Page 24 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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Introduction 9
assigned to them. Barker and Brooks, meanwhile, attempt to find
evidence of empowerment in the way fans consume the comics and
1995 film of Judge Dredd. Such approaches tend to overemphasize the
extent to which such activities constitute ‘empowerment’ in any
deeper sense as understood by critical theory. Little, if any, evidence
is provided that cultural populism’s version of empowerment involves
the ability of the audience/media pilgrim to challenge or even
question the fundamental nature of the media’s structuring of their
social conditions. Greater access to the sites of media production
(Couldry 2000, 2003) or more regulated pluralism (Thompson 1995)
in the ownership of the means of media production, will not solve
the innately alienating features of the media framework itself. For
example, Barker and Brooks fail to see the irony in their choice of
the term investment to ‘summarize all the ways in which audiences
demonstrate strength of involvement to a social ideal of cinema’
(Dickinson et al. 1998: 225). Although they openly acknowledge
that: ‘This concept of “investment” is a key one for us’ (1998: 225),
it appears much better suited to describing the deep overlapping of
cultural values with a pervasively commodified cultural setting as set
out in the culture industry thesis than it is to representing ‘a social
ideal’. Similarly, Jenkins and Poster’s accounts focus upon the
immersion of consumers within a commodity life-world with little
recognition that this could be anything other than an ultimately
liberating experience.
There may be a sense in which culture industry advocates and
their opponents are arguing in parallel monologues. Those seeking
to emphasize audience empowerment concentrate upon the ways in
which a cultural commodity is consumed with various degrees of
gusto, whereas culture industry theorists question that very gusto.
For the Frankfurt School et al., the very consumption of a commod-
ity is part of the underlying problem rather than a possible solution.
Summarizing this debate Alasuutari suggests that active audience
notions of consumption represent: ‘a move away from the sphere of
aesthetics to the political, or one could say that it politicizes the
aesthetics of everyday life’ (Alasuutari 1999: 11). This represents a
now version of the similar then argument that, using very similar
language, Benjamin makes for the positive potential of mass culture
explored in detail in the next chapter. A perennial caricature of
critical theory’s position is that it represents an elitist defence of
highbrow against lowbrow art. This is a misrepresentation that leads
to the further misleading implication that the culture industry thesis
is rooted in the aesthetic (rather than the political) because
arguments against the cultural industry thesis are purported to
represent ‘a move away from’ the aesthetic sphere. In fact, the
opposite of Alasuutari’s conclusion can be argued because the very

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