Last I left off, I had set up an admittedly very ham-fisted framework for the rise of pop culture and the eventual thermadorean reaction that gave rise to the "information age." The question remained: when and why did the Establishment begin to repress this new media?
So we have the advent of periodicals, pamphlets, newspapers, and a primarily socially democratic institution desseminating this information.
As a graphic designer and art and pop culture enthusiast, it would simply be a crime for me to gloss over a powerful arm of this new media: illustration for the purposes of conveying information and opinion. If we were to talk about the all-too-frequently neglected influence of illustration in informing the public mind (consider literacy rates in Europe and America at this time), we cannot gloss over the power wielded by Benjamin Franklin's famous "Join or Die" cartoon, depicting the 13 colonies as sectors of a snake that will die if they are not joined, and, later, the influence of Thomas Nast's beautifully rendered cartoons , some of which are credited with the fall of Tammany Hall in the 19th century. Fast forward to Joseph Conrad and what you have is a powerful sucbulture using illustration as its medium of communication.
These only bolstered the influence of publications of these types among many sectors of the public the text-based editorials would never have reached.
Chomsky's view is that these early publications, notably the Mirror and the Daily Herald in Britain, ran editorials contrary to what the Establishment (government and especialy political interests) wanted the public to hear, see, and read. What did the Establishment do in order to suppress the influence of this new Social Democraticlly aligned industry? Advertising, says Chomsky. They used advertising and the concentration of capital. The advertisers, of course, also didn't like what the Labor-oriented media had to say, and thus the media, over time, lost capital support. In the end, these outlets had to succumb to advertising pressure. In my lifetime alone, I have seen the use of two to three advertisments between sections of television programms fatten to seven to ten advertisments, and this does not factor in TV programms during unusually popular programming, when it feels we have a solid ten to fifteen minutes of cheesy ads to sift through before getting back to the main event. We live in an age in which we are routinely subjected more and more to audible jeers when there is just "one more" movie preview to watch before the start of the Feature Presentation. Why is it that we now have fifteen to twenty minutes of actual "programming" for every half an hour of television when we used to have twenty-five to twenty-nine? Chomsky might assert that it's the increasing cost of television programming, as helped along by a strong desire to suppress independent thought.
Of important notre is that in the television industry,, the word "content" is used to refer not to the main program, but the ads themselves. The main programm we all wait to get back to during commercials is, instead, called "filler." Quite contrary to how us viewers look at things, ey? The programmers would'nt have it any other way. We essentially operate under the illusion that the real "content" is the programm itself.
By keeping the public awash in "fasionable comsumption," the Establishment - more and more as time has gone on - has been able to free itself from the negative impacts of the editorialising of what was, initially, a social construct birthed out of a Social Democratic ideology. To watch Fox news or even CNN these days . . . .. it appears the Establishment has less and less to worry about with regards to a "socially Democratic" bias in what has traiditionally been a "leftist" industry.
To my thinking, consumerism goes hand-in-hand with the amazing growth of entertainment television (the remarkably powerful E! Entertainment Television, for example), the celebutrash tabloids, and the alarming growth of the paparrazzi from a secretive, almost mafia-like subculture to a well-known, and much-maligned public phenomenae. Buying keeps the public occupied, just as the hawking of celebutard news does. Consumerism encourages celebrity gossip and vice versa. Keep the public asleep.
What we have now is the disastrous fall from power of worker unions, public participation and voting, and the public consumption of media that can influence their lives for the better. I urge views to the contrary because I honestly have had a rough time of it finding opposing views from notable intellectuals.
Until next time.
