Jing Ke
Nov, 2009
Course Title: Organizational Communication
The Constitution of Collectivism in an Organization:
From A Rhetoric Perspective
Abstract
In contemporary society, although the capacity and prominence of individual have been largely facilitated by modern technology, the sense of collectivism is still exist in both private and public organizations as well as some countries which hold collectivist thinking as dominant ideology. This article analyzes the constitution of collectivism applies to both classical and contemporary rhetoric theories, questioning how a sense of collectivism is built up in one organization both technically and ideologically. The main argument is, classical rhetoric’s focus on linguistic means of persuasion is widely used in constituting a sense of collectivism in an organization. Also, on a larger scale, the long-established philosophical principles of a nation can also be interpreted as a rhetorical discourse/context which shapes the nation’s dominant ideology and personality.
Key words: collectivism, rhetoric, organization
Introduction
In this information era, the term “collectivism” seems somewhat out of date – with a computer connected to the Internet at hand, one can easily keep one’s life going on without stepping out of his/her house and at the same time being informed what is happening on the other side of the earth. The possibility and capacity of the individual is now stretching to an unprecedented level while, on the other hand, the dominance of central power is breaking down in every social dimension.
However, as a matter of fact, the sense of collectivism has never disappeared from the scene. In business organizations, collectivism, defined as “any of several types of social organization in which the individual is seen as being subordinate to a social collectivity such as a state, a nation, a race, or a social class” (Britannica Online Encyclopedia, 2009), has transformed into the spirit of teamwork and the sense of loyalty to the company which contribute to team culture and business success (Tarricone & Luca, 2002); not to mention military organizations and some central government agencies (e.g. the U.S. Department of Defense), where collectivism is undoubtedly the leading principle due to their special duties like managing military forces for war-fighting, collecting and analyzing intelligence, and protecting the security of the country. In fact, in some East Asian countries like China, Japan and Korea, collectivism is the dominant ideology and philosophy that fulfills these countries’ social life and political activities, making a sharp contrast with many western countries.
The constitution of collectivism in an organization is a progressively accumulative process rather than accomplished at one stroke. It is a communicational practice aims at issues of motivation, persuasion and “sales” of opinions (McMillan, 1982). The process of persuasion can be interpreted as a rhetorical manipulation which shapes the personality of a group. Such process can be explained by either classical or contemporary rhetorical theories.
Classical rhetoric originates in 5th century BC Greece and focuses on persuasiveness and the features of an effective speech (Wiseman, 2007). It is “a theory of public speaking, which develops an extensive technical vocabulary to describe features of argument, arrangement, style, and delivery” (Kennedy, 1994). When it is used in organized persuasion, as Hegstrom (1990) argues, the possible effects would be the organizational values superseding individual ones, making an emphasis on “unity of voice” in organization’s identity. In other words, the public speaking, or the “speech” emphasized by classical rhetoric, has a potential power in conveying organizational values to a group of individuals. As a result, a sense of collectivism is constituted through such rhetorical activities.
Contemporary studies on rhetoric address a more diverse range of domains than did classical rhetoric. It focuses on the analysis of discourse and the relationship between rhetoric and knowledge (Burke, 1969). Contemporary rhetorical theories see rhetoric as a mean to constitute social realities as well as a medium for creating, managing, or resisting ideological meanings (Giddens, 2005). An array of organizational phenomena that can be marked as a practice of collectivism is then produced by such process, such as the systems of influence and control writ large (P. K. Tompkins & Cheney, 1985) and the epideictic (it is one of Aristotle's major branches of rhetoric, which means speech or writing that praises or blames) advocacy of values in society (Goldzwig & Cheney, 1984). One good example on this would be the constitution and widely acceptance of the Confucian way of thinking in East Asian countries. Throughout long historical immigrations and inter-cultural communications, most Esat Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea, etc.) share very similar values and ideologies mainly based on Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. These had shaped the mainstream discourses and dominant ideologies of East Asian countries which influence, lead and control people’s behaviour.
Definitions and Implications of Collectivism
Before examine the relationship between rhetorical theories and the constitution of collectivism, some characteristics of collectivism should be clarified. In the book Beyond Self-Interest (2002), collectivism is defined as “the theory and practice that makes some sort of group rather than the individual the fundamental unit of political, social, and economic concern (Beabout et al, 2002). In other words, group become the basic element in all social activities in collectivist’s discourse. Beabout et al go on to say, “in theory, collectivists insist that the claims of groups, associations, or the state must normally supersede the claims of individuals.”
The ignorance or denying of individual needs and merit directly lead collectivism emphasizes personal responsibility and self-sacrifice in an organization. For instance, in ancient feudal society of China, people believed in that family is the ultimate goal and standard of their everyday life, and all their activities should be consistent with the family’s interest and reputation. And on a broader scale, for every social member, the nation is a larger “family”, and everyone in the country should be a royal subject to the emperor. According to Perry (1984), this family-centered social structure is generated from the production mode of Chinese traditional farming society, in which family is the basic unit of production and individuals have to rely on the collaboration of family members in order to make a living in the “small peasant economy”. Perry also argued that the process of social production, which allows limited freedom of individual’s movement, is also a process of the strengthening of this sense of collectivism.
Ayn Rand (1944) argues that “collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group - whether to a race, class, or state does not matter…Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ‘the common good’.” As a matter of fact, when it is adopted by a country, the wholeness and integrity stressed by collectivism usually increase the risk of stirring up nationalism and dictatorship. For instance, looking backward the history of human society in the past century, Communism, Socialism and Fascism may all be termed collectivist systems.
In the field of mass communication studies, the Spiral of Silence Theory (Anderson, 1996) could somehow explain the generating and legitimacy of collectivism in an organization. Spiral of silence theory asserts that a person is less likely to voice an opinion on a topic if one feels that one is in the minority for fear of reprisal or isolation from the majority (Anderson, 1996). In other words, People will be unwilling to publicly express their opinion if they believe they are in the minority. They will also be more vocal if they believe they are a part of the majority. Thus the more marginalized, the less people speak, and the stronger the majority will be, this forms the spiral of silence.
The psychological motivation of this spiral is simple: fear of social rejection and isolation, and also, fear of being associated with the rejected person (Noelle-Neumann, 1984). At the same time, making oneself into a group brings the sense of safety and belonging, then collectivism generates. Noelle-Neumann (1984) also argues that the media accelerates the muting of the minority in the spiral of silence due to its big influence on shaping public opinions. According to Noelle-Newman (1984), the media not only tell us what to think about, but show us what everyone else is thinking. In my opinion, from contemporary rhetoric perspective, those agendas and discourses set by mass media can also be viewed as different rhetorical systems in which people are persuaded into certain beliefs and behaviours.
There are many other resources in literature discussing the definition of collectivism. Despite different expressions, two characteristics of collectivism could be summarized: Firstly, the superiority of the collectives over the individuals; and secondly, the similarity and simplification in identity for members in a collective. This may help understand the relationship between rhetoric and constitution of collectivism.
Classical Rhetoric in the Constitution of Collectivism
Literally, the word “rhetoric” includes four meanings: the art of speaking or writing effectively; skill in the effective use of speech; a type or mode of language or speech; and verbal communication (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, 2009). In one word, the original meaning of rhetoric is all about techniques of effective speech and eloquent expression. As Cothran (2003) argues, classical rhetoric requires a man to be familiar with “the Good, the True, and the Beautiful” in expression. Cothran (2003) also mentions that although the study of rhetoric truly begins at a young age with practice in imitating the writing of others, it extends in later years into the specific study of persuasive expression.
There is no better place to begin the latter kind of study than with Aristotle’s Rhetoric. According to Aristotle (1954), there are three elements of communication: the speaker (the sender), the audience (the receiver), and the speech itself (the message). Actually, communication is the interaction between the three elements: the receiver understands what the sender intends to say in the exchanges of information. Aristotle also said there are three modes of rhetoric in which persuasion is accomplished – ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos refers to the character of the speaker or source. For example, whether the speaker is trustworthy or not, or whether the source is reliable. Logos refers to the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments or messages, meaning the logical strengths of the arguments. Aristotle said, using enthymeme and example is a good way to enforce the logos. And pathos refers to the emotions of the audience or listeners. To take into account how the audience feel is crucial when one try to persuade people of something, and often the speaker may elicit emotions like pity, anger, enthusiasm or scepticism among the audience. Aristotle believes that in the practice of persuasion, these three principal dynamics usually work together to make a good persuasive effect.
Combined with Aristotle’s discourse on effective persuasion, classical rhetoric has been widely used by collectivists to build up the sense of collectivism in target groups. One representative example on this would be Hitler’s rhetorical speech which mobilized millions of Germans into fanatic Nazism. As a matter of fact, Hitler used speeches as a main tool of his Nazi propaganda. According to Harold Lasswell’s (Levyatan, 2009) analysis of Hitler’s speeches, Hitler succeeded in captivating and influencing his audiences by combining the above three modes into a highly personalized way of speaking. As Lasswell shows, Hitler used ethos by adopting a unique individual stamp in voice and non-verbal elements in his speech, making himself charismatic and trustworthy. Lasswell mentioned that Hitler’s voice “carried a stronger challenge than those of the Western leaders” (Levyatan, 2009, p.56). Hitler used logos to establish the legitimacy of his National Socialism by advocating the superiority of a racially defined “German people”; and his arguments “healed” the Germans from the sense of failure and humiliation in World War I. And using pathos, Hitler dedicatedly elicited anger and enthusiasm in the audience to control their feelings. He also had a keen perception of the listeners’ psychological need. All of these factors contributed to the sheer force of his speeches.
Besides Aristotle and his followers’ discourses on ethos, logos, and pathos about the classical arts of persuasion, some modern researchers tend to study rhetoric through psychological means. Gardner (2004) applies a cognitive psychological lens to his review of persuasion or what he terms “changing minds”. He notes that “rhetoric is a principal vehicle for changing minds” that in its best form encompasses “tight logic, draws on relevant research, and resonates with an audience” (p. 16). Gardener (2004) also stresses the importance of the ability of mind changers strategically to develop, share, and embody a message or “story” that resonates with a given audience. As he argues in the book, “the more of an individual’s intelligences you can appeal to when making an argument, the more likely you are to change a person’s mind, and the more minds you are likely to change” (p. 30). In one word, Gardner reiterates the importance of linguistic skills, credibility, resonating with the audience and reasoning as he articulates the process for changing minds or persuading ourselves and others. Nevertheless, in his discourses, we can still find some clear links with the traditional canons of rhetoric on persuasion.
Summarized from the above analysis, it is fair to conclude that the constitution of collectivism and the success of propaganda to a target group of audience can be interpreted as a practice of classical rhetoric in a given circumstances.
Contemporary Rhetoric and Collectivism
Contemporary rhetoric, as mentioned in the introduction, focuses on the discourses and the ideological meaning of rhetoric in social construction (Burke, 1969). Throughout the centuries, people have relied on different ideologies in order to explain all kinds of beliefs, although they might be political, religious or social. van Dijk (2001) argued that, ideology, as a special form of social cognition shared by social groups, may influence the ways social attitudes are expressed in discourse structures and affect the productions or interpretations of discourse directly. In other words, ideology shapes our values and worldview. For instance, the traditional ideology of gender roles in a given social group or system indicate the long-exist beliefs on what men and women “should” do in their social life. In most of both Eastern and Western culture context, traditionally, men are connected with high professional education, careers, works and achievements, and decision-makings in a family; while women are not expected to receive professional education or appear in workplace but devote themselves in things like housekeeping and child care. However, in some matriarchy societies (e.g., the Mosuo Tribe living in today’s Sichuan-Yunnan provincial border of China), the leading role is taken by women and especially by the mothers of the community, the gender roles men and women played are much different compared with those in patriarchy societies.
Ideologies may also control the knowledge acquired and shared by a group, such as the social beliefs which a group holds to be “true” or “good” according to its own evaluation or verification criteria. As Bhatia (2008) argues, social realities are often negotiated and determined by elite groups of society, including political and religious leaders, the mass media, and even professional experts, who give meaning to complex, multifaceted constructs consistent with their individual socio-political agendas. One example Bhatia mentions is the ideologies and discourses of anti-terrorism, in which the Bush-Administrations defines “what we the public and media understand by the term terrorism; who are terrorists; what constitutes terrorism; how we can fight terrorism, etc.” Bhatia goes on to say that in order to convince audiences that the version of reality that the Bush’s government is representing is the objective truth, particular themes such as the construction of religion, Weapons of Mass Destruction, orientalism, and attack vs. self-defence are utilized (Bhatia, 2008). What’s more, Bhatia argues that those particular themes are realized through the use of rhetorical resources such as category work, appeals to historicity, negative other-presentation, and metaphor, which allow a subjective conceptualization of reality to appear more convincing through the invocation of emotions and ideologies. In one word, according to Bhatia (2008), the use of language and rhetoric features achieves the themes that enable the discourse of illusions on anti-terrorism to eventually take effect.
On the other hand, the productions or representations of ideological discourse (e.g. mass media, religion, art, architecture, politics, history, culture, language, laws, ethics, etc.) may reinforce the legitimacy of ideology (van Dijk, 2001). For instance, in the above “gender roles” example, the stereotypes of men and women in social life are ceaselessly reinforced by our own social activities from generation to generation, making the ideology of gender roles becoming more legislative; then the legislation of this ideology in turn dominates our behaviors to conform to it – and the process will go on and on. From my perspective, such “produce - reinforce” process forms a circle between ideological discourses and their representations. Noticeably, contemporary studies of rhetoric investigate such interactivities (Giddens, 2005).
The research on Confucianism and East Asian philosophy gives us a vivid example on these interactions and explains why people in these countries own a high sense of collectivism in their values. Yum (2007) argues that Confucianism, which has been the dominant ideology in China and then Japan and Korea for nearly two thousand years, created the philosophical emphasis on collectivism, hierarchy and social harmony in these countries. In its doctrines, Confucianism contains two of the most important principles: jen (humanism, human dignity and collective sharedness) and li (propriety or etiquette, people should treat other people with respect and deference). Generally speaking, the Confucian discourse systems stress that “people are people through the other people” and “the very existence and identity of an individual depends on his/her relationships with others” (Yum, 2007, p. 16). Accordingly, following the rules of proper behavior and making contribution to the group one belongs to is thought to be “good” and “right” in their ideologies since East Asian people consider proper human relationships to be the basis of society.
Confucianism has left a strong impact on interpersonal relationships and communication patterns in East Asian countries. According to Yum’s earlier article (1988), the East Asian communication patterns differ from those of North America because of the Eastern emphasis on social relationships, which stems from the doctrines of Confucianism, as oppose to the North American emphasis on individualism, which stresses equality, fairness, and justice. Yum (1988) explains that, the emphasis on Confucianism in social relationship is “conducive to cooperation, warm, relaxed human relations, consideration of others, and group harmony” (p. 386). According to Yum’s (1988) arguments, Confucianism has also contributed to the East Asian Communication patterns of process orientation, differentiated linguistic codes, indirect communication emphasis, and receiver-centred communication. In contrast, North American patterns of communication represent outcome communication, less-differentiated linguistic codes, direct communication emphasis, and sender-centred communication.
