COMS 361 - Lecture 8 Reading Summaries
Learning Objectives
Consolidate knowledge of central themes related to mass media, popular culture, and propaganda
Theorize and identify the way propaganda functions in popular culture by using a range of discursive tools and media examples
Use critical, analytical, and interpretive skills to analyze and counter propaganda in popular culture and contemporary forms of mass media
Introduction
A Historical Approach
A large portion of the course has been dedicated to a historical approach to propaganda, notably emphasizing world wars I and II which were seminal to setting the stage for the development of the practice and study of propaganda in the 20th century.
However, things have changed. We no longer think of propaganda as the printed pamphlets and posters dropping from the sky onto populations below, or “voice of God” narration booming from propaganda news films during the war.
Modern Propaganda Use and Our Expanded Understanding of its Nature
Today, propaganda largely functions through the media in all of its forms, and operates through sophisticated forms of persuasion that can sometimes be overt, but tend to be more subtle nowadays.
We understand propaganda today to mean not only the persuasive messages that are specifically crafted and targeted toward specific audiences, but also the supporting structures and institutions (e.g., education, state, judiciary, religious etc.) from which much of the propaganda emanates and is reinforced.
Propaganda is also understood as a phenomenon that functions not only in a “topdown” (vertical) structure, but that can also operate horizontally, from people to people.
Propaganda in a Technological Landscape
Modern technology is more accessible, mobile, and personal today
Access to mass information is easy, and this accessibility offers fertile grounds for propaganda to thrive
Earlier forms of media include the radio, the press, television, film, public monuments, and other expressions of power
Forms of public speeches, public meetings, and door-to-door canvasing for political campaigns also fall within this category
Posters, books, comic strips, poetry, music, sporting, and cultural events can and do also qualify as avenues for propaganda
The Power of Propaganda
How are these mediums used to shape opinions and actions via power relationships?
Dune Effect: Those who control and have access to/potential over media can control public opinion
Operating code embeds culture’s myths and stereotypes in disseminated messages, making it more difficult to recognize propaganda
E.g., embedding particular themes or stances on topics in the media to sway the public’s thoughts or opinions
Let’s refresh our memory with two definitions of propaganda:
John Pilger reminds us that, “Really, the most powerful propaganda of the twentieth century is insidious, something that we don’t recognize.”
Alastair Campbell uses the news to draw attention to the fast-paced, ubiquitous nature of information. “Today the news is happening every single second of every single minute in every single country in the world. And it is happening not just via television screens, radio and newspapers or magazines it is happening on people’s phones, on people’s iPads, in people’s cars on trains, on planes all around us all the time the News is unfolding.”
Popular Culture
Definition: Beliefs, practices, and objects with largely shared meanings within a social system (Dustin Kidd).
Associated with mass or popular culture
Different from “high culture” and “institutional culture”
Theorists approach popular culture as capitalist production and by the way it influences consumerism
E.g., popular' culture’s profit-driven relationship with consumer behaviour
Performance through the work of artists/musicians
Circulation of images/song, representational practices, relationship with audiences
Popular Culture in the Mass Media
Mass media provides us with most of the information through which we construct the world, and thereby the meanings of things that surround us
Now, the mass media is the epicenter of our common experiences
Producers of popular culture produce media messages with particular meanings, after which, audiences make sense of these texts
“Popular culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry. All the culture industries do not produce a repertoire of texts or cultural resources for the various formations of the people to use or reject in the ongoing process of producing their popular culture.” - John Fiske
In other words, audiences actively engage in creating messages and giving meaning in this context
Popular Culture Propaganda
In popular culture, propaganda can operate in overt ways in addition to more subtle ways
Advertising is an example of overt propaganda
The themes and social norms depicted in television shows can communicate subtle propaganda messages
Cop shows offer entertainment, but also transport ideas about the importance of a police force for society to function properly
Many mediums of propaganda use images as propaganda
Image-Based Propaganda Culture
Sut Jhally draws attention to the important role of images as the foremost mode through which communication occurs in our culture. Images and the way they mediate society are at the core of popular culture. Jhally links the function of products, commodities, and visual signs with values and assumptions embedded in media messages and culture. Public attitudes and practices toward commodities are shaped through mass media. The marketplace and its ideological tool, advertising, function as a major structural institution of contemporary society. While much attention is paid to advertising as a particular type of persuasive and pervasive form of culture that fills the space of our daily existence, it also highlights the dominance of visual images and information in the public sphere. Advertising is tied to popular and deeper ideas about life and happiness. Understanding how propaganda functions is to see how the system of images that circulate daily is linked to ideals of happiness and satisfaction. The commodity image system draws attention to wider image systems that offer particular perspectives of the world. This excerpt from Jhally’s article points to the importance of visual images as systems of signs and symbols: “The object world intersects with the human world at the most basic and fundamental levels.” For example, think of the popularity of music videos with their fast moving, fragmented, and powerful imagery and sound packed with emotions and feelings. Such montages of visual images can reaffirm our common ideas about gender, power, commodities, or everyday life through a powerful system of cultural signs.
