EXPLAINING DEMOTIC TURN TO CLASS WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON REALITY TV SHOWS. In earlier times, men from high or royal classes, mainly protégés wrote most of the literature of that age. It had as its theme praise of elites or invocations on gods and as its hero an extraordinary man who completed extraordinary deeds. All the protagonists showed valor and sought glory. Then society witnessed the rise of middle class and along came the genre of novel. Gradually the heroes were of working class or middle class. This trend of ‘movement towards the ordinary’ was later seen in cinema also and increased as the penetration of TV sets in households increased. The protagonist became ordinary and fallible just as the people watching him/her. Nowadays,
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He further questions the current role of media as opposed to its traditional role and compares the media of present day (especially in reference to reality TV shows) to a quasi-state, with its own agenda and ideology. He discusses the idea that reality TV shows produce celebrities in bulk for each season.Much like a harvesting cycle, this is also an accelerated cycle of mass production of celebrity. Owing to the exceeding demand for celebrities, mass production of celebrities takes place in media industry through reality TV shows. Turner writes: “given what appears to be our culture’s appetite for consuming celebrity and the scale of the demand for new stories, gossip and pictures the celebrity media industries generate, …show more content…
Turner contends that such arrangement on the media’s part can not be called democratic because “celebrity still remains a systematically hierarchical and exclusive category, no matter how much it proliferates. No amount of public participation in game shows, reality TV or DIY celebrity websites will alter the fact that, overall, the media industries still remain in control of the symbolic economy, and that they still attempt to operate this economy in the service of their own interests.” Further, no power is actually posited in common people; hence the coinage of the term ‘demotic’ in place of ‘democratic’. Turner further argues that even if there is a democratic dimension to it that should not be anything more than a by-product of media industry’s real objective that is per se commercial. He posits through a rhetoric question that this demotic turn in media is not producing democracy but a lot of programming, consuming the “unlimited performances of
He further questions the current role of media as opposed to its traditional role and compares the media of present day (especially in reference to reality TV shows) to a quasi-state, with its own agenda and ideology. He discusses the idea that reality TV shows produce celebrities in bulk for each season.Much like a harvesting cycle, this is also an accelerated cycle of mass production of celebrity. Owing to the exceeding demand for celebrities, mass production of celebrities takes place in media industry through reality TV shows. Turner writes: “given what appears to be our culture’s appetite for consuming celebrity and the scale of the demand for new stories, gossip and pictures the celebrity media industries generate, …show more content…
Turner contends that such arrangement on the media’s part can not be called democratic because “celebrity still remains a systematically hierarchical and exclusive category, no matter how much it proliferates. No amount of public participation in game shows, reality TV or DIY celebrity websites will alter the fact that, overall, the media industries still remain in control of the symbolic economy, and that they still attempt to operate this economy in the service of their own interests.” Further, no power is actually posited in common people; hence the coinage of the term ‘demotic’ in place of ‘democratic’. Turner further argues that even if there is a democratic dimension to it that should not be anything more than a by-product of media industry’s real objective that is per se commercial. He posits through a rhetoric question that this demotic turn in media is not producing democracy but a lot of programming, consuming the “unlimited performances of