As a matter of fact, some scholars believe that the impact of Confucianism on interpersonal relationships and both interpersonal and organizational communications in East Asian countries is a major cultural factor to explain the impressive economic and social progress of Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, etc. in the past three decades (Chen & Chung, 1994). For instance, the Japanese way of management tend to create establishing long term personal relationship between employees, and employees are encouraged to stay in the organization for a long period of time; while Western organizations adopt high mobility, heterogeneity, and individualism by contrast.
In one word, it is obvious from the above cases, on ideological level, different cultural contexts and discourses can be seen as a given rhetorical system in which a certain kind of belief (collectivism), communication pattern (from top to bottom and receiver-centred) and group behaviour (collectivistic activities) are created.
Conclusion
In summary, the articles and examples mentioned in the preceding analysis provide a clear view, both theoretically and practically, to how a sense of collectivism is constituted in an organization by rhetorical means. With the supportive case study of Hitler’s speeches and East Asia’s Confucianism, we can easily go to the conclusion that classical rhetoric’s focus on linguistic means of persuasion is widely used in constituting a sense of collectivism in an organization. On a larger scale, the long-established philosophical principles of a nation can also be interpreted as a rhetorical discourse/context which shapes the nation’s dominant ideology and personality.
References
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Mar 26, 2010
Open the Deadlock? Government Transparency and Communication Policies of Chinese Government during Sichuan Earthquake
Jing Ke
Dec, 2009
Course Title: Government Communication
Open the Deadlock? Government Transparency and Communication Policies of Chinese Government during Sichuan Earthquake
At 2:28 in the afternoon of May 12, 2008 the ground in China's Sichuan province shuddered and cracked open. Buildings, roads and lives were torn apart in seconds. During the next minutes, tremors of the quake were felt throughout the whole country and reached as far away as Russia, India and Pakistan. With a magnitude of 8.0, the massive earthquake had left nearly 70,000 dead with over 18,000 missing[1] and about 5 million people (most of them poor and elderly villagers) homeless[2] (though the number could be as high as 11 million[3]), making it the 19th deadliest earthquake of all time.
Eighteen minutes after the disaster, at 2:46 in the afternoon, the official press agency of Chinese government Xinhua News Agency first publicized breaking news of the earthquake on its website. Fourteen minutes later, at 3:00 in the afternoon, the major state television broadcaster and mouthpiece of the government China Central Television (CCTV) started a 24-hour live broadcast of the disaster on both CCTV-1 and CCTV-News channels. At the same time, most of the mainstream media in China (newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, magazines) as well as new media (websites and cell phone news, etc.) began to report the earthquake. According to Asian Weekly magazine, after the earthquake, CCTV had sent over 160 reporters to the disaster zone, and they were doing their job with the support of all the provincial TV stations in China. The quantity and quality of news broadcasting on the earthquake “break the record in Chinese news reporting history” [4].
Besides domestic media, seniors in Chinese central government also had a quick response to the unexpected cataclysm. Ninety minutes after the earthquake, Premier Wen Jiabao, who has an academic background in geology, flew to the earthquake area to oversee the rescue work[5]. Soon afterward, the State Council initiated an emergency contingency plan to deal with the entire rescue, settle and rebuild work after the earthquake. In order to communicate with the public effectively and publicize the latest information of the disaster, the central government disseminated the information primarily via three channels:
State-owned domestic media (mentioned above)
Press conferences and the Chinese government’s official web portal[6]
Overseas media and independent journalists facing the foreign audience
Such is the profile of Chinese government’s reactions on information communication after the earthquake. Based on the event, the question I focus on in this essay is: Can government achieve pure transparency in its communication with the public? If not, then to what extent can the transparency be?
On May 1, 2008, just eleven days before the earthquake, the Regulation on Publicizing Government Information of People’s Republic of China was officially promulgated and came into force in China. From the political science perspective, this regulation, if effectively implemented, would have a far-reaching impact on Chinese society. As the insiders have already revealed, once issued, “it will commit all government organs to publishing most of the information which until now has remained locked in office desks”[7]. In other words, this regulation unprecedentedly represents the principle of citizen’s “right to know” and asserts government’s obligation on disclosure of information about public affairs.
It is quite fair to say that the Chinese central government’s responses and reactions, including their attitude to state-owned and overseas media on news reporting after the earthquake, have highly, although not thoroughly, revealed the principles of this information publicizing regulation. Comment from the International Herald Tribune and other overseas media states that Chinese government’s attitude on the earthquake news reporting is “amazingly open”[8]. As a matter of fact, compared with the long-established tradition of highly centralized administration, lack of transparency, and state-controlled information publicity as well as news censorship in journalism, the central government of China, when facing the Sichuan Earthquake, is trying out a more open and transparent way to communicate with the public. In today’s global discourse and competition of new public management (NPM), these reactions showed the eagerness of Chinese government and the leadership of China to gradually move the huge bureaucratic machine towards a modest form of “good governance”[9] through the ongoing administrative reforms and innovation.
Before examine the transparency issues of government communication, I’d like to figure out some fundamental elements and definitions of transparency in the field of political science. In the field of political science, “transparency” can be defined as “legal, political and institutional structures that make information about the internal characteristics of government and society available to actors both inside and outside of the domestic political system”[10], this definition emphasizes the structural measures that create a climate that promotes transparency in government actions. Cotterrell also argued that “transparency is the availability of information on matters of public concern, the ability of citizens to participate in political decisions, and the accountability of government to public opinion or legal processes”[11], focusing on the opening organizational behavior. Finel and Lord at the same time defined transparency as “legal, political and institutional structures that make information about the internal characteristics of government and society available to actors both inside and outside of the domestic political system”[12]. In one word, open administrative procedures and citizen’s access to information and decision-making process are key aspects of transparency.
According to Fairbanks, Plowman and Rawlins, an ideal model of a transparent government communication, the Transparency Model[13], can be visualized as a three dimensional triangle: The base of this model is a commitment to transparent communication processes, the three sides, or key elements of the model are communication practices, organizational support and the provision of resources[14]. This model can be used to understand how to make the workings of a government or public sector more transparent and how government should interact with the public.
One principal goal of this transparency model is citizen’s access to information, which increases the public’s knowledge on government’s activities and attendance in decision-making process. As Fairbanks, Plowman, and Rawlins argued, transparency in government actions and decision-making processes create an informed public, which is the basic stone of a healthy democracy[15]. On the other hand, there is a direct connection between government transparency and its accountability. Scholars have suggested that good communication and interaction with the public can increase trust, since open access to information and transparent systems will increase the public's knowledge of government activities. Oppositely, the decline of trust in government is an outgrowth of poor communication between government and its publics, where publics feel that they are not well informed about government actions. The accountability of public sectors is a crucial factor for modern scientific administration, especially in crisis period. The image of accountability and trustworthy of a government would facilitate a more effective and efficient way for policy making as well as undertaking.
It seems Fairbanks’s model has perfectly depicted how to create a good, responsible, accountable, and transparent government communication, it represents us a vision of “government transparency” in liberal democratic political systems. However, pure transparency only establishes itself on the conceptual and theoretical side. On the practical side of government administration and public management, pure transparency in government communication is no more than a “cheerful willingness”. More accurately, I would argue that pure transparency is neither realizable nor advisable on the empirical level of government communication.
Fairbanks and his colleagues’ research[16] has shown that, nowadays leaders and communicators in government have clearly recognized that the openness in the communication process of federal agencies is one of the basic requirements of a democratic government. However, we have spent most of our class throughout this semester discussing the un-transparent practices of government, such as strategic truth, plausible deniability, democratic propaganda and integrated circuit, etc. In other words, we were digging out the “ugly truth” of public management and the nature of political world: How to maintain a controlled or at least translucent communication under the mask of being transparent? From my perspective, this question is irrelevant with the political system, the ideologies, or the extent of democracy of a country. As a matter of fact, the issue of government transparency might be a never-ending dilemma for government leaders and social servants everywhere in the world. At least till now, we haven’t seen any political entity solve this problem perfectly.
In the context of Canadian parliamentary political system, as well as other western democratic countries, the un-transparent communication practices I mentioned above widely exist. Especially in the Westminster political system of Commonwealth of Nations countries (UK, Canada, Australia, etc.) which hold parliamentary opposition (multi-party) as a key characteristic and tend to have a more adversarial style of debate and contest between parties. In this situation, the game is all about “winning the power”, which means, the first objective of a government to be elected/re-elected and to stay in power. The competition between the majority and minority in the parliament is so severe that both sides would spare no pains to dig out any tiny mistakes and missteps of each other in order to embarrass and shame the competitor. Consequently, a paradoxical situation is shaped: on the one hand, government passes legislations to facilitate and protect transparency under the hat of being “democracy” (e.g. Access to Information Act and Freedom of Information); on the other hand, government has to control, attain and keep power, pure transparency is not realist -- such is the nature of governance.
Same thing happens in China’s single-party socialist political system. Though the central government has been pushing an extensive restructuring of public sectors for two decades[17] in order to catch up with the pace of the country’s economic development and integrate with the rest of the world, current situation is still hardly optimistic. The uniqueness of China’s public sector administration and reform are widely known as “Chinese Characteristics”:
Firstly, the country’s leadership has to maintain an ideological correctness. Secondly, the leaders are eager to “learn from the west”, they largely adopt the NPM reforms originating in the Anglo-American countries[18] to accord with the economic reform and to facilitate the economic success. Thirdly, since the world has seen China’s rise in recent years, the central government is bearing increasing pressure from western world to change the governance to be more democratic and transparent, especially after China’s accession to the WTO. Finally, current conditions of Chinese society are rather complicated and the country’s economic development has suffered many growth-related problems[19] (e.g. inflation pressure, income gap, regional imbalance, and unemployment concerns). The Chinese society has also experienced many problems in the areas of school education, public health, public safety, and social welfare, etc. And now they have to face new problems -- the separatist or even terrorist thoughts and activities in the country.
From my perspective, Chinese society is now quite unstable under the superficial quietness and risk may occur (and is occurring) anytime. Based on all the considerations, the central government of China is also facing the dilemma I mentioned above in government communication and cannot achieve pure transparency on administration and information. As a matter of fact, until now China has refused to issue a press law because it might curtail the privileges of Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda department in disseminating information.
Sometimes I feel this deadlock situation quite ironic and I would personally describe it as “good people doing bad things” -- Rationally, everyone in this domain knows that in government communication “greater transparency promotes accountability and better management” [20] but practically no one can put it into practice. This is not only a phenomenon throughout the western world, but actually the whole political world. Grunig’s two-way symmetrical communication model[21] is a rather amiable belief for transparent government communication, but in contemporary political arena it’s a lofty aspiration.
Personally speaking, I prefer to look at this issue from a more realistic perspective. Thousands of years of human experience tells us that, any existence of government, no matter democratic, republic, communist, dictatorship, or, in history, monarchist and Christian etc., is a monopoly of organized forces. Control is necessary since the so-called “free markets” and “individual initiative” is not always reliable. Numerous historical events as well as social experiments have proved that no matter to what extent a society develops, the rationality of human mind is tend to be over-estimated and public opinion is always easy to be manipulated. Examples are Nazism’s upsurge in post-World War I Germany and the notorious Culture Revolution in 1960s China, as well as other political movements in human history that have agitated the public into fanatical obsession. Moreover, as some ancient Chinese politicians and philosophers believed, dialectically speaking, good social order depends on governance and people’s freedom depends on a certain extent of forces and restrictions. To be honest, I personally disapprove of the political philosophy of anarchism and I agree that a compulsory government is always necessary.
I’m not advocating high-pressure politics here. Pure transparency might be advisable and plausible at a low level of governance in a relatively small region (e.g. municipal government in cities, towns, villages and municipalities). In such circumstances, the population is smaller and the demographic structure is simpler, it is possible for government to hold assembly and to obtain a unifying public opinion and agreement on a given issue or policy. For instance, the municipal governments in Canada may set out some statues named as the Municipal Act, the Local Government Act, the Cities and Towns Act and the like to provide services that can be more effectively handled under local control[22]. Also, the origins of the term democracy in ancient Greek have represented another good example of pure transparency and direct democracy in politics. Plato claimed that, to achieve democracy, all citizens were eligible to speak and vote in the Assembly, which set the laws of the city-state[23]. As a matter of fact, of the 250,000 inhabitants in Athens at that time, only some 30,000 on average were “citizens”, and of those 30,000 perhaps 5,000 might regularly attend one or more meetings of the popular Assembly[24].
Nevertheless, on a larger scale, for federal government and other types of government in contemporary world, to undertake pure transparency in government communication might cause huge disorder and chaos, and the situation will definitely lose control. Take China’s government communication strategy and activity after the earthquakes for example, though the communications between Chinese government and the public requires honesty and openness to stop rumors and halt panic, the impediments and balancing interest in pure transparency are still easy to perceive:
First and foremost, the central government of China needs to maintain public order and control the situation in the post-earthquake mess. When crisis happen, government sometimes cannot communicate all the facts and must “hide” some part of the truth for the public good. I would personally view this as a kind of obscurantism, which means the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known or a policy of withholding knowledge from the general public[25]. But it really works in certain context, especially in China where the vast majority of the population is undereducated and easy to overthrow self-control in crisis period.
Secondly, the existing censorship practiced in China’s mainstream media constrains the media’s capacity to report the disaster objectively and independently. As I mentioned above, until now China has no press law and the propaganda department of central government is in charge of all the information disseminated from the mainstream media. As is always the case, the “reportage policy” of the earthquake was sent to all state-owned media in the country soon after the disaster happened in form of official documents through an intranet. Consequently, the mainstream media’s reports have to fulfill the government’s requirement of propaganda and the so-called “guidance of public opinion” (yulun daoxiang).
Last but not least, the ideological conflict between China and western countries and the world’s hostility to China’s recent year’s rise “forced” the central government to withhold information, in order to protect state interest and maintain a good (or at least neutral) national image. For instance, lots of schools collapsed in the earthquake and the bodies of teenagers are, as reported, “Too many to count”[26], experts on global hazards pointed out that the loss of life could have been significantly reduced using known methods for designing or retrofitting structures in earthquake zones[27] and they named those collapsed buildings “tofu-dregs school houses”[28]. However, government till today refuses to accept responsibility and doesn’t admit that there is any quality problem of the school houses nor publicize the member of death in school collapse. It is probably because to do this will implicate other issues like the rampant corruption and misconduct in Chinese bureaucratic system. – In my opinion the government’s reaction is quite unsophisticated, as one can never solve a problem by cover it up.
Based on the above analysis, I would go to the conclusion that practically speaking, pure transparency in government communication is neither realizable nor advisable in any political context. It is not realizable because government has to win a power, there is no room for pure transparency; and it is not advisable because government has to run, there is still no room for pure transparency. Thus I personally believe that it is impossible to open the deadlock between theoretical and practical side of government transparency, Chinese government’s communication activities after Sichuan Earthquake also reflected this dilemma.
