Page 199 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

PAUL MESSARIS

From a broader sociocultural perspective, these ramifications of our involve-
ment with visual fantasy may perhaps be seen as elements of the overall work-
ings of a consumption-driven economy and culture, geared to the satisfaction
of individuals’ material desires. The notion that there can be no upper limit in
one’s pursuit of such desires is part and parcel of the operation of such an
economy and culture, and this notion is bound to create a sense of personal
failure in individuals who subscribe to it, since, where there are no upper limits,
there can be no point at which success has been attained. In that sense,
the visual culture of movie and television fantasy may be interpreted as an
expression of deep-seated social imperatives.

Television and global media

With the advent of movies, ‘Western’ visual culture became increasingly inter-
national in its reach, and this process has been accelerated by the instantaneous
global dissemination of television images. If there is any validity to the 1960s
notion of an emerging ‘global village’, the shaping of that village’s common
culture will be largely tied to the mass-produced visual images of movies, ads,
and news. The notion of a global village is sometimes put forth (as it was by
Marshall McLuhan) as a self-evident fact of contemporary life or, alternatively,
as a rhetorical construct, something to strive for or wish for, rather than a
description of existing reality. However, there is some intriguing empirical
research that can be interpreted as actually demonstrating the workings of a
global-village effect on specific societies and individuals.
Perhaps the most important set of findings on this topic comes from a study
by Forbes and Lonner (1980), conducted in Alaska in the late 1970s. At that time,
with the advent of large-scale satellite transmission, television had begun to
appear in areas of the state that had hitherto not been able to receive it. Through
systematic interviews, the researchers set out to investigate the e ffects of the
medium on the lives of young people who were being exposed to it for the first
time. In particular, these interviews focused on how children belonging to the
various Native Alaskan ethnic groups responded to television images of two
other ethnic groups, African-Americans and European-Americans. These
responses, obtained through before-after questionnaire ratings, indicated no
change in the perception of European-Americans, but a signi ficant positive
change in the children’s attitudes toward African-Americans. Given the fact that
the Native Alaskan children were previously familiar with European-Americans
(who constitute the majority of the state’s population) but had little or no prior
familiarity with African-Americans, these findings suggest that increased con-
tact with another group through a visual medium may indeed create the sense of
community and commonality that the term ‘global village’ connotes. This
interpretation is supported by the fact that the children’s post-television ratings
of African-Americans included an increase in perceived similarity to themselves,
while European-Americans were already rated high on that attribute.

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