Page 16 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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Introduction: Cultural populism and
Critical theory

The new Plato’s Cave
I want you to go on to picture the enlightenment or ignorance
of our human condition somewhat as follows. Imagine an
underground chamber like a cave, with a long entrance open
to the daylight and as wide as the cave. In this chamber are
men who have been prisoners there since they were children,
their legs and necks being so fastened that they can only look
straight ahead of them and cannot turn their heads. Some way
off, behind and higher up, a fire is burning, and between the
fire and the prisoners and above them runs a road, in front of
which a curtain-wall has been built, like the screen at puppet
shows between the operators and their audience, above which
they show their puppets …
(Plato 1955: 317)

Plato’s allegory of prisoners in a cave is contained within The Republic
(approx 375 BC). It was originally used to describe the philosophical
difficulty of uncovering truth in a human world that is inevitably
error-strewn. From our contemporary perspective we can easily
imagine the shadows projected onto the cave wall as a primitive form
of cinema projection and thus Plato’s image becomes highly reso-
nant with our own media-saturated society. Citing Plato from the
very beginning of this book underlines the key now and then theme
of its subtitle. Any novelty in the following analysis stems paradoxi-
cally from the relatively unfashionable insistence that the central
tenets of critical theories of mass media are still highly relevant
despite their relatively marginal position in mainstream cultural/
communication studies and the sociology of the media. This book
aims to give these critical theories of the past a fresh impetus from
more recent theoretical developments. It is hoped that this will
provide an antidote to the present dominance within academic
discourse of excessively uncritical theories of mass-media culture that
contribute to our staying bound within a new Plato’s Cave – albeit an
unprecedentedly comfortable one replete with high-definition
plasma screens.
The lack of a critical edge to much discussion of the mass media
has profoundly dangerous political implications for two main rea-
sons.

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