I haven't really thought through the implications of this, and there might be a few horrible wrong turns in this entry, but this blog is a place where I can muse about media, so here goes.
I had a few thoughts about media and Other-ing after canvassing in Sandusky, Ohio on Sunday. The poorer neighborhoods I walked around were the kind of parts of the United States that I have never been to, that I have only experienced through the media. I read about them in the paper or see on TV when the news or fictional stories talk about economic downturn or how these parts are a problem that needs fixing (or how people living here should be pitied). As I walked around, I thought "in many ways, I do not live in the same world that these people live in." Did this mean that I was somehow fundamentally different than they were? Not that I was superior or inferior, but that I was different in some irreconcilable, permanent way.
That's a crucial distinction, between difference and deficience. If there truly is difference, we may look at it as something positive like diversity, or we may look at it as something that prevents communication, trust-building, or close relationships. But what is that difference? Am I mistaken in imagining its type and degree?
First off, as became obvious after talking with a few folks, there were some people who I got along with and agreed with on many topics, and others whom I did not, as would be true with people from the town in which I grew up. But the people I disagree with that are from my socio-economic and cultural sphere and I have some things in common that I feel I don't have in common with folks I disagree with in Sandusky. We have different views of the world, different values of certain ways of thinking, different views of other people and of human nature and their houses, the surroundings, are all so different than where I grew up and where I’ve always lived.
Are these people more different from me than people living in other countries, or people at other times (say, China 1000 years ago)? Are the differences superficial ones? I had to face the fact that I had very little direct experience with people in places like Sandusky. In the absence of direct experience, mediated experience and second-hand information fills in. When people talk of media forming images of people as Other, as fundamentally different, I think they're usually talking about the depictions of those people. And certainly that's one thing that contributed to my conception of such difference. But the big contributor from media, it occurred to me, is the audience that I imagine to be consuming media that I do not like or do not understand.
I see some stuff on TV (primarily Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, whom I've been watching a lot of lately) and I think, “millions of people watch this. This reflects someone’s desires and values. And they are so different than my desires and values, therefore those millions of people are fundamentally different than I am.” And that’s where this idea of some people being so different than me, irreconcilably different, comes from. Its not so much the depictions of the Other as these bits of media that reflect the desires and values of an Other. In the language used by my friends and colleagues, I hear this. We talk about Bill O'Rielly and Fox News, and in the language that we use, we treat their viewers as inferior or, at the very least, fundamentally different than us. Media scholars have long since refrained from demeaning analyses of debased cultural forms like the soap opera and the romance novel, but we talk about Fox News and their viewers as if they were lower forms of life, like they need to rescued. What if we were able to determine that Fox News viewers have certain demographic qualities in common; say, that they're mostly white, mostly religious, mostly either earn between 0 and 25K or 250K and 1M, mostly have American flags in their front yard, mostly wear Nascar-related memorobilia. Might this lead us to look upon these people, as I found myself looking upon the McCain supporters I saw in Sundusky, as fundamentally different? Might this be a problem?
But I'm not sure that we're really all that different. My cognitive development psych class has me thinking about human similarities. So, die-hard Repubs, people in Africa a thousand years ago, and me, we all have some things in common. In a sense, we all have most thing in common - language acquisition, intuitive grasp fo physics, the basics of psychology, biology. We all desire affection, attention, shelter, food, sleep. Sometimes we compete with one another or threaten one another, and other times we cooperate to achieve common goals. So what do we differ on? Theories about human nature: in what contexts are we competitive or cooperative, nature or nurture, the role of organizations and the individual, how to behave sexually, how best to bring about long term gain for the greatest number of people. Arguably, these differences touch on many aspects of our everyday lives. But still, I feel like we have some things in common. And this is what psychology can speak to.
They are incomplete thoughts.
No comments:
Post a Comment