Bell Hooks on Mass Media

Cultural Criticism
Bell hooks notes that “popular culture is where the pedagogy is, is where the learning is” (2006). This statement sums up her views rather well and gets right to the heart of what hooks is up to in her Cultural Criticism and Transformation talks. I agree a lot with what hooks says about popular culture and it lines up well with what cultural critics in the past have said. The Frankfurt School, for example, was very critical of popular culture and its effect on the mass of people. Horkheimer and Adorno (1944) were very critical about what popular culture was doing and how it was achieving a kind of hypnotic effect on people.
However, I tend to be a bit more traditional in my thinking when it comes to roles and I think having clearly defined gender roles in society is not a bad thing at all. I think that the feminist ideology that pushed for equality among the sexes was politically driven and not really driven by familial concerns. The leading feminists of the time were not really interested in families; many of them, however, interested in promoting abortion, which is essentially the destruction of life, whereas procreation is the basis of the family. So I see feminism as somewhat destructive socially speaking and I do not find the argument about equality to be very convincing. On the other hand, a lot of what bell hooks points out about the power of popular culture and the issues that are communicated about race and class and power are ones that need to be discussed. I agree with her that there is a deep element of racism that runs through the country and that this goes back to the white power structure that has dominated the country for a long time.
Sociologists like Weber have tried to explain the structure of classes in society and show how they all benefit from one another. In Germany this may have been the case (Bendix, 1974). The Germanic people were always a highly civilized people and showed respect towards one another. In America, this has not always been the case. America was constructed by a group of outsiders in their own nations, who came largely seeking independence and autonomy. They were not interested really in equality even though they said they were in the Declaration of Independence (and the proof of that is that many of the signers of the Declaration were actually slave owners). And so bell hooks has a very good point that a lot of what goes on in America is based in this desire among the ruling elite to control the masses by giving them the illusion of freedom and equality while actually oppressing them and denying them these things in real life. The masses are amused by their popular entertainments but these do not offer them much in the way of actual learning and so the masses are not well educated and do not see how philosophy or integrity applies to their lives.
Mass media does a little of both promotion of equality and promotion of inequality. Especially today because everything has become so fragmented and fractured that there is basically an audience for everyone and everything. So if one wants to find media that promote equality and racial, ethnic and gender equality they can do so. If one wants to find media that promote inequality, they can do so. It is all out there and ready to be found. However, on the whole the politically correct culture of today does seem to promote equality more than inequality, with a few non-politically correct shows like South Park that still delight fans by going counter-culture.
Mass media does, however, reinforce the viewpoints of white, male, corporate culture overall, because everything in media is oriented towards profit—advertising, hawking products, profiting off the sale of data, and so on. No media is produced for free because producers simply love to have everyone entertained. On the one hand they are indoctrinating the public and duping people into believing that everyone is free and equal just like the Founding Fathers did when they wrote the Declaration of Independence even though they were all owning slaves at the time. On the other hand, they are making money off people who consumer their entertainments and so it is actually a big business that doubles as the supreme education camp.
I do not believe that mass media is really demonstrating authentic expression of racial, ethnic or sexual identity even when it is depicting these issues from a politically correct standpoint or from the standpoint of social justice because at the end of the day I feel that everything has been so politicized and monetized that authenticity is in rare supply. Few things exist in today’s culture that can be defined as authentic. Everyone is out to build his brand; everything is all about image; people want to be YouTubers and enjoy the shrine that they build to themselves. It is a very narcissistic culture and it is not a very healthy one.
That is one of the reasons I feel that the media’s nod to equality and diversity is really just a lark and is not genuine. The mass media will promote only equality and diversity by promoting the LGBTQ community (Yahoo! Entertainment is always posting articles celebrating this community), yet mainstream media will also promote wars overseas and promote the ongoing imperialistic aims of the American Empire by vilifying everyone and anyone the State Department wants vilified in its quest to gain public support for its overseas ambitions. Today’s target is Venezuela. Yesterday it was Syria. Before that Libya. Before that Iraq. I do not view anything that comes out of the mass media as legitimate because I am of the opinion that the Frankfurt School is correct when it comes to the culture industry—and bell hooks understands as much.
References
Bell hooks. (2006). Cultural criticism and transformation. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQUuHFKP-9s
Bendix, R. (1974). Inequality and social structure: a comparison of Marx and Weber.  American Sociological Review, 149-161.
Horkheimer, M. & T. Adorno, T. (1944). The Culture Industry. UK: Routledge