Page 47 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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32 Then
This type of criticism is frequently dismissed (along with many of the
Frankfurt School’s insights) as ‘elitist’. What such a refutation misses,
however, is the extent to which these banal formats embody the true
message of the medium rather than its nominal content. This is the
negative, critical alternative to Benjamin’s faith in the social possi-
bilities created by mechanical reproduction – the basis of Part 2’s
analysis of Banality TV.
Inglis’s key insight here relates to the role programmes like soap
operas play in fostering a general social climate amenable to
commodity values. They create a closed, tautological circle of
interpretation: like commodities they are made for circulation. In
terms of the culture industry thesis their complete lack of artistic
merit stems from the fact that they inherently lack any potential for
provoking ideas that transcend the dominant social value of con-
sumption, as Inglis puts it, they are incapable of providing a
synthesis upon which non-commodified meanings can be con-
structed. Whereas Benjamin saw radical possibilities in the endless
reproducibility of representations, in practice, the commodified
format of contemporary television actually extinguishes them. Inglis
proceeds to argue that this repetitive content actually constitutes a
form of psychosis. The cultural danger it poses stems from the fact
that, just as the Frankfurt School (and theorists such as Mellen-
3
camp ) argued, consumer culture fosters an arrested emotional
development at the level of either the infantile or the adolescent
according to the severity of the critical judgement. For Inglis the
cultural harm results from a:
return to the mechanical rhythms of the libido, with no help
from the alter ego. Psychosis designates a rhythm of compul-
sion and gratification of a regular but unregulable kind in
which the play of fantasy upon experience is such as to
preclude rational reflection or the direction of action towards
diverse ends. In countless narratives on American film and
television, the circuit of action is closed to reflection in this way.
(Inglis 1990: 152)
Benjamin’s positive notion of distraction as habit (see next section),
albeit in a much revised, more pessimistic form, is pertinent to
Inglis’s concerns. The habit of distraction in contemporary media
now relates to an unthinking familiarity with inherently uncritical,
emotion-based forms of expression – explored in Part 2 as the emo.A
wealth of substantive issues become ‘naturally’ excluded by editorial
standards driven by either overt celebrity values or closely related
libidinal requirements for personality-driven features. In addition to
these forms of censorship by exclusion can be added the preponder-
ance of material whose suitability is defined in strictly pictorial terms.
Over-reliance upon the charge of elitism by the critics of the culture

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