media commodities are less
tangible and their packaging is completely integrated into the cultural content.
There are no recycling bins for cultural packaging. When we consume the
product, we consume the packaging. It intrudes and disrupts.
4. The elites who operate the cultural industries generally are ignorant of the
consequences of their work. This ignorance is based partly on their alienation
from the people who consume their products. They live in Hollywood or New
York City, not in typical neighborhoods. They maintain ignorance partly
through strategic avoidance of or denial of evidence about consequences in
much the same way the tobacco industry has concealed and lied about research
documenting the negative effects of smoking. Media industries have developed
formal mechanisms for rationalizing their impact and explaining away
consequences. One involves supporting empirical social research and the
limited-effects findings it produces. Another involves professionalization.
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