Signs and Symbols in Popular Culture
The visual aspect of modern propaganda can be seen as an “endless visual field” with which we engage every day. This visual field uses a large range of signs and symbols to convey messages. Each sign as a message is encoded with histories and layers of meanings that transport and reinforce powerful ideas about society. As social texts, the visual sign—an item of clothing, a face, a luxury car, or words splashed across a screen—can speak to the present, the past, and future, and to desires, feelings, anxieties, and hopes.
Star Power in Popular Culture
No discussion of popular culture is complete without addressing the star-system that sustains it. Popular culture thrives off celebrity culture, using brands names as currency that drives messages to audiences. Celebrities from the worlds of sports, politics, television, music, fashion, and business are central to a star-system that produces and distributes culture. Well known celebrities with millions of social media followers act as distributors of and/or means of amplification of particular messages. The power of these “stars” is on display in many ways, for example, celebrity endorsements of products or ideas, or celebrity-led initiatives and promotions. Well known celebrities have massive fan followings which translates into star-power. For example, Beyoncé has more than 60-million followers on Facebook and 15.6-million followers on Twitter.
Old Propaganda and New Propaganda
In the article, “Total Propaganda: from Mass Culture to Popular Culture,” Alex Edelstein explores the notions of “old” and “new” propaganda. Although he takes time to demarcate the two forms, he stresses that synergies are produced between the two types akin to a “total” form of propaganda that engages consciousness. Let’s look in detail at the distinctions presented by Edelstein. Old propaganda, or “Oldprop,” is linked to control and manipulation of mass cultures in the early and mid-20th century, culminating in WWII and the Cold War. It commonly featured charismatic leaders who directed propaganda to mass publics and mass media that amplified those messages. This view presents an image of an irresistible propaganda created by omnipotent leaders that audiences cannot avoid. Oldprop affects mass cultures by utilizing totalitarian methods of conflict, demonization, and exclusiveness. In this model of propaganda, rhetoric or actions limit the functioning of individuals in a popular culture (Alex Edelstein). We can think of this kind of propaganda as still practiced today. 7 © May not be copied or duplicated without the permission of the owner. By contrast, Edelstein views new propaganda, or “Newprop,” as created by members of the popular culture as a means through which they can engage and promote inclusiveness. Shifts from old to new propaganda are tracked across social issues such as race, religion, sexuality, gender, and the environment, as well as in fashion, politics, advertising, sports, and media (Eldelson). Newprop can be considered as a product of more egalitarian, participant forces that emerged in the post-WWII period. Unlike the members of mass cultures, members of the popular culture have gained the ability to share messages as well as respond to them. Through music, writing, and performance, they create means to promote their participation in popular culture.
“Total Propaganda”
Edelson advances the notion of “Total Propaganda” as an expression of today’s environment. In other words, we live in a space where Oldprop and Newprop merge and coalesce. In this configuration, we see the fusing of propaganda in fields such as music, art, advertising, sports, politics, etc. These synergies produce new energies that contribute to a total propaganda that is greater than its individual parts. Edelson makes an important distinction between mass culture and popular culture. In mass culture, almost everyone consumes media messages (propaganda), but only a few create it. In popular culture, everyone creates and consumes propaganda. Audiences, fans and, consumers also produce and consume media messages in this fragmented fast-moving world of messages. Popular culture can be viewed as an important vehicle for today’s participatory democracy, much of which is played out in the public sphere of media where all forms of propaganda, old and new, function together.
Television Propaganda
Think of the films and television images, from children’s programing to exclusive adult programming, that we see every day. How does pop culture function in them? In children’s programming, for example, they educate by offering normalized and acceptable views of the society
The work of Disney films has been described as seminal in teaching children and communicating important images, ideas, and wider ideologies about society. Much of this happens through overt and subtle messages and symbols. For example, during World War II, Walt Disney characters such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse were not only for entertainment, but for educating the American public about their enemies during the war.
