SEKT
23rd October 2008, 05:05
I made an analysis about mass media in the US during post war era, Iwould like your comments and critiques about it.
Here It is:
Class Struggle and the Mass Media in the United States of America a
Historical Approach
The American Civil War was an episode that marked the life of the United States, why? Because it was the collision of two antagonist societies, it was the struggle between capitalism and semi-feudalism. Its result determined not only the mode of production but also the social relations that would characterize the United States until today.
The relevance of Civil War is not only the military victory of the Northern states over the Southern states but the fact that the victorious band would have the opportunity to impose its rules over the social totality[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn1). In that sense and following the Marxist theoretical framework we argue that an incipient social unity needs to legitimate itself inside and outside. This could be accomplished through the use of culture (social form of conscience in a determined historical period) as a tool of social control. Among the cultural mechanisms that can be used for social control, the mass media is a very powerful mean; we also argue that mass media was a logical creation of the capitalist mode of production in order to extend its grip not only to the material conditions of life but also in people’s minds.
As Lukacs showed, the need for rationalization of the world became crucial for the survival of the mode of production, rationalization was not only used in the sphere of production but also in all spheres of life.[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn2) Culture became object of calculus; then through the use of mass media values, attitudes and behaviors were rationalized and transmitted by the ruler class. The rationality of the market was imposed to the creation of culture.
In this paper we would analyze the form in which mass media generated a specific form of speech according to the ruler class view. Three are the main characteristics we would analyze in this work:
· The generation of an affirmative culture in the mass media
· The use of the functional language in the speech
· The enunciation of the subjects in the speech in order to know how they were named (i.e. citizens, patriots, humans, workers, people, etc.) and how this enunciation would be used in order to create social segments of the American society that were not included in the past but that we know are needed in order to legitimate the system.
The phenomena listed above are used in order to inhibit class struggle in a more radical way (frontal class confrontation) in the American society; all of them linked to the alienation produced by the mode of production. The use of these means would be also confronted with the so called freedom of speech promoted by the bourgeois class in order to verify if it exists of if it is merely illusion. The concentration of property and the access to mass media production would be also analyzed.
Our main concern is that mass media and in general the bourgeois culture are consider as irrational and in some cases as a disease. We argue that these forms of social relations are not such a disease but a necessary condition for the survival of the irrational society. In that sense the roots of such irrationalism have to be analyzed, the victory of the Union and the predominance of the capitalist mode of production is the best fact we can examine in order to understand the creation of the superestructural relations of the American society.
Our study will be focused on the New York World (as an expression of the mass media that targets the oppressed class) mainly but we will also use other sources to show change of the form of the speech during time and we will analyze the three phenomena mentioned:
Affirmative culture[3] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn3)
Functional language[4] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn4)
Treatment of subjects in the content
Finally we will show the results of our analysis and its confrontation with our initial hypothesis hoping this paper helps the understanding of today’s American society.
The American Civil War ended in 1865, by that time the South part of the country was devastated. It then became a period of reconstruction in which the country had to look for a new way of organization because the antagonistic union had not worked. The transformation of the society now was based on the capitalist mode of production (because the North in which the relationships that implies the capitalist mode of production won). Before the war “The South opened fire on a barrier to its prospective mercantile displacement of markets for the North's industries - not on opponents to its decaying agrarian infrastructure” (SFECON, 2000), so we cannot state that after the war the reconstruction process changed the ruling class but what it did was to transform the relations of productions. With the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) slaves were turned into freedmen, so they were not tied anymore to a master (in a base in which the master posses the slave completely), now the slave could be tied to the ancient master in another way, by selling the unique merchandise he possessed: his labor. What then is the significant change of the period? There is a turning point in which masters don’t have to take care of the freedman anymore but by paying him a salary, so they can use the rest of resources to expand its production and accumulate more capital, it is the change to a capitalist mode of production in agriculture. This change was experimented in the south while in the north capitalism continued with its expansion. “1860’s-1890’s was the epoch of the industrial capitalist, who participated directly in production” (Novack, 1935), it means that the capitalist that owned the means of production were the ruling class so the social structure of society only turned into a more developed stage of capitalism.
