Post Class 4/13, meg143

I felt that today’s class was very helpful in making connections between different theorists no matter what time period they were writing in. Herman and Chomsky have interesting theory and I would be very interested in reading their book about the political economy of the media. They discuss about the mass media and how, “individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society” (257). This theory ties into ideology with Althusser and how individuals are fitting right into the public structure set up for them by the mass media, ruling class etc. This also relates to Adorno and Horkheimer who discuss how the media industry creates a sameness among our society. Our discussion then went on to Bourdieu who also discusses how the media makes everyone “ordinary” and takes away from any uniqueness we used to hold because our universe is based on advertising. Bourdieau also goes on to discuss the people in our society who are considered famous and influential, “the most important of these figures are treated with a respect that is often quite out of proportion with their intellectual merits”(329). We looked at a picture in class of Barbara Walters, a famous, high paid, well known interviewer who is normally seen interviewing actors, singers, etc. who is now also interviewing political figures, even the Dahli Lama. It was a bizarre picture to see, two people who have been very influential but in drastically different ways. We had a debate over why and how we thought Barbara Walters was given the opportunity to interview the Dahli Lama. Some people felt that she asks good questions, and is well known and has a lot of publicity, and others argued that she probably doesn’t write her own questions and she looked out of place interviewing him. Either way both of them are considered influential, one for their intellectual merits and one based solely on publicity.