Tracing Changes in Values
Printed Page 18
In addition to examining metaphors of culture that we use to understand media’s role in our lives, cultural researchers examine the ways in which our values have changed along with changes in mass media. Researchers have been particularly interested in how values have shifted during the modern era and postmodern period.
The Modern Era
From the Industrial Revolution to the mid-twentieth century—which historians call the modern era—four values came into sharp focus across the American cultural landscape. These values were influenced by developments that unfolded in the modern era and the media’s responses to those developments:
- Working efficiently. As businesses used new technology to create efficient manufacturing centers and produce inexpensive products more cheaply and profitably, advertisers (who operate in all mass media) spread the word about new gadgets that could save Americans time and labor—reinforcing the benefits of efficiency.
- Celebrating the individual. Media described and interpreted new scientific discoveries, enabling ordinary readers to gain access to new ideas beyond what their religious leaders and local politicians communicated to them. With access to novel ideas, people began celebrating the individual’s power to pick and choose from ideas instead of merely following what leaders told them.
- Believing in a rational order. Being modern also meant valuing logic and reason and viewing the world as a rational place. In this orderly place, the printed mass media, particularly newspapers, served to educate the citizenry, helping to build and maintain an organized society.5
- Rejecting tradition and embracing progress. Within the modern era was a shorter phenomenon: the Progressive Era. This period of political and social reform lasted roughly from the 1890s to the 1920s and inspired many Americans—and mass media—to break with tradition and embrace change. For example, journalists began focusing their reporting on immediate events. They ignored the foundational developments that led up to those events, further reinforcing the notion that the past matters far less than the present and the future.
The Postmodern Period
In the postmodern period—from roughly the mid-twentieth century to today—cultural values changed shape once more, influenced again by developments in our society and the media’s responses to those developments. Cultural researchers have identified the following dominant values in today’s postmodern period:
- Celebrating populism. As a political idea, populism tries to appeal to ordinary people by setting up a conflict between “the people” and “the elite.” For example, populist politicians often run ads criticizing big corporations and political favoritism. And many famous film actors champion oppressed groups, even though their work makes them wealthy global icons of consumerist culture.
- Reviving older cultural styles. Mass media now borrow and then transform cultural styles from the modern era. For example, in music, hip-hop deejays and performers sample old R&B, soul, and rock classics to reinvent songs. And in the noir genre of moviemaking, directors use moody photography and retro costuming to create the same look and feel of movies crafted in the earlier era.
- Embracing technology. Even as we and our media can’t seem to get enough of retro cultural styles, we passionately embrace new technologies. The huge popularity of movies that feature technology at their core—like Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Avatar—testifies to this paradox.
- Embracing the supernatural. Some people have begun challenging the argument that scientific reasoning is the only way to interpret the world, and have gravitated toward traditional religion or the supernatural. Mass media reflect this shift. For example, since the late 1980s, a host of popular TV programs emerged that featured mystical themes—including Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Lost, and The Vampire Diaries.