To close the essay, I want to add that the optimistic side of the deadlock needs to be highlighted. Although pure transparency is not realizable in contemporary government communication, the political practice of liberal democratic countries as well as some developing countries like China proves that the citizen’s access to information and government’s transparency is much better than decades ago. The widely adoption of E-Government in modern public management and all the legislations providing the right of access to information and protecting the citizen’s “right to know” guarantee that generally, government information is available to the public. Besides, with the development of public education and the information communication technologies, people are tend to shape more deliberate and considered opinions over public issues and can get information via non-professional media. From my point of view, the rise of today’s civil/citizen journalism may change the existing relationships between government, media and public in “public sphere”, and it will probably bring a more hopeful future of government transparency.
[1] “Casualties of the Wenchuan Earthquake” (in Chinese). Sina.com. 2008-06-08. http://news.sina.com.cn/pc/2008-05-13/326/651.html.
[2] Jacobs, Andrew; Edward Wong; Huang Yuanxi (2009-05-07). “China Reports Student Toll for Quake”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08china.html.
[3] Hooker, Jake (2008-05-26). “Toll Rises in China Quake”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/world/asia/26quake.html.
[4] Zhang, Jieping. Sichuan Earthquake and Opening of Journalism (in Chinese). Asian Weekly. 2008. issue22
[5] Simon Elegant. China's Quake Damage Control. Time. 2008-05-13
[6] http://www.gov.cn /
[7] Zhang, Junhua. 2005. Good Governance through E-Governance? Assessing China’s E-Government Strategy. Journal of E-Government, Vol. 2(4)
[8] http://www.zaobao.com/special/forum/pages6/forum_zp080521.shtml
[9] Christensen, Dong, and Painter. 2008. Administrative reform in China’s central government - how much ‘learning from the West’?. International Review of Administrative Sciences. Vol. 74 (3): 351–371
[10] Finel B.I., Lord K.M. 1999. The surprising logic of transparency. International Studies Quarterly. 43: 315-339.
[11] Cotterrell R. 1999. Transparency, mass media, ideology and community. Cultural Values. 3(4): 414-426.
[12] B.I. Finel and K.M. Lord. 1999. The surprising logic of transparency. International Studies Quarterly. 43 (2) (1999), pp. 315–339.
[13] Fairbanks, J., Plowman, K., and Rawlins, B. 2007. Transparency in government communication. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1. 23-27.
[14] Fairbanks, J., Plowman, K., and Rawlins, B. 2007. Transparency in government communication. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1. 23-27
[15] Same as 14
[16] Fairbanks, J., Plowman, K., and Rawlins, B. 2007. Transparency in government communication. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1. 23-27
[17] Christensen, Dong, and Painter. 2008. Administrative reform in China’s central government - how much ‘learning from the West’?. International Review of Administrative Sciences. Vol. 74 (3): 351–371
[18] Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. (2004) Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[19] Kuotsai Tom Liou. (2008). E-Government Development and China’s Administrative Reform. Intl Journal of Public Administration, 31: 76–95
[20] The Gomery Commission Report. 2006. Chapter 10. Transparency and better management
[21] Grunig, J.E. (1997). Public relations management in government and business. In J.L. Garnett, & A.Kouzmin (Eds.), Handbook of administrative communication (pp. 241). New York: Marcel Dekker
[22] Municipal government in The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0005517
[23] Grinin L. E. (2004). Democracy and Early State. Social Evolution & History. 3(2), pp. 93-149
[24] Democracy is people who rule the government directly. BBC. History of democracy
[25] obscurantism. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved December 14, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obscurantism
[26] Tania Branigan. (2008). In the rubble of a school, bodies everywhere - too many to count. The Guardian. 2008/5/16 , from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/16/chinaearthquake.china2
[27] Andrew C. Revkin. (2008). China earthquake brings faulty school design to the fore. New York Times. 2008/05/14, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/world/asia/14iht-schools.1.12875366.html
[28] Alex Lantier. 2008. "Rising death toll, popular anger in China quake". World Socialist Web Site. May 21, 2008. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/quak-m21.shtml.
Dec, 2009
Course Title: Government Communication
Open the Deadlock? Government Transparency and Communication Policies of Chinese Government during Sichuan Earthquake
At 2:28 in the afternoon of May 12, 2008 the ground in China's Sichuan province shuddered and cracked open. Buildings, roads and lives were torn apart in seconds. During the next minutes, tremors of the quake were felt throughout the whole country and reached as far away as Russia, India and Pakistan. With a magnitude of 8.0, the massive earthquake had left nearly 70,000 dead with over 18,000 missing[1] and about 5 million people (most of them poor and elderly villagers) homeless[2] (though the number could be as high as 11 million[3]), making it the 19th deadliest earthquake of all time.
Eighteen minutes after the disaster, at 2:46 in the afternoon, the official press agency of Chinese government Xinhua News Agency first publicized breaking news of the earthquake on its website. Fourteen minutes later, at 3:00 in the afternoon, the major state television broadcaster and mouthpiece of the government China Central Television (CCTV) started a 24-hour live broadcast of the disaster on both CCTV-1 and CCTV-News channels. At the same time, most of the mainstream media in China (newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, magazines) as well as new media (websites and cell phone news, etc.) began to report the earthquake. According to Asian Weekly magazine, after the earthquake, CCTV had sent over 160 reporters to the disaster zone, and they were doing their job with the support of all the provincial TV stations in China. The quantity and quality of news broadcasting on the earthquake “break the record in Chinese news reporting history” [4].
Besides domestic media, seniors in Chinese central government also had a quick response to the unexpected cataclysm. Ninety minutes after the earthquake, Premier Wen Jiabao, who has an academic background in geology, flew to the earthquake area to oversee the rescue work[5]. Soon afterward, the State Council initiated an emergency contingency plan to deal with the entire rescue, settle and rebuild work after the earthquake. In order to communicate with the public effectively and publicize the latest information of the disaster, the central government disseminated the information primarily via three channels:
State-owned domestic media (mentioned above)
Press conferences and the Chinese government’s official web portal[6]
Overseas media and independent journalists facing the foreign audience
Such is the profile of Chinese government’s reactions on information communication after the earthquake. Based on the event, the question I focus on in this essay is: Can government achieve pure transparency in its communication with the public? If not, then to what extent can the transparency be?
On May 1, 2008, just eleven days before the earthquake, the Regulation on Publicizing Government Information of People’s Republic of China was officially promulgated and came into force in China. From the political science perspective, this regulation, if effectively implemented, would have a far-reaching impact on Chinese society. As the insiders have already revealed, once issued, “it will commit all government organs to publishing most of the information which until now has remained locked in office desks”[7]. In other words, this regulation unprecedentedly represents the principle of citizen’s “right to know” and asserts government’s obligation on disclosure of information about public affairs.
It is quite fair to say that the Chinese central government’s responses and reactions, including their attitude to state-owned and overseas media on news reporting after the earthquake, have highly, although not thoroughly, revealed the principles of this information publicizing regulation. Comment from the International Herald Tribune and other overseas media states that Chinese government’s attitude on the earthquake news reporting is “amazingly open”[8]. As a matter of fact, compared with the long-established tradition of highly centralized administration, lack of transparency, and state-controlled information publicity as well as news censorship in journalism, the central government of China, when facing the Sichuan Earthquake, is trying out a more open and transparent way to communicate with the public. In today’s global discourse and competition of new public management (NPM), these reactions showed the eagerness of Chinese government and the leadership of China to gradually move the huge bureaucratic machine towards a modest form of “good governance”[9] through the ongoing administrative reforms and innovation.
Before examine the transparency issues of government communication, I’d like to figure out some fundamental elements and definitions of transparency in the field of political science. In the field of political science, “transparency” can be defined as “legal, political and institutional structures that make information about the internal characteristics of government and society available to actors both inside and outside of the domestic political system”[10], this definition emphasizes the structural measures that create a climate that promotes transparency in government actions. Cotterrell also argued that “transparency is the availability of information on matters of public concern, the ability of citizens to participate in political decisions, and the accountability of government to public opinion or legal processes”[11], focusing on the opening organizational behavior. Finel and Lord at the same time defined transparency as “legal, political and institutional structures that make information about the internal characteristics of government and society available to actors both inside and outside of the domestic political system”[12]. In one word, open administrative procedures and citizen’s access to information and decision-making process are key aspects of transparency.
According to Fairbanks, Plowman and Rawlins, an ideal model of a transparent government communication, the Transparency Model[13], can be visualized as a three dimensional triangle: The base of this model is a commitment to transparent communication processes, the three sides, or key elements of the model are communication practices, organizational support and the provision of resources[14]. This model can be used to understand how to make the workings of a government or public sector more transparent and how government should interact with the public.
One principal goal of this transparency model is citizen’s access to information, which increases the public’s knowledge on government’s activities and attendance in decision-making process. As Fairbanks, Plowman, and Rawlins argued, transparency in government actions and decision-making processes create an informed public, which is the basic stone of a healthy democracy[15]. On the other hand, there is a direct connection between government transparency and its accountability. Scholars have suggested that good communication and interaction with the public can increase trust, since open access to information and transparent systems will increase the public's knowledge of government activities. Oppositely, the decline of trust in government is an outgrowth of poor communication between government and its publics, where publics feel that they are not well informed about government actions. The accountability of public sectors is a crucial factor for modern scientific administration, especially in crisis period. The image of accountability and trustworthy of a government would facilitate a more effective and efficient way for policy making as well as undertaking.
It seems Fairbanks’s model has perfectly depicted how to create a good, responsible, accountable, and transparent government communication, it represents us a vision of “government transparency” in liberal democratic political systems. However, pure transparency only establishes itself on the conceptual and theoretical side. On the practical side of government administration and public management, pure transparency in government communication is no more than a “cheerful willingness”. More accurately, I would argue that pure transparency is neither realizable nor advisable on the empirical level of government communication.
Fairbanks and his colleagues’ research[16] has shown that, nowadays leaders and communicators in government have clearly recognized that the openness in the communication process of federal agencies is one of the basic requirements of a democratic government. However, we have spent most of our class throughout this semester discussing the un-transparent practices of government, such as strategic truth, plausible deniability, democratic propaganda and integrated circuit, etc. In other words, we were digging out the “ugly truth” of public management and the nature of political world: How to maintain a controlled or at least translucent communication under the mask of being transparent? From my perspective, this question is irrelevant with the political system, the ideologies, or the extent of democracy of a country. As a matter of fact, the issue of government transparency might be a never-ending dilemma for government leaders and social servants everywhere in the world. At least till now, we haven’t seen any political entity solve this problem perfectly.
In the context of Canadian parliamentary political system, as well as other western democratic countries, the un-transparent communication practices I mentioned above widely exist. Especially in the Westminster political system of Commonwealth of Nations countries (UK, Canada, Australia, etc.) which hold parliamentary opposition (multi-party) as a key characteristic and tend to have a more adversarial style of debate and contest between parties. In this situation, the game is all about “winning the power”, which means, the first objective of a government to be elected/re-elected and to stay in power. The competition between the majority and minority in the parliament is so severe that both sides would spare no pains to dig out any tiny mistakes and missteps of each other in order to embarrass and shame the competitor. Consequently, a paradoxical situation is shaped: on the one hand, government passes legislations to facilitate and protect transparency under the hat of being “democracy” (e.g. Access to Information Act and Freedom of Information); on the other hand, government has to control, attain and keep power, pure transparency is not realist -- such is the nature of governance.
Same thing happens in China’s single-party socialist political system. Though the central government has been pushing an extensive restructuring of public sectors for two decades[17] in order to catch up with the pace of the country’s economic development and integrate with the rest of the world, current situation is still hardly optimistic. The uniqueness of China’s public sector administration and reform are widely known as “Chinese Characteristics”:
Firstly, the country’s leadership has to maintain an ideological correctness. Secondly, the leaders are eager to “learn from the west”, they largely adopt the NPM reforms originating in the Anglo-American countries[18] to accord with the economic reform and to facilitate the economic success. Thirdly, since the world has seen China’s rise in recent years, the central government is bearing increasing pressure from western world to change the governance to be more democratic and transparent, especially after China’s accession to the WTO. Finally, current conditions of Chinese society are rather complicated and the country’s economic development has suffered many growth-related problems[19] (e.g. inflation pressure, income gap, regional imbalance, and unemployment concerns). The Chinese society has also experienced many problems in the areas of school education, public health, public safety, and social welfare, etc. And now they have to face new problems -- the separatist or even terrorist thoughts and activities in the country.
From my perspective, Chinese society is now quite unstable under the superficial quietness and risk may occur (and is occurring) anytime. Based on all the considerations, the central government of China is also facing the dilemma I mentioned above in government communication and cannot achieve pure transparency on administration and information. As a matter of fact, until now China has refused to issue a press law because it might curtail the privileges of Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda department in disseminating information.
Sometimes I feel this deadlock situation quite ironic and I would personally describe it as “good people doing bad things” -- Rationally, everyone in this domain knows that in government communication “greater transparency promotes accountability and better management” [20] but practically no one can put it into practice. This is not only a phenomenon throughout the western world, but actually the whole political world. Grunig’s two-way symmetrical communication model[21] is a rather amiable belief for transparent government communication, but in contemporary political arena it’s a lofty aspiration.
Personally speaking, I prefer to look at this issue from a more realistic perspective. Thousands of years of human experience tells us that, any existence of government, no matter democratic, republic, communist, dictatorship, or, in history, monarchist and Christian etc., is a monopoly of organized forces. Control is necessary since the so-called “free markets” and “individual initiative” is not always reliable. Numerous historical events as well as social experiments have proved that no matter to what extent a society develops, the rationality of human mind is tend to be over-estimated and public opinion is always easy to be manipulated. Examples are Nazism’s upsurge in post-World War I Germany and the notorious Culture Revolution in 1960s China, as well as other political movements in human history that have agitated the public into fanatical obsession. Moreover, as some ancient Chinese politicians and philosophers believed, dialectically speaking, good social order depends on governance and people’s freedom depends on a certain extent of forces and restrictions. To be honest, I personally disapprove of the political philosophy of anarchism and I agree that a compulsory government is always necessary.
I’m not advocating high-pressure politics here. Pure transparency might be advisable and plausible at a low level of governance in a relatively small region (e.g. municipal government in cities, towns, villages and municipalities). In such circumstances, the population is smaller and the demographic structure is simpler, it is possible for government to hold assembly and to obtain a unifying public opinion and agreement on a given issue or policy. For instance, the municipal governments in Canada may set out some statues named as the Municipal Act, the Local Government Act, the Cities and Towns Act and the like to provide services that can be more effectively handled under local control[22]. Also, the origins of the term democracy in ancient Greek have represented another good example of pure transparency and direct democracy in politics. Plato claimed that, to achieve democracy, all citizens were eligible to speak and vote in the Assembly, which set the laws of the city-state[23]. As a matter of fact, of the 250,000 inhabitants in Athens at that time, only some 30,000 on average were “citizens”, and of those 30,000 perhaps 5,000 might regularly attend one or more meetings of the popular Assembly[24].
