Page 28 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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Introduction 13
Only the second of these categories can easily be construed in
radical political terms likely to challenge the dominant meaning
system. Even the ‘personal freedom’ issues embodied in Charles and
Diana’s failed relationship needs some further translation before it
can be used to illuminate the social conditions of those markedly
less privileged. Indeed, despite attempts to represent the audience’s
response to media coverage of Diana’s death as a challenge to the
Royal Family, the sum total of its political effects was a temporary
disturbance to Royal protocol with two unprecedented (but hardly
revolutionary) events: the lowering of the flag to half-mast at
Buckingham Palace and a round of applause during Diana’s funeral
service both outside and inside Westminster Abbey. The media’s
personalization of the Charles and Diana saga can be viewed more
cynically than Hermes as a good example of Baudrillard’s (1983a)
notion that media coverage of the superficial rupture of hegemonic
structures (for example, Watergate), in practice, reinforces the status
quo. In actuality, such apparent ruptures serve only to simulate the
presence of real accountability and provide an opportunity to display
equally superficial responses from those in power.

Conclusion

Illustrating O’Neil’s previously cited claim that contemplative
thought is disproportionately excluded from discussions of the mass
media, critics tend to beach themselves on the rocks of either the
Scylla of excessively celebratory cultural populism or the Charybdis 6
of reactionary conservatism. The former approach tends to overcom-
pensate for the weak quality of the mass-media’s content by praising
the inherent worth of any content that requires any interpretation,
while the latter promotes cultural exclusivity for its own sake. Critical
Theories of Mass Culture attempts to steer a middle ground. It argues
that the mass media need to be engaged with on a much more
critical and less accommodative basis. It should be noted that those
least willing to adopt a critical perspective and most willing to lay the
charge of cultural elitism on others are frequently those whose work
exacerbates rather than ameliorates the disenfranchised condition of
large sections of the mass-media audience – an audience that
frequently does not share the same levels of access to cultural capital
enjoyed by their purported champions. Cultural populists thus risk
celebrating the nature of the life of the enchained prisoners in the
Cave while their intellectual capital at least gives them the opportu-
nity to leave it.
There is a distinct possibility of an inverse relationship between
the enthusiasm with which the arguments of cultural populism are
put forward and the likelihood of improvements to the cultural

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