123hop
>
> Are you kidding me? Propaganda (in the form of TV commercials/billoards/etc)
> begins with consciousness (toddlerhood) in the U.S.
>
> Toddlers accept premises through everyday practice?
>
> Get a clue.
>
> J
Joanna,
Here's the problem with your argument: if propaganda is all-powerful and
omnipresent, how does anyone escape its grip? How are people like you and me (and many LBOsters!) capable of critically assessing the propaganda? I suppose that you could argue that we're all superhumans insusceptible to the Siren charms of mass media, but I suggest a less hubristic explanation: TV and other forms of mass media propanganda on their own cannot "shape" someone's consciousness. As C. points out, there must be preexisting social conditions that both generates the mass media and also produces the kinds of people who uncritically consume it.
Miles
^^^^^^^ CB: Not disagree with your main point that media alone does not shape consciousnesses. There is parental and peer shaping, school, et al.
But , perhaps, also, it is not omnipresent or _all_powerful, but just very wide spread and very powerful. 1% not mindlessly watching would be ,what 3 million people. I know my mother often warned against watching too much television from when I was very young. We had to stop watching after a certain amount. My father used to ask critical questions about commercials. When I was in college I almost never watched television because I had a built in critical attitude toward it. I imagine Joanna has similar experiences to relate. It's not superhuman, just minority exceptions to the general rule developed from upbringings like my example.