tuesday reflection for week 2

Mass media came about in the 1920's and 1930's. During this time, society in the West was split into two main classes due to the industrial revolution: the high class and the working/low class. The high class folks feared that the working class folks would be influenced by the mass media and, thus, revolt. Consquently, the high class folks set out to educate the working class to encourage them not to revolt. Unfortunately, the high class folks' tactic for educating the people was to educate them to become high class. They did not respect the working class as themselves. The high class simply wanted to create more high class folks. Obviously this did not work.

I recap this part of class today because I wonder if we today are still attempting to do this. We want to redeem "the good" parts of culture. However, do we want to redeem these good parts of culture to higher status because we think they will truly be good once they are at a status of our liking? Or, do we want to redeem these good parts of culture simply because they are good? I do not know. I hope we are doing the latter. However, the dualism that has been prevalent through history—the separation of the classes—is still dominant today, and this makes me think we do the former.

This dualism acts on different levels today. For example, some of academia does not respect the writings and thoughts of women. Some women writers in academia change their name from Jane Doe to J. Doe when submitting works for publication because they do not want the editors and publishers to read their material with presuppositions based on gender. Women in academia should not have to do this. I hope we redeem things in culture simply because they are good and need to be redeemed as what they are, not what we want them to be.