What has been described above give us a parameter to understand now the role of mass media in the period. First mass media understood as a real production of social consciousness has to be considered in the form in which existed and is still existing in the capitalist society: a fetish, it means that is a deformed representation of facts determined by the social relations of the period, in our case those relations are: master-servant in the capitalism. Mass media was used by the ruling class on the whole country; after Civil War mass media (principally the Penny Press) increased in a large amount. From the period of the Civil War were only 512 newspapers while after the Civil War and until 1900 the number increased to 1967.[5] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn5)
As an expression of ideology of the ruling class mass media in the Civil War period was highly marked by the political confrontation in the mass media arena, an example from the Staunton Spectator, February 24, 1863 about the Southern Vision of the North:
“The Yankee Congress is employed, diligently, its few remaining days in organizing and consolidating a despotism as pure and unmixed as that of Russia. Bills are pending, and likely to become laws, to vest in the Executive the absolute control of the militia of the States, and to crush the State banks and vest the whole of the money power of the country in the Executive department.”[6] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn6)
Here an example from an article from Valley Spirit, March 4, 1863 about problems in the South:
“If the South is a unit, as the papers in that region would have us believe, it is a very queer unit, to say the least. In almost every quarter there is opposition to the government--not only opposition by speech, but actually armed opposition. It has become so alarming in some sections that large army forces have been detached to put it down. The signs are encouraging, and lead us to hope that, at someday not very distant, the co-operation of the true Union men North and South, may re-establish the old order of things.”[7] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn7)
In both we can examine that the political confrontation was the model of production of news, also the fact that southern and northern are not identified in its class but only as a part of a region and finally one of the articles accuse the northern of being despotic in order to legitimize themselves and the other one tries to legitimize themselves by “showing” the troubles in the south. Both articles tries to attack the other part but in none of them we can observe that there is a reference to themselves, the legitimization is only external, it means that is based in attacking the contrary but not in showing own characteristics as better. It is the way in which media would try to form its speech, mainly trying to legitimize its own perspective over the contrary.
With the end of the Civil War and the end of the confrontation antagonist societies (though the ruling class was not destroyed at all in the South) the American society started to build the superstructural relations of modern capitalism. Mass media was produced for a large number of people, in national or in local level, but the tension between north and south was dissolved by a new form of speech: the daily American life.
The expression itself can give us an idea of how the speech was structured. First the standard American dissolves the contradiction among classes and built the speech of nationality in which what is important is being part of the nation not a specific social segment of the social structure. Daily life now refers to a state of peace instead a state of confrontation as in the period of Civil War.
The form of speech related to the American way of life is the base of this production of propaganda; it “mediates between the masters and their dependents”. (Marcuse, 1964). We have to take into consideration the class division in the United States by the period: between 1870 to 1929 and after the abolition of slavery the working class increased (because before slaves didn’t consitute a group of capitalist working class) until a 68.5% approximately to the population meanwhile farmers and the burgeoise only constituted together 31.5% of the population. (Corey, 1934) It means that the speech had to be reproduced and distributed looking for this segment of population that were the majority.
The speech of mass media becomes not only written but also graphic. The sublimation of senses is expanded to the visual sphere. The consequences of this change are: the message is more direct and fixes the meaning of the speech (Marcuse, 1964). For example, Image 1 shows the vision about the immigrants and the role they are going to play in the industrial society. The image shows a group of immigrants that had just to arrived to America and back of them is showed their destiny: worker in factories and servants in bourgeois houses, it also magnifies the fact that America is getting “twelve Americans per minute”. In that sense the immigrants are included into the American society but not as equal “Americans” but as new servants of the system. This is an example of speech about the economic life while other parts of the superstructure are also used in order to maintain individuals controlled, for example the use of the legal system to discourage people from committing “crimes” (which are stated by the ruler class laws). The superstructure uses the speech to create fear. Image 2 and the article referred to this image shows how the legal system is used: “the fear of the certainty of life imprisonment would act as a greater deterrent to criminals than that of the electric chair, which they have every reason to hope to escape.” In which fear to avoid certain conducts appears as the justification against criminals. Criminals are only mentioned in a general way, but in the image shows a black men on the steel chair, so it has a racist content associated with the notion of criminal or criminal = black equation. The role of racism also contributes in the speech because it helps to create the fixed meaning, in other words, the use of an image helps to the creation of a stereotype as the one mentioned above. The creation of the speech not only refers to adult population, also kinds are subject of the mass media speech. For example the labor of children was not regulated until 1938, before children could be employed in worse conditions than adults. The mass media created also a speech about child labor but it was merely descriptive not pressuring the regulation of child labor. For example the article of The New York World of August 3 1903 only describes the work conditions of children in glass factories in New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Indiana. In those states labor of children below fourteen years old is not regulated by law and also some associations such as the Western Pennsylvania Association of Glass Manufacturers opposed to the regulation of children working at night, the regulation stipulated that at least children had to be able of reading and writing before they started to work but the Association opposed to the regulation because it was against their interest, the article finally only “alert” the population about the working conditions of children but it didn’t invite people to act against this situation. Once again the subjects of the speech are only mentioned, it is also mentioned their conditions but the speech is only contemplative doesn’t not implies practical movements.
