Page 129 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

Similarly, the perception of space may be significantly altered by
film or television productions with the aid of lenses, combinations
of shots, or even morphing. Types of shots are indicators of moods
or conditions; for instance, Jean-Luc Godard once said that the
close-up was invented for tragedy and the long shot for comedy,
suggesting the range of technical choices for setting a scene. In fact,
close-ups accentuate the (disembodied) face, without context but
recognizable nevertheless. Close-ups are rarely achieved in real life,
but an emphasis on the face reflects the cultural practices of con-
temporary mass communication. The media celebrate the face,
which replaces the idea and serves to identify the individual with a
cause while suggesting proximity, even intimacy, particularly in life-
size representations on television screens.
In addition, montage fragments and reassembles reality to recon-
stitute time and space in narrative patterns, beyond the notion of
merely editing a film sequence, and to provide an intellectual marker
for contrast or conflict; an example is the originality of Sergei
Eisenstein’s work, which is grounded in the dialectical – the con-
flict of opposites. The disruption of the time continuum and the
dissection of the spatial totality contain the substance for con-
structing meaning, which arises – in the readings of the spectator –
from relationships among images that constitute the flow of the
visual narrative.
But the notion of space beyond its physical or geographical def-
initions also includes the recognition of privacy as a constituent of
social space. Mass communication typically crosses the boundaries
of social space, technically through the process of dissemination and
discursively through creative practices that invoke rights and insist
on public interest. Indeed, mass communication, with its institu-
tional regime of publicity, opposes the very notion of privacy by
pursuing strategies of disclosure in the arena of information
exchange, while elaborating on the conditions of privacy in fictional
accounts with strategies of inclusion that obscure the difference
between private and public and allow audiences to explore the
intimacy of the other, including private thoughts.
When the need to protect privacy becomes an argument against
the intrusion of mass communication, however, legal protection

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