Doth Media Images Provoke Days of Rage and Revolution?

We think the media are responsible for everything, George Will sarcastically quipped to Sam Donaldson’s considered thought about the vital role of broadcast and social media, especially, in the uprising in Egypt on ABC’s This Week-Jan. 30, 2011.   Off handedly Mr. Will was expressing a sentiment I encountered in undergrad school of the mid-1970’s.  We Communication Arts majors of the time believed every post-WW II social-political uprising around the world, and those urban riots in the 1960’s U.S., were a consequence of failed expectations borne from an extreme contrast between all those middle class images of American television broadcast throughout the country and exported into world cultures, and the impoverished circumstances of those consuming those images here and abroad.  

The middle class images from cigarette, car and personal care product commercials and shows like Dallas, Mary Tyler Moore and even All in the Family were said to excite the desires of the working classes and the poor for the American Dream.  These folks, the idea went, identified with and aspired to the American middle class life-style, creating and increasing the expectation of eventual acquisition of that life-style.  But, when over time it became ever more impossible for the masses to acquire the American Dream a failure of expectations was created, turning into individual and then social discontent.  And the more intense the discontent, the longer it simmered, the greater the likelihood of uprising until a spark, like a severe rise in the cost of food, or the jailing or execution of one too many dissenters, or a self-immolation coalesced the anger and out to the street the masses would come.  Well, it is a good theory.  And it might have a grain of truth. But, it seems to me rather ethno-and class-centric in that we think the American middle class images are the be all and end all of how life should be lived, and thus we think everyone in our country and around the world thinks, and should think, likewise.  And if we do not life the American middle class way because of powers preventing it from happening, well, then we just have to do something about it, like riot, rebel and even cause a regime change.  But, I have to wonder the degree media images do force discontent and such discontent rage, rebellion and revolution.  I suspect real life, real time experiences are a far more powerful influence.

At the moment I am not about to put my late middle-aged body in front of rows of riot control police, no less columns of National Guard troops with rifles ready.  I do believe in civil disobedience but I've decided to leave such tactics to the young who can far better tolerate the physical abuse than I.  Besides, my real life, real time experiences are not so life threatening to me or to my family's health and well being to radicalize me into action, although it is getting tougher as the price of living keeps rising and the social contract stitched together during the FDR and LBJ administrations is being rolled back by radical libertarians who favor big corporate interests over the common good, but we are not yet anywhere near to a radicalizing situation.  But it may come sooner than we like.

Still, today remains a bastion of plenty and even if a lot of that plenty disappeared, I would not be so inclined to see it as cause for radicalization.  And certainly the televised images of what I do not have and would like to have really have not moved me to take up street protesting.  So, my family has been enjoying blueberries from Chile recently on sale in our local supermarket.  If I can’t get blueberries in January which has been the rule up until recently I definitely will not feel it a cause for me to be on the way to the barricades.  We tried Rachael Ray’s Egg Foo Young a couple of Saturday’s ago, the one we saw her preparing on one of her shows several months ago.  I would certainly miss the oriental vegetables like bean sprouts, bac choi and water chestnuts along with the variety of Chinese noodles if somehow we were prevented from enjoying them, but the inability to secure these types of food commodities is, for me, equally not a cause for going into the streets.  Likewise, that there is absolutely no way we can afford any of the exotics as seen on BBC’s Top Gear like the Ferrari California or the Lamborghini Murcielago, or the Bugatti Veyron, no less my favorite, the Aston-Martin DP9, or the new American entry into the exotic market, the SSC Ultimate Aero, or that when we had to buy a car we settled for a Nisson Sentra instead of the GTR which was featured on a Top Gear episode, creates no cause for me to feel disillusioned, disappointed or dispirited, especially to the degree that I would be on the streets with a placard parodying the Janis Joplin tune:  “Oh State, guarantee me a Mercedes Benz, my fiends all have Porches, I gotta make amends…” , or the libertarian version, “Oh, Corp, won’t chu buy me a Mercedes Benz…” And finally, that we live in a tiny bungalow instead of a palatial house as seen on Homes of the Rich and Famous, and like television programs, really does not force a resentment in me of any degree, no less one which would propel me onto the barricades.  Indeed, while I would like the money to afford the life-styles of the rich and famous, I am okay where we are and hold no resentments for those who are better-off, much better-off, whether I see them on television or in their natural habitats in New York City's exclusive neighborhoods, or in the Hamptons on eastern Long Island, or on the Island's Gold Coast, the North Shore.

But I have to wonder if, along with tens of millions of neighbors, friends and colleagues, my family could no longer afford the staples we have come to rely on to survive, like guaranteed safe bread, rice, beans, potatoes, milk, fish, chicken, eggs, fruit, vegetables, along with clean water and air, as might happen if the radical libertarian agenda becomes the law of the land, transferring the wealth of the nation continuously upward to the top two percent leaving the rest to fend for scraps, then, we just might see uprisings here and I will disregard the fragile state of my aging body and face down the symbols of oppression of the common good, the police and both the National Guard and the U.S. Army.

Indeed, I have to wonder if this radical personal responsibility-small government society comes to pass eliminating or reducing to starvation levels the Social Security upon which my wife and I will be in need in five to eight years when we both stop working, upon which our one hundred percent disabled son relies and will need to depend for the rest of his life, if it eliminates or reduces to death inducing levels the Medicare upon which my 94 year old mother needs to live to be 95 and upon which we will need for life sustaining medical payment when we no longer have job provided medical coverage, if it excludes or reduces to insolvent levels the Medicare Drug benefit my mother needs to sustain life and my son to stay mentally even, and on which we will rely eventually as much because of the health problems created by the government supported toxic American corporate-industrial diet as inherited predispositions, and if it eliminates or drastically reduces accessibility to Medicaid to all those who in spite of working as they are told to do yet still can’t afford life saving medical care, I think you will see me definitely on the barricades, bent over, ill and aged as I might be.

And you bet you will see me on the barricades if the society of wealth hoarders and privilege, backed up by the power of the state, dictate the only shelter my family can afford in our old age with our disabled son is a tarpaper shack or a cardboard box!  Yes, sir, if we revolve to a world like that of the nineteenth century, or that of the 1930’s, then regardless of age and infirmity, I will be in the vanguard of the revolution!

Perhaps it is what is happening in the real world, the living world of daily existence affecting health, sustenance and survival, rather than the world of images which has the more profound affect on bringing people into the streets demanding a restructuring of social, political and economic orders.