Nevertheless, on a larger scale, for federal government and other types of government in contemporary world, to undertake pure transparency in government communication might cause huge disorder and chaos, and the situation will definitely lose control. Take China’s government communication strategy and activity after the earthquakes for example, though the communications between Chinese government and the public requires honesty and openness to stop rumors and halt panic, the impediments and balancing interest in pure transparency are still easy to perceive:
First and foremost, the central government of China needs to maintain public order and control the situation in the post-earthquake mess. When crisis happen, government sometimes cannot communicate all the facts and must “hide” some part of the truth for the public good. I would personally view this as a kind of obscurantism, which means the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known or a policy of withholding knowledge from the general public[25]. But it really works in certain context, especially in China where the vast majority of the population is undereducated and easy to overthrow self-control in crisis period.
Secondly, the existing censorship practiced in China’s mainstream media constrains the media’s capacity to report the disaster objectively and independently. As I mentioned above, until now China has no press law and the propaganda department of central government is in charge of all the information disseminated from the mainstream media. As is always the case, the “reportage policy” of the earthquake was sent to all state-owned media in the country soon after the disaster happened in form of official documents through an intranet. Consequently, the mainstream media’s reports have to fulfill the government’s requirement of propaganda and the so-called “guidance of public opinion” (yulun daoxiang).
Last but not least, the ideological conflict between China and western countries and the world’s hostility to China’s recent year’s rise “forced” the central government to withhold information, in order to protect state interest and maintain a good (or at least neutral) national image. For instance, lots of schools collapsed in the earthquake and the bodies of teenagers are, as reported, “Too many to count”[26], experts on global hazards pointed out that the loss of life could have been significantly reduced using known methods for designing or retrofitting structures in earthquake zones[27] and they named those collapsed buildings “tofu-dregs school houses”[28]. However, government till today refuses to accept responsibility and doesn’t admit that there is any quality problem of the school houses nor publicize the member of death in school collapse. It is probably because to do this will implicate other issues like the rampant corruption and misconduct in Chinese bureaucratic system. – In my opinion the government’s reaction is quite unsophisticated, as one can never solve a problem by cover it up.
Based on the above analysis, I would go to the conclusion that practically speaking, pure transparency in government communication is neither realizable nor advisable in any political context. It is not realizable because government has to win a power, there is no room for pure transparency; and it is not advisable because government has to run, there is still no room for pure transparency. Thus I personally believe that it is impossible to open the deadlock between theoretical and practical side of government transparency, Chinese government’s communication activities after Sichuan Earthquake also reflected this dilemma.
To close the essay, I want to add that the optimistic side of the deadlock needs to be highlighted. Although pure transparency is not realizable in contemporary government communication, the political practice of liberal democratic countries as well as some developing countries like China proves that the citizen’s access to information and government’s transparency is much better than decades ago. The widely adoption of E-Government in modern public management and all the legislations providing the right of access to information and protecting the citizen’s “right to know” guarantee that generally, government information is available to the public. Besides, with the development of public education and the information communication technologies, people are tend to shape more deliberate and considered opinions over public issues and can get information via non-professional media. From my point of view, the rise of today’s civil/citizen journalism may change the existing relationships between government, media and public in “public sphere”, and it will probably bring a more hopeful future of government transparency.
[1] “Casualties of the Wenchuan Earthquake” (in Chinese). Sina.com. 2008-06-08. http://news.sina.com.cn/pc/2008-05-13/326/651.html.
[2] Jacobs, Andrew; Edward Wong; Huang Yuanxi (2009-05-07). “China Reports Student Toll for Quake”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08china.html.
[3] Hooker, Jake (2008-05-26). “Toll Rises in China Quake”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/world/asia/26quake.html.
[4] Zhang, Jieping. Sichuan Earthquake and Opening of Journalism (in Chinese). Asian Weekly. 2008. issue22
[5] Simon Elegant. China's Quake Damage Control. Time. 2008-05-13
[6] http://www.gov.cn /
[7] Zhang, Junhua. 2005. Good Governance through E-Governance? Assessing China’s E-Government Strategy. Journal of E-Government, Vol. 2(4)
[8] http://www.zaobao.com/special/forum/pages6/forum_zp080521.shtml
[9] Christensen, Dong, and Painter. 2008. Administrative reform in China’s central government - how much ‘learning from the West’?. International Review of Administrative Sciences. Vol. 74 (3): 351–371
[10] Finel B.I., Lord K.M. 1999. The surprising logic of transparency. International Studies Quarterly. 43: 315-339.
[11] Cotterrell R. 1999. Transparency, mass media, ideology and community. Cultural Values. 3(4): 414-426.
[12] B.I. Finel and K.M. Lord. 1999. The surprising logic of transparency. International Studies Quarterly. 43 (2) (1999), pp. 315–339.
[13] Fairbanks, J., Plowman, K., and Rawlins, B. 2007. Transparency in government communication. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1. 23-27.
[14] Fairbanks, J., Plowman, K., and Rawlins, B. 2007. Transparency in government communication. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1. 23-27
[15] Same as 14
[16] Fairbanks, J., Plowman, K., and Rawlins, B. 2007. Transparency in government communication. Journal of Public Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1. 23-27
[17] Christensen, Dong, and Painter. 2008. Administrative reform in China’s central government - how much ‘learning from the West’?. International Review of Administrative Sciences. Vol. 74 (3): 351–371
[18] Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. (2004) Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[19] Kuotsai Tom Liou. (2008). E-Government Development and China’s Administrative Reform. Intl Journal of Public Administration, 31: 76–95
[20] The Gomery Commission Report. 2006. Chapter 10. Transparency and better management
[21] Grunig, J.E. (1997). Public relations management in government and business. In J.L. Garnett, & A.Kouzmin (Eds.), Handbook of administrative communication (pp. 241). New York: Marcel Dekker
[22] Municipal government in The Canadian Encyclopedia http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0005517
[23] Grinin L. E. (2004). Democracy and Early State. Social Evolution & History. 3(2), pp. 93-149
[24] Democracy is people who rule the government directly. BBC. History of democracy
[25] obscurantism. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved December 14, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obscurantism
[26] Tania Branigan. (2008). In the rubble of a school, bodies everywhere - too many to count. The Guardian. 2008/5/16 , from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/16/chinaearthquake.china2
[27] Andrew C. Revkin. (2008). China earthquake brings faulty school design to the fore. New York Times. 2008/05/14, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/world/asia/14iht-schools.1.12875366.html
[28] Alex Lantier. 2008. "Rising death toll, popular anger in China quake". World Socialist Web Site. May 21, 2008. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/quak-m21.shtml.
Growing up under Pressure - Some of my views on Singapore film industry
Jing Ke
Oct, 2007
Course Title: Film Studies
Growing up under Pressure
Some of my perspectives on Singapore film industry
(As a Chinese born in the late 1980s and grown up in a populous mainland city, Singapore film is not a familiar word to me. Surrounded by Hollywood blockbusters and Hong Kong gangster films, I watched my first Singapore film 3 months ago after arriving here. The more Singapore films I watch, the more curious I feel about the film industry of this country, that is the reason why I choose this topic.)
Singapore film industry began in the early 1930s, it enjoyed a golden age in the 1950s and 1960s and produced nearly 400 films during that period. After its independence in 1965, the film industry of the nation was almost silent before 1990 as the government despised film making. However, since the release of Bugis Street and Mee Pok Man, the first profitable local film in 1995, film industry of Singapore has launched into its renaissance.[①] From my perspective, the renaissance of Singapore film industry is in a steady but tortuous process.
The film industry of a country is inseparable with its culture, history, politics and economy background as well as the ideology and value it believes in. Accordingly, I’d like to analyze Singapore film industry from the following aspects:
Culture:
Singapore a small and multi-raced country possessing a diversified culture, the various ethnic groups celebrate their own cultures while they intermingle with one another. This special form of culture has great influence on local film industry, since film is a cultural practice, it is born in a certain culture context and has emotional and moral impact on the audience. Film is also remarked as a “bridge” connects different cultures and represents the culture background in which it is produced. Therefore to utilize film as an instrument for cross-cultural exchange is rather important to Singapore, since culture harmony is the basic element for a steady-going society.
Take Kelvin Tong’s horror film The Maid for example, it is a horrible story happens in a Singapore Chinese family, there are many traditional Chinese elements in the film, like the Seven Ghost Month, the Chinese Opera and the sacrifice to the dead, these are all representations to the traditional Chinese way of life in the old days. It would arouse a range of different responses among audience coming from different culture background. A Chinese will probably understand the heavy and deep pathos in this movie or even have a feeling of nostalgia to the philosophic perception on life and death in traditional Chinese values, while, say, an Indian or American would probably only enjoy the horror it brings in and sigh with confusion or even misunderstanding of the “unreasonable” Chinese way of life after seeing the film. They may have a peep into the traditional Chinese culture while misunderstand it at the same time. The risk exists in any film produced from any culture background.
Example above is one aspect of the culture issue, on a higher level, film need to represent the unique culture of Singapore to the world and promote indigenous culture at the same time. However, as 99% of the films screened in Singapore are imported while few films are exported, the indigenous culture of Singapore is under threat in the tide of globalization.
Politics & Ideology:
Acting as a part of media industry, film is under the influence of political power and ideological tendency since its appearance. Government is the leading power in control of the film industry, the administrative control can be implemented by two means, one is financing (this will be mentioned later), the other is censorship.
Film censorship is inevitably practiced in every country in different forms and different degree, according to Singapore Media Development Authority, the film censorship in Singapore aims to “protect the young from unsuitable content as well as to maintain stability and harmony in our multi-racial and multi-religious society”.[②] Besides, films are classified into 5 categories in order to provide a wider choice for audiences. As a matter of fact, either the film censorship or the classification is accepted by most of the local audience.
However, things are becoming more complex when we regard film as a way to reflect reality rather than a tool to conform the ideology. Hong Kong broadcasting magnate Run Run Shaw once called Singapore “too clean”,[③] which is a reflection on the strictness of the film censorship, and the “cleanness” is even seemed unreal.
I’d like to discuss more on Royston Tan’s film 15: The Movie, which narrates five fringe Singaporean teenagers who are abandoned by the system, the life they adopt is incompatible to the mainstream of the society. It seems more like a documentary than a film, recording the true-life story of the “bad boys” who lost themselves in the metanarrative in this postmodern world. For some acceptable reasons, this film was initially banned in Singapore and then suffered 27 cuts before being approved for release. It is reasonable for a film which reflects the dark side of a society being banned by the authority in order to maintain social stability, but sometimes to uncover and expose the wound is a better cure. The drug smuggling, suicide committing and self-abandoned adolescent gang boys can be found every place in the world and have become a social problem, film bears the responsibility to guide the audience looking into their inner world and touch their weakness behind the marble façade. It is much helpful than simply brand them “bad guy” and throw them in the corner of this “rich-and-educated-set-the-rule”[④] society. From this point of view, film censorship can be more open and flexible in some certain conditions.
On the other hand, politics is an effective power in promoting the local film industry when the government has realized the function of popular culture in facilitating economy and improving country’s image in the world. Events like the annual Singapore International Film Festival and the Film Week in Singapore Season held in London 2005 witness the government’s effort in promoting Singapore film to the world. Actually these events turned out to be great success which acquires both reputations and profits for Singapore.
Finance:
What impresses me most on Singapore film industry is that many celebrated films turned out to be very cheaply made. Eric Khoo’s film Mee Pok Man was made with a tight budget of S$100,000, and Tay Teck Lock’s Money No Enough was made for less than S$1 million but raked in S$5.8 million[⑤], making it the most commercially successful local film up to now. (Disappointedly, according to a statistic made by Singapore Film Commission, which indicates the production cost and box office receipts of all Singapore films produced from 1991 to 2007, most of the films are still at loss in business.[⑥]) Compared with some Hollywood blockbusters with tens of millions of US dollar’s budget, or even some Chinese movies produced in recent years, the financing deficiency in Singapore film industry is easy to notice and is apparently a burden on its renaissance, although the relationship between financing, quality and commercial success is not a certainty in film industry.
Accordingly, from another perspective, Singapore films concentrate on themes like social life may objectively because of the restrictions on its small budget, further financial support and more multinational cooperation is needed if Singapore wants to produce epic films like Troy or high-tech films like Star Wars.
Audience & Market:
Geographically, Singapore is an island-state with a 4.5 million small population, it is a limiting factor to the domestic film market. At the same time, due to the diversified culture background, some small budget and realistic films tend to be more successful in Singapore, like Eric Khoo’s 12 stories, Djinn Ong’s Perth and Jack Neo’s I not Stupid. Concentrating on social topics and culture interweaving landscape in Singapore, these films are capable to maintain the customer inland as well as exploit new market and find audience overseas. In recent years, more and more Singapore films appear on the stage of some well-known international film festivals (Pusan, Berlin, Moscow, Venice, etc.), they are nominated or awarded, manifesting Singapore’s marching into the international film market.
It is reasonable that due to the limited space of box income in local film market, the future of commercially successful Singapore film lies in the oversea market. In order to get a position in the international film market, domestic film productions will compete (and cooperate) with studios like Hollywood, Bollywood, and other competitors in Europe and Asia. From my perspective, a renewal in film themes and trends in Singapore film industry is necessary, filmmakers could experiment on new themes like historical or fictive, also, cooperation with other film magnates in the world is helpful to exchange ideas and acquire new techniques in film making as well as solve financial problem.
Filmmaker:
There are many capable filmmakers and directors in Singapore, they make films with their talent and passion and are trying on different styles and genres, exponents are Jack Neo, Royston Tan, Eric Khoo and Kelvin Tong. These filmmakers and their works have become the milestones in the renaissance of Singapore film industry. Besides the achievement, there is still a rough road to go. More panoramic films capable to reflect the history, society and human spirit of Singapore are in need and other challenges still occur, like to forge an indigenous as well as distinct film culture and film style of Singapore; and to produce more mature films that are both artistically and commercially successful.
To sum up, rapid development in Singapore film industry in the past decade has accumulated governors’ and filmmakers’ experience and confidence in film making as well as marketing. Both domestic and oversea markets are being cultivated, while problems and challenges still exist, the film industry of Singapore has obtained great progress and is showing its huge potential. As long as Singapore film industry can take advantage of its internationalization while maintain the indigenous color, it will harvest more achievement in future.
[①] The history of Singapore film is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Singapore
[②] http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/1001qns.aspx?sid=165&fid=77&v1=True#HtmlAnchor_Anchor
[③] http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/95/0616/cinema.html
[④] This phrase is from one of the boy’s lines in 15: The Movie
[⑤] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Singapore
[⑥] Statistic resource: http://www.sfc.org.sg/main.html
Oct, 2007
Course Title: Film Studies
Growing up under Pressure
Some of my perspectives on Singapore film industry
(As a Chinese born in the late 1980s and grown up in a populous mainland city, Singapore film is not a familiar word to me. Surrounded by Hollywood blockbusters and Hong Kong gangster films, I watched my first Singapore film 3 months ago after arriving here. The more Singapore films I watch, the more curious I feel about the film industry of this country, that is the reason why I choose this topic.)
