Re: trendy left

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:08 PM +0100 3/3/97, Trond Andresen wrote:

>While I said in an earlier message
>
>> When i "admit" in my analysis (last message from me) that there is a
>> large sector of the public (for simplicity lumped together by me under
>> the label "type I") that is "content" (in the sense that when asked
>> they see no need to change things), i do not mean to imply that this is
>> mainly because of their "nature" (even if I used that term also). I
>> consider their passive acceptance more a case of being socialized to
>> accept today's media state of affairs. Feed people shit their whole
>> life, and they will consider the least worst shit to be fair cuisine.
>
>So Doug's accusation of being "patronizing", may possibly also be
>directed against me.

No, Trond. I entirely agree that people have been socialized to swallow
huge amounts of crap. The producers of this crap rationalize their dirty
work by saying that's what people want, ignoring all evidence to the
contrary.

It's instructive to read histories of broadcasting, advertising, and PR, to
realize that back in the 1920s, when the modern consciousness industry was
taking shape, the crafters had a very conscious, every explicit political
and economic agenda: to shape opinion and to transform human beings into
"consumers." All that is lost today, since it's so embedded in the
landscape, but you can recover it if you read, say Robert McChesney's book
on early radio or Walter Lippmann's book on public opinion. I've just
gotten a review copy of Ellen Garvey's new Oxford book, The Adman in the
Parlor, on the creation of the early gendered consumer; it looks quite good.



Doug

--

Doug Henwood
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