This is just a relatively brief theory of how media influences the lives of the Audience in a negative way.
Yes, we may have intelligence, but what have we turned it upon? Weapons to kill each other, or the ruthless industrialization of the precious natural world; yes, there are countless benefits to the boundless potential of our brains, but the human mind has created vicious devices and implements it uses freely. We suffer mental illnesses animals are blissfully ignorant to - if you can show me a schizophrenic cat or a bipolar parrot, I'll take a large step back with these hypothesises.
That in itself is bad enough, but the insanities we suffer would be much simpler without a such a bizarre society, or more specifically, a mass-controlling media that glorifies negative states of being. We live in a consumer culture, where the vast majority of art is a designed product created to make a profit, and the media does this by preying on the insecurities and the sicknesses of the mass audience. Artists individually might have no other intention than to express their own disorders, their heartache, or their pain through films, music and art, but the media machine has a very different idea what to do with it.
The moment the 'Artist' passes the 'Art' to the 'Industry', it loses value as an expression and becomes a 'Product'. The Product is then marketed for financial gain, ironically enough cheapening the Artist's persona as it makes him or her wealthier. This is not necessarily a harmful process, it's most likely the personal choice of the Artist to process his Art into a Product, and that's hardly morally reproachable. No, the issue I have with the Art + Industry = Product process is how the Industry packages the Product to appeal to the masses.
To sell clothes, an Industry will dress a drained, malnourished, stick insect of a girl in whatever the latest fashion is (I'm a critic, not a fashionista) and say to the Audience - "This is what you want to wear. If you wear this, you will be successful. You will be beautiful". It goes past creating a fleeting desire in the Audience and creates a personal dependency on attaining that status.
This 'Influence' is undeniable, and in the cases of Products such as video games, films, or books, it's understandable, it doesn't go to the extreme in creating a desire in the Audience that makes them feel as if they have to change themselves for happiness and success. But with fashion and anything cosmetic, it's vicious and deserves nothing more than the Audience's total disdain and disregard. I'll be the first to admit this is an overly idealistic concept to suggest, but it would certainly provoke the Industry into changing its targeting tactics to something that could at least achieve a positive Influence rather than a negative one.
The Industry, through its choice of representatives, encourages disorder. It has created an idea of beauty and happiness and repeated that single, harmful message ad nauseum until the pattern of thought in certain members of the Audience's individual component has become immovable. When the Industry packages a Product, in this case, a human being, they place it onto a pedestal, for a select mass, this becomes the only way to be. To be any other way is simply unacceptable, or so the Industry says.
In no way am I suggesting that individuals who fall for this are suggestible, or mindless cattle shepherded by supermodel dogs and their media masters, the Industry is a clever machine that knows how to Influence the Audience better than anything - it's had a lot of practise. But when it holds this sort of Influence and so heavily promotes a negative body image, it's no surprise that people become disordered and illnesses such as anorexia, bulimia and manic depression are plaguing society.
The media creates a no-win situation. First, the Influence subtly causes the 'Individual' to begin their negative behaviour. This is because of Industry programming, the Individual believes, whether this belief is subconscious or conscious, that if they achieve the promoted image, they too will be happy and beautiful.
This is extremely harmful, unfortunately for the Individual, and a further damning indictment of society. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate out of any other mental disorder, and when the Individual, through personal realization or external guidance, decides to free themselves from the Influence, the Industry lays a gauntlet before them.
For the majority, adverts trying to make you more aware of what you eat, or telling you to look after your weight, watch your sugar or calorie intakes, or to buy this butter because it has less saturated fats in it or whatever unnecessary bulletins they use to guilt trip people into buying their Product are harmless. The Audience thinks "Oh, perhaps I should consider buying Product X instead of Product Y, it's better for me"
The Reformer - an Individual in the process of removing the Industry's Influence - is vulnerable to such messages. It's a constant barrage of information that the Reformer takes as orders, thus creating a new Influence. This can make a reformation of normal human instinct and behaviour difficult, nigh on impossible. I'm not suggesting that the media actively encourages negative behaviours and promotes anorexia and bulimia (Though it's an idea I'm open to) , what I'm suggesting is that it discourages a removal of the Influence it subtly exerts.
The disorders I have chosen to use as examples are not media created. There are examples of them dating hundreds of years back, and it's no post-modernist culture phenomenon. But the Industry certainly creates thousands of false ideas of happiness, a mass illusion it uses to create a dependency on consumerism.
These are just some of my thoughts on this matter. I'm likely to expand upon them in the future, but if you've read this far, thank you, I'd love to read individual thoughts and opinions.
Laurence Braddow
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