Singapore film industry began in the early 1930s, it enjoyed a golden age in the 1950s and 1960s and produced nearly 400 films during that period. After its independence in 1965, the film industry of the nation was almost silent before 1990 as the government despised film making. However, since the release of Bugis Street and Mee Pok Man, the first profitable local film in 1995, film industry of Singapore has launched into its renaissance.[①] From my perspective, the renaissance of Singapore film industry is in a steady but tortuous process.
The film industry of a country is inseparable with its culture, history, politics and economy background as well as the ideology and value it believes in. Accordingly, I’d like to analyze Singapore film industry from the following aspects:
Culture:
Singapore a small and multi-raced country possessing a diversified culture, the various ethnic groups celebrate their own cultures while they intermingle with one another. This special form of culture has great influence on local film industry, since film is a cultural practice, it is born in a certain culture context and has emotional and moral impact on the audience. Film is also remarked as a “bridge” connects different cultures and represents the culture background in which it is produced. Therefore to utilize film as an instrument for cross-cultural exchange is rather important to Singapore, since culture harmony is the basic element for a steady-going society.
Take Kelvin Tong’s horror film The Maid for example, it is a horrible story happens in a Singapore Chinese family, there are many traditional Chinese elements in the film, like the Seven Ghost Month, the Chinese Opera and the sacrifice to the dead, these are all representations to the traditional Chinese way of life in the old days. It would arouse a range of different responses among audience coming from different culture background. A Chinese will probably understand the heavy and deep pathos in this movie or even have a feeling of nostalgia to the philosophic perception on life and death in traditional Chinese values, while, say, an Indian or American would probably only enjoy the horror it brings in and sigh with confusion or even misunderstanding of the “unreasonable” Chinese way of life after seeing the film. They may have a peep into the traditional Chinese culture while misunderstand it at the same time. The risk exists in any film produced from any culture background.
Example above is one aspect of the culture issue, on a higher level, film need to represent the unique culture of Singapore to the world and promote indigenous culture at the same time. However, as 99% of the films screened in Singapore are imported while few films are exported, the indigenous culture of Singapore is under threat in the tide of globalization.
Politics & Ideology:
Acting as a part of media industry, film is under the influence of political power and ideological tendency since its appearance. Government is the leading power in control of the film industry, the administrative control can be implemented by two means, one is financing (this will be mentioned later), the other is censorship.
Film censorship is inevitably practiced in every country in different forms and different degree, according to Singapore Media Development Authority, the film censorship in Singapore aims to “protect the young from unsuitable content as well as to maintain stability and harmony in our multi-racial and multi-religious society”.[②] Besides, films are classified into 5 categories in order to provide a wider choice for audiences. As a matter of fact, either the film censorship or the classification is accepted by most of the local audience.
However, things are becoming more complex when we regard film as a way to reflect reality rather than a tool to conform the ideology. Hong Kong broadcasting magnate Run Run Shaw once called Singapore “too clean”,[③] which is a reflection on the strictness of the film censorship, and the “cleanness” is even seemed unreal.
I’d like to discuss more on Royston Tan’s film 15: The Movie, which narrates five fringe Singaporean teenagers who are abandoned by the system, the life they adopt is incompatible to the mainstream of the society. It seems more like a documentary than a film, recording the true-life story of the “bad boys” who lost themselves in the metanarrative in this postmodern world. For some acceptable reasons, this film was initially banned in Singapore and then suffered 27 cuts before being approved for release. It is reasonable for a film which reflects the dark side of a society being banned by the authority in order to maintain social stability, but sometimes to uncover and expose the wound is a better cure. The drug smuggling, suicide committing and self-abandoned adolescent gang boys can be found every place in the world and have become a social problem, film bears the responsibility to guide the audience looking into their inner world and touch their weakness behind the marble façade. It is much helpful than simply brand them “bad guy” and throw them in the corner of this “rich-and-educated-set-the-rule”[④] society. From this point of view, film censorship can be more open and flexible in some certain conditions.
On the other hand, politics is an effective power in promoting the local film industry when the government has realized the function of popular culture in facilitating economy and improving country’s image in the world. Events like the annual Singapore International Film Festival and the Film Week in Singapore Season held in London 2005 witness the government’s effort in promoting Singapore film to the world. Actually these events turned out to be great success which acquires both reputations and profits for Singapore.
Finance:
What impresses me most on Singapore film industry is that many celebrated films turned out to be very cheaply made. Eric Khoo’s film Mee Pok Man was made with a tight budget of S$100,000, and Tay Teck Lock’s Money No Enough was made for less than S$1 million but raked in S$5.8 million[⑤], making it the most commercially successful local film up to now. (Disappointedly, according to a statistic made by Singapore Film Commission, which indicates the production cost and box office receipts of all Singapore films produced from 1991 to 2007, most of the films are still at loss in business.[⑥]) Compared with some Hollywood blockbusters with tens of millions of US dollar’s budget, or even some Chinese movies produced in recent years, the financing deficiency in Singapore film industry is easy to notice and is apparently a burden on its renaissance, although the relationship between financing, quality and commercial success is not a certainty in film industry.
Accordingly, from another perspective, Singapore films concentrate on themes like social life may objectively because of the restrictions on its small budget, further financial support and more multinational cooperation is needed if Singapore wants to produce epic films like Troy or high-tech films like Star Wars.
Audience & Market:
Geographically, Singapore is an island-state with a 4.5 million small population, it is a limiting factor to the domestic film market. At the same time, due to the diversified culture background, some small budget and realistic films tend to be more successful in Singapore, like Eric Khoo’s 12 stories, Djinn Ong’s Perth and Jack Neo’s I not Stupid. Concentrating on social topics and culture interweaving landscape in Singapore, these films are capable to maintain the customer inland as well as exploit new market and find audience overseas. In recent years, more and more Singapore films appear on the stage of some well-known international film festivals (Pusan, Berlin, Moscow, Venice, etc.), they are nominated or awarded, manifesting Singapore’s marching into the international film market.
It is reasonable that due to the limited space of box income in local film market, the future of commercially successful Singapore film lies in the oversea market. In order to get a position in the international film market, domestic film productions will compete (and cooperate) with studios like Hollywood, Bollywood, and other competitors in Europe and Asia. From my perspective, a renewal in film themes and trends in Singapore film industry is necessary, filmmakers could experiment on new themes like historical or fictive, also, cooperation with other film magnates in the world is helpful to exchange ideas and acquire new techniques in film making as well as solve financial problem.
Filmmaker:
There are many capable filmmakers and directors in Singapore, they make films with their talent and passion and are trying on different styles and genres, exponents are Jack Neo, Royston Tan, Eric Khoo and Kelvin Tong. These filmmakers and their works have become the milestones in the renaissance of Singapore film industry. Besides the achievement, there is still a rough road to go. More panoramic films capable to reflect the history, society and human spirit of Singapore are in need and other challenges still occur, like to forge an indigenous as well as distinct film culture and film style of Singapore; and to produce more mature films that are both artistically and commercially successful.
To sum up, rapid development in Singapore film industry in the past decade has accumulated governors’ and filmmakers’ experience and confidence in film making as well as marketing. Both domestic and oversea markets are being cultivated, while problems and challenges still exist, the film industry of Singapore has obtained great progress and is showing its huge potential. As long as Singapore film industry can take advantage of its internationalization while maintain the indigenous color, it will harvest more achievement in future.
[①] The history of Singapore film is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Singapore
[②] http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/1001qns.aspx?sid=165&fid=77&v1=True#HtmlAnchor_Anchor
[③] http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/95/0616/cinema.html
[④] This phrase is from one of the boy’s lines in 15: The Movie
[⑤] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Singapore
[⑥] Statistic resource: http://www.sfc.org.sg/main.html
Bowling for Columbine, A Michael Moore's Documentary
Jing Ke & Chen Lou
Oct, 2007
Course Title: Film Studies
Bowling for Columbine and Documentary Film
About this film
In this film, Michael Moore looks into the nature of violence in the United States, focusing on guns as a symbol of both American freedom and its self-destruction in a deep interrogation and incisive exposure, which spurs us to think; while, with tendentious and aggressive point of view, this film looks more like a symbolically individual interpretation than a rational documentary film.
Documentary film
Literally, “documentary” is to document reality. Although “documentary film” originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can be either direct-to-video or made for a television series.
The term “documentary” was first used by documentarian John Grierson’s review of Robert Flaherty (1884-1951, a filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature length documentary film Nanook of the North in 1922)’s film Moana published in the New York Sun in 1926. In the 1930s, he further argued that documentary was the cinema’s potential for observing life in a new art form, which meant that the “original” actor and “original” scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials “thus taken from raw” can be more real than the acted article. Grierson generally held documentary as “creative treatment of actually” compared with the dramatic fiction as “bourgeois excess”.
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices, which placed far more interpretive control in the hands of the director, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries.
However, as a matter of fact, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form.
Moore as an Auteur Director
Accurately, this film is not only directed, but also written, starring, and produced by Michael Moore. He is also the director and producer of another celebrated documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. In his documentaries he tends to present a critical look at some social problems like gun violence or international issues like globalization and the Iraq War. He is active in promoting his political views and is known for his “fiery left-wing populism.” Besides film, he is also a director of TV series and a writer of three best-selling books, and all of his works reflect a left-wing viewpoint on American political and social issues. Although some Americans see him as a betrayer of the country, he claims himself as a patriot. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.[i]
Awards
Bowling for Columbine had brought Moore international attention after its release and won numerous awards, including a 55th Anniversary Prize, Cannes Film Festival in 2002; an Academy Award for Best Documentary Features, International Documentary Association - Best Documentary of All Time and the César Award for Best Foreign Film in 2003.
Content and Focus
Bowling for Columbine is released on October 11, 2002 and explores what Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre (Occurred on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School, two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher, wounded 23 others, before committing suicide.) and other acts of violence with guns in America. Moore focuses on the background and environment in which the massacre took place and looks into the nature of violence in the US, he describes gun as a symbol of American freedom as well as its self-destruction at the same time.
The arrangement of materials in this documentary is, to some extent, disordered. Moore mixed and interweaved a great lot of materials, real and artificial, historical and real-time, into the film to make it more convictive and impressive.
Remarkably, this film enjoys a commercial success: with a budget of only $4,000,000, it grossed $40,000,000 worldwide, including $21,575,207 in the United States. It also broke box office records internationally, becoming the highest-grossing documentary in the U.K., Australia, and Austria.
Features of the film
1. The Use of Cartoon:
Moore tries to convey the historical connection between whites' fear of non-whites and the protection of gun ownership using an eight minute cartoon. The cartoon starts with the Mayflower (the ship), focuses on the colonists' fear of indigenous people, and only links this fear to blacks as they approach the civil rights era. This cartoon, together with some news clips, each tending to indicate the emphasis on violence and crime in news reports, and interviews illustrate the “security-minded” attitude of U.S. residents all prove that the Columbine massacre is not merely an outcome of the easy availability of guns in the U.S., but instead more connected to a “climate of fear” which is engendered by the American media. The eight minute cartoon is an artificial element in the documentary, which shows the director’s creativity and sense of humor.
2. Ironic Choice of Music:
About 20 minutes in the film, the song Happiness Is a Warm Gun plays during a violent montage is shown. The footage of it mainly reflects people buying and firing guns, a town in Utah passed a law requiring all residents to own guns, a blind man who is a gun enthusiast, etc. Also, when the film cuts to a montage of a review on American foreign policy decisions from 1953, which is filled with violence and hegemony, the film is set to another song What a Wonderful World. So we can feel the director’s intention to express his criticism in gun holding and American foreign policy through the choice of music.
3. Numerous Interview and Discussion:
In this film Moore interviews various people, including the National Rifle Association's president Charlton Heston, the rock-and-roll musician Marilyn Manson, and many residents, he seeks to explain why the Columbine massacre occurred and why the United States has a higher number of violent crimes — especially crimes involving guns — and he charges that the occurrence of violent crimes in the U.S. is relatively higher than other developed nations.
The interview is a central part of the documentary; Moore conveys what he wants to tell the audiences through the interviewee’s mouth, which makes the film quite “objective” – what is expressed is not the director’s viewpoint, but the interviewee’s.
4. Starring of Director:
Unlike most documentaries in which the directors never make an appearance, Michael Moore jumps to the front of lens in Bowling for Columbine and the whole film is absolutely under his steering. He gets a free gun for opening a bank account, he takes two Columbine victims to the Kmart headquarters to claim a refund, he visits Canada to show front doors unlocked and people are much less concern over crime and security, etc. His intervention arouses furious disputation on the objectivity of the film. It makes the documentary seems like a true-man show and some critics even contend it as “deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive”.[ii]
Strengths
Put aside the argument on the standard of objectivity of documentary, which is always under impugnment, Bowling for Columbine is unquestionably successful in exploring into the thorny subject like the cause of the high murder rate and nature of violence in the US. It is thought provoking, agitative, and impressive.
Here are some reviews of the film from a website, which claims to express the opinion of “the top critics and audiences in the US”[iii], witness the popularity of this documentary:
●For anyone who cares about the future of America, it is required viewing.
●As the national media become more sedate and incurious; this country desperately needs a gadfly like Moore. Indeed, we need more like him.
●Moore has perfected the art of highly entertaining, self-important, politically motivated documentary-making, and he has got as potent a topic as ever with Bowling for Columbine.
●Anything that coaxes us into thinking about why we are the way we are, even as imperfectly as Bowling for Columbine does, is an energizing change of pace.
●A great national conversation starter.
Inquiries
The theory of Gate-keeper: In human communication, in particular, in journalism, gatekeeping is the process through which ideas and information are filtered for publication. The internal decision making process of relaying or withholding information from the media to the masses. The theory was first instituted by social psychologist Kurt Lewin in 1947 and is still one of the most important theories studied by students of mass communication and journalism. Gatekeeping occurs at all levels of the media structure - from a reporter deciding which sources are chosen to include in a story to editors deciding which stories are printed, or even covered.
When concerning to this movie, Moore, undoubtedly, did a good job as a gatekeeper, who displayed genuine information that are totally truthful. However, making a decision between what to show and what to ignore itself is a kind of gatekeeping, and as a result of this, he seems to be selling his point of view to viewers furtively and smartly in the name of documentary film.
For example:
● The title originates from the story that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two students responsible for the massacre, attended a school bowling class early that morning, at 6:00 a.m., before they committed the attacks at school starting at 11:18 a.m, which at last proved wrong because their absence of school that day (NOT SHOWN). However, Moore incorporates the concept of bowling in other ways, such as a Michigan militia uses bowling pins for their target practice, the two boys’ classmates recollections about them with the bowling class. By doing these, Moore suggests that bowling could have been just as responsible for the attacks on the school as Marilyn Manson or even Bill Clinton. In sum, all of these give spectators impression that they are persuaded into buying this kind of subjective opinion of the director himself, what is the other reality, who cares? It seems that it is the way that using reality to get superficially “objective” opinion really matters rather than the whole reality itself.
●After an interview with NRA president Charlton Heston, who walks away from the interview while the cameras are still rolling, Moore leaves a photograph of six year old school shooting victim Kayla Rolland in Heston's house when he departs (SHOWN ON PURPOSE). By doing so, Moore actually exaggerated the tendentious view of them both, and give an ostensible demagoguery for viewers on the ostensible assumption that he only himself is seeing reality and on the side of right and totally true.
