Page 214 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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Conclusion 199
the face of direct experience. The film screen, acting as a modern
embodiment of Athena’s polished shield, allows the spectator to view
events from one stage removed. In a similar fashion to the mis-
guided nature of Benjamin’s optimistic belief in distraction as an
empowering feature of mass culture, the hopes Kracauer rested
upon the screen appear, with historical hindsight to be misplaced.
They sit rather uneasily with his own analysis of the way in which, in
practice, Ratio rips away the veils of cultural symbolism. In the
preceding chapters, Baudrillard’s analysis has suggested that the
media-sponsored removal of taboo has proceeded to such an extent
that the traditional notion of the obscene associated with taboo is
now replaced with the obscene, the stage-less immediacy of an optical
unconscious effectively lacking any social constraints.
Experience of today’s mediascape points to both the essential
accuracy of Benjamin and Kracauer’s early analyses of the basic
mediated processes of mass culture but also the betrayal of their
hopes that these would ultimately prove empowering. Rather than
allowing us to enjoy the benefits of a technologized Athen’s shield:
The voyeuristic gaze threatens to overwhelm the narrative
structure of the conventional documentary. The video clip is
more reality fetish than evidence, as it is replayed over and
over, slowed down, grabbed, processed, de- and re-constructed
for our entertainment and horror. The video clip here stands
for a reality (of horror) that cannot be known but which must
at the same time be contained.
(Dovey 2000: 59)

The media’s efficient containment of otherwise inhibitory tendencies
comes at the cost of a McLuhanite auto-amputation. We extend our
ability to manage reality, but we lose some of our ability to know it
with the depth offered by less technological forms of narrative. Film
has its own inherent properties so that, according to Kracauer: ‘the
question arises whether it makes sense at all to seek the meaning of
horror images in their underlying intentions or uncertain effects’
(Kracauer 1960: 305). This resonates with McLuhan’s the medium is
the message. The crucial point is that a situation soon arises in which:
‘The mirror reflections of horror are an end in themselves’
(Kracauer 1960: 306). This is a key element of a critical understand-
ing of the media. The detailed discussion of media content typical of
various forms of cultural populism is guilty of missing the bigger
picture. As McLuhan argued, the form in which content is presented
is its true cultural effect. It is worth remembering that it is only a
few lines after his famous aphorism that McLuhan, as previously
cited, suggests that in terms of the machine’s social impact: ‘it
mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or
Cadillacs’ ([1964] 1995: 7–8). This is also the political import of

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