Introduction
Confessional culture is a contentious facet of tabloidization. It has been condemned by the media industry because of its degrading nature. This is because confessional culture entails on the concealment of the truth between the private and the public domains. This means that, it is an increasing concealing between private and public and the concern to reveals the truth. The reality of existence of confession culture can be traced through the rise of reality media and the web 2.0, which means that culture is continuing to publicize the private and using the media to expose the truth about the society. This paper focuses on the issue of confessional culture; “Do we live in a confessional culture”?
Foucault studies on confession
In reference to Foucault studies, the relationship between truth, confession and sexuality is explored. This is because, these extent of these concepts bear on confession, which are perhaps more pawn instinctive now, than they were earlier. Confessional does not disclose the truth that it produces, neither does it liberate, but condemn shame. Thi...
The mass media has an essential role in today’s society as a channel of valuable information. Lots of people rely on media as the epicenter of information and as the yardstick on which they form their decisions and opinions (Agner, 1999). Any selection of messages in the mass media would have a profound impact on the entire society, this is according to Cultural selection theory. In the short story “Gray Noise”, Rojo uses this story to express his annoyance toward technology, but more specifically his most effective critic is on how society has overpowered valuable news with “dramaturgically crafted news” (Vettehen) and competition while desensitizing their viewers. Since competition has also stiffened up in are of mass media as the attention of readers, TV-viewers and listeners are fought for by every journalist. For this reason, every news media has turned to other strategies such as scandal-mongering and entertainment as tools of making a profit since a large audience is assured of such news even if they are not correct. Rojo’s views on critics of technology are widely shared among many people including the authors of the following studies, “Research Note: Sensationalism in Dutch Current Affairs Programmes by Paul Hendriks Vettehen
Unlike other texts of the time, Augustine’s confessions are less of an epic tale or instructive texts, both of which soug...
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, Volume I: An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Vintage. (Original work published 1976)
I decided to focus my paper on the first volume, the most mentioned and most known, which is a deep analysis of the last two centuries of history of sexuality, particularly oriented in finding out why and how sexuality is an object of discussion. Foucault is not interested in sexuality itself, but he is interested in how it has become an object of knowledge. Why, in the past few centuries, have we increasingly come to see our identity as bound with our sexuality?
For Foucault—similarly or on the other hand, however, Foucault’s speculation on punishment and morality is that punishment is used, also for a variety of reasons, also unstable and dynamic historically. Foucault focuses in particular on a change in our ideas about punishment like Nietzsche. In the first situation, where punishment is more “festival-like” as Nietzsche would say, the joy is not for the people as much as it is for a festival to...
The objective of norm in American, by Michael Schudson, explores how and why the objective norms developed in American journalism. Objective is one of the most important occupational values of American journalism, it can be identified by following measures: express allegiance, ethnographers’ observations and occupational routines, resist with the challenging behaviour, impersonality and non-partisanship in news content. Differencing from some scholars’ opinions that economic and technological change enhances the ethic of objective, Schudson thinks four conditions encourage the articulation of norms. Two of them are Durkheimian, the other two are Weberian. One of the Durkheimian conditions thinks the emergence of norm is to achieve horizontal solidarity, another Durkheimian condition find the norm is used to identify the group from other groups. Both Durkheimian conditions are concluded as social cohesion. The Weberian conditions find norm is not appear abruptly, they are transfer from the old generation, who were benefit from these rules, to the young generation. It is the tool for the superiors to control subordinates in a complex organization. Weberian condition is to satisfy the need of social control. By discussing the history of American journalism development, this essay outlining the emergence of these four conditions in the late 19th and early 20th century. By doing so, the author found the reason why a new moral norm appeared in American journalism. Compared with European journalism, this article discusses why objectivity as a norm first and most fully appears in American instead of Europe.
Looking the historical moment we are living at, it is undeniable that the media plays a crucial role on who we are both as individuals and as a society, and how we look at the...
