Media Exposure as Harmful Cultural Practice

Having worked on this project for nearly a year now, I have come to understand clearly how television and all media imagery functions as political patriarchal propaganda and have tried to demonstrate how this works.  I believe this project has been successful in its aims, which were to articulate the facets and mechanisms of the patriarchal propaganda machine (via “The Gears“) and to fill an existing gap in online publishing, where there exists plenty of liberal (non)analysis and no dedicated space for radical feminist analysis of media imagery.

But what does the future hold for a radical feminist media-critical project, once its author realizes that exposure to this propaganda itself, for any reason — even to critique it — is actually a harmful cultural practice that’s best avoided?

French AIDS Awareness: Scorpion

French AIDS awareness poster. Click on image to visit Ads of the World.

On liberal media analysis of “The Sexualization of Young Girls”

Video from Sociological Images.

We have seen before that liberal media analysis consistently falls short of making meaningful political connections, or naming and explaining the foundations and mechanisms of male power.  The point of liberal and even liberal feminist media criticism seems to be to merely point out various “inequalities” or perceived positional slights and to conclude that these inequalities are undesirable on their face — for example, pointing out that young girls are sexualized more than are young boys suggests that the statistical difference is significant without explaining why that is so, or how or even whether it is of political relevance to women and feminists.

Abilify

Lean Cuisine

Bewitched

Revlon

Air Wick