The form in which the speech is conformed not only tends to create a fixed subject it also tends to manipulate the elements in which it is conformed and tends to conciliate opposed conditions or tries to create a Happy consciousness (Marcuse, 1964) by means of the functional language . Returning to Image 1 it has been mentioned that the subjects are appropriated by the system but the system is also created in order to control the contradiction between immigrants that only posses their labor force and the industrial system that will use them as tools. The image implies that new workers arrived to be employed in the industrial society, only recognized with the qualitative value of a tool, the composition of the image tries to conciliate the industrial way of life with the social phenomena of immigration while the political reality is conciliated using the nationalism to mean that the new “Americans” would have the rights of the “old Americans”; basically under the concept of being American it doesn’t matter if you are new American or old America because you are included now into the political definition of an American (only used in a subjective way because legal recognition of rights has nothing to do with the mass media speech).
The manipulation of speech not only uses human subjects but also uses other non-human entities; it can be proved by analyzing Image 3 which title is: “THE SUBMARINES ENCOUNTER-WHALES!” The title’s objective is to impact the spectator by the use of a natural subject: the whales. The written speech is mixed with the graphic speech of a whale destroying a submarine and another whale hitting a submarine. What is privileged is that submarines are not strong enough so a natural force as the force of a whale could destroy it, in other words, the fact that a mean of national defense is weak is more important that the fact of a whale being killed by a strong submarine. The speech suggests an affirmation of the defense as above the nature, but why defense is more important than nature? The answer is not founded in the speech but in the material conditions of the American society and in the international context: The United States had fought against Spain in 1898 for the control of Cuba. “Spain relinquished Cuba and ceded to the United States the Philippine Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Expansion of the nation to include regions outside of the North American continent” (Spencer, 1993) So a strong military machinery is needed in order to accomplish the expansionist objectives of the ruling class that is why it is showed on the mass media.
The third tendency observed in the american mass media speech is the affirmative character of culture. It shows how the spiritual life is above the material conditions of life. The form of speech clearly targets the working class in the fact that they are the majority of the population and if they aspire to improve their live they have to confront the rulling class, that is why the conflict is moved towards the spirit. But let’s show how Leo Tolstoi give us an example of affirmative culture:
“The idea of communism and what it implies refers to the social conditions and it would be senseless for me to demand that everyone should sleep as little as I do, eat the same food, wear the same clothes
or have the same feelings which are peculiar to me. A man is not a watch. Each is a world in himself. It is therefore an illusion to believe in materialistic economy as if it were a religion. It is foolish therefore to worship the idea of socialism. I worship the soul
of man, which is the only reality”[8] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn8)
Analyzing the fragment we can observe how clearly the author emphasizes that the spirit is the reality of man, but what is more important it takes communism as a religion and concludes that it is false, which can be also stated as if communism as a religion is false then religion itself is false, but the soul is the reality, so Mr. Tolstoi tries to save its argument by implying that reality resides on a metaphysic entity!
Its speech only refers the Russia of his times but also he makes a reference to America:
“All this proves that government cannot improve the moral nature of man, and that brute force always defeats its object. There can be no coercion of the soul”
Again Mr. Tolstoi uses the metaphysic entity of soul as a real argument against the government but also he refers to a “moral nature of man” which is not expressed in historical terms because “nature” is not historical so a transformation of the moral cannot be produced because it is “natural” determined.
Of course the analysis of Leo Tolstoi is based on his personal appreciations nevertheless what is relevant is that it has been published in the mass media and his speech could arrive to a large population: by 1896 the New York World had a circulation of 370,000 newspapers in the daily edition and in Sundays it has a circulation of 568,000 items. But also it is showed as in the case of the New York World (which was founded by Democrats) that only certain groups had the access to the production of mass indoctrination, so freedom of speech at least in mass media was closed to the ruler class that had the access by means of the economic resources they had.
