MEDIATED CULTURE

Mediated Culture

Ratheesh Kaliyadan

While we march from instructional television to internet protocol television a lot of change had happened. Technologically prestigious advancements are noted. We became one among the internationally appealing media markets. Gently the reflections happened in our attitude also. How does a child taught to ask for a particular brand of chocolate or tooth paste? Why do college students in Assam and Kerala tend to wear pretty much the same types of clothes? Why do they prefer same brands? Why do they tend to listen to the same types of music? Enjoy the same movies or television shows?  Because they are exposed to many of the same media messages and images!

Ours is a media driven society. With the emergence of cheap newspapers, magazines, paperback books, radio and television a new form of art made its debut, catering to the undeveloped tastes of massive. Its content is unsophisticated and simplistic. Confession magazine, popular time soap opera, reality shows, people participatory programmes like talkshaws and phone-ins, games show, comic strip and western movie are its typical forms.

Thanks to new economic policy and liberalization, commercial revenue cumulated in media houses. Media managers are in war to invite maximum revenue to their own house. To attract advertisement providers media giants are forced to make programmes as the ‘commercial bosses’ like it. This media output is an important part of popular culture. A term used to label such mass mediated art is the German word kitsch. It diminishes both folk and elite as it deprives its audience of interest in developing tastes for more genuine art forms. As media scholar David Buckingham tells, “The media do not offer us a transparent window on the world. They provide channels through which representations and images of the world can be communicated indirectly. The media intervene; they provide us with selective versions of the world, rather than direct access to it.” Moreover, it is mainly a tool for economic exploitation of the masses.