The Great (impossible) Escape

Dani’s question posted on Sunday, October 4, 2009:
“Can we as an audience escape the media? With the idea that “audiences must be exposed repeatedly to the same message”(Persuasion, 391), is this at all possible? The media has become like a virus and can infect every moment of our everyday. Do we consume the media, or does the media consume us?”

My Response:
We cannot disregard the fact that society is cluttered with millions of competing messages each day, of which we as an audience consume. As an audience of media, we are both consuming what type of media to take in, but only just as much as media tries to consume our everyday lives. As Chapter 13 of Woodward and Denton suggests, the human attention span is extremely short and easily distracted, so our chances of retaining information from a commercial is not very high. However, the amount of effort we put into “escaping” media will always be rebutted with media that repeatedly exposes itself to us. What I am suggesting, is that media will always find its way to consume us. Professionals of this field are out there who make this possible. Strategically, message makers will carefully select their visual images and typography in an advertisement that will catch the audience’s eye. There is no escaping media unless we fly away to a deserted island where no sign of commercial life is present (though on the way there we will be exposed with the airline’s suggestive messages in their logo, uniform color and design, etc.).

The Gestalt “laws” outline the way we perceive messages and images, and how we might find identity in relationship to these messages. Whether we group similar things together or fill in what is left out of the picture, we do so while being consumers of such messages. In response to Dani’s question, I would suggest that we as an audience cannot escape the media because it will come back to bite us after we’ve let go (or thought that we had). We are consumers of media but not by choice; message makers expose ideas and messages repeatedly so that they can consume their audience in the subtlest ways.

Though some of us are aware of seeing product placements, advertorials, and the same large billboards, sometimes this allows us to avoid being consumers of such products and services. Nevertheless, we have already made it a point to avoid such products, which suggests that these ads have already consumed our minds, to the point where we have to make the conscious choice to not be a consumer of such products and services.