Page 154 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

138 Visual Culture

and which are being punished? What different stories could be told, and
why are they not?
The cultural supremacy of visual communication is a relatively recent
phenomenon. In pre - modern societies, the myths and legends that shaped
the social group were passed from generation to generation through oral
performances, or recorded in painstakingly handcrafted texts which
were only decipherable to an elite minority who had access to the education
required for reading literacy. For the vast majority of the population,

the reach of a story ’ s influence was limited by the audience ’ s ability
to memorize and recite what they had heard. In order to receive and trans-
mit information, a person had to hone his or her faculties for listening
comprehension and mental concentration. This style of communication
required tremendous cooperative effort on the part of both the sender
and receiver of a story. With the widespread use of the printing press in
the early eighteenth century, the production of texts and the spread of
literacy to the masses increased dramatically, enabling the rise of democ-
racy and consumer capitalism, and heralding the first instances of what

would come to be known as mass culture: cheaply produced and widely
available books, music, newspapers, and periodicals that connected indi-
viduals and communities dispersed by space into a cohesive group united
by the shared consumption of common texts. This made possible a much
more diversified social experience, as individuals could move from one

textual encounter to the next with ease. A reader can “ converse ” with
multiple, conflicting voices as quickly as he can turn the pages of the news-

paper or take books off the library shelf. It enlarged the world, insofar as
people had increased access to different ideas and perspectives, but also, in
another respect, narrowed it: the institutions that owned the technology
for producing and distributing texts also controlled the kinds of stories
being told. Depending on the degree of openness fostered by the ruling
bloc of a particular society, this technology held the potential to greatly
expand or severely constrict the range of ideas and information circulating
throughout a culture.
In the mid - twentieth century, film, television, and other mass - produced

visual media inaugurated a new kind of cultural literacy and mass audience.
Traditional oral and literary practices demanded a great deal of intellectual
effort from listeners or readers, who had to mentally visualize the events
described in words and texts. Visual media, on the other hand, do the work
of bringing language to vivid life for us. We no longer have to picture in
our minds the events we ’ re listening to or reading about: it ’ s all there on