Page 147 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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132 Now
explanation of the way in which mass-media audiences are not
deceived into false consciousness but, rather, willingly participate and
connive at their own oppression within a culture of excessive
explicitness. In Chapters 7 and 8 this theme is discussed in relation
to theorists of the now, such as Slavoj Žižek and Jean Baudrillard.
McLuhan’s provocative notion of the medium is the message, read in
a critical fashion, adds a prescient interpretation of the technological
underpinnings to the concepts of all three previous thinkers of the
then. In particular, it provides a theoretical basis for understanding
the contemporary mediascape’s powerfully innate grammars
explored in the themes of celebrity, Reality TV and a global politics
of the spectacle in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 respectively.
Debord’s notion of the society of the spectacle provides an integrated
account of the previous thinkers. It explains how the culture-
defining nature of the spectacle derives from the close cultural
alignment of the technical power of the mediated image and the
wider commodity culture of which it is an intrinsic part. Part 2 uses
recent illustrations to explore how this alignment works in practice
to produce our excessive contemporary dependence upon the
mediated image.

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