Page 228 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

JOBNAME: McGraw−TaylorHarris PAGE: 16 SESS: 9 OUTPUT: Mon Oct 8 09:11:10 2007 SUM: 57D71AF5
/production/mcgraw−hill/booksxml/tayharris/chap09−conclusion

Conclusion 213
ness … Tragedy reminds us of how hard it is, in confronting
non-being, not to undo ourselves in the process. How can one
look upon that horror and live? At the same time, it reminds us
that a way of life which lacks the courage to make this
traumatic encounter finally lacks the strength to survive. Only
through encountering this failure can it flourish.
(Eagleton 2003: 221)

Previous chapters have demonstrated the extent to which the society
of the spectacle is grounded in sensation and an over-dependence
upon the image. This serves to exclude people and issues from the
tele-frame as previously argued by Nichols in his description of the
decline in the discourses of sobriety. Both Nichols and Eagleton’s
analyses fundamentally question Kracauer’s positive interpretation of
the Medusa myth. They problematize Kracauer’s hope that film will
‘redeem horror from its invisibility behind the veils of panic and
imagination’. Instead of the media functioning as an empowering
modern version of Athena’s shield, it serves as a barrier that
prevents us from traumatic encounters with the realities of human
existence – replacing them with the manufactured Realities of
Banality TV in which our encounters with human deprivation are
continuously deferred and filtered by the use of spectacle for
grounding emo-driven sensations. Eagleton cites Adorno’s remark
that: ‘There is tenderness only in the coarsest demand: that no-one
should go hungry any more’ (Eagleton 2003: 174). He points out
that in the Judeo-Christian tradition the term anawim refers to the
wretched beloved of God, arguing: ‘The dispossessed are a living
sign of the truth that the only enduring power is one anchored in
an acknowledgement of failure. Any power which fails to recognise
this fact will be enfeebled in a different sense, fearfully defending
itself against the victims of its own arrogance’ (Eagleton 2003: 176).
It is the world’s starving anawim that are systematically excluded in a
society of the spectacle grounded in sensation rather than sensitivity, and
it is the failure of our mediated culture to acknowledge failure that
lies behind the West’s fear that, as Boorstin foresaw and 9/11 so
tragically demonstrated, our images will come back to haunt us.
Even in Benjamin’s optimistic interpretation of the camera’s new
mode of distraction, he is aware of the danger of the rise of the
semiotic over the symbolic. It is worth repeating a final time the
final lines of the epilogue to his Essay. He so eloquently describes
the negative trends we can see more clearly now with the advent of
Banality TV: ‘Humankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of
contemplation for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree
that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of
the highest order’ (Essay: Epilogue). In his 2001 essay ‘Dust breeding’,
Baudrillard cites Benjamin’s lines in full (Baudrillard 2005: 184)

Kerrypress Ltd – Typeset in XML A Division: chap09-conclusion F Sequential 16

www.kerrypress.co.uk - 01582 451331 - www.xpp-web-services.co.uk
McGraw Hill - 152mm x 229mm - Fonts: New Baskerville