COPS: Dan Taberski Analysis Another example is in the array of television genres that audiences consume daily: reality TV, sitcoms, soap operas, crime dramas, or late-night shows. The important consideration related to their function as propaganda is how they participate in shaping opinions about an idea, product, or phenomenon. For instance, take the television show COPS which has been produced and aired for the past 30 years. It is designed to show “real men and women of law enforcement,” but researchers suggest that the narratives are, in fact, well-crafted and dramatized pro-police propaganda. In this video, Dan Taberski explains how his analysis of COPS demonstrates how the show shapes the way Americans view policing. Select the button to access the video.
Popular Culture as Resistance
At the same time, popular culture can be an important venue for advocacy, dissent, and resistance to dominant, top-down messages and practices. While popular culture is often criticized for producing stereotypes about marginalized groups in society, it is also a space to defy stereotypes, thus operating as a form of counter-propaganda. An example is the recent Pixar film, Coco, which defies U.S. president Donald Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric. As Steve Rose writes about the film Coco in the Guardian, “In the movies, Mexico is a place where bad things happen. From the car bomb in Touch of Evil to the drug gangs with their scary dogs in No Country for Old Men, it’s where outlaws go to lie low and bozos go to party with impunity. It’s the place of Donald Trump’s “bad hombres” nightmares.” “Even in animated form, Mexican characters have not come off well. El Macho, the villain of Dispicable Me 2, for example, was a compilation of stereotypes: chubby, hairy chest, medallion, exaggeratedly romantic, wears wrestler’s mask, and owns a Mexican restaurant. …Then there were the taco truck owners in Turbo; the romantic “Latino,Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 3. Basically, things haven’t moved on much from ‘Speedy Gonzales’.” By contrast, Coco directly challenges some of these stereotypes of Mexicans produced in the American film tradition. This film actively sets out to present Mexico in a different light. Rose goes on to describes the film in this way, “Like the best of Pixar’s movies, it reaches emotional depths few live-action films do, especially as the story takes our guitar-playing boy hero into the afterlife on el dia de los muertos, the day of the Dead, where he meets his skeleton ancestors. Coco is not only steeped in Mexican culture and tradition, it gets it right, from the dance steps to the twine around the tamales. Latin critics have lauded it and it’s now Mexico’s highest grossing movie ever.” (Steve Rose, the Guardian, 2018)
Propaganda in Music: Apartheid
At times, popular culture also functions as a force for mobilization. For example, take the role of music in advocating an important subject that requires the building of mass consciousness and mobilization in support of a worthy cause. A pertinent example of this is the role of the global music of resistance against the apartheid regime of South Africa. Under apartheid’s rule, which lasted from 1948-1991, South Africa saw the brutal institutionalization of systemic, racial, and social segregation of society. Much of the music in question supported the freeing of Nelson Mandela who had become the worlds best known freedom fighter. Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa’s Robben Island prison for 27 years for his defiance of the oppressive rules of segregation for Black South Africans. Within the period of his incarceration, there was a gradual process of advocacy and public education about the evils of the apartheid system. Artists and musicians turned to song to advocate for Mandela’s release, and in so doing, helped add pressure on the South African regime. Mandela was eventually released from prison in 1990, and the practice of apartheid in South Africa was discontinued in the early 1990s. In 1994, Mandela became president of South Africa in free elections that included all South Africans.
Listen to some of these well-known, powerful songs that got the world singing during the height of resistance to apartheid. In the process, people began to understand and articulate the anti-apartheid mantra in song. These songs sung by well-established artists poignantly carried the message and set the mood for a powerful global antiapartheid movement. Listen to two notable songs of that movement, and pay attention to the lyrics and delivery in making the case against apartheid. The first is “Free Nelson Mandela” by the British group, The Specials (1984). This song became a worldwide hit and was played as an anthem at anti-apartheid rallies. The second is “Biko” by Peter Gabriel (1980). The song was heard as a eulogy for Steve Biko, a Black, South African anti-apartheid activist who died in police custody in September 1977. Select each button to access the songs
Concluding Thoughts
Popular culture is a vital part of our existence that merges old and new forms of propaganda. These fragmented and fast-moving visuals encapsulate collective consciousness in a kind of totalizing propaganda. Within this space, multiple players send and receive messages offering new ways of viewing media power. Spaces for advocacy, dissent, and resistance through media are created and can offer powerful forms of feedback and counter-propaganda. As we conclude this part of the lessons, reflect on the following questions. How does propaganda function in your favourite reality TV show? How can your social media participation be explained as propaganda in popular culture? What are some other ways that popular culture can resist dominant ideas and power?