Social Theory of Fear by Geoffrey R. Skoll

Author:Geoffrey R. Skoll
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2010-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

According to Glynn, tabloid culture “is immersed in image rearticulation and appropriation” (2000:18 citing Collins 1992:333). Furthermore, Glynn said, tabloid media exemplify the commodification of culture that lies at the heart of postmodernity. Finally, Glynn, relying on Frederic Jameson, argued that the postmodern news media relegate recent historical experiences to the past. The logic of “‘you are there’ is taken to the nth degree” (Glynn 2000:18 citing Jameson 1983:125). Once relegated to the past, media representations deposit residual collective memory traces preparing the way for subsequent media reappropriation. The built-in obsolescence of popular media “thwart[s] precisely those forms of understanding that are needed” (Glynn 2000:19). Consider the fact that the U.S. government never presented any clear and convincing evidence that Osama bin Laden and his organization they dubbed “al Qaeda” planned and carried out the attacks of 9/11, although today the media treat the speculation as established fact based on continual reappropriation of the televised images.

Once the images of 9/11 became established as iconic signs, they contributed to ideological formations.

In actual fact, each living ideological sign has two faces, like Janus . . . any current truth must inevitably sound to many other people as the greatest lie. This inner dialectic quality [sic] of the sign comes out fully in the open only in times of social crises or revolutionary changes. In the ordinary conditions of life, the contradiction embedded in every ideological sign cannot emerge fully because the ideological sign in an established, dominant ideology is always somewhat reactionary . . . so accentuating yesterday’s truth as to make it appear today’s. And that is what is responsible for the refracting and distorting peculiarity of the ideological sign within the dominant ideology.

(Vološinov 1973:23–24)

In trials of those accused of terrorism, the prosecution regularly has introduced images and film footage of the 9/11 attacks as part of its evidence. The image, having been embedded in an ideological formation, subsequently proves the truth of the ideology.

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