The age of the ‘techne’ marked the crossing of a Rubicon – for the first time in human history the notoriously futuristic credo of progress and development became immediately available and the impending became inextricably enmeshed with the quotation. In every, sphere life was suddenly agog with ‘marvels’ – Newton, steam engines, Darwin, the Bessemer patent, the serendipitous invention of the Montgolfier brothers, and more. Factory life and production opened new vistas of possibility and the human horizon of expectations has since been bounding exponentially.
Doomsayers of various ilk, from Spengler to Henry Adams (and we may also include the pessimistic visions of such as Schumacher and George Miller) have often focused attention towards growing socio-political labyrinths and fragmentation, the perilous state of resources, historical cycles and slipstreams, thermodynamic discharge and akin factors, and raised plausible visions of apocalypse but the bubble has stubbornly refused to burst. Discontent with going around the world in eighty days, generations have successively diminished the temporal expanse of the world and as we enter the post-modernist world of ‘chaos’ ‘uncertainty’ and ‘relativity’ we ‘inner and outer’ in techno-time more than ever before.
It is a matter of no little significance in the history of our racer civilization that the media has grown in scale and stature in tandem with the coeval ‘technologisation’ and democratization of the common society. The advent of the scientific revolution and capitalism broke feudal strangleholds and emasculated the various versions of the ‘estates’ order that had been perpetuating their stultifying influence around preponderate parts of the world. Social and philosophical notions of the individual arose. Even while tenets of egalitarianism were distant, more and more men rose to participate more freely and actively and in many more spheres than had been hitherto possible.
Greater involvement logically entailed greater generation of information, which had to be spread over greater distances and a greater spectrum and in lesser time. Indeed, before the world shrank it bloated, but the technology that engendered it also made the proportions of this tumescence manageable, even beneficial. The post office and mass media were both the handiwork and handmaiden of the information driven manufacturing society.
It may indeed be irrefragably averred that the institution of mass media could not have been envisaged or derived even until late feudalism. In those days information was expensive (custom-made, to use later terminology that is most befitting), scarcely traveled large distances and concerned only a handful of people (mostly elite) and remarkable events, and was disseminated with only as much celerity as quadruples could manage. However unlike medieval systems capitalism was an open and outward looking phenomenon that was impelled by its innate, expansionist logic to forever draw and co-opt more and more elements to fuel its dynamics.
Quite inevitably the cost effective, technologically efficient and wide-reaching method of mass media became its natural messenger. The invention of the Guttenberg press was a magnetic event around which all the forces presiding over the passing of the feudal era clustered. The invention, apart from being the harbinger of technological promise, was an important step towards the democratization of the most critical implement of power, i.e., knowledge – it was no longer the sole prerogative of monastic ivory towers and fittingly many great inventors and ideologues rose from the ranks of common society.
The tide soon turned into a deluge even as more and more specialized target audiences for mass media were created. From books arose magazines, journals, comic books, posters and pamphlets. Progress in other technological avenues gave birth to radio, television, cinema video, compact disc, audiotapes etc and today we are on the cybernetic brink of interactive TV and ‘virtual reality’. All along the reach (market = mass base = mass participation) of the mass media (and even popular culture) has shown steady acclivity, so much so that it is now among the cardinal signifiers of our society much in the same way as the elitist activities of the past such as art and architecture symbolized the cutting edge of their respective eras.
Any architecture of the media must be characterized by its triumvirate of coefficients – time, technology and democracy (by which is meant general involvement and not its strictly political connotation), and this combinatory is geared towards the production and regurgitation of information. It is in this light that we must comprehend that mass media can never afford to be either entirely didactic or mindless and refrains like Doordarshan’s pontificatory shibboleth – to educate and entertain – must be assiduously discarded.
The animadversion becomes clearer if the most transparent facets of the mass media such as hard news, features, documentaries, drama, fiction, editorials etc. are neglected in favor of the more subtle messages that are transmitted to the subconscious of the receiver, thus influencing his subjectivity and future choices. Popular cinema is a fine exemplar and the persistence and popularity of formula in various guises around the world a most suitable giveaway. If cinema were to be reduced to mere plots, the medium would soon become redundant and it is the medium’s efficacy as a carrier of sub-textual information that has kept it vivified.
