Theme 2: Critical media studies - part 2

For this week's theme I read the texts and interpreted them to answer the questions related to them. I had not been able to make as much time for reflecting or reading the texts over again as I had wished for. However I found the lecture and the seminar helpful to get a clearer view on how to interpret the texts.

From the seminar I feel like I got another perspective of “myth” in Adorno & Horkheimer’s text.  My new perspective is that it does not refer to an outdated method of describing the world. Instead myth meant that in order to try to control the nature we try to mimic it.

I think that an example would be that we through history have different ways of mimicking nature. In Greek mythology natural phenomena are presented in terms of Gods, because that was a way to make an understandable concept of nature for humans. Nowadays natural phenomena, for example gravity is mimicked in terms of mathematical formulas. They are both different concepts from humans to try and mimic and explain nature.

In the seminar we discussed the question about superstructure and substructure in terms of capitalist order of production. And the explanation for these terms were:

Substructure – The components of a production that affects the production itself directly. (Such as: resources and workers.)

Superstructure – The components of a production that affects the production itself indirectly. (I think that the more administrative professions would be an example of that.)

We also discussed that Benjamin and Adorno & Horkheimer had different perspectives on how culture (or more specifically the cinema) could make an impact on people, which I feel I had misunderstood before attending the seminar.

Benjamin was said to believe that it made the portrayal of the “ordinary people” possible and give them a sense of hope. It was said that he meant that art before had only been a privilege for rich people and therefore when a person who was not rich was portrayed and could be seen by everyone in a cinema it could give them a sense of having the same privilege of someone who was rich.

Adorno & Horkheimer on the other hand discussed mass media and how cinema could be used a negative way to present to people how they should live and tell when people should not try to stand out above the crowd. They meant that cinema uses nominalism in the sense that people are being categorized under certain names and are being portrayed after that characterisation. 

An example was given with the portrayal of how secretaries in cinema were female, and that Adorno & Horkheimer meant that such a portrayal was to tell female secretaries that they should not have ambitions to work in any other profession.

Other terms we discussed were naturally determined perception and historically determined perception. This discussion gave me a new perspective on what the terms mean. To summarize and to end this blog post:

Naturally determined perception – This means how we perceive an object, that is our naturally determined perception.

Historically determined perception – This refers to that how we perceive an object is partially determined by when we perceive it. For example what we find beautiful today may not be considered beautiful in 20 years, so time has a saying in how we perceive objects.