Primary sources:
• Constitution of the United States: Bill of Rights. (1789, June 8). Retrieved September 1, 2008, from The Avalon Project at Yale Law School: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/rights1.htm
• New York Wold. (1911, August 13). The Submarine Encounter-Whales! The World Magazine , p. 1.
• New York World. (1906). 12 Americans a Minute. The World Magazine , p. 1.
• New York World. (1903, August 3). BOY LABOR IN GLASS-BOTTLE FACTORIES. New York World , p. 6.
• New York World. (1906, November 25). Shall We Banish the Electric Chair and the GALLOWS, as France has banished the GUILLOTINE? The World Magazine , p. 2.
• Tolstoi, L. (1909, February 7). TOLSTOI COMPARES AMERICA AND EUROPE. New York World , p. 1.
• Valley Spirit. (1863, March 4). Troubles in the South. Valley Spirit , p. 2.
• Whig, R. (1863, February 24). The Northern Despotism. Staunton Spectator , p. 2.
[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref1) It refers to the society as a whole, as the set of human relations that in a determined historical period form a unity based on the material conditions in which they develop the reproduction of social life.
[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref2) Lukács, G. (1972). History and Class Consciousness. New York: The MIT Press.
[3] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref3) Cultural relations that belong to the bourgeois stage; it tends to separate the spiritual world and the material world. Its main characteristic is that it also tends to affirm the spiritual life above the material life.
[4] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref4) Form of speech that tends to eliminate the non-conformist elements of the language and that identifies things with its functions. Also it tends to reconcile the opposite elements of a speech resulting in its use for repressive purposes.
[5] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref5) News Writing. (2000). Yellow Journalism. Retrieved October 20, 2008, from Mass Media and Society: http://www.newswriting.org/100/100xyellowjournalism.pdf
[6] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref6) Whig, R. (1863, February 24). The Northern Despotism. Staunton Spectator , p. 2.
[7] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref7) Valley Spirit. (1863, March 4). Troubles in the South. Valley Spirit , p. 2.
[8] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref8) Tolstoi, L. (1909, February 7). TOLSTOI COMPARES AMERICA AND EUROPE. New York World , p. 1.
The images are at: http://home.gwi.net/~dnb/readlist.htm
Here It is:
Class Struggle and the Mass Media in the United States of America a
Historical Approach
The American Civil War was an episode that marked the life of the United States, why? Because it was the collision of two antagonist societies, it was the struggle between capitalism and semi-feudalism. Its result determined not only the mode of production but also the social relations that would characterize the United States until today.
The relevance of Civil War is not only the military victory of the Northern states over the Southern states but the fact that the victorious band would have the opportunity to impose its rules over the social totality[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn1). In that sense and following the Marxist theoretical framework we argue that an incipient social unity needs to legitimate itself inside and outside. This could be accomplished through the use of culture (social form of conscience in a determined historical period) as a tool of social control. Among the cultural mechanisms that can be used for social control, the mass media is a very powerful mean; we also argue that mass media was a logical creation of the capitalist mode of production in order to extend its grip not only to the material conditions of life but also in people’s minds.
As Lukacs showed, the need for rationalization of the world became crucial for the survival of the mode of production, rationalization was not only used in the sphere of production but also in all spheres of life.[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn2) Culture became object of calculus; then through the use of mass media values, attitudes and behaviors were rationalized and transmitted by the ruler class. The rationality of the market was imposed to the creation of culture.
In this paper we would analyze the form in which mass media generated a specific form of speech according to the ruler class view. Three are the main characteristics we would analyze in this work:
· The generation of an affirmative culture in the mass media
· The use of the functional language in the speech
· The enunciation of the subjects in the speech in order to know how they were named (i.e. citizens, patriots, humans, workers, people, etc.) and how this enunciation would be used in order to create social segments of the American society that were not included in the past but that we know are needed in order to legitimate the system.
The phenomena listed above are used in order to inhibit class struggle in a more radical way (frontal class confrontation) in the American society; all of them linked to the alienation produced by the mode of production. The use of these means would be also confronted with the so called freedom of speech promoted by the bourgeois class in order to verify if it exists of if it is merely illusion. The concentration of property and the access to mass media production would be also analyzed.
Our main concern is that mass media and in general the bourgeois culture are consider as irrational and in some cases as a disease. We argue that these forms of social relations are not such a disease but a necessary condition for the survival of the irrational society. In that sense the roots of such irrationalism have to be analyzed, the victory of the Union and the predominance of the capitalist mode of production is the best fact we can examine in order to understand the creation of the superestructural relations of the American society.
Our study will be focused on the New York World (as an expression of the mass media that targets the oppressed class) mainly but we will also use other sources to show change of the form of the speech during time and we will analyze the three phenomena mentioned:
Affirmative culture[3] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn3)
Functional language[4] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn4)
Treatment of subjects in the content
Finally we will show the results of our analysis and its confrontation with our initial hypothesis hoping this paper helps the understanding of today’s American society.
The American Civil War ended in 1865, by that time the South part of the country was devastated. It then became a period of reconstruction in which the country had to look for a new way of organization because the antagonistic union had not worked. The transformation of the society now was based on the capitalist mode of production (because the North in which the relationships that implies the capitalist mode of production won). Before the war “The South opened fire on a barrier to its prospective mercantile displacement of markets for the North's industries - not on opponents to its decaying agrarian infrastructure” (SFECON, 2000), so we cannot state that after the war the reconstruction process changed the ruling class but what it did was to transform the relations of productions. With the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) slaves were turned into freedmen, so they were not tied anymore to a master (in a base in which the master posses the slave completely), now the slave could be tied to the ancient master in another way, by selling the unique merchandise he possessed: his labor. What then is the significant change of the period? There is a turning point in which masters don’t have to take care of the freedman anymore but by paying him a salary, so they can use the rest of resources to expand its production and accumulate more capital, it is the change to a capitalist mode of production in agriculture. This change was experimented in the south while in the north capitalism continued with its expansion. “1860’s-1890’s was the epoch of the industrial capitalist, who participated directly in production” (Novack, 1935), it means that the capitalist that owned the means of production were the ruling class so the social structure of society only turned into a more developed stage of capitalism.
What has been described above give us a parameter to understand now the role of mass media in the period. First mass media understood as a real production of social consciousness has to be considered in the form in which existed and is still existing in the capitalist society: a fetish, it means that is a deformed representation of facts determined by the social relations of the period, in our case those relations are: master-servant in the capitalism. Mass media was used by the ruling class on the whole country; after Civil War mass media (principally the Penny Press) increased in a large amount. From the period of the Civil War were only 512 newspapers while after the Civil War and until 1900 the number increased to 1967.[5] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn5)
As an expression of ideology of the ruling class mass media in the Civil War period was highly marked by the political confrontation in the mass media arena, an example from the Staunton Spectator, February 24, 1863 about the Southern Vision of the North:
“The Yankee Congress is employed, diligently, its few remaining days in organizing and consolidating a despotism as pure and unmixed as that of Russia. Bills are pending, and likely to become laws, to vest in the Executive the absolute control of the militia of the States, and to crush the State banks and vest the whole of the money power of the country in the Executive department.”[6] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn6)
Here an example from an article from Valley Spirit, March 4, 1863 about problems in the South:
“If the South is a unit, as the papers in that region would have us believe, it is a very queer unit, to say the least. In almost every quarter there is opposition to the government--not only opposition by speech, but actually armed opposition. It has become so alarming in some sections that large army forces have been detached to put it down. The signs are encouraging, and lead us to hope that, at someday not very distant, the co-operation of the true Union men North and South, may re-establish the old order of things.”[7] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn7)
In both we can examine that the political confrontation was the model of production of news, also the fact that southern and northern are not identified in its class but only as a part of a region and finally one of the articles accuse the northern of being despotic in order to legitimize themselves and the other one tries to legitimize themselves by “showing” the troubles in the south. Both articles tries to attack the other part but in none of them we can observe that there is a reference to themselves, the legitimization is only external, it means that is based in attacking the contrary but not in showing own characteristics as better. It is the way in which media would try to form its speech, mainly trying to legitimize its own perspective over the contrary.
With the end of the Civil War and the end of the confrontation antagonist societies (though the ruling class was not destroyed at all in the South) the American society started to build the superstructural relations of modern capitalism. Mass media was produced for a large number of people, in national or in local level, but the tension between north and south was dissolved by a new form of speech: the daily American life.
The expression itself can give us an idea of how the speech was structured. First the standard American dissolves the contradiction among classes and built the speech of nationality in which what is important is being part of the nation not a specific social segment of the social structure. Daily life now refers to a state of peace instead a state of confrontation as in the period of Civil War.
The form of speech related to the American way of life is the base of this production of propaganda; it “mediates between the masters and their dependents”. (Marcuse, 1964). We have to take into consideration the class division in the United States by the period: between 1870 to 1929 and after the abolition of slavery the working class increased (because before slaves didn’t consitute a group of capitalist working class) until a 68.5% approximately to the population meanwhile farmers and the burgeoise only constituted together 31.5% of the population. (Corey, 1934) It means that the speech had to be reproduced and distributed looking for this segment of population that were the majority.
The speech of mass media becomes not only written but also graphic. The sublimation of senses is expanded to the visual sphere. The consequences of this change are: the message is more direct and fixes the meaning of the speech (Marcuse, 1964). For example, Image 1 shows the vision about the immigrants and the role they are going to play in the industrial society. The image shows a group of immigrants that had just to arrived to America and back of them is showed their destiny: worker in factories and servants in bourgeois houses, it also magnifies the fact that America is getting “twelve Americans per minute”. In that sense the immigrants are included into the American society but not as equal “Americans” but as new servants of the system. This is an example of speech about the economic life while other parts of the superstructure are also used in order to maintain individuals controlled, for example the use of the legal system to discourage people from committing “crimes” (which are stated by the ruler class laws). The superstructure uses the speech to create fear. Image 2 and the article referred to this image shows how the legal system is used: “the fear of the certainty of life imprisonment would act as a greater deterrent to criminals than that of the electric chair, which they have every reason to hope to escape.” In which fear to avoid certain conducts appears as the justification against criminals. Criminals are only mentioned in a general way, but in the image shows a black men on the steel chair, so it has a racist content associated with the notion of criminal or criminal = black equation. The role of racism also contributes in the speech because it helps to create the fixed meaning, in other words, the use of an image helps to the creation of a stereotype as the one mentioned above. The creation of the speech not only refers to adult population, also kinds are subject of the mass media speech. For example the labor of children was not regulated until 1938, before children could be employed in worse conditions than adults. The mass media created also a speech about child labor but it was merely descriptive not pressuring the regulation of child labor. For example the article of The New York World of August 3 1903 only describes the work conditions of children in glass factories in New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Indiana. In those states labor of children below fourteen years old is not regulated by law and also some associations such as the Western Pennsylvania Association of Glass Manufacturers opposed to the regulation of children working at night, the regulation stipulated that at least children had to be able of reading and writing before they started to work but the Association opposed to the regulation because it was against their interest, the article finally only “alert” the population about the working conditions of children but it didn’t invite people to act against this situation. Once again the subjects of the speech are only mentioned, it is also mentioned their conditions but the speech is only contemplative doesn’t not implies practical movements.
The form in which the speech is conformed not only tends to create a fixed subject it also tends to manipulate the elements in which it is conformed and tends to conciliate opposed conditions or tries to create a Happy consciousness (Marcuse, 1964) by means of the functional language . Returning to Image 1 it has been mentioned that the subjects are appropriated by the system but the system is also created in order to control the contradiction between immigrants that only posses their labor force and the industrial system that will use them as tools. The image implies that new workers arrived to be employed in the industrial society, only recognized with the qualitative value of a tool, the composition of the image tries to conciliate the industrial way of life with the social phenomena of immigration while the political reality is conciliated using the nationalism to mean that the new “Americans” would have the rights of the “old Americans”; basically under the concept of being American it doesn’t matter if you are new American or old America because you are included now into the political definition of an American (only used in a subjective way because legal recognition of rights has nothing to do with the mass media speech).
The manipulation of speech not only uses human subjects but also uses other non-human entities; it can be proved by analyzing Image 3 which title is: “THE SUBMARINES ENCOUNTER-WHALES!” The title’s objective is to impact the spectator by the use of a natural subject: the whales. The written speech is mixed with the graphic speech of a whale destroying a submarine and another whale hitting a submarine. What is privileged is that submarines are not strong enough so a natural force as the force of a whale could destroy it, in other words, the fact that a mean of national defense is weak is more important that the fact of a whale being killed by a strong submarine. The speech suggests an affirmation of the defense as above the nature, but why defense is more important than nature? The answer is not founded in the speech but in the material conditions of the American society and in the international context: The United States had fought against Spain in 1898 for the control of Cuba. “Spain relinquished Cuba and ceded to the United States the Philippine Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Expansion of the nation to include regions outside of the North American continent” (Spencer, 1993) So a strong military machinery is needed in order to accomplish the expansionist objectives of the ruling class that is why it is showed on the mass media.