The most commonly understood of these sub-textual signs are perhaps prevalent fashion, socio-politico-cultural trends and boundaries and technological prowess or limitation as the case may be. The prevalent knowledge of and about the world draws barriers for popular cinema that it cannot deny and as such they are reflected in the message- medium. Thus Ramanand Sagar’s Sita showed greater fidelity to Raja Ravi Verma’s prototypes than to some informed opinion that suggested that a topless Sita would bear greater affinity to a historical reconstruction of the germane age’s fashion tastes.
Similar paradigms abound (however it must be specified forthwith that the above and segueing are not intended to establish the primacy of the sub-text over the text or the vice-versa, but rather the endeavor is to piece together the sprawling nature of the mass-media). News selection is a case in point that aptly reflects upon the mass media as a disseminator of collective intellectual information, or the dominant knowledge structure of the world. The triumph of hegemony lies in compliant subjectively and when the mass media, ostensibly of its own volition, chooses to highlight starvation deaths in Ethiopia rather than in Kalahandi or to discuss Booker entries in greater detail than Jnanpeeth winners its susceptibilities become immediately lucid.
The old hat about whether railway accidents should count as news comparable to air-crashes may also be mentioned. A pattern may easily be described in the way news items are carefully selected, classified or discarded by all sections of mass media and this ineluctably denotes the medium as a carrier of hegemonic information more than anything else.
This hegemony should not be construed in the sense of precepts emanating from the upper echelons of the society or else mass media would violate the democracy coefficient aforementioned and would be indistinguishable from propaganda machinery (communist Russia is an example of didactically organized media set up which was destined to be an aberration). The consent I have in mind is a democratic one that pervades common society and is not monolithic. The history of the past two centuries bears ample testimony to the fecundity of such an understanding of hegemony and the mass media has not been bereft of its implications. At an intellectual level it has been witness and party to an unprecedented democratization ideology – never on prior record have so many prominent ideologies jostled for space on a global level and it would not be improper to say that minus democratic mass media such would not have been feasible. All modern ideologies from Marxism to environmentalism owe this debt to the mass media, which has not only spread the word but also lent these ideologies a degree of authenticity that can only come from cold print.
Putative media issues like Bofors and RJB-BM imbroglio may be understood in this context. The media must not be made the hero or the villain of the piece (if holistically considered) for it serves merely as a conduit and not as a demiurge. Its powers are limited by the co-efficient driven nature of its existence. Similarly at the consumerist level mass media constantly alters and establishes points of reference sometimes stretching, but never violating the democracy co-efficient, and also simultaneously reinforces the time principle. An explicardum lies in advertising. It functions at twin pedestals: -
- As a rapid informant of production news with the concomitant sub-textual information similar to the one discussed in the case of popular cinema; and
- As a lever and control on mass media as result of the complex interaction between producers and consumers in the contemporary society.
Thus mass-media would appear to be our culture’s prime mode of ‘talking’ – in the context of getting information across to our ‘circle’ (which is often global in the modern and post-modern case). Undeniably there are other modes of communication, telephones and computers being two of them with global reach but these can never achieve mass media’s influential status unless they venture out of the personal sphere -- computers with their vast and inter connected information pools seemingly have the potential to compete and it is apprehended in several quarters that in alignment with mass media it would inexorably lead towards the de-privatization of our society thus hearkening towards a simulacrum of the primitive commune.
Marshall Mcluhan’s vision of a global village borne out of tetradic permutations is an augury of such a fate. He envisions a world wrapped by inter-connected, disembodied voices in the noisiest era of human history and an altered nature of institutional life towards which we seen to be heading with our telegenic leaders, sound bites, prime time mania and excessive consumerism etc with time reduced to a channel zap. The nature of the individual and democracy shall indubitably be restructured and technology remolded in accordance.
Mass Media, while it shall survive will not remain the same. The portents are already visible. Modern audiences have greater freedom and access than ever before and information embargo appears to be a thing of the past. Modern media so fills our sky that any one with an antenna can pluck gleanings from it. Choices are unlimited and round the clock specialized channels under one flag (thus de-centralizing without losing a central identification plank) are rapidly becoming the norm with the fare doctored to meet international tastes.
The movement is towards ‘totalled specialisation’ and even in India mass media networks are diversifying to include as many servers as possible – thus e.g. Bennet Coleman has acquired a stake in television. Abroad too large-scale mergers have take place with Time Warner being among the notables. Time magazine is also available electronically. It may never perhaps be possible to spread information evenly around the world but it will definitely not be for lack of trying.
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