If you ever wondered what graduate school was like, look no further, as all my brilliant work will find it's way right here. Everything will be published word for word as submitted, and only completely irrelevant work will be excluded.
The blog will represent a series of signposts that I'll set out as I figure out exactly what the hell it is that I'm doing. I'll try to add original entries as well, but given my track record to this point, this will mostly be used as my online graduate archive.
So with now further adieu, here is my very own intellectual introduction, my first assignment as a real deal graduate student...
If I had to attribute the spark that lit my academic universe to one person, as difficult as that may be, I would have to give it to one Irwin M. Fletcher. ‘Fletch’, as he was known to most, was an investigative reporter who wrote under the name Jane Doe. I watched Fletch work the drug-riddled beaches of Los Angeles, take on a variety of assumed identities, and eventually name Chief Karlin as the biggest heroin dealer in town. Despite being a fictional film character played by Chevy Chase, both the vigor and panache with which Fletch attacked his mystery inspired me from a young age. Fletch went to ridiculous depths to get to the bottom of his story, I appreciated his wit, and empathized with his lack of respect for imposed authority. I watched his movies, read his books, and was convinced I could recreate his spirit in reality.
Journalism seemed like an ideal place for my inquisitive nature, and I was accepted into Mount Royal College’s Applied Communications program as an immature 19-year-old. As I worked through the program I became dissatisfied; writing stories, taking and processing photos, shooting and editing tape, all under the strict faculty regime, simply wasn’t fulfilling. I still remember when the program chair ordered pages 7/8 torn out of each copy of ‘The Journal’, our weekly newspaper. I had written a story, which had been approved by our instructor from the start, on a classmates’ punk rock band who called themselves ‘The MotherFuckers’. And despite starring out all of the swearing, the faculty heads made the executive decision to give its’ students a lesson in old-time censorship. That story was on page 7; I had another one on the reverse, page 8, and at least four other students lost the opportunity to have their stories published. If this was the way the Fourth Estate was controlled while being trained and developed, what was the professional world like? Near the end of my degree I signed up for the dreaded communications theory course. “Don’t ever ask me for help, seriously, ever.” was the unanimous reply from students who had taken the course, which was a senior requisite at Mount Royal College. Ironically, the MRC Communications Faculty saved the only thought provoking, paradigm shifting course for the end of their program, when the majority of students were programmed. Despite the passion of the professors, the majority of students wanted nothing to do with the class, fighting the ideas with every bit of wisdom they had amassed and armed themselves with for the professional world. The truth was, the MRC Communications Faculty was almost solely focused on producing both Cogswell Cogs and Spacely Sprockets, representative of both sides of the aisle, eager young labour for the media machine, ready to perpetuate the same dominant ideologies without a great deal of thought as to why.
One of the few exceptions were the two theory professors, Dr.’s Avril Torrence and Lee Easton, who used these theories and thinkers I had never heard of to challenge the class’s worldview. The theories were difficult, but they began to explain the nature of the flawed power structure I had been brought up to question. While most of the students loathed the class, I embraced it, and worked tirelessly on my term project. ‘The Real Thing’ was a theoretical deconstruction of the American image Coca-Cola used to sell their beverage globally. My premise was that for its advertisements, Coca-Cola would create hyperreal drinking experiences, “sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and the imaginary” (Baudrillard, 1983). This hypereality was uniquely and ephemerally American by design, done in order to appeal to non-Americans generalized other, or the “general class category or group of people that you use to assess your actions.” (Wadsworth et. al., 2001). The result was that Coca-Cola had become more symbol than substance, creating through its advertising a world of spectacle where “each moment imposes the total knowledge of a passion which rises erect and alone, without extending to the crowning moment of a result.” (Barthes, 1972). The result was cultures around the world were lining Coca-Cola’s coffers, trying to get a taste of America by drinking ‘The Real Thing’. The work was narrated over a Coca-Cola video montage of commercials and other video footage (which was very cutting-edge at the time, as there was no youtube and everything had to be individually digitized). The medium for presentation was intended to speed up the overwhelming amount of images Coca-Cola spewed out individually to overwhelm the audience.
