Response to Harmony’s blog

Harmony commented:

Cobbs wrote, “our highest aspiration is a happiness defined by amusement, engineered along the lines of Disney World or the ubiquitous themed sites of pleasure…” This quote annoys me because of its truth. I am annoyed that the media has completely formed my view of happiness. Due to media, I have high expectations for what a good relationship with a friend, spouse, and family member must be like. It is easy to be unsatisfied.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I also disagree on some level.  I recognize that media plays a role, but I also assert (as did Barker) that people are not merely passive audiences. We are shaped by media, but we also shape media; what we receive from Disney and gang cannot be merely contrived for us, but must somehow reflect what we as a society deem valuable. I think we fail to appreciate the nuance of the situation when we assume that the influence goes in only one direction.

As a case in point, I might note the significant number of dramas on television.  TV series often seem to exploit the morbid and the bizarre. Clearly we don’t receive input like this and somehow see them as reflections of what life ought to look like. But at the same time, we as a society have somehow given these elements a validity that allows them to be exploited in commercial media.