Imagined Communities
I have decided to post my paper that I just finished for my media class. I recognize that the comedy section is more of a stretch and therefore makes much less sense. The transitions need work and the conclusion needs to be longer. But alas, this is what I turned in. Enjoy!
Chelsea McLennan
Professor Catherine Simpson
MAS 104: Australian Media
28 May 2009
Essay #2: “Imagined Communities”
Talking and Laughing: Radio and Comedy and the Formation of Imagined Communities
In this world, there exists uncountable ways to see difference. Yet the idea of ‘nationalism’ and ‘community’ still exist, represented by bonds between people. Those bonds are based in commonalities and shared social and cultural constructs within a perceived nation. To establish these bonds, individuals look not only to personal communication but also to the media to inform them and share ideas across a wider geographical distance. The power that media has to create a sense of unity in a country as diverse and distant as Australia demands attention. Through expressed intent to share the common elements of everyday life, Australian media creates and sustains an active imagined community, highlighted in the mediums of community radio and comedy.
There is some argument to be made for the ways in which media works against society. At times, media can broadcast the worst of a community or misrepresent the truth. Furthermore, some may argue that the community that media may establish is not a community at all, but a loose structure based on impersonal bonds without all the elements necessary for a community to thrive. However, there is value in acknowledging the share of ideas and content that media allows. In this paper, a brief outline will be given on the term ‘imagined community’ followed by a discussion of how radio and comedy fulfil the requirements to create such a construct. Radio and comedy were chosen to demonstrate that a wide variety of mediums exhibit this phenomenon.
Historically, “’imagined communities’ were product of what [Anderson] