Page 44 - Culture Society and the Media

34 THEORIES OF THE MEDIA AND SOCIETY
change’ (Bell, 1960, p. 38). Why is the dominance of élites toppled? Why are the
integrated social relationships which comprise the organic community
fragmented? Unable to account for these developments as a product of the
organization of the organic community itself in the same way, for example, that
Marx accounted for the downfall of feudal society as the result of contradictions
inscribed within its very structure, mass society theorists have had no alternative
but to attribute responsibility for the demise of the organic community to such
exogenous factors as the rise of democracy, the spread of literacy, the
development of the media and so on. But, of course, unless these developments are
themselves accounted for in terms of their articulation with other social forces,
tendencies and contradictions, any such explanation is necessarily inadequate.
It is somewhat surprising, in view of these difficulties, that the mass society
outlook should have proved so influential in defining the field of vision within
which so many of the initial empirical inquiries into the social role of the media
were located. Yet, until recently, its influence in this respect has been absolutely
preponderant. The general philosophical reflections of the more noted exponents
of the mass society outlook have, of course, always been buttressed by an
underlying level of social commentary which has viewed the development of the
media with apprehension. However, it was not really until the 1930s, either in
this country or in America, that the media were mapped out as a field of study in
a formal or academic sense. Yet, initially, this had little effect on the issues
addressed. Although there were some who took exception to it, the ‘force-field’
exerted by the mass society outlook still determined the questions around which
the debate was conducted.
Some indication of what this has meant for inquiry into the media in this
country can be gleaned from the work of the Scrutiny group. F.R.Leavis’s Mass
Civilization and Minority Culture (1930) and Q.D.Leavis’s Fiction and the
Reading Public (1932) played a particularly important role in the formation of
the Scrutiny perspective. ‘In any period,’ F.R.Leavis argued, ‘it is upon a very
small minority that the discerning appreciation of art and literature depends: it is
only a few who are capable of unprompted first hand judgements.’ Endorsing
this view, Q.D.Leavis went on to argue that ‘the individual has a better chance of
obtaining access to the fullest (because finest) life in a community dominated by
“society”’—by which she means ‘a select, cultured element of the community
that set the standards of behaviour and judgement, in direct opposition to the
common people’—‘than in one protesting the superiority of the herd’
(Q.D.Leavis, 1965, p. 202). Given this perspective, the history of the reading
public which Q.D. Leavis offers becomes, inevitably, a history of deteriorating
standards. As a consequence of the authority of the cultured minority having
been attenuated by the intrusion of market forces into the sphere of culture, she
argues, pulp journalism has replaced respectable journalism, the novel has
become sentimentalized, diversion has replaced edification as the motive for
reading and, oh horrors! the presumption of the middlebrow public encouraged it