What is more important, after all these provocations and dig-deep efforts, Moore actually did not add up to certain definite answer or really objective consensus. It is more like gate-keeper who let the advantageous information flow into his display rather a rational or holistic scan contributing to further insight, ironically but unbelievably by the way, the information is actually genuine and thoroughly truthful on its own.
Conclusion
Moore played a great role in his documentary film and succeed in spurring viewers to think more about the nature of violence of American; but as a gate-keeper with tendentious and aggressive approach in his documentary film, all the communication that he did seemed symbolic and some sort of individual heroic, hardly add up to a rational approach or real answer to the issue.
[i]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine
[ii]http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html
[iii]http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bowling_for_columbine/?beg=0&int=136&creamcrop_limit=30&page=all
Oct, 2007
Course Title: Film Studies
Bowling for Columbine and Documentary Film
About this film
In this film, Michael Moore looks into the nature of violence in the United States, focusing on guns as a symbol of both American freedom and its self-destruction in a deep interrogation and incisive exposure, which spurs us to think; while, with tendentious and aggressive point of view, this film looks more like a symbolically individual interpretation than a rational documentary film.
Documentary film
Literally, “documentary” is to document reality. Although “documentary film” originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can be either direct-to-video or made for a television series.
The term “documentary” was first used by documentarian John Grierson’s review of Robert Flaherty (1884-1951, a filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature length documentary film Nanook of the North in 1922)’s film Moana published in the New York Sun in 1926. In the 1930s, he further argued that documentary was the cinema’s potential for observing life in a new art form, which meant that the “original” actor and “original” scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials “thus taken from raw” can be more real than the acted article. Grierson generally held documentary as “creative treatment of actually” compared with the dramatic fiction as “bourgeois excess”.
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices, which placed far more interpretive control in the hands of the director, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries.
However, as a matter of fact, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form.
Moore as an Auteur Director
Accurately, this film is not only directed, but also written, starring, and produced by Michael Moore. He is also the director and producer of another celebrated documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. In his documentaries he tends to present a critical look at some social problems like gun violence or international issues like globalization and the Iraq War. He is active in promoting his political views and is known for his “fiery left-wing populism.” Besides film, he is also a director of TV series and a writer of three best-selling books, and all of his works reflect a left-wing viewpoint on American political and social issues. Although some Americans see him as a betrayer of the country, he claims himself as a patriot. In 2005 Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people.[i]
Awards
Bowling for Columbine had brought Moore international attention after its release and won numerous awards, including a 55th Anniversary Prize, Cannes Film Festival in 2002; an Academy Award for Best Documentary Features, International Documentary Association - Best Documentary of All Time and the César Award for Best Foreign Film in 2003.
Content and Focus
Bowling for Columbine is released on October 11, 2002 and explores what Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre (Occurred on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School, two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher, wounded 23 others, before committing suicide.) and other acts of violence with guns in America. Moore focuses on the background and environment in which the massacre took place and looks into the nature of violence in the US, he describes gun as a symbol of American freedom as well as its self-destruction at the same time.
The arrangement of materials in this documentary is, to some extent, disordered. Moore mixed and interweaved a great lot of materials, real and artificial, historical and real-time, into the film to make it more convictive and impressive.
Remarkably, this film enjoys a commercial success: with a budget of only $4,000,000, it grossed $40,000,000 worldwide, including $21,575,207 in the United States. It also broke box office records internationally, becoming the highest-grossing documentary in the U.K., Australia, and Austria.
Features of the film
1. The Use of Cartoon:
Moore tries to convey the historical connection between whites' fear of non-whites and the protection of gun ownership using an eight minute cartoon. The cartoon starts with the Mayflower (the ship), focuses on the colonists' fear of indigenous people, and only links this fear to blacks as they approach the civil rights era. This cartoon, together with some news clips, each tending to indicate the emphasis on violence and crime in news reports, and interviews illustrate the “security-minded” attitude of U.S. residents all prove that the Columbine massacre is not merely an outcome of the easy availability of guns in the U.S., but instead more connected to a “climate of fear” which is engendered by the American media. The eight minute cartoon is an artificial element in the documentary, which shows the director’s creativity and sense of humor.
2. Ironic Choice of Music:
About 20 minutes in the film, the song Happiness Is a Warm Gun plays during a violent montage is shown. The footage of it mainly reflects people buying and firing guns, a town in Utah passed a law requiring all residents to own guns, a blind man who is a gun enthusiast, etc. Also, when the film cuts to a montage of a review on American foreign policy decisions from 1953, which is filled with violence and hegemony, the film is set to another song What a Wonderful World. So we can feel the director’s intention to express his criticism in gun holding and American foreign policy through the choice of music.
3. Numerous Interview and Discussion:
In this film Moore interviews various people, including the National Rifle Association's president Charlton Heston, the rock-and-roll musician Marilyn Manson, and many residents, he seeks to explain why the Columbine massacre occurred and why the United States has a higher number of violent crimes — especially crimes involving guns — and he charges that the occurrence of violent crimes in the U.S. is relatively higher than other developed nations.
The interview is a central part of the documentary; Moore conveys what he wants to tell the audiences through the interviewee’s mouth, which makes the film quite “objective” – what is expressed is not the director’s viewpoint, but the interviewee’s.
4. Starring of Director:
Unlike most documentaries in which the directors never make an appearance, Michael Moore jumps to the front of lens in Bowling for Columbine and the whole film is absolutely under his steering. He gets a free gun for opening a bank account, he takes two Columbine victims to the Kmart headquarters to claim a refund, he visits Canada to show front doors unlocked and people are much less concern over crime and security, etc. His intervention arouses furious disputation on the objectivity of the film. It makes the documentary seems like a true-man show and some critics even contend it as “deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive”.[ii]
Strengths
Put aside the argument on the standard of objectivity of documentary, which is always under impugnment, Bowling for Columbine is unquestionably successful in exploring into the thorny subject like the cause of the high murder rate and nature of violence in the US. It is thought provoking, agitative, and impressive.
Here are some reviews of the film from a website, which claims to express the opinion of “the top critics and audiences in the US”[iii], witness the popularity of this documentary:
●For anyone who cares about the future of America, it is required viewing.
●As the national media become more sedate and incurious; this country desperately needs a gadfly like Moore. Indeed, we need more like him.
●Moore has perfected the art of highly entertaining, self-important, politically motivated documentary-making, and he has got as potent a topic as ever with Bowling for Columbine.
●Anything that coaxes us into thinking about why we are the way we are, even as imperfectly as Bowling for Columbine does, is an energizing change of pace.
●A great national conversation starter.
Inquiries
The theory of Gate-keeper: In human communication, in particular, in journalism, gatekeeping is the process through which ideas and information are filtered for publication. The internal decision making process of relaying or withholding information from the media to the masses. The theory was first instituted by social psychologist Kurt Lewin in 1947 and is still one of the most important theories studied by students of mass communication and journalism. Gatekeeping occurs at all levels of the media structure - from a reporter deciding which sources are chosen to include in a story to editors deciding which stories are printed, or even covered.
When concerning to this movie, Moore, undoubtedly, did a good job as a gatekeeper, who displayed genuine information that are totally truthful. However, making a decision between what to show and what to ignore itself is a kind of gatekeeping, and as a result of this, he seems to be selling his point of view to viewers furtively and smartly in the name of documentary film.
For example:
● The title originates from the story that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two students responsible for the massacre, attended a school bowling class early that morning, at 6:00 a.m., before they committed the attacks at school starting at 11:18 a.m, which at last proved wrong because their absence of school that day (NOT SHOWN). However, Moore incorporates the concept of bowling in other ways, such as a Michigan militia uses bowling pins for their target practice, the two boys’ classmates recollections about them with the bowling class. By doing these, Moore suggests that bowling could have been just as responsible for the attacks on the school as Marilyn Manson or even Bill Clinton. In sum, all of these give spectators impression that they are persuaded into buying this kind of subjective opinion of the director himself, what is the other reality, who cares? It seems that it is the way that using reality to get superficially “objective” opinion really matters rather than the whole reality itself.
●After an interview with NRA president Charlton Heston, who walks away from the interview while the cameras are still rolling, Moore leaves a photograph of six year old school shooting victim Kayla Rolland in Heston's house when he departs (SHOWN ON PURPOSE). By doing so, Moore actually exaggerated the tendentious view of them both, and give an ostensible demagoguery for viewers on the ostensible assumption that he only himself is seeing reality and on the side of right and totally true.
What is more important, after all these provocations and dig-deep efforts, Moore actually did not add up to certain definite answer or really objective consensus. It is more like gate-keeper who let the advantageous information flow into his display rather a rational or holistic scan contributing to further insight, ironically but unbelievably by the way, the information is actually genuine and thoroughly truthful on its own.
Conclusion
Moore played a great role in his documentary film and succeed in spurring viewers to think more about the nature of violence of American; but as a gate-keeper with tendentious and aggressive approach in his documentary film, all the communication that he did seemed symbolic and some sort of individual heroic, hardly add up to a rational approach or real answer to the issue.
[i]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine
[ii]http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html
[iii]http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bowling_for_columbine/?beg=0&int=136&creamcrop_limit=30&page=all
The interactions between mass media, culture and politics in the postmodern circumstance - With the example of U.S. TV series 24
Jing Ke
Nov, 2007
Course Title: Media and Culture Analysis
The interactions between mass media, culture and politics in the postmodern circumstance
- Take U.S. TV series 24 as a case
In contemporary society, mass media, culture and politics are always integrated and interacted with one another, the mass media is a reflection of the culture and politics to which it belongs and it has the reaction to both of the two domains. In this paper, I’ll analyze the process of interactions between mass media, culture and politics with a case study of the TV series 24.
First of all I’d like to analyze what 24 is as a mass media product. According to Roland Barthes, the entire signification of a culture product can be scaled into three levels: The denotative level, the connotative level and the ideological level.[i] Connected with 24, the denotative level of it is a story about a competent agent Jack Bauer working for a fictional U.S. government Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) and fights against terrorism threat to save the nation, it is an American TV series wins many awards and is full of suspense. The connotative level is about a super-hero fight against evil and protects the country, making choices and also suffering from the conflicts between family and country, life and death, trust and betrayal, humanity and bloodiness, ration and emotion. And on the ideological level, 24 questions some major subjects in the field of culture, sociology and politics, e.g. the relationship between human power and technology, the roles of male and female plays in contemporary society, the individualism and worship of hero in the American culture, together with the ideological icon this TV series implies after the 9/11 terrorism attacks.
24 and ideology: The mass media’s function in building up an ideology
Postmodernism holds a trenchant point of view on mass media and its function in solidify a system of ideology. According to Fiske and Hartley[ii] and other theorists, people understand the world through their own ideologies, which infiltrate into the culture via language, narrative, symbol, and mass media, etc. Since the ideologies are repeated ceaselessly in a certain culture context by the media, people (the receivers of such repetition), form a natural response and begin to certificate and accept those ideologies without any question or doubt. This process has established the “power” or “violence” of mass media, they have the power to define, to judge and to dominate everything in public life: for instance, they keep on telling people stories about crimes and immorality as well as the threats caused by them, as a result the person who receives such information will spontaneously distinguish “him/herself” from “them” in this context and thus behave him/herself as a law-abiding, cautious and conscientious citizen. Anything excluded by such narrative created by mass media is regarded as deviation and is being marginalized in society. In one word, postmodernism asserts that it is mass media create the legitimacy of ideology.
In this perspective, 24 is successfully using the power of mass media to conform the U.S. ideology and rebuild people’s confidence after 9/11. The first episode of the TV series is shown nearly two months after the 9/11 attacks, this terrorism attacks had arouse profound transformation in the U.S. politics, economics, diplomacy and social life, also, the country’s confidence of being a superpower is collapsed attended with the Twin Towers; the sense of panic, insecurity and wrath caused by the attacks flourished the country and anti-terrorism became an international subject overnight.
In such condition, 24 rigidly touches the sensitive subject of anti-terrorism and sets the whole story in a tragic and anxious atmosphere, directly facing the panic consist in American citizens and insinuates the 9/11 and Iraq War throughout its narratives. In my perspective, Jack Bauer, the leading character, is an extension of American former screen superheroes like the Superman, Batman and Terminator etc. that all cater to the country’s worship of individualistic heroism. And for Jack Bauer, his almighty competence and bravery in fight against terrorism give the audience an image of a hero who can conquer any difficulty in any condition and roughly but successfully save the country, save people’s lives, a hero like him is exactly needed for American citizens to construct a sense of security after 9/11.
Then 24, as a TV series and a form of American mass media, tries to build up the nation’s confidence by advocating heroism and creating a virtually secure environment which is similar to the realities but not at all realities. We have to admit that what we called “reality” is “an agreement we make with ourselves and between ourselves and the rest of the culture about what we will call real”[iii]. Postmodernism develop this point of view to a higher level by pointing out the delusive aspect of the reality such as “representation” and “simulacra”. To same extent, 24 matches what Jameson called a “pastiche” in the contemporary vision-dominated postmodern world and we can define 24 as a pastiche which represents the image of U.S. according to the traditional and ideal views to comfort and lull people. It gives an image that “Even if the same thing happens in reality, some superhero like Jack Bauer will come forth and defuse the crisis.”
Another influence created by the “hegemony” of mass media is that, different ideologies will “compete” with each other and show their validity in the space exploited by their own mass media. (Like the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic, the ideological information it bears is obvious: the success of the American New World, which is portrayed as youthful, energetic, full of democracy and freedom, while oppositely the European Old World is senile and autarchic. With the film sweeping the world, the glamorous, perfect image of America spread.)
Things are similar in 24, the ideological conflict between the east and the west is reflected in the TV series. For instance, in 24, the source of terrorism attacks is directly alluding some Mid-East and Asian countries and the images of the nation’s hostile countries including China are aggrandized again on screen. The ideological and political inclinations, similar to many other American mass media and popular culture products did, cultivate the validity and superiority of American Ideology in order to consolidate its meta-narratives.
I’d like to discuss more on that, in fact, ideology, culture, politics, and civilization are all intertwined, and mass media plays a dedicate role in this net. For instance, 24 is about anti-terrorism, and the origin of terrorism is actually rooted in the conflict between the East and West Civilizations, between Christianity and Islam (the religion is a representation of civilization). However, without a thorough analysis and objective understanding of the origin for which the West World should take much of the responsibility, anti-terrorism won’t be effective, at least, the way like expressing ideological opposition in 24 won’t be effective.
To sum up, from the TV series 24 we can educe that the ideological function of mass media is never out of date, the news, the films or other forms of mass media all have a huge influence on building up an ideology and meta-narrative, on propagandize political and cultural inclination, from this perspective, 24 has more meaning on ideological function besides entertainment.
24 and gender: The transformations in the gender role in postmodern time
Postmodernism emphasize the change in the power relationship between male and female in contemporary society. According to Richard Dyer[iv] and Foucault[v], the stereotypes of masculinity are shifting all the time in different situation, which indicate a change in the social status played by male and female roles. Power is dynamic; the nature of power relationship may shift all the time.
