Page 117 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

news reports and fictional accounts alike.There are always heroes in
the manufactured reality of an American life, whose message never
varies: the cause is worth the sacrifice, and the cause is frequently
the defense of traditional institutions, such as nation, family, or reli-
gion. These are noble causes which generate feelings of patriotism
and serving a greater purpose, regardless of the real motivation. It
is idealism in action, designed to address the alienated and isolated
individual with optimism about belonging to a community of
heroes, and being American.
In the mass-mediated reality nobody dies alone, or is abandoned
to a fate of utter resignation; on the contrary, there are always solu-
tions, material security, and emotional support. The idea of com-
munity, with all of its implications, comes to mind and rules the
day of television-watching or magazine-reading. Despite a myriad
of social, economic, and political problems, there is youthful opti-
mism and a naive belief in the ability of the individual to endure
and survive in order to eventually be materially independent before
riding off into the sunset or living a complete life in the isolation
of a retirement village in Florida or Arizona, for instance.
In the reality of American television programs an uneasy juxta-
position of black and white neighborhoods, generations, or families
creates competition for time slots rather than for mutual respect
and understanding. It is a divisiveness that may well be based on
commercial grounds rather than on racial policies, but it becomes
political when it happens, and it suggests again the dominance of
economic interests over social or cultural issues.
Mass communication suggests that life is good in a capitalist
society until the very end; this idea is rarely challenged by those
most affected by the social and economic conditions, because they
cannot afford to listen – for economic reasons – to dissenting intel-
lectual (or political) voices from a wider reading of thoroughly
informed and enlightened critiques of the dominant order. Because
people are economically restricted in their choice of media, they
must live in the one-dimensional world of commercial television,
where fact and fiction have merged. More recently a calm discourse
has been replaced by screaming (not talking) heads in what is still
another form of collapsing boundaries between the sound of com-
mercial and noncommercial messages.Television in the twenty-first

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