Jennifer Silva
COM 492
February 19, 2003
Reflection paper #2
Cultural studies provides interdisciplinary scholarship as a critical means to
exploring the development of cultural identities. In the text Critical and Cultural Theory
(2001), Dani Cavallaro explores the dominant themes of cultural studies theory. In
essence, the theoretical approach considers social influences including concepts of
meaning, history, identity, power, cultural production, and cultural consumption (p. x). In
doing this, cultural studies discovers dominant social constructions of influence to
provide critical insight and in-depth understandings of beings amongst culture.
Cavallaro’s description of cultural studies theory provides a framework for understanding
how cultures produce and consume meaning through language and interpretation and
how these meanings define our social identities and approaches to knowledge (p. 4).
Further, cultural studies provides a meaningful approach to exploring mediated
communication at the intersection of mass communication and interpersonal
communication.
Cavallaro explains that Debord (1983) provides an understanding of this
intersection through mediated communication in describing the ‘society of the spectacle’
as, “a world in which relationships among people are constantly mediated by images to
be unrelentingly consumed, then discarded, then recycled, then consumed again – ad
infinitum” (p. 208). Thus, cultural beings become involved in an ongoing process of
image consumption that affects their social relations. The ‘society of the spectacle’
suggests a phenomenon including interpersonal communication within the presence of
the constant mass communication of socially relevant images.
Further, these images deliver cultural meaning and reality through the process of
representation, or serving as cultural symbols. Representation implies construction of
meaning following individual interpretation within the social framework. Cavallaro
explains that cultures “never create anything from scratch: rather we reiterate what was
already there, we literally re-present” (p. 39). Thus, as images construct reality, beings
become increasingly and unknowingly reliant. Cavallaro states, “This is because they are
so deeply ingrained in our culture’s fabric that we have forgotten their constructed (and
largely arbitrary) status. We adopt them [images] as though they were natural tools rather
than the production of cultural decisions” (p. 40). To this end, actually unrealistic images
and resulting representations become culturally ingrained and universally accepted as
culturally real, having heavy impact on social meaning. Moreover, mediated
communication exists as a relentless cycle of consumption of constructed images, viewed
as reality, affecting interpersonal relationships.
Within the cultural context, the images construct cultural products. Cavallaro
explains, “Any cultural product can be approached as a form of representation offering
vital clues to a culture’s belief systems, its interpretations of reality, and its ways of
translating both factual and fictional situations into images” (p. 41). The cultural belief
systems, or ideologies, are sources for understanding widely accepted ideas within
dominant social conditions. The impact of image on ideology is significant. Cavallo
states, “We gradually realize that if an image can be constructed, it can also be taken
apart into its constitutent elements and each of these elements can offer precious insights
into our culture’s ideology” (p. 41). For example, mass media perpetuates social
representations and images that, when critically viewed and de-constructed, provide
meaningful insight into the nature of all aspects of culture, including interpersonal
relations.
From a cultural studies standpoint, mass media serves as a meaningful text for
critical analysis. According to Cavallo, “A text’s form should be dismissed as superficial,
and its content prioritized as the reflection of an underlying reality” (p. 79). Essentially,
in the ‘society of the spectacle’, mass images as reality serve as a means of constructing
social identity. Elements of this identity include notions of self-identity and collective
identity, each placed within the social context. Overall mass media frames all aspects of
interpersonal relation between self and other.
Within this framework, it is unlikely that interpersonal communication frames and
develops all other communication and meaning as discussed by Gumpert and Cathcart
(1986). It is unlikely that relationships can function outside the ‘society of the spectacle’
and that communicative meaning is delivered outside images that dominate and
perpetuate understandings of social realities. It is unlikely that our understanding of self
and other is derived from interpersonal conversation apart from mass media, or relation
outside of mediation. Overall, within mass media, we primarily interpret mediated images
that frame interpersonal relations through our reliance on a constructed social reality, but
we do not have interpersonal relations with the actual images themselves.
This framework provides an example of a conceptual understanding for the
intersection of mass and interpersonal communication. The ‘society of the spectacle’
provides a meaningful argument that mass and interpersonal communication are solidly
interconnected and co-existent. In fact, the framework demonstrated that mediated, mass
communication supports the structure of interpersonal communication and social
relations. The impact of mass media within the ‘society of the spectacle’ is significant.
Images in text construct social reality and develop widely accepted ideological beliefs
that function to order social identity, affecting knowledge and meaning. For example,
television programs present concepts, or images, that when viewed are unconsciously
acknowledged, with significant social result. This result is delivered through
interpersonal communication with a direct impact on interpersonal relations. Overall, the
cultural studies framework provides an understanding of culture within a network reliant
on both mass and interpersonal communication with great social implications.
References
Cavallaro, Dani. (2001). Critical and Cultural Theory, New Jersey: Transaction
Publishers.