Page 389 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Pornography

ThE roLE oF ThE auDiEnCE
Of utmost importance, though, is the audience, and thus a great deal of the
potential power of political entertainment relies on how individual and com-
munal audiences will react to and use it. If we ignore the politics, or if we use
political entertainment as a substitute for a more serious engagement in politics
elsewhere, then fears that “politics lite” is undernourishing us will be justified;
but if we use it as a springboard to learn more and to do more, political enter-
tainment could prove a vital component of a functioning democracy.
see also Media and Citizenship; Media and Electoral Campaigns; Narrative
Power and Media Influence; News Satire; Political Documentary; Presidential
Stagecraft and Militainment; Public Sphere; Shock Jocks.
Further reading: Alberti, John, ed. Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility
of Oppositional Culture. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2003; Crawley,
Melissa. Mr. Sorkin Goes to Washington: Shaping the President on Television’s The West
Wing. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2006; Creeber, Glen. Serial Television:
Big Drama on the Small Screen, Chapter 1. London: BFI, 2004; Fischlin, Daniel, and
Ajay Heble, eds. Rebel Musics: Human Rights, Resistant Sounds, and the Politics of Music
Making. Montreal, QC: Black Rose Books, 2003; Fiske, John. Understanding Popular
Culture. New York: Routledge, 1989; Gabler, Neil. Life: The Movie: How Entertainment
Conquered Reality. New York: Vintage, 2000; Hartley, John. The Uses of Television.
New York: Routledge, 1999; Jeffords, Susan. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in
the Reagan Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994; Jones, Jeffrey P.
Entertaining Politics: New Political Television and Civic Culture, New York: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2005; Kellner, Douglas. Media Spectacle, New York: Routledge, 2003; Post-
man, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.
New York: Penguin, 1986; Sachleben, Mark, and Kevan M. Yenerall. Seeing the Big Pic-
ture: Understanding Politics through Film and Television. New York: Peter Lang, 2005;
Van Zoonen, Liesbet. Entertaining the Citizen: When Politics and Popular Culture Con-
verge. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
Jonathan Gray

PornograPhy
Pornography is defined in the New Oxford American Dictionary as “printed
or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs
or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feel-
ings.” While pornography involving children is widely condemned, it remains a
serious international problem. Pornography involving adults, although conten-
tious, is a massive international media industry.
Pornography—from religious, commercial, social, cultural, artistic, feminist,
and gay-friendly perspectives—is variously defined, criticized, and defended.
While obscenity historically has not been protected under the First Amend-
ment, very little material has been found by the courts to meet the standard for
obscenity. The pornography industry is a multi-billion-dollar one; novel tech-
nologies and media—beginning with the printing press and photography and