Page 118 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

century seems to have rediscovered the power of the voice rather
than perfected the power of the word as it privileges volume over
substance.
As a source of social knowledge and a representation of life and
work in society, mass communication provides more caricatures of
a concrete existence than thoughtful consideration; the latter occurs
in literature and (mostly foreign) films, or documentary projects of
noncommercial media, where creative insights and intellectual
power address the challenges of being in the world.Yet these oppor-
tunities are not widely exploited, or even known, since the mass
appeal of light and undemanding media fare prevails among program
producers.

IV

The pervasive visual extensions of contemporary mass communica-
tion invite closer consideration of the image as a representation of
the self. Especially since the individual is invented and confirmed
by mass communication in the roles of citizen, neighbor, sexual
object, or human being, the respective attributes of these roles are
constructed and reinforced through processes of recognition and
identification that involve media events and personalities.The latter,
in particular, are carefully produced to project ideologically correct
versions of the self in society, beginning with a cultural awareness
of the body.
It is a topic that is hardly new, as Michel Foucault reminds us (in
the first volume of The History of Sexuality) about the body as an
object of knowledge and a significant element in the relations of
power, at least since the seventeenth century. Since then, the body
has become a signifier of political correctness and power in its
multiple reproductions throughout media narratives. Moreover, and
analogous to Jacques Lacan’s observation about the mirror phase of
children, mass communication, and television in particular, con-
tributes to the recognition (or misrecognition) and identification of
the mirror-image of the social self. The process of looking turns
into self-awareness among the constituents of the social world; it
draws attention to the ego ideal and its presence in media narra-

106