04/27/21
In the 1920s and 1930s, Frankfurt school declared popular culture “trash” because it was a commodity. During the late 1990s, children’s use of the internet came to a concern as they had access to pornography. Many movie and TV shows were being accused of causing certain events in this time range as well. For example, media was encouraging people to start smoking and corrupting children. This is endangering to children that have access to media and the internet as they are not educated and therefor more vulnerable to this information. It is further argued that films do not force its audience do anything. Although true, films may influence or encourage something, often unintentionally.
“Audiences use entertainment as an escape from reality.” Capitalism creates this
entertainment. However, this causes factors such as race, sexuality, equality, etc to be ignored in entertainment. Media is considered entertainment when it has the following elements: energy, abundance, intensity, transparency, and community. The uses of and gratifications of media studies is basic to the understanding of how audiences engage with media.
Media text focusses on the text itself, while also taking into account its meaningful discourse, or its structure. In order for audiences to understand media text, they must understand its meaning structure. For example, a politician can use meaningful discourse when explaining their popularity is due to them not getting their point straight. Further, peoples understanding in “dominant cultural order” may vary with generation. For example, young people may have more of an idea and more bias opinion of popular culture. Audience remains problematic as audiences may consume media in many different ways.