Seeing Voices, Hearing Faces

Okay Class, today’s Lecture is on “Text and Subtext”, that is to say, for those of you who managed to make “A”s in all your Language Arts classes without actually learning anything of value, the lecture is about Stated and Implied Themes and the ways and means by which a reader or audience is involved in what is expected to be one message while actually being inculcated in another, or various other, messages.  Be sure to take notes as otherwise your lives will be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, and most especially in the likely event that, having taken said notes, you never look at them or think about the points therein again.  Take it from a Doctor of Separate Reality.

We begin, as we often do, with “things we fail to realize”.  First, regardless of the extent to which we have absorbed a kind of reflexive, “hip” atheism in our lives without giving it any thought whatsoever, we have still grown accustomed to the idea of Vox Pop. The meaning of this term has undergone various insidious transformations over time, and especially in contemporary culture, which, yes, we fail to realize.  Vox Pop is short for the Latin, “vox populi” and originates in the phrase, “vox populi, vox dei“, or, “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.  Stop groaning and considering the threat of lawsuits as we are not talking about a Supreme Deity, except as metaphor for the ceaseless demands of particular populations to be given anything and everything they want at any time, preferably at the expense of others.  When the group wearing “Che” t-shirts stops cheering and stomping their feet to the tune of “We Will Rock You” we will continue. 

As we see, there are many for whom the idea that “the voice of the people is the voice of God” is to be taken literally, and more often than not, enforced as a kind of political formula at the end of a gun.  Who would like to see Dick Cheney given a blindfold and a Marlboro and stood against a wall and shot?  No?  Okay, take away the evil cigarette, then.  Yes, that’s a majority of hands, thank you.  But regardless of these sentiments, we fail to realize, as we so often do when quotes are taken out of context, that the original Latin statement, as addressed to Charlemagne in the Middle Ages, advises the king to ignore and disregard all those who keep shrieking “vox populi, vox dei“, as the mob is both populated with, and represented by, a bunch of lunatics.  Thus we arrive at the next thing we typically fail to realize, which is that the answer to the question, “Isn’t this supposed to be a democracy?” is, in a word, “No”.  In point of fact, this, meaning the USA, is a “constitutional republic”, or essentially a government ruled, not by individuals or groups, but by the rule of written law.  Vox Pop, then, is no more than anyone’s given opinion, whether insightful or absurd, whether that of the voice of reason or a lone nut, as voiced by a single individual or a massive crowd, at any particular moment in time.

As Mark Twain, who was once a famous American author, put it, “we all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking”. Thus, devoid of reason and enslaved by emotional attitudes, we assume that those who feel the way we do have the moral high ground and that no right-thinking person could feel otherwise, which is something of a stretch, given not only our inherent amorality but our increasing inability and refusal to think at all.  At any rate, Twain associated this with Vox Pop, which is what one hears when television journalists stick their microphones in the faces of people in the street.  Obviously, this is why media organizations employ people who are called “editors” when we agree with them and “censors” when we don’t.

Bearing these thoughts in mind, then, or, for the scientific materialists among us, maintaining the focus on the so-called “meaning” of these “words” by whatever as-yet undetermined but merely physical means they are held in the soft tissue contained within our bony skulls, we come to the final thing we fail to realize, which is the often unnoticed but ever-present medium by which the Vox Pop is conducted to our attention, and the filter through which it is processed in the transmission.  This, one might gather, would be the “Fourth Estate”, but it is present in virtually every transmission process of the Mass or Mainstream Media, whether it has any relationship to journalism or not.  Briefly, then, we look at first the one and then the other, with an eye towards more detailed analysis of specific examples in future lectures.

Among the “insidious transformations” of the vox populi previously mentioned as being visible in our contemporary culture, it requires no immense intellectual effort to realize the inherent connectivity between the fourth estate and the voice of the people.  The former once peddled its wares as actual hard-copy “print-media” and claimed-some assert strove for-objective reporting, or the dissemination of facts; the latter, as one might expect, predictably shouted their grievances and demands as loudly and perpetually as possible.  “The People”, naturally, are self- identified groups, who claim to speak for everyone; “The Press” distributes information on current events, which includes these groups and their causes.  Unfortunately, perhaps, it is the nature of objectivity to be difficult, which is another way of saying it is not effortless.  Therefore, like reading, doing homework or research, or holding a job for pay, no one wants to do it.  Too many words are involved, too much time away from whatever one happens to be “passionate” about, and it’s not fun.  It’s too hard to transcend the attachments of emotion and to cultivate the ability to discern facts from codswallop; imagine how impossible it must be to engage in probative analysis in quest of determining something such as whether or not a group’s cause serves as a smokescreen for its actual agenda and ultimate goal.

We know it can actually be done; we know it has been done in the past.  Some contemporary reporters have genuinely studied the concept of objectivity, know how it is practiced, and occasionally do it, if only to see what it feels like.  Some of you might actually be able to see it in action on a daily basis, provided your parents removed the programming block to the Fox News Channel.  Still, objectivity is rare and has lost its cachet among journalists, idealism and the desire to save the world being higher callings than simply telling the truth.  Hence, we see another case in which something that began as a vice has become nothing more than a habit, in that the voice of the news media now styles itself as the voice of the people.  How can this be so if the Vox Pop is not, in itself, the Fourth Estate?  It’s as simple as the press saying so, particularly when they reference what they are doing as “civic journalism”, “public journalism” or “activist journalism”.  Therefore it is no stretch at all to conclude that, as easy as it is for ideas to gain common currency through media saturation as opposed to education, it slips past our notice that the Voice of the Press, usurping the role of the Vox Pop, is now the voice of God.

Some of the more astute-or awake-of you may have already realized that the press is merely one facet of a larger and more potent means of cultural transmission, the one through which ideas and issues enter the public discourse and our daily attitudes almost as if by osmosis.  This is of little consequence to journalists and their editors because they are in the position of directing the action; issues they deem “serious” are taken as such by the Mass Media itself.  T.V programs, whether dramatic, comedic or satirical, follow their leads.  Films, popular music, books and talk shows do the same.  So one might say the Vox Pop Fourth Estate is more like the Herald of God, with the Mass or Mainstream Media having the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of the Voice of God.  No surprise that one of the present undercurrents of the latter Voice is that no such thing as a God exists, since shedding that difficult-to-control belief would be essential in eliminating a filter of conscience between “media” and “self” making it possible, finally, to place all the contents of consciousness under the benign control of superior, enlightened beings who know what’s best for us.

So, having not yet looked at specific texts and subtexts, we have gained, some of us, insights into the processes by which they might be manipulated in order to influence opinion and dominate the public discourse.  To further explore how literary themes, both implied and stated, are manipulated in this way by processes through which the Mass Media tells its stories-and remembering Aristotle’s definition of art as a representation of reality-your homework assignment it to obtain and watch the two versions of the film Cape Fear. The original, filmed in 1962 and starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, tells the tale of a noble father and husband whose family is being stalked by an evil, ruthless criminal bent on revenge against the man who sent him to prison.  The re-make, released in 1991 and featuring Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro, uses the general outline of the same story.  The implications of the original subtexts are that “this is what we, potentially, can be”; it is obvious that the message of the later film is that “this is what we are, and all we are.”  It is up to you to determine the meanings of what these two distinct Voices are saying to you, and about you.

Until next time, be well and think carefully.

–SG