The Individual in a MASS CULTURE

Lonely in a crowd

George Gerbner

T takes 17,000 different job be etched in the public mind. classifications to produce an All this is genuine aspect of ordinary can of peas. Thou mass culture. sands more are needed to mar Mass culture today has ab ket the millions of cans that sorbed and utilized previously must be sold to pay the produ existing forms and functions of cers and to make a profit. A high folk class cultures, devel small army of specialized talent oped new form of its own, and mus: convince us, therefore that transformed the whole into a one brand of ordinary peas is historically new phenomenon. like no other brand of ordinary The facts of this transformation peas. Finally, we need a de are so obvious that we often tachment of the artists, perfor take them for granted. Parents mers, and technicians to create used to wonder how they spent the popular cultural atmos their time before they had chil phere in which the vibrant dren. Today they are equally image of the brand the corpo apt to ask, “What did we do be rate profile of its provider may fore television?”

22 Panorama As a nation we now devote the heart of popular culture. more time to the consumption This is the shared communica of mass-produced communica tive context of messages and tions than to paid work, or play, images through which society or anything except sleep (and reveals to each of its members the “late show” is cutting into the varieties limitations, and that too). Television alone, potentials of the human condi only ten years old as a mass tion. medium now demands one-fifth The basic social function of of the average person’s waking popular culture is, therefore, to life. Comic books, twenty years make available to all members old, can sell one billion copies a of the species the broadest a year at the cost of $100 mil range of meanings of their own lion — four times the budget of humanity that society makes all public libraries, and more possible, and, in turn, to help than the cost of the entire book them build such societies as new supply for both primary and conceptions of the human po secondary schools. Movies de tential may require. veloped within a lifetime, reach Popular culture can fulfill 50 million people who still go such functions to the extend to theatres each week. The that it makes available repre same number stay home and sentations and points of view watch movies on TV each night that enable men to judge a real —a total of 50 million a week world, and to change reality in But such facts and figures the light of reason, necessity, illuminate only one facet of the and human values. transformation. They do not To that extent, popular cul reveal anything about changes ture also forms the basis for in the structure, context, and self-government. orientation of popular culture. Men’s experiments with self- government are predicated on a H omo sapiens became a re historically new conception of cognizable human being popular culture. This new con through collaboration, communi. ception assumes that men have 1y, and communication^, Of such consciousness of existence these, communication is the as they themselves provide for most uniquely human element in communications; that reason in its symbolic representation confronts realities on terms cul- and re-creation of the human makes available; that societies condition. This symbolic repre can be self-directing only to the sentation and re-creation — extent, and in ways, that their whatever we call it news, infor popular cultures permit them to mation, or entertainment — is be so.

August 1960 23 Much has happened since ed, controlled, and supported some of these assumptions by industrial enterprises of found expression in the First mass communication. These en Amendment. Popular culture terprises, and the industries that has come to be mass-produced support them, bear central res and harnessed to the service of ponsibility for decisions affect a marketing system. ing popular culture. It falls to The founding fathers made them to safeguard the freedom life, liberty, and property sub to reflect on the requirements ject to law but tried to protect and dreams of a real world. But freedom of speech and press there are neither Constitutional from the main threat they knew guarantees nor alternative —government. They did not forms of support to protect the foresee the revolutionary cul mass media in carrying out tural development of our time: these responsibilities and in the transformation of public safeguarding these freedoms. communication into mass-pro The strategy of private-enter duced commodities protected prise mass production is geared from the laws of the republic to careful assessment, cultiva but subjected to the laws of pro tion, and exploitation of market perty and of markets. able desires. A detachment of Today the words of Andrew intelligence specialists probes Fletcher, uttered in 1704, rever public fancy; . reconnaissance berate in the halls of the Acade brings in the sales charts, cost- my (and, at times, of Con per-thousand figures, consump gress): “I believe if man were tionstatistics; corporate head permitted to write all the bal quarters issues a series of battle lads, he need not care who orders; an army of popularity should make the laws of the na engineers prepares compelling tion.” For ours is a revolution messages designed to make the in the making of all the ballads. public want what it will get. The “ballads” of an age are Then vivid images of life roll those vivid dramatic accounts out of the “dream factories”, and images which compel atten produced to exacting specifica tion for their own sake and tions to sell the public what which, in so doing, provide com it wants. These are the images mon assumptions about man, and messages through which life, and the world. They are millions see and judge and live the means through which socie and dream in the broader hu ty communicates to its mem man context. And the condi bers. tions of sale are implicit in the Today these means are big, in the content and quality of the few, and costly. They are own the dream. What are these im-