The third tendency observed in the american mass media speech is the affirmative character of culture. It shows how the spiritual life is above the material conditions of life. The form of speech clearly targets the working class in the fact that they are the majority of the population and if they aspire to improve their live they have to confront the rulling class, that is why the conflict is moved towards the spirit. But let’s show how Leo Tolstoi give us an example of affirmative culture:
“The idea of communism and what it implies refers to the social conditions and it would be senseless for me to demand that everyone should sleep as little as I do, eat the same food, wear the same clothes
or have the same feelings which are peculiar to me. A man is not a watch. Each is a world in himself. It is therefore an illusion to believe in materialistic economy as if it were a religion. It is foolish therefore to worship the idea of socialism. I worship the soul
of man, which is the only reality”[8] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn8)
Analyzing the fragment we can observe how clearly the author emphasizes that the spirit is the reality of man, but what is more important it takes communism as a religion and concludes that it is false, which can be also stated as if communism as a religion is false then religion itself is false, but the soul is the reality, so Mr. Tolstoi tries to save its argument by implying that reality resides on a metaphysic entity!
Its speech only refers the Russia of his times but also he makes a reference to America:
“All this proves that government cannot improve the moral nature of man, and that brute force always defeats its object. There can be no coercion of the soul”
Again Mr. Tolstoi uses the metaphysic entity of soul as a real argument against the government but also he refers to a “moral nature of man” which is not expressed in historical terms because “nature” is not historical so a transformation of the moral cannot be produced because it is “natural” determined.
Of course the analysis of Leo Tolstoi is based on his personal appreciations nevertheless what is relevant is that it has been published in the mass media and his speech could arrive to a large population: by 1896 the New York World had a circulation of 370,000 newspapers in the daily edition and in Sundays it has a circulation of 568,000 items. But also it is showed as in the case of the New York World (which was founded by Democrats) that only certain groups had the access to the production of mass indoctrination, so freedom of speech at least in mass media was closed to the ruler class that had the access by means of the economic resources they had.
Primary sources:
• Constitution of the United States: Bill of Rights. (1789, June 8). Retrieved September 1, 2008, from The Avalon Project at Yale Law School: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/rights1.htm
• New York Wold. (1911, August 13). The Submarine Encounter-Whales! The World Magazine , p. 1.
• New York World. (1906). 12 Americans a Minute. The World Magazine , p. 1.
• New York World. (1903, August 3). BOY LABOR IN GLASS-BOTTLE FACTORIES. New York World , p. 6.
• New York World. (1906, November 25). Shall We Banish the Electric Chair and the GALLOWS, as France has banished the GUILLOTINE? The World Magazine , p. 2.
• Tolstoi, L. (1909, February 7). TOLSTOI COMPARES AMERICA AND EUROPE. New York World , p. 1.
• Valley Spirit. (1863, March 4). Troubles in the South. Valley Spirit , p. 2.
• Whig, R. (1863, February 24). The Northern Despotism. Staunton Spectator , p. 2.
[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref1) It refers to the society as a whole, as the set of human relations that in a determined historical period form a unity based on the material conditions in which they develop the reproduction of social life.
[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref2) Lukács, G. (1972). History and Class Consciousness. New York: The MIT Press.
[3] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref3) Cultural relations that belong to the bourgeois stage; it tends to separate the spiritual world and the material world. Its main characteristic is that it also tends to affirm the spiritual life above the material life.
[4] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref4) Form of speech that tends to eliminate the non-conformist elements of the language and that identifies things with its functions. Also it tends to reconcile the opposite elements of a speech resulting in its use for repressive purposes.
[5] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref5) News Writing. (2000). Yellow Journalism. Retrieved October 20, 2008, from Mass Media and Society: http://www.newswriting.org/100/100xyellowjournalism.pdf
[6] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref6) Whig, R. (1863, February 24). The Northern Despotism. Staunton Spectator , p. 2.
[7] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref7) Valley Spirit. (1863, March 4). Troubles in the South. Valley Spirit , p. 2.
[8] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref8) Tolstoi, L. (1909, February 7). TOLSTOI COMPARES AMERICA AND EUROPE. New York World , p. 1.
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