Page 23 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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8 Critical Theories of Mass Media
Daughter: Just to see different people, probably not to talk to
them, just to see them, walking up the Street, or
around wherever we’ve been, yeah.
Mother: Yeah, it would’ve been lovely.
Daughter: Just to see one.
(Couldry 2000: 97)

Similarly, in an otherwise critically aware text, Inglis (1990) support-
ively cites Morley’s attempt to document the empowering aspects of
television in his work Family Television (1986). From a critical
perspective, however, this attempt meets with limited success. Morley
portrays a working-class patriarch who watches certain programmes
to a tight regimen and assiduously videotapes any other programmes
that clash. This is a man loathe to leave the private realm of his
living room. He appears avant la lettre (ahead of his time) remark-
ably similar to the character Jim from the BBC series The Royle
Family. Morley describes: ‘the bottomless pit of this man’s desire for
programmes to watch’ (Morley 1986: 71). Inglis, nevertheless, refers
to him as ‘a fascinating folk-figure’ and claims that ‘His unstoppable
soliloquy must do here to suggest just how various are the needs and
purposes working themselves out in audiences’ (Inglis 1990: 154). In
such misguidedly optimistic evaluations, we can see clear illustrations
of a widespread risk that theorists bend over backwards not to see
personifications of the culture industry thesis in their own subjects
of enquiry. Indeed, ironically, it is likely that if material of the same
tone was found in the work of culture industry theorists it would in
all likelihood be rejected for its overly selective, exaggeratedly
patronizing, and generally unrealistic depiction of alienated con-
sumption. Inglis claims that Morley ‘speaks up for and documents
the sociable and sociable uses of television’ (Inglis 1990: 153). This
is an aim that is consistent with the cultural populism approach, but
which in fact fails to take us far from a contemporary manifestation
of Plato’s Cave to the extent that: ‘in going out to a public place this
man experiences a loss of the total power which he has established
within the walls of his own home’ (Morley, cited in Inglis 1990: 153).
Emblematic of cultural populism’s lack of critical edge, borderline
agoraphobia is represented as personal empowerment.
Further illustrations of counterproductive evidence of audience
empowerment are evident in the work of Radway (1984) and Barker
and Brooks (in Dickinson et al. 1998) and more recently Poster
(2006) and Jenkins (2006a, 2006b). Radway’s much cited study
explored the purportedly empowering way in which women read
Harlequin series romances. She argued that the act of carving out
personal time to do this reading amongst the otherwise pressing
demands of their families meant that the women were effectively
resisting the patriarchally imposed, gendered roles conventionally

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