Page 198 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

VISUAL CULTURE

In fact, it seems that even professional observers of the media are not immune
from feelings of this sort. The famous film critic Molly Haskell once wrote a
whole essay about her repeated disappointment at the discrepancy between the
loves in her real life and the love-life she had experienced vicariously in
movies. The essay’s title was, ‘Movies ruined me for real romance’.
Furthermore, as the quotation from Goldfarb’s respondent suggests, it is not
just images of romance and sex that give rise to such feelings of personal
inadequacy. The quotation’s hint at career dissatisfaction is a theme that
emerges in other accounts of viewers’ comparisons between their own profes-
sional or economic circumstances and the images they witness in the visual
media. For example, in a psychotherapeutic exploration of people’s responses
to advertising, Carol Moog cites the case of a young lawyer who felt frustrated
because she hadn’t lived up to her potential as a member of ‘the Pepsi gener-
ation – that is, beautiful, sexy, happy young people . . . a generation that didn’t
slog through law school, work twelve-hour days, or break up with fiances’
(Moog 1990: 15). Moog suggests that advertising is actually in the business of
making people feel bad in such ways, on the assumption that personal frustra-
tion can motivate compensatory purchases. In the case of movies and fictional
television images, on the other hand, similar feelings seem to arise despite
the fact that the producers of these images are presumably in the business of
making people feel good.
Feelings of dissatisfaction in response to visual fantasy seem especially sig-
nificant when they occur in children, whose evolving world views are prob-
ably more fluid and malleable than those of adults. Some indication of how
children feel about idealized media images comes from a study by the present
author (Messaris 1987). Based on interviews with mothers, the study was an
investigation of what children and parents say to one another while watching
television. Without any special prompting on the part of the interviewers, a
substantial number of mothers mentioned that their children had occasionally
expressed feelings of inadequacy or resentment in response to television
programs or commercials. More specifically, it was images of material well-
being and glamorous lifestyles that appeared to trigger these expressions of
dissatisfaction, and what the children were objecting to was the discrepancy
between these highly alluring images and the more constrained circumstances
of their own lives. As one mother put it, ‘Both my own and children in school
seem to feel that that [i.e., television] is – at that age, at the sixth, seventh, and
eighth grade level – they seem to feel that that’s reality and what they’re living
in is somehow a mistake’ (see Messaris 1987: 100). Not surprisingly, these
kinds of comments were more common among the less well-o ff families in
the study. According to our interviews, mothers often respond to such com-
ments by telling their children that television images paint a false picture of
reality. However, as we have seen, adults themselves are not immune from
feeling that reality is at fault for not being able to match the attractions of the
television image.

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