24 Panorama lications? How do these condi ence that we call culture. Cul tions of sale affect the indivi ture is itself a historical process dual’s image of himself? How and product. It reflects the gen is that image changing? eral productive structure of so Individual means indivisible, ciety, the role and position of a single separate person. Indivi communications institutions, the duality is the sum total of char dominant points of view their acteristics that set one indivi role and position may impart to dual apart from all others. these institutions, and certain What leads to differentiation overriding myths, themes, and and uniqueness of individual images. existence? One factor is the range of response required by ^DUCATORS especially wond the environment. Life probably er about the consequences began in the depth of the oceans inherent in the commercial com where food can float to the sim pulsion to present life in salable plest organism with little effort packages. They observe that in or sensation on its part. A a market geared to immediate higher form of differentiation is self-gratification, other rewards required when the organism can and appeals cannot successfully float against the current, as well compete. They are concerned as with it, in search of food. But about subjecting young people the highest forms of life we get to dramatically heightened im tremendously more complicated pact of the adult environment pattern because of the operation as the target audience of con of another factor: social life. sumers presumably wishes to Specialization in the perform see it. There is fear of distor ance of socially necessary tasks tion and moral confusion in the leads to further differentiation image of the human condition and uniqueness. When 17,000 that might emerge. And there different job classifications go is suspicion that the appeal to into caning of peas we have an juvenile fantasy, role experi intricate social network both re mentation, curiosity, and even lating and differentiating ways and even anxiety and revolt, of making a living, which is the may be based more on the pri material basis of individualized vate necessity of developing ha existence. bits of consumer acceptance But existence by itself is not than on public requirements of consciousness of existence. Be developing critical judgment tween human existence and our and of defining essentials of a consciousness of existence stand useful life in society. the symbolic representation and Not least among the parado imaginative re-creaiton of exist xes confronting “people of abun

August 1960 25 dance” having “comfort and The complexity of the struc fun” in the “afluent society” is ture of our relationships to otn- the shadow of what rather than er places on popular culture in surfeit in our midst, and around c.easing demands to illustrate, the world. The soothing voice ti illuminate, explain, and drama tillates lethargic consumers tize the meaning of being a man while muted government re in a collective society. Whether ports speak of as many as one we call it information, enter out of every five American fa tainment or even escape, I milies living in stubborn poc think it is basically this quest which explains the alacrity kets of permanent poverty. And with which we embrace every before the message is over, basic innovation in popular cul somewhere within half a day’s ture. But the “privatized” indi jet-range of the voice a spider- vidual finds his hidden thirsts bellied child whimpers and lies increased rather than quenched. still forever. The image of the Over previledged as a consu human condition reflected in mer and undernourished as a ci- the selective mirror of mass cul tizen, the purely private indivi ture defies full moral compre dual is a perpetual Walter Mit- hension; it can be grasped only ty. His daydreams of identity in terms of previleges of the present flight from insight into market place, of purely private the broader context of his exist rewards of the moment, danger ence. From his ranks come ad ously divorced from the world dicts of schizophrenic images of of crying needs with which the Superman. Mass-produced sa present market structure can dism and irrational violence are not effectively connect. his staple diet. These afforded The charge of the critics is, private gratifaction in their in brief, that for all its attrac cheapest, and therefore most tions and private satisfacitons, profitable, form; they can thrill our mass culture does not link him while he “tells of the world” the individual to that real world without having to enter into of existence in which he can be any consequential relations come an autonomous person, in with it. The purely private which he can base his direction individual cannot think in Des on an awareness of the existing cartes’ sense of critical reflec structure of his relations to the tion; he can only salivate to others, in which he can find re clues that evoke his “internal presentations and points of view stirring”; he can “resonate” but necessary to judge and change not reason. There, by grace of reality in the light of human mass culture, goes a challenge values. for us all.

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