Paradigms and Perceptions
by Steven Hager
EPUB ISBN 9781301104741
copyright 2013 by Steven Hager
Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (On the cover: watercolor on paper by Steven Hager, 1968).
Foreword
Once I crawl into the archives, I can get stuck easily and that’s what happened when I retrieved the short story about my tragic love affair. While I was digging around looking for that ancient manuscript, I found something much older, something I wrote while a graduate student working on a Masters of Science in Journalism at the University of Illinois.
I have no idea what reaction this paper would get in today’s academic world, but I can tell you my professor gave me an A minus. When I asked why it wasn’t an A or A plus (considering the cutting edge brilliance I felt I’d displayed), he explained the paper was too short. Even though I had distilled my major points to their essence, I should have played the game of inflating the language, stacking the citations, and basically blowing hot air into everything, which would have made it a regular A paper.
I felt at the time I was being penalized for being succinct, which I considered the greatest trademark of a great writer, something Hemingway had actually instilled in me. And that’s the way it’s always been for me. I prefer to write short stories and my popular culture histories can all be read in one sitting. I don’t like long tomes. In fact, that was what was so great about Keith Haring: he had that ability to pack a tremendous amount of content into a very simple drawing.
Of course, I decided to update the paper by adding a couple more recent developments since the citations were all from the middle 1970s, which I’m sure seems like a very distant past to grad students today. The one concept I was trying to work out was how cultural symbols are manufactured and what ramifications they have on the subconscious mind. It’s still an area I consider worthy of study, although a lot of the research in this field, like Mark Passio’s is sophomoric and doesn’t even come close to the truth in my opinion. As someone who worked inside the corporate media for most of his adult life, I can tell you the professional media experts are trained to sell products. They are mercenaries for hire, not Aleister Crowley dark magicians secretly holding black masses and implanting black magic sigils in your brain. The really good ones may get hired by the Pentagon to sell a war, but it’s just another product and another paycheck to most of these media shamans who have these magic skills of mental manipulation. Which isn’t to say they aren’t trying desperately to manipulate you, keep you complacent, filled with pills and booze and so many addictions (like violence porn) that basically render you helpless to resist any orders from the establishment if any of these addictions are suddenly cut off or tampered with. The control mechanisms have been functioning for 2,000 years, there is nothing new under the sun really. It’s a oligarchy running the shows with many secret agendas, but mainly fomenting wars for profit all over the globe, while selling guns in one direction and drugs in the other.
I actually put forth a solution for these problems in my paper, not that anyone will listen to me. I’ve been playing around with magic symbols for a long time, and got involved in a big way when I launched the Freedom Fighters with Jack Herer in 1988. I didn’t realize the full implications at the time, but that group was actually my attempt to recapture the flag and all the Revolutionary War sigils from the right-wingers who had so carefully crafted them for propaganda purposes and hand these symbols over to the hemp movement where they belonged.
In order to instantly end all war, first you have to create a paradigm shift that harmonizes religions into one highway leading to one destination. Maybe someone will come up with a concept that can do this, something that would create an instant ceremonial altar, expressing respect to all spiritual cultures. If only someone could come up with a device like that. Maybe, some day. Maybe.
Introduction
In 1957 Bernard Rosenberg complained that analyzing popular culture was like setting foot in an uncharted wilderness without a compass. And 56 years later, we still don’t have an adequate map. Or maybe we have too many. Popular culture has been analyzed by psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and journalists, and not only is there a lack of consensus between different disciplines, but within each field little agreement can be reached on how to approach the subject.
This brief essay cannot hope to solve all the difficulties of dealing with popular culture but it does present an individual viewpoint reached through a synthesis of various materials. The primary inspiration, however, came from Thomas Kuhn’s study of the history of science, an approach that has been applied by many other more knowledgeable people, but never in exactly the same way. After discussing the definition of popular culture and providing a framework for looking at the subject, this essay will deal with the question of value judgments and superior and inferior cultures.
It’s not possible to discuss popular culture today without a thorough inspection of the people who manufacture, promote and sell it to the public and the influence they may have over this process.
In all phases of what we call “mass media,” the relationship between the consumers and producers is easy to draw, except for television. Very few people would argue novels which fail to live up to high cultural expectations should not be published, or that movies containing no significant social themes should not be distributed, or that a particular style of music should not be played over the radio. These media outlets contain a diversity of styles and allow the consumer to choose the artifacts that best suit his style.
It could be argued if people don’t like what is on television, they have the choice of turning it off, although for many years, studies showed that though people liked less of what they saw on television, they were watching more. Only recently has the Internet and its streaming media content put an end to the dominant strangle-hold television once held on the distribution and promotion of popular culture.
Americans are at the mercy of what James Carey calls the professional communicator. These professionals understand how cultural meanings are made and they are expert at feigning meanings and manipulating symbols to create pseudo-cultures with pseudo-meanings. Television not only advertises products, it advertises itself, creating a demand for generally unsatisfying cultural fare. The argument is no longer an attack on popular culture by high culture, but an attack on the professional communicator’s manipulation of the public.