Gwatter06, 11/8

• This week in class we covered two very different theorists who approach very different topics but all, of course, pertain to entities of the media. Firstly we covered multiple concepts and topics from Jameson. One of the more compelling topics that we covered from Jameson was the concept of millenarianism, which is a concept of an end of time, a belief that there is an end of things and we are progressing to that end. For the first time we came across a concept that relates other theorists, not for similarities however, but for its oppositional text. This concept oppositely relates to Habermas and Lyotards belief that we are constantly moving on to better things, stuck with the belief that we constantly strive to improve. I think that our society includes both of these regions of belief. For example, we have recently experienced the concept of millenarianism with the scare of Y2K back in 1999. It was a worldwide fear phenomenon that we would meet an apocalyptic fate to our end merely because our programs weren’t set right for the millennium switch over. This directly relates to ideology, as Althusser would critique, we have been caught in a trap of ideologies conforming our society through mass fear tactics. It was unbelievable how many people actually believed that there would be major destruction on the turn of the millennium. I for one, being young and naïve and not the critical thinker that CMC has helped me to be, found myself waiting for the end in fear. This ideological concept was fueled and broadened by the media. It was only able to become as massive of an ideological conformity as it was because the general populous had so many avenues and sources to be dragged into the fear of the end. This then leads me into the other theorists that we covered in class. Chomsky wrote his piece mainly on mass media and propaganda. One of his main concepts that I found most compelling was his notion on mass media in stating, “[mass media] inculcates individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.” (257) This exemplifies the affect that millenarianism is capable of having, solely through the power of mass media and its ability to draw the populous together. All in all I found both theorists quite compelling and I enjoyed that we were able to take in so many new concepts that we haven’t covered already in class.