Although I mentioned in my previous discourse that Jack Bauer, the leading character, is an extension of American former screen superheroes like the Superman, Batman and Terminator etc. The differences between those heroes are also obvious: Firstly, unlike the 1970s muscle stars such as Schwarzeneger and Stallone, the actor, Kiefer Sutherland, who enacts the hero Jack Bauer, is a haggard-looking man with wrinkles and tiredness on his face. Besides his bravery, wisdom and almighty competence, 24 also shows the audience other aspects in his personality, something more like a human, a father, a husband, and a friend, rather than simply a hero. Like many other contemporary TV series and films (e.g. the Spider-Man), 24 breaks the traditional image, or stereotype, of a strong, callous white male and conveys the idea that a hero has his own emotions and sensibilities, happiness and sufferings, just like any man on the street. The ideal image of a hero has changed.
Secondly, the individualistic heroism in 24 is no longer real “individual” - Superman can save the world all by himself but Jack Bauer cannot, he has to depend on his supporting team including his fellows (many of them are females), the whole CTU and other government agencies, his leaders and, most importantly, machinery and technology (which will be discussed later). Here I’d like to concentrate on the roles male and female each played in 24, which can be a reflection of the gender issues in postmodern society.
In postmodern context, the traditional domination of patriarchy in the family or society is weakening and the male-centered meta-narrative is collapsed. Such is also happened on Jack, his family is broken, his daughter is rebellious, and his venture life is totally a mess. Although he is a superhero who can invincibly save the nation, he also, to some extent, reflects the living status of contemporary urban male citizens: living under huge pressure, being both physically and mentally debilitated, enmeshed in family and working crisis, lacking a real trustworthy friend in his life, etc. (And in 24, Jack cried many times when he faces the death of his wife and workmates or confront some rather difficult choices.) His loneliness and helplessness correspond to the declination of masculinity in postmodern society as man are no longer the center or most powerful group in society since knowledge have been greatly transferred to females. On the other hand, the imperfections of Jack Bauer as a superhero make the image of him “perfect” on the contrary, which is more real and amiable than the earlier screen heroes.
If we see Jack Bauer as a representative of contemporary masculinity, the female characters in 24 can then be figured as a representative of contemporary feminism. Around four hundred years ago Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet “Fragility, thy name is woman!” However, things have changed today, women are no longer, at least not only, an existence of fragility; the female characters in 24 have comprised almost every typical stereotype of contemporary women, which indicate the sense of independency of women in postmodern society.
Jack’s daughter, Kim, a typical contemporary American teenager, also a young woman, rebellious and capricious, she tends to see her family problem in her own point of view and stands for self-directed ideas in her life. She is a trouble-maker and is not a liked character in 24; this is probably because she reflects some of the eccentricity of teenagers in today’s society. However, when she tells her mom “I love you” for the first time as she is in real danger and struggles to escape with her friend after being hijacked, we can feel that under her rebellious façade, her inner world is rather frail and eager for love. Kim is the representative of contemporary young woman seeking for independence and love in their lives but always have no ideas when they are in real crisis situation. (And Jack’s wife, Teri, a mid-aged woman who worries about her family problem and relies on her husband when accident happens – by calling him ceaselessly, is more traditional and domestic. She represent the ideal image of women in patriarchy families.)
There are some stronger female characters in 24, like the dirty agent Nina Myers, one of Jack's closest and most trusted allies in CTU - Michelle, and the wife of the President, Sherry Palmer, etc. They have some common features: well-educated, very competent in the field they engaged in, sedate and intelligent – in one word, they play the roles that are supposed to be acted by men before. In contemporary society, the group of such “forceful women” in the field of politics, business, high-tech, academe etc. is increasing rapidly, the power has been largely transferred from man to women. This corresponds to Foucault’s discourse on power-knowledge relation, which asserts that knowledge is the determinant of power rather than gender in postmodern time and the one who owns knowledge owns power.
Here is another question on the postmodern gender issues: with the fluid of power between genders in today’s society, the boundaries of different social roles male and female played are blurred, this has caused the traditional gender characteristics disappearing. For instance we can see that neutralized dress and style has become a fashion internationally and many people are tending to be transgender. Is it a natural step in the development of human beings or a kind of alienation of human society? Personally I cannot prefigure the future of this power transference between men and women and curious about what men and women will be like decades later.
24 and technology: cyborg citizens and biopower in postmodern city
One research subject of post-humanism is how to face the influence of technology on human beings and how to use technology properly in postmodern time. We cannot deny that human beings have already been alienated by technology – non-personalized, abstracted, symbolic and becoming instrument. According to Chris Gray[vi], advances in technology have changed our definitions of what it is to be a human and what it is to be a citizen, we can move beyond the fixed states of the human body and nation, we can communicate beyond the limit of geographical position, by cyber-modification and cybernetic systems such as the Internet.
Further, Gray argues that since technology enables human to get beyond the natural bounds of the body and promote the artificial intelligence, the distinction between human and machine are fading away, the human brain can be biologically altered or technologically enhanced to its perceived potential. Thus, Gray proposes to rethink the definition of citizenship since citizens have largely become cyborgs and the influences of cyborgs on ethics and politics in today’s society.
Take 24 as an example, it is obvious that Jack Bauer is a cyborg citizen living in the 21st century and utilizing every latest achievement of technology. More accurately, his power is largely relying on technology and we can say without technology Jack Bauer can do nothing but sitting in his office or staying at home. Technology and his body have been merged into a unity which is defined as a “cyborg”. McLuhan said media is the extension of man, for Jack Bauer, technology (to which media belongs) is the extension of himself. Gray advocates the political equality and the right to express opinions democratically for cyborg citizens which is rather hard to achieve in real life. For Jack, since his power and knowledge are granted by the country government, he has to act accord with his social status rather than act as he really wants to. In 24, we can see that Jack lost his wife and workmates in order to fulfill his responsibility to the nation and for many times he wants to quit but he couldn’t. The rights for cyborg citizens are restricted.
On the other hand, due to the infiltration of technology into every aspect of social life, the status of women has been greatly improved and a new social relation between man and woman is building up. This is what Haraway called “a boundary-less form”, which is a new phase in the development of feminism.
I’d like to analyze more on the restricted rights of today’s cyborg citizens. It is not only a deprivation of utterance but also an outcome of the mechanism of surveillance in postmodern society. According to Foucault[vii], surveillance (the act of keeping watch over a person or place) is one of the primary means through which a society enacts control over its subjects. Modern social subjects regulate their own behavior in a panopticon way: presume they are being watched by the power system (e.g. social institutions) and then they control and regulate their behavior to fulfill the system. As a result, a certain type of citizen is “produced” by the mechanism of surveillance and the relations of dominance and subordination are maintained in the process. The combination of modern power and human body generates the “biopower”, which refers to the power exercised over human body in order to train or force individual to act by the dominance’s intention: willing to work, fight wars, produce babies, etc. It is like creating a meta-narrative and only when the individuals obey such orders can they obtain their own power.
Let’s go back to 24, Jack Bauer is a typical existence under this biopower, his identities regulate his behaviors. He is an agent of CTU, so he has to bet his life to fight against terrorism; he is a father as well as a husband, so he is responsible to protect and rescue his family; he is a superhero in others’ eyes so he is deemed to perform missions that are impossible to achieve. All of these identities are conveying surveillance from the “gaze” of the social institutions as well as from the whole community, once Jack Bauer trespass against such regulations, he will be marginalized and lose his power – he is no longer “Jack Bauer” and become nobody in his society. On the other hand, the terrorists in this TV series are also operated by the biopower of their society and politics; they behave like “jihad” in order to match their system of surveillance and ideology. In one word, biopower produces a certain kind of citizen that serves to the establishment of an ideology.
Conclusion: 24 and the eternal pursuit of human nature
What strikes me most in 24 is the discussion and investigation of human nature. From my perspective the pursuit of human nature and humanity is the only eternal subject glowing throughout the history and development of human society. It surpasses the struggles on politics or conflicts between different countries and different interest groups; it characterized the universal strengths, weaknesses, anguish, happiness and needs, etc. of human beings exceeding the boundaries of races and ideologies. In postmodern circumstance, the investigation of human nature and the returning of humanism are rather important for people since human and human societies are being enormously alienated by technology.
From my perspective, the theme of 24 is not only about political struggles, diplomatic mediations and anti-terrorism - it also represents the test and challenge on human nature. The first thing I want to mention is conflicts. The whole TV series is abounding with conflicts: the conflicts between countries, values, religions, ideologies and political interests in the exterior and the conflicts in families, friends, personal mentality and beliefs in the interior. These conflicts and struggles exist in our everyday life and 24 represent the complexity of such conflicts to incite the audience (at least I have) ponder on some rather serious questions: Why there are so many struggles in the world? Are political interests really more important than human’s life? Why people living in the 21st century have to be cyborgs and dominated by biopower? How can we make ourselves live in a safer and more peaceful environment? More importantly, is the alienation (such as the religions which were created to comfort human beings but now brings in more suffering to some extent is a typical sort of alienation) a degeneracy of human society or a natural stage? And are the criteria of “justice” and “evil” we believe in trustworthy? Since the conflicts and struggles are becoming the themes of human life, the real human nature and humanism are dying away - it may be too pessimistic to say so but we cannot deny that human beings are becoming more pugnacious, brutal, callous and selfish. (I remember that it is written in Holy Bible, “We are all sons of God”, and after watching 24 I have a better understanding on why Nietzsche said “God is dead”!)
Another essence in 24 is choices. The characters in 24 are facing choices related with life and death almost every minute, and every choice brings in sufferings. Take Jack Bauer for instance, as I have mentioned ahead, he is a cyborg citizen with many different identities he has to fulfill. It is this diversity of identity that brings him conflicts and choices: choices between individual and country, career and family, life and death, trust and distrust, etc. All these choices make Jack a superhero but ruined his life and smashed his spirit at the same time; he lost almost everything in his life including his wife and friends, becoming lonely and unhappy. Although there is not a real Jack Bauer in the reality, there are many modern citizens like him and we can find some similarities between Jack and ourselves: for instance, we both live with multi-identities, under pressures from different sources and are weighed down with playing our roles. However, it is simply a truth that no one can have an eye on everything simultaneously and as a result, although modern citizens are playing many roles, they do not play any of them well. As a matter of fact, after seeing the whole TV series, we can go to the conclusion that what is presented in 24 is exactly what we are doing all the time: making stiff choices between different interests and striving to play our roles well.
What’s more, in the process of facing conflicts and making choices, and the sacrifice of families, affections and workmates, the characters in 24 are all struggling with their own destiny and fighting against their inner weaknesses. Accordingly another message 24 conveys is the toughness of human beings and tells people the real enemy you confront is yourself.
In conclusion, as a media product made in the U.S. after 9/11 attacks, 24 reflect the complicated relationship between mass media, politics and cultural background of human society. It suggests the tendentiousness on U.S. ideology and diplomacy and can be viewed as a product of the traditional adoration of heroism. Also, the story told in 24 is a representation of the new model of relationship between genders and human – technology in postmodern society. Besides discussing the alienation of human in modern time, 24 puts up a paradigm of goodness, faithfulness and mutual-affections, it calls for the return of human nature. - This is my personal interpretation of 24 in the cultural-analysis context.
References:
[i] Roland Barthes. Rhetoric of the Image. Image, Music, Text. Ed. and trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 32-51.
[ii] Fiske, J. and J. Hartley (1988). The Signs of Television; The Codes of Television. In Reading Television. (pp.37-67). London, Routledge.
[iii] Kolker, R. (2002). Preface. Film, Form and Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill
[iv] Dyer, R. (1997). The white man’s muscles. White (pp.145-183). London: Routledge.
[v] Foucault, M. (1979). Excerpts from The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An introduction. In Natoli, J. & Hutcheon, L. (EDs). 1993. A Postmodern Reader (pp.333-341). NY: State U of NY
[vi] Gray, C. H. (2002). Citizenship in the age of electronic reproduction. Cyborg citizen (pp.21-54). New York: Routledge.
[vii] Foucault, M. (1984). Panopticism. In P. Rainbow, (Ed.), The Foucault reader: an introduction to Foucault’s thought (pp.206-213).
Nov, 2007
Course Title: Media and Culture Analysis
The interactions between mass media, culture and politics in the postmodern circumstance
- Take U.S. TV series 24 as a case
In contemporary society, mass media, culture and politics are always integrated and interacted with one another, the mass media is a reflection of the culture and politics to which it belongs and it has the reaction to both of the two domains. In this paper, I’ll analyze the process of interactions between mass media, culture and politics with a case study of the TV series 24.
First of all I’d like to analyze what 24 is as a mass media product. According to Roland Barthes, the entire signification of a culture product can be scaled into three levels: The denotative level, the connotative level and the ideological level.[i] Connected with 24, the denotative level of it is a story about a competent agent Jack Bauer working for a fictional U.S. government Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) and fights against terrorism threat to save the nation, it is an American TV series wins many awards and is full of suspense. The connotative level is about a super-hero fight against evil and protects the country, making choices and also suffering from the conflicts between family and country, life and death, trust and betrayal, humanity and bloodiness, ration and emotion. And on the ideological level, 24 questions some major subjects in the field of culture, sociology and politics, e.g. the relationship between human power and technology, the roles of male and female plays in contemporary society, the individualism and worship of hero in the American culture, together with the ideological icon this TV series implies after the 9/11 terrorism attacks.
24 and ideology: The mass media’s function in building up an ideology
Postmodernism holds a trenchant point of view on mass media and its function in solidify a system of ideology. According to Fiske and Hartley[ii] and other theorists, people understand the world through their own ideologies, which infiltrate into the culture via language, narrative, symbol, and mass media, etc. Since the ideologies are repeated ceaselessly in a certain culture context by the media, people (the receivers of such repetition), form a natural response and begin to certificate and accept those ideologies without any question or doubt. This process has established the “power” or “violence” of mass media, they have the power to define, to judge and to dominate everything in public life: for instance, they keep on telling people stories about crimes and immorality as well as the threats caused by them, as a result the person who receives such information will spontaneously distinguish “him/herself” from “them” in this context and thus behave him/herself as a law-abiding, cautious and conscientious citizen. Anything excluded by such narrative created by mass media is regarded as deviation and is being marginalized in society. In one word, postmodernism asserts that it is mass media create the legitimacy of ideology.
In this perspective, 24 is successfully using the power of mass media to conform the U.S. ideology and rebuild people’s confidence after 9/11. The first episode of the TV series is shown nearly two months after the 9/11 attacks, this terrorism attacks had arouse profound transformation in the U.S. politics, economics, diplomacy and social life, also, the country’s confidence of being a superpower is collapsed attended with the Twin Towers; the sense of panic, insecurity and wrath caused by the attacks flourished the country and anti-terrorism became an international subject overnight.