‘The Real Thing’ received my professors’ acclaim, but then class was over, and there was no structured opportunity to pursue these wonderful theories any further. I spent some time doing not-for-profit public relations, quickly deciding bartending would be more lucrative, much more interesting, and in some cases more ethical. Finding myself in Vancouver on the end of another drunk’s worldview, I decided to move back to Calgary and attempt to make something of myself. Initially I decided to return to school with the intent of going to the Haskayne Business School to make my millions. They informed me I needed one semester of open study with a reasonable average, along with a proper GMAT score, and I would be in. Fortunately I was permitted my choice in courses, and enrolled in a collection of senior communications classes due to my familiarity and fondness for the subject matter. Immediately the passion and depth of knowledge my professors possessed struck me. Finally I had the opportunity to continue studying in the area that made my world make sense. I diligently pursued a path into the Master of Arts program, and am both elated and overwhelmed at being here.
My graduate studies are not intended as a destination. As I continue forward I've found that despite my previous notions, I have barely scratched the surface of critical social theory. As I pursue graduate studies I am quickly finding out that what I believed is really only prologue. It involves only a partial understanding, a great deal of what I think I know now will undoubtedly be proven false, and what I thought was unbelievable will be shown to be quite plausible. But this is where, and how, I intend to begin to figure it all out. As I approach the next two years, I do so currently believing that we live in a state of hegemony which the media perpetuates. Ruling powers, with a vested interest in the maintenance of their dominance, exert influence at all points of the media machine to ensure the status quo is both perpetual and permanent. My starting point is Baudrillard’s concept of simulation, according to which contemporary media, primarily television and the Internet, create simulations of reality which are presented to their audience as true, accurate representations of actual reality. The symbolic exchange and hyperreality that are created by media content has engaged the audience into production through consumption. Audiences produce value for cultural industries in a number of ways, but most importantly they shift, mediate, and eventually construct their own reality through their consumption.
I'm concerned with the forces behind the production of identity, meaning, value, and to an increasing extent, reality, that occurs through the consumption of content. More and more of people's daily existence is spent engaging in virtual communication and information exchange, to the extent that absolute reliance on this communication and the media that provides has become an issue. Cultural industries, who at best influence, and at worst control, the majority of media content, are working hard to ensure that more media offers more content with less meaning under the guise of more information. As the audience consumes this mass of information, they become further detached from reality, and further interpellated into a world created and controlled by simulations. Lulled into passivity and blind acceptance, hegemonic domination continues for the audience, as the excess of content and increasingly perceived importance of the content blurs the line between simulated and tangible reality, and causes an uncertainty that encourages more media consumption in search of a solution. The search for the solution of this uncertainty is paradoxically seemingly solved within the provided content, which provides examples and archetypes that dictate in what Foucault referred to in his writings on discipline and punishment as what is normal and what isn't, what is acceptable and what isn't, etc... While one example alone may not sufficiently or necessarily impact an individual or audience, the manipulation and harmonization of the content by cultural industries is able to appeal to a majority of the population in one form or another. The myriad and affluence of media casts an immeasurably wide net, and once entrapped, the simulated reality provided by media does not end when the technology is turned off; it has lasting effects on their audience's construction of reality.
Works Cited:
Barthes, Roland (1972). Mythologies. (A. Lavers Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1957).
Baudrillard, Jean (1983). Simulations. New York: Semiotexte
Wadsworth, Sherwyn P. Morreale, Brian H. Spitzberg, J. (2001). Human Communication: Motivation, Knowledge, and Skills. (Kevin Barge). Florence, Ky: Wadsworth Publishing
Note: Written for COMS601 - Interdisciplinary Approaches to Communications
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