Archive for the ‘Bob McChesney’ tag
Book: The Age of Oprah
There are a handful of really good talk radio shows out there that deal with media in popular culture. One of my favorites is Media Matters with Bob McChesney. Granted, Mr. McChesney is an academic steeped in the traditions of formal, heady, and slightly monotone conversation styles, but he also has really interesting guests of whom he asks really interesting questions. I always feel like I’ve just left an excellent cultural studies lecture immediately following a Media Matters episode.
Anyway, last week there was a particularly intriguing interview with Janice Peck, an associate professor at the University of Colorado who recently published a new book entitled “The Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era.” Basically, Peck aligns Oprah’s success (she’s an absolutely massive media presence stateside) with the rise of neoliberalism, an economic ideology that became a significant political force in the 1980’s, and with sweeping consequences on/for the globalization of today.
Having not read the book I cannot comment on its quality. But the interview on Media Matters was fascinating predominantly because it was one of the first, really articulate, well-constructed criticisms of the Oprah machine I have ever heard. And it is most definitely a machine–an empire of television, magazines, books, websites, and so on, each churning out Oprah’s particular brand of ‘informed’ public discourse. This media goliath, supported mainly by suburban, middle-class white girls, is very, very lucrative. According to Peck, Oprah Inc., if you will, is worth over two billion dollars! I suppose it’s actually quite amazing, in a horrific, overdose of snake-oil kinda way.
On that note, I must admit that I enjoyed Peck’s criticism because it also vindicated me for much of what I have felt about Oprah for years, ever since I was a kid back in high school, when I was just starting to develop a more sophisticated socio-economic and political consciousness. Painfully, I distinctly remember being forced to listen to some of my least-inspiring instructors, even up through college, laud Oprah with near religious zealotry for the now very popular Book Club, which they believed would eventually do more for American literacy than the classroom ever could.
“Hmph,” I would grunt. Even then I could smell the cow manure of idolotry.
In any case, Oprah is certainly a force with which to be reckoned. I hope Ms. Peck’s text will go a long way in expanding the conversation to include larger cultural (read: economic and political) trends. Though, honestly, I suspect it’s just going to piss off advertisers and housewives alike.
NOTE:
I did not include any links in this post to Oprah’s many (business) web ventures. You’re gonna have to do that on your own.
