The Media in Question
The Media in Question
The Media
in Question
Robert
Ferguson
ISBN
0-340-74078-7
Media
Studies appears on the curriculum in your child's school but a
popular front stretching from Polly Toynbee in the Guardian to Chris
Woodhead in the Telegraph denigrate it as a "soft option"
and suggest that anyone who studies or researches it is wasting their
time. They would much prefer it, for example, if their prose were
read without any analysis. Not only does Robert Ferguson champion
this much-maligned subject but he also adopts a heretical view on
teaching it. For him it is not a subject which casts the teacher in
the role of a sheepdog directing pupils to pre-determined answers but
one in which students and researchers work together both on the
skills of media production and on the analysis of media texts.
The TV or
movies are often seen as realistic because "the camera cannot
lie." However, for example, the people taking the decisions on
how to represent a war can decide whether to focus on faithfully
showing "the action on the front line" or (like Michael
Moore) also pay attention to the grieving mothers, the recruitment of
disadvantaged youngsters into the army and to the big business
interests which profit from warfare. As Ferguson puts it:
"realism, while dependent partly upon verisimilitude,
is also dependent on creating, sustaining or challenging the
audience's understanding of the world being represented. It is not
necessary to agree with what a text offers in terms of dialogue,
acting and so on, in order to accept it as realist. The irony is that
realism is often most persuasive when any superficial criteria ('that
looks like a battlefield') are transcended by thosewhich are more
complex ('after the film, you knew more about the nature of warfare
and those in whose interets it is pursued.') and are not dependent
upon surface appearance."
If "Media
Studies" is divorced from ideology it is reduced to issues of
technique in a vacuum. Understanding the "how" without
tackling the "why" is sterile. Studying the media also
involves studying the society which produces media images.
Questioning is central to Robert Ferguson's approach and time and
again he causes the reader to go beyond simplistic analyses.
For
example when dealing with 'race' in the media, he invites the reader
to go beyond the basic semiotic
analysis and look at the contradictions and tensions within media
messages. Media messages draw on what he terms a "discursive
reserve". This is a set of ideas which the media both "feeds"
and reinforces. A media text will not have a single meaning for a
single audience, it will have *meanings* for *audiences* and an
analysis of how these "work" is more fruitful than seeking
the one meaning of the text.
He also
draws attention to the very real consequences of racism beyond the
media.
"On the one hand it is clear that much of the construction of
otherness, the exotic and issues of 'race' is accomplished through
complex modes of discourse and representation. On the other it is
apparent to all but the most solipsistic that people's lived
existence, and their deaths, cannot be reduced to the discursive. We
have to face the contradictions and dilemmas thrown up at the
interface of the discursive and the material. We must also recognise
that, as media students and researchers, our relationship to our
field of study cannot be that of a 'free floating' intellectual,
questioner or researcher."
Postmodernism
sheds light and casts shadows in roughly equal measure. The book
evaluates the contribution of postmodernism whilst dealing ruthlessly
with its shortcomings.
"The main challenge offered by the concept of postmodernism
for the media studies student and researcher is that it invites a
debate to which there is no easy or final conclusion. Postmodern
media texts open the door for the celebration of consumerism and
liberation from the constraints of some forms of totalitarianism. At
the same time, postmodernity is a period of intense insecurity. In
its denial of totalizing theory, it is prone to a new totalitarianism
which is insistent upon fragmentation and difference. Political
solidarity does not sit happily beside the postmodern."
The book
intentionally raises more questions than it answers but anyone who
really wants to know what media studies is about and why it is
important for socialists could do a lot worse than start with this
book.
Posted by derekmcmillan
at 8:39 PM BST