c-spam media and critical analysis thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > c-spam media and critical analysis thread

Frog Act: Feb 10, 2012

so c-spam's need for a media criticism discussion has come up in the gaming thread, the woke brands thread, and a couple other places, where discussions of the degree to which specific films, television shows, and fictional constructs eternalize Liberal capitalism and have the overall effect of loving up the public imagination started but weren't topical enough to keep going. there is a lot of good Marxist film and media theory out there, and I am not familiar with much of it, which is mostly why I'm making this thread.

so, lets talk about capitalist, liberal, racist, and other perfidious discourses in popular media and the effect they have on people in general. lets start with someone who is not very credible, Kracauer in "From Caligari to Hitler", an exploration of how German film totally presaged the Holocaust by demonstrating the inherent teutonic affection for authoritarianism

quote:

Second, films address themselves, and appeal, to the anonymous multitude. Popular films or, to be more precise, popular screen motifs can therefore be supposed to satisfy existing mass desires. It has occasionally been remarked that Hollywood manages to sell films which do not give the masses what they really want. In this opinion Hollywood films more often than not stultify and misdirect a public persuaded by its own passivity and by overwhelming publicity into accepting them. However, the distorting influence of Hollywood mass entertainment should not be overrated. The manipulator depends upon the inherent qualities of his material; even the official Nazi war films, pure propaganda products as they were, mirrored certain national characteristics which could not be fabricated. What holds true of them applies all the more to the films of a competitive society. Hollywood cannot afford to ignore spontaneity on the part of the public. General discontent becomes apparent in waning box-office receipts, and the film industry, vitally interested in profit, is bound to adjust itself, so far as possible, to the changes of mental climate. To be sure, American audiences receive what Hollywood wants them to want; but in the long run public desires determine the nature of Hollywood films.

or someone who is generally correct and good, Adorno, in "Culture Industry"

quote:

Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work. It is sought after as an escape from the mechanised work process, and to recruit strength in order to be able to cope with it again. But at the same time mechanisation has such power over a man�s leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture of amusement goods, that his experiences are inevitably after-images of the work process itself. The ostensible content is merely a faded foreground; what sinks in is the automatic succession of standardised operations. What happens at work, in the factory, or in the office can only be escaped from by approximation to it in one�s leisure time.

All amusement suffers from this incurable malady. Pleasure hardens into boredom because, if it is to remain pleasure, it must not demand any effort and therefore moves rigorously in the worn grooves of association. No independent thinking must be expected from the audience: the product prescribes every reaction: not by its natural structure (which collapses under reflection), but by signals. Any logical connection calling for mental effort is painstakingly avoided. As far as possible, developments must follow from the immediately preceding situation and never from the idea of the whole. For the attentive movie-goer any individual scene will give him the whole thing. Even the set pattern itself still seems dangerous, offering some meaning � wretched as it might be � where only meaninglessness is acceptable. Often the plot is maliciously deprived of the development demanded by characters and matter according to the old pattern. Instead, the next step is what the script writer takes to be the most striking effect in the particular situation. Banal though elaborate surprise interrupts the story-line.

I'm not very well-versed in this stuff and I would like to read more, and I think there aren't enough spaces to talk or think about how media we consume intentionally engages in liberal reification and the parasitic relationship this induces between media and the consumer host body. most non-angry reactionary or generic plot hole examining media analysis these days is focused on individuated manifestations of social responsibility and Liberal atomization by examining shows and movies exclusively through the lens of casting or racial diversity, without questioning the broader intellectual framework that exploits minorities in order to more effectively commodify an entertainment product. so I'd like to see if anyone has anything interesting to say about the tv, movies, radio, books, and games they're consuming that isn't being said loudly or much elsewhere.

what i also want everyone to acknowledge from the very beginning in this thread, as it is foundational: Christopher Meloni showed his dick off in Oz a bunch at the same time he was playing an anti-sex crimes detective on Law and Order: SVU, which is interesting if you like think about it, and stuff

someone else did this better, post in this thread instead: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3881007

Frog Act has issued a correction as of 15:32 on Jan 31, 2019