In such condition, 24 rigidly touches the sensitive subject of anti-terrorism and sets the whole story in a tragic and anxious atmosphere, directly facing the panic consist in American citizens and insinuates the 9/11 and Iraq War throughout its narratives. In my perspective, Jack Bauer, the leading character, is an extension of American former screen superheroes like the Superman, Batman and Terminator etc. that all cater to the country’s worship of individualistic heroism. And for Jack Bauer, his almighty competence and bravery in fight against terrorism give the audience an image of a hero who can conquer any difficulty in any condition and roughly but successfully save the country, save people’s lives, a hero like him is exactly needed for American citizens to construct a sense of security after 9/11.
Then 24, as a TV series and a form of American mass media, tries to build up the nation’s confidence by advocating heroism and creating a virtually secure environment which is similar to the realities but not at all realities. We have to admit that what we called “reality” is “an agreement we make with ourselves and between ourselves and the rest of the culture about what we will call real”[iii]. Postmodernism develop this point of view to a higher level by pointing out the delusive aspect of the reality such as “representation” and “simulacra”. To same extent, 24 matches what Jameson called a “pastiche” in the contemporary vision-dominated postmodern world and we can define 24 as a pastiche which represents the image of U.S. according to the traditional and ideal views to comfort and lull people. It gives an image that “Even if the same thing happens in reality, some superhero like Jack Bauer will come forth and defuse the crisis.”
Another influence created by the “hegemony” of mass media is that, different ideologies will “compete” with each other and show their validity in the space exploited by their own mass media. (Like the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic, the ideological information it bears is obvious: the success of the American New World, which is portrayed as youthful, energetic, full of democracy and freedom, while oppositely the European Old World is senile and autarchic. With the film sweeping the world, the glamorous, perfect image of America spread.)
Things are similar in 24, the ideological conflict between the east and the west is reflected in the TV series. For instance, in 24, the source of terrorism attacks is directly alluding some Mid-East and Asian countries and the images of the nation’s hostile countries including China are aggrandized again on screen. The ideological and political inclinations, similar to many other American mass media and popular culture products did, cultivate the validity and superiority of American Ideology in order to consolidate its meta-narratives.
I’d like to discuss more on that, in fact, ideology, culture, politics, and civilization are all intertwined, and mass media plays a dedicate role in this net. For instance, 24 is about anti-terrorism, and the origin of terrorism is actually rooted in the conflict between the East and West Civilizations, between Christianity and Islam (the religion is a representation of civilization). However, without a thorough analysis and objective understanding of the origin for which the West World should take much of the responsibility, anti-terrorism won’t be effective, at least, the way like expressing ideological opposition in 24 won’t be effective.
To sum up, from the TV series 24 we can educe that the ideological function of mass media is never out of date, the news, the films or other forms of mass media all have a huge influence on building up an ideology and meta-narrative, on propagandize political and cultural inclination, from this perspective, 24 has more meaning on ideological function besides entertainment.
24 and gender: The transformations in the gender role in postmodern time
Postmodernism emphasize the change in the power relationship between male and female in contemporary society. According to Richard Dyer[iv] and Foucault[v], the stereotypes of masculinity are shifting all the time in different situation, which indicate a change in the social status played by male and female roles. Power is dynamic; the nature of power relationship may shift all the time.
Although I mentioned in my previous discourse that Jack Bauer, the leading character, is an extension of American former screen superheroes like the Superman, Batman and Terminator etc. The differences between those heroes are also obvious: Firstly, unlike the 1970s muscle stars such as Schwarzeneger and Stallone, the actor, Kiefer Sutherland, who enacts the hero Jack Bauer, is a haggard-looking man with wrinkles and tiredness on his face. Besides his bravery, wisdom and almighty competence, 24 also shows the audience other aspects in his personality, something more like a human, a father, a husband, and a friend, rather than simply a hero. Like many other contemporary TV series and films (e.g. the Spider-Man), 24 breaks the traditional image, or stereotype, of a strong, callous white male and conveys the idea that a hero has his own emotions and sensibilities, happiness and sufferings, just like any man on the street. The ideal image of a hero has changed.
Secondly, the individualistic heroism in 24 is no longer real “individual” - Superman can save the world all by himself but Jack Bauer cannot, he has to depend on his supporting team including his fellows (many of them are females), the whole CTU and other government agencies, his leaders and, most importantly, machinery and technology (which will be discussed later). Here I’d like to concentrate on the roles male and female each played in 24, which can be a reflection of the gender issues in postmodern society.
In postmodern context, the traditional domination of patriarchy in the family or society is weakening and the male-centered meta-narrative is collapsed. Such is also happened on Jack, his family is broken, his daughter is rebellious, and his venture life is totally a mess. Although he is a superhero who can invincibly save the nation, he also, to some extent, reflects the living status of contemporary urban male citizens: living under huge pressure, being both physically and mentally debilitated, enmeshed in family and working crisis, lacking a real trustworthy friend in his life, etc. (And in 24, Jack cried many times when he faces the death of his wife and workmates or confront some rather difficult choices.) His loneliness and helplessness correspond to the declination of masculinity in postmodern society as man are no longer the center or most powerful group in society since knowledge have been greatly transferred to females. On the other hand, the imperfections of Jack Bauer as a superhero make the image of him “perfect” on the contrary, which is more real and amiable than the earlier screen heroes.
If we see Jack Bauer as a representative of contemporary masculinity, the female characters in 24 can then be figured as a representative of contemporary feminism. Around four hundred years ago Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet “Fragility, thy name is woman!” However, things have changed today, women are no longer, at least not only, an existence of fragility; the female characters in 24 have comprised almost every typical stereotype of contemporary women, which indicate the sense of independency of women in postmodern society.
Jack’s daughter, Kim, a typical contemporary American teenager, also a young woman, rebellious and capricious, she tends to see her family problem in her own point of view and stands for self-directed ideas in her life. She is a trouble-maker and is not a liked character in 24; this is probably because she reflects some of the eccentricity of teenagers in today’s society. However, when she tells her mom “I love you” for the first time as she is in real danger and struggles to escape with her friend after being hijacked, we can feel that under her rebellious façade, her inner world is rather frail and eager for love. Kim is the representative of contemporary young woman seeking for independence and love in their lives but always have no ideas when they are in real crisis situation. (And Jack’s wife, Teri, a mid-aged woman who worries about her family problem and relies on her husband when accident happens – by calling him ceaselessly, is more traditional and domestic. She represent the ideal image of women in patriarchy families.)
There are some stronger female characters in 24, like the dirty agent Nina Myers, one of Jack's closest and most trusted allies in CTU - Michelle, and the wife of the President, Sherry Palmer, etc. They have some common features: well-educated, very competent in the field they engaged in, sedate and intelligent – in one word, they play the roles that are supposed to be acted by men before. In contemporary society, the group of such “forceful women” in the field of politics, business, high-tech, academe etc. is increasing rapidly, the power has been largely transferred from man to women. This corresponds to Foucault’s discourse on power-knowledge relation, which asserts that knowledge is the determinant of power rather than gender in postmodern time and the one who owns knowledge owns power.
Here is another question on the postmodern gender issues: with the fluid of power between genders in today’s society, the boundaries of different social roles male and female played are blurred, this has caused the traditional gender characteristics disappearing. For instance we can see that neutralized dress and style has become a fashion internationally and many people are tending to be transgender. Is it a natural step in the development of human beings or a kind of alienation of human society? Personally I cannot prefigure the future of this power transference between men and women and curious about what men and women will be like decades later.
24 and technology: cyborg citizens and biopower in postmodern city
One research subject of post-humanism is how to face the influence of technology on human beings and how to use technology properly in postmodern time. We cannot deny that human beings have already been alienated by technology – non-personalized, abstracted, symbolic and becoming instrument. According to Chris Gray[vi], advances in technology have changed our definitions of what it is to be a human and what it is to be a citizen, we can move beyond the fixed states of the human body and nation, we can communicate beyond the limit of geographical position, by cyber-modification and cybernetic systems such as the Internet.
Further, Gray argues that since technology enables human to get beyond the natural bounds of the body and promote the artificial intelligence, the distinction between human and machine are fading away, the human brain can be biologically altered or technologically enhanced to its perceived potential. Thus, Gray proposes to rethink the definition of citizenship since citizens have largely become cyborgs and the influences of cyborgs on ethics and politics in today’s society.
Take 24 as an example, it is obvious that Jack Bauer is a cyborg citizen living in the 21st century and utilizing every latest achievement of technology. More accurately, his power is largely relying on technology and we can say without technology Jack Bauer can do nothing but sitting in his office or staying at home. Technology and his body have been merged into a unity which is defined as a “cyborg”. McLuhan said media is the extension of man, for Jack Bauer, technology (to which media belongs) is the extension of himself. Gray advocates the political equality and the right to express opinions democratically for cyborg citizens which is rather hard to achieve in real life. For Jack, since his power and knowledge are granted by the country government, he has to act accord with his social status rather than act as he really wants to. In 24, we can see that Jack lost his wife and workmates in order to fulfill his responsibility to the nation and for many times he wants to quit but he couldn’t. The rights for cyborg citizens are restricted.
On the other hand, due to the infiltration of technology into every aspect of social life, the status of women has been greatly improved and a new social relation between man and woman is building up. This is what Haraway called “a boundary-less form”, which is a new phase in the development of feminism.
I’d like to analyze more on the restricted rights of today’s cyborg citizens. It is not only a deprivation of utterance but also an outcome of the mechanism of surveillance in postmodern society. According to Foucault[vii], surveillance (the act of keeping watch over a person or place) is one of the primary means through which a society enacts control over its subjects. Modern social subjects regulate their own behavior in a panopticon way: presume they are being watched by the power system (e.g. social institutions) and then they control and regulate their behavior to fulfill the system. As a result, a certain type of citizen is “produced” by the mechanism of surveillance and the relations of dominance and subordination are maintained in the process. The combination of modern power and human body generates the “biopower”, which refers to the power exercised over human body in order to train or force individual to act by the dominance’s intention: willing to work, fight wars, produce babies, etc. It is like creating a meta-narrative and only when the individuals obey such orders can they obtain their own power.
Let’s go back to 24, Jack Bauer is a typical existence under this biopower, his identities regulate his behaviors. He is an agent of CTU, so he has to bet his life to fight against terrorism; he is a father as well as a husband, so he is responsible to protect and rescue his family; he is a superhero in others’ eyes so he is deemed to perform missions that are impossible to achieve. All of these identities are conveying surveillance from the “gaze” of the social institutions as well as from the whole community, once Jack Bauer trespass against such regulations, he will be marginalized and lose his power – he is no longer “Jack Bauer” and become nobody in his society. On the other hand, the terrorists in this TV series are also operated by the biopower of their society and politics; they behave like “jihad” in order to match their system of surveillance and ideology. In one word, biopower produces a certain kind of citizen that serves to the establishment of an ideology.
Conclusion: 24 and the eternal pursuit of human nature
What strikes me most in 24 is the discussion and investigation of human nature. From my perspective the pursuit of human nature and humanity is the only eternal subject glowing throughout the history and development of human society. It surpasses the struggles on politics or conflicts between different countries and different interest groups; it characterized the universal strengths, weaknesses, anguish, happiness and needs, etc. of human beings exceeding the boundaries of races and ideologies. In postmodern circumstance, the investigation of human nature and the returning of humanism are rather important for people since human and human societies are being enormously alienated by technology.
From my perspective, the theme of 24 is not only about political struggles, diplomatic mediations and anti-terrorism - it also represents the test and challenge on human nature. The first thing I want to mention is conflicts. The whole TV series is abounding with conflicts: the conflicts between countries, values, religions, ideologies and political interests in the exterior and the conflicts in families, friends, personal mentality and beliefs in the interior. These conflicts and struggles exist in our everyday life and 24 represent the complexity of such conflicts to incite the audience (at least I have) ponder on some rather serious questions: Why there are so many struggles in the world? Are political interests really more important than human’s life? Why people living in the 21st century have to be cyborgs and dominated by biopower? How can we make ourselves live in a safer and more peaceful environment? More importantly, is the alienation (such as the religions which were created to comfort human beings but now brings in more suffering to some extent is a typical sort of alienation) a degeneracy of human society or a natural stage? And are the criteria of “justice” and “evil” we believe in trustworthy? Since the conflicts and struggles are becoming the themes of human life, the real human nature and humanism are dying away - it may be too pessimistic to say so but we cannot deny that human beings are becoming more pugnacious, brutal, callous and selfish. (I remember that it is written in Holy Bible, “We are all sons of God”, and after watching 24 I have a better understanding on why Nietzsche said “God is dead”!)
Another essence in 24 is choices. The characters in 24 are facing choices related with life and death almost every minute, and every choice brings in sufferings. Take Jack Bauer for instance, as I have mentioned ahead, he is a cyborg citizen with many different identities he has to fulfill. It is this diversity of identity that brings him conflicts and choices: choices between individual and country, career and family, life and death, trust and distrust, etc. All these choices make Jack a superhero but ruined his life and smashed his spirit at the same time; he lost almost everything in his life including his wife and friends, becoming lonely and unhappy. Although there is not a real Jack Bauer in the reality, there are many modern citizens like him and we can find some similarities between Jack and ourselves: for instance, we both live with multi-identities, under pressures from different sources and are weighed down with playing our roles. However, it is simply a truth that no one can have an eye on everything simultaneously and as a result, although modern citizens are playing many roles, they do not play any of them well. As a matter of fact, after seeing the whole TV series, we can go to the conclusion that what is presented in 24 is exactly what we are doing all the time: making stiff choices between different interests and striving to play our roles well.
What’s more, in the process of facing conflicts and making choices, and the sacrifice of families, affections and workmates, the characters in 24 are all struggling with their own destiny and fighting against their inner weaknesses. Accordingly another message 24 conveys is the toughness of human beings and tells people the real enemy you confront is yourself.
In conclusion, as a media product made in the U.S. after 9/11 attacks, 24 reflect the complicated relationship between mass media, politics and cultural background of human society. It suggests the tendentiousness on U.S. ideology and diplomacy and can be viewed as a product of the traditional adoration of heroism. Also, the story told in 24 is a representation of the new model of relationship between genders and human – technology in postmodern society. Besides discussing the alienation of human in modern time, 24 puts up a paradigm of goodness, faithfulness and mutual-affections, it calls for the return of human nature. - This is my personal interpretation of 24 in the cultural-analysis context.
References:
[i] Roland Barthes. Rhetoric of the Image. Image, Music, Text. Ed. and trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 32-51.
[ii] Fiske, J. and J. Hartley (1988). The Signs of Television; The Codes of Television. In Reading Television. (pp.37-67). London, Routledge.
[iii] Kolker, R. (2002). Preface. Film, Form and Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill
[iv] Dyer, R. (1997). The white man’s muscles. White (pp.145-183). London: Routledge.
[v] Foucault, M. (1979). Excerpts from The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An introduction. In Natoli, J. & Hutcheon, L. (EDs). 1993. A Postmodern Reader (pp.333-341). NY: State U of NY
[vi] Gray, C. H. (2002). Citizenship in the age of electronic reproduction. Cyborg citizen (pp.21-54). New York: Routledge.
[vii] Foucault, M. (1984). Panopticism. In P. Rainbow, (Ed.), The Foucault reader: an introduction to Foucault’s thought (pp.206-213).
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