Politics and Media Studies

From a certain standpoint, it seems perfectly natural to link the concepts of media and politics; after all, especially in this tumultuous and frequently adversarial election season, the broadcast media has experienced an explosion of political advertisements from both candidates and third-party groups endorsing a specific viewpoint. 24-hour news networks on cable have boosted ratings with an intense political focus to their programming, and the election and related issues are represented on newspaper and magazine covers on an almost-daily basis. Even the new media has felt the effects of this sweeping tide of political awareness: on popular social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook, Obama and McCain groups and profiles draw the attention of thousands, and videos such as Obama's acclaimed speech on race in America have soared in viewings to reach the top of the internet charts for extended periods of time. This enthusiasm has been dramatically seized upon by a classic print-broadcast media trying to remain relevant, yet also finds a natural fit in some of the advances in connectivity brought about by the advent of the Internet.

While some of this attention can be attributed to the historic nature of the 2008 election specifically, as past election cycles have shown through cases such as the John Kerry swift boat ads that arguably cost Kerry the election, in modern American society media and politics are inextricably linked. This much has become an accepted quality; Americans are accustomed to a certain dose of political rhetoric in between the fast food and soft-drink advertisements. Yet a certain realm of media culture demonstrates a much less obvious and expected link to politics, as evidenced in recent readings from the aesthetic and linguistic criticism of Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes: the field of media studies itself. We hardly expect academic, studious work such as this to carry a political undercurrent, yet in both works the conclusions drawn are used in the formulation of a stark assertion that goes far beyond the standard realm of purely scientific discourse.

In Barthes, the spectre of politics rears its head without warning, as what began as a theoretical study of conceptual myth suddenly turns to what the author sees as a distinction between the role of myth at various points on the ideological spectrum; "Statistically," he calmly states as if still playing solely the role of the academic, "myth is on the right." This surprising tangent snowballs into a general and often biting critique of the French bourgeoisie, and the reader, caught more than a bit off guard by this unexpected diatribe, is torn between distaste at the twisting of science to political end and respect for the boldness with which he defends his convictions; any final judgment may depend entirely upon the reader's own ideological center. At once the work becomes more challenging to receive, for, while as a scientific treatise it is clearly sound and well-reasoned in its arguments towards the definition of myth, the sense of pure, objective academics is sullied by Barthes' eleventh-hour turn to his own agenda, however justified. The reader is left confused and more than a bit surprised, as if the study of anything should be a sacred realm immune to human divisions and argumentation. Yet in retrospect, the signs of Barthes' attention to politics is clear; why else choose as a key example the image of an African soldier saluting the French flag, if not to illuminate specifically the myth of French colonialism? Everything, clearly, is included for a compelling reason. These subtle clues as to an author's affiliations likely come up more frequently than we realize, yet only in light of his unapologetic critique of French society through the prism of myth can these hints be placed in their proper context.

While Benjamin's argument comes across as more purely theoretical, his ideas on art in the age of mechanical reproducibility are visibly rooted in an understanding of politics in which his own views are made clear to the reader. His assertions regarding the virtue inherent to the destruction of the artistic aura by technical reproduction succeeds on its own merits, and yet he also sees fit to credit this phenomenon as a tool to be made effective against the forces of Fascism; indeed, there is a distinct Socialist bent to his musings on the leveling he sees of the societal playing field, brought about by the elimination of the cult value of artistic work.

While these obvious political arguments within an otherwise standard academic discourse prove disconcerting in that they play against our expectations of a 'pure' theoretical narrative, they are not so surprising when one realizes that academics, like any other humans, are citizens of a society and of the world, and therefore not invulnerable to the appeal of personal conviction. It is a matter for debate whether or not it is just for these ideologies to be given voice in the context of a scientific exploration, yet one thing is clear: it is a mistake to underestimate either the humanity of the academic, or the insidious quality of politics to wriggle its way into any medium, from art to linguistic theory.