Walter Benjamin discusses the contrast of art versus cinema. He uses the term “sense perception,” describing the way we are taught to appreciate art—generally from a distance. The human sense perception may change over periods of history, according to Benjamin, but it is still a matter of teaching correct ways of appreciation. However, this is different for cinema because it allows us to assert a sense of agency in the way we perceive it. Today, this is also true of television as discussed by John Fiske in “Popular Culture.” He discusses how we can have agency in two ways: through popular discrimination choosing to not select the commodity and text or thorough popular selection by only selecting the functional elements—for a specific person or group of people—from the text or commodity. I find the latter the more interesting case because it shows the multitude of meanings and ideas that can be expressed within one movie or television program (hey, sounds like Mimi White). It exposes the slipperiness of meaning, resulting in contradictions and an infinite number of possible interpretations. How people choose to negotiate this slipperiness, by either extracting the bits and pieces they choose or by the ways in which they choose to interpret it, is what grants us agency.
However, as I do believe we have agency, I wonder how much agency we possess towards mass culture (producer of cultural commodities)? With commercials being so crucial for television production and promotion, advertising has now permeated television programming and cinema itself—product placement being the biggest example. Therefore, we are subconsciously saturated with products and lifestyle discourses outside of what we consciously consider commercial messages. Perhaps our agency is diminished in these instances? Are there not instances when, despite the fact that we are aware of advertising, we are still compelled to choose a brand of product over another—perhaps because we’ve connected it, subconsciously, with a film or television program we have recently experienced, thus linking to a specific lifestyle?
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Sare,
Yes! There are definitely times at which we are influenced to purchase a product because we have seen it in a TV show or a movie or a particularly clever commercial. But we are not universally influenced to purchase every product we see advertised. This is what Fiske is talking about. We take mass culture (TV shows with product placement, etc) and we decide how, when, and if we want to use its products. Our agency remains because we choose the programs we watch and therefore have some control over the context in which we will be exposed to product placement and we are aware product placement happens and therefore are not unconsciously inundated with product messages. We take the products thrown at us in rapid and constant succession, sift through them, find what is useful, and decide what to do with it. I think you are absolutely right in noting that we cannot avoid being influenced by advertisement; our decisions will always be conditioned by consumer culture and our choices limited by mass culture, but we are not without agency.
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