Marie89, Bourdieu

“The failure of critical thinkers and organization charged with articulating the interests of dominated individuals to think clearly about his problem only reinforces the mechanisms I have described” (336)

In order to be affected dramatically, we must have the freedom to choose what is enlightening and what is not. When we are manipulated into only viewing certain images or viewpoints, we are not free to discover new ideas, etc. as these ideas are picked out by a larger ruling class who claims that these ideas are the best and therefore the most prevalent. When we are incapable of critical thinking because we are caused not to by the media, especially TV, then nothing is shocking to us as we are entitled to just take everything in. This idea relates back to the idea of Horkeimer and Adorno that we are put in a world where everything is the same. We believe to live in a free society in which we may have options, etc., but in reality, our options are just variations on the same thing, making us not choose from extremely different things, but only those which have already been accepted and molded by the media and the ruling class. For example, as a culture, we are “Enslaved by audience ratings, television imposes market pressures on the supposedly free and enlightened consumer” (336). We are thought to behave like enlightened consumers, yet the media has already turned us into robots in that we have very little choices as to what we see or claim to have an opinion on. We claim to have interests as individuals, yet what we are interested in is what the ruling class has already deemed interesting. The ruling class attains much power through the media as we are subconsciously programmed to feel free and have choices. However, when thought about, it is interesting to think that new ideas are hard to come by as many ideas have already been thought and presented to the society. The news continuously probes society with the same stories; TV shows seem to take ideas from other TV shows, etc. causing nothing to be dramatically different from anything else. It is as if we are continuing our past despite beliefs that we have fresh ideas, new choices, and free will.