In The Introduction to the History of Sexuality, Foucault explains how during the 19th century with the raise of new societies, the discourse or knowledge about sex was not confronted with repulsion but it “put into operation an entire machinery for producing true discourses concerning sex” (Foucault 69). In fact, this spreading of discourse on sexuality itself gives a clear account of how sexuality has been controlled and confined because it was determined in a certain kind of knowledge that carries power within it. Foucault reflects on the general working hypothesis or “repressive hypothesis,” and how this has exercised power to suppress people’s sexuality. It has power on deciding what is normal or abnormal and ethical or unethical about sexuality. Through discourses of life and sexuality, power is exercised because humans learned how to behave in relation to sexuality, which method keep individuals controlled and regulated. This explains why people experience that sense of behaving inappropriate when we talk about sex in a different way than the whole society. Foucault points up how sexuality is not just treated in terms of morality, but it is a matter of knowledge and “truth.” However, these discourses, including sexual discourses are not true or false, but they are just understood to be the truth or falsehood to control society. As a result, sexuality begins to be explored in a scientific way, developing the “truth” science of sex (Foucault 69). For Foucault, he asserts that sexuality has developed as a form of science that keeps us all afraid of such phenomena, which people think to be true, thus this science helps society to discipline and control individuals’ behaviors.
Foucault, Michel. “Power and Sex.” Politics. Philosophy. Culture-Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. Ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman. New York, New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc., 1988. 110-124.
In “12 O’Clock News,” Elizabeth Bishop accentuates the difficulty involved in perceiving the “truth.” She utilizes a technique of constructing an exotic world out of objects that can be found in a newsroom. By defamiliarizing a newsroom, she questions our trust in what we perceive. Is it truly a journey to another world or just another perspective on something we are already familiar with? The intent of this transformation is to create a substitute for reality, analogous to the substitute reality which the media presents to us each day as its product, the “news.” The news media are capable of creating a world beyond what we see everyday, presenting us with what appears to be the truth about cultures we will never encounter firsthand. Bishop’s manipulation of a newsroom parallels the way the media distorts our perception of the world, and by doing so questions our ability to find our way out of this fog which is “reality.”
Far too often, we are influenced mentally and socially by Media. The new millennium has accepted all sources of media has almost more prudent source of information. As defined by The Merriam Webster Dictionary , Media is “a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression (Smiler).” For the purposes of this essay, I will condense the broad spectrum of media and focus specifically on these forms : print media, television , movies, and the internet. Within the Written composition, A trifling media written by Shakira Smiler, she carefully examines piece by piece why she believes not only men are trifling but as well how media has influenced why it's acceptable. Within her exposition, she speaks to infidelity , immaturity, and specifically, seeing
In Sigmund Freud’s “Sexual Morality and Modern Nervousness”, contained in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, the writer presents separate roles for men and women as it relates to sexuality, even referring to a “double code of morality” (22) for the genders. In his paper the former often takes the role of the subject while the former becomes the object. In fact, women are described as the “true sexual guardians of the race” glorified, it seems, instead of truly studied. However, in one particular section of the essay, Freud turns his focus onto the female sexuality. In specific he references the various factors that, in his eyes, can influence the female sexual formation. The primary influences being that of the society, primarily the institution of marriage, and that of the family, which would include both a woman’s parents and children. After discussing these elements, Freud then
Foucault argues that the modern idea of sexuality was historically constituted when medical science delimited deviance. Although Foucault addresses that sexuality was shaped rather than repressed by the scientific will to know, the purpose was relegating sexual repression.
However, the characteristic theme of Porter's[1] critique of postmodern materialism is a textual reality. Foucault suggests the use of subsemantic cultural theory to analyse and read sexual identity.
This essay will analyze and critique Michel Foucault’s (1984) essay The Use of Pleasure in order to reveal certain internal weaknesses it contains and propose modifications that would strengthen his reading of sexuality as a domain of moral self-formation. In order to do so, it will present a threefold critique of his work. Firstly, it will argue that that his focus on solely the metric of pleasure divorced from its political manifestations underemphasizes state power as a structuring principle of sexuality. Secondly, it will posit that his attention to classical morality privileges written works by male elites and fails to account for the subtexts that would demonstrate other forms of morality. Finally, it will argue that the nature of actors’ resistance to moral codes, explicated through Butler’s concept of iterability and signification, is an important factor that should also be considered. As a result of this critique, this essay