Page 13 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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x Chapter outlines
surface of his treatment of popular culture, particularly his concepts
of Ratio, the cult of distraction and the mass ornament. It is argued that
the negative implications of these notions remain highly relevant to
a critical understanding of today’s media.

Chapter 3 Theodor Adorno and the culture industry

Adorno’s culture industry thesis is defended as a key intellectual
resource with which to approach contemporary media. Sharing both
Benjamin and Kracauer’s interest in the theme of distraction as a new
mode of audience reception in the age of mass media, Adorno’s
work is explored for the ways in which it highlights the links to be
found between media technologies and the fundamental philosophi-
cal underpinnings of Western capitalist culture. It is argued that, far
from being unduly cynical and elitist as critics often suggest,
Adorno’s culture industry thesis actually underestimated the sophistica-
tion and reach of today’s mediascape.

Chapter 4 Marshall McLuhan’s understanding of the media

Despite the apparent optimism with which he analysed media
technologies, McLuhan’s work is shown to contain the seeds of a
deeply critical portrayal of the media’s social impact. He consistently
emphasizes the various ways in which the media profoundly rear-
range and disorientate the human sensorium. McLuhan shows how
the media promote essentially reactive, adaptive responses to their
needs rather than those of the societies they increasingly dominate.

Chapter 5 Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle

Part 1 concludes with an account of Guy Debord’s Society of the
Spectacle. This brings together the key themes of the previous
chapters with Debord’s conception of a mass media society whose
cultural frame of reference is dominated by the ubiquitous and
defining presence of the spectacle. In conjunction with the previous
examination of McLuhan, Debord’s theory is shown to provide a key
transition point between the theorists of the then who wrote in the
relatively early days of mass media society and Part 2’s treatment of
the now and more recent forms of the society of the spectacle.

Part 2 Now

Chapter 6 The culture of celebrity

The origins and current prevalence of celebrity values in mass
culture are examined in direct relation to Part 1’s themes of the

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