The media generally entertains us by focusing on some angle that our prejudices will identify with, and then, perhaps, giving it a slight twist so that the prejudice will not be that obvious, but in fact makes it more interesting, and therefore more powerful.
When media outlets show us an image that we are not predisposed to see we may not be attracted to it immediately – so we will pass over it. I first copped on to this familiarity trick when I was a young teenager going to films, or the pictures as they were called in those days, or the movies as they are called nowadays.
I noticed that the cowboys in Westerns made in the nineteen-fifties were righteous looking heroes with short cropped haircuts in keeping with the fashions and norms of the nineteen fifties.
However, the cowboys in the films about the same nineteenth-century era, but made in the late nineteen-sixties, were rebellious, had long hair and beards and were untidy and bedraggled, in keeping with the norms and fashions of the late nineteen sixties!
Not having lived in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the heyday of the cowboys, I don’t know which depiction was authentic. What I do know is that we will be drawn in by what is familiar, and short cropped haircuts were what people were familiar with in the disciplined nineteen fifties, so that’s what they got. If the cinemas of the fifties had shown bedraggled, nonconformist cowboys with long hair and beards – the fashions of the late 1960’s – the audiences wouldn’t have found them that attractive.
As a keen fan of pop music in my youth I spotted this in music hits also. If a song is familiar, in fashion, follows a certain pattern, with a sprinkle of originality it has a better chance of being a hit than a completely strange song – no matter how wonderful the melody or profound the lyrics.
And sticking with music, did you ever notice how the background music in a film repeats itself so that we will become familiar with the theme – sometimes the music is changed in beat or cadence, but the melody is recognisable to our unconscious.
Or, when a reporter is reporting (particularly on TV) an event that is exciting, his voice is raised above the normal level so that we will get excited too and be drawn into the story.
And when Green Party/Comhaontas Glas T.D’s were first elected their members were often televised arriving to the Dáil on bikes!
I could give loads of examples here but the point that I am making is that mainstream media (including the film and music industries) will almost always portray the characteristics of a situation/event/group which are unconsciously, or subliminally familiar, or attractive – to the reader, listener or viewer, i.e. the consumer. They instinctively know that if they challenge the stereotype too much, the majority of consumers won’t be attracted.
For example, if something is written about the disadvantaged it will probably focus on typical features that people will be familiar with, and expect. Like Green Party T.D’s on bikes, when it comes to the Focus Group, the images that the general public have (perhaps salt-of-the-earth, long suffering, but also poor, dependent, helpless, sometimes irresponsible) will be accentuated in the reportage.
Reportage really encapsulates the old saying there’s always what you read in the papers, and then there’s the real story. In my experience, even media reportage on disadvantaged person does good is written in a manner that I feel is not really helpful to the raising of self-esteem of people in distress and who have been very hurt in life.
Now I don’t believe that journalists do this out of any badness. (At least I sincerely hope they don’t – but maybe I’m naïve)! I assume that most such decisions are unconsciously made in respect of what will sell papers, and what won’t.
I have personal experience of this.
When I was Project Leader of Bedford Row Family Project I received many requests from media outlets for either simple comments on high profile happenings or longer stories about what the experience of imprisonment is like, i.e. the plight of families and in particular children in the Focus Group.
Every time, the requesters assured me that they would be sensitive, caring, and non-prejudicial in their story or reportage.
Fair enough!
In my experiences over those years (with the odd exception for which I am grateful and I have not forgotten) when I pointed that my principal focus was something new and exciting that many people are not aware of, i.e. the fostering of potential in wise and committed people to take control of their lives and assist others in dreaming of a world beyond imprisonment, and that alone was what I was interested in telling a story about, interest generally waned.
One day I was having a chat with some men who had been to prison. One had been homeless, and he had been approached to give an interview about his experiences. All the usual guarantees about respectful reporting, etc. had been trotted out. After a bit of a chat, one of the other men said to him: ‘Don’t become someone else’s pay packet’. I thought that this was a fair reflection on the reality of media coverage of matters to do with the Focus Group and imprisonment in general.
Journalists, film makers, story writers etc. being much more media savvy than I, obviously know that such positive news or attitudes may not be as attractive to readers or viewers.
Firstly, it just simply isn’t as exciting, but also, (and more importantly) the thought that dependent, so-called disadvantaged people can do things for themselves, far more cost-effectively than external professional intervention doesn’t fit the image of such people that the media wishes to portray and/or what the general public expect.
It would be like showing 1960’s cowboys to a 1950’s audience, or Greens driving big diesel SUV’s.
Now in the Chapter on Energy I propose that work done supporting vulnerable people needs to be exciting for practitioners – to keep both practitioners and families motivated.
But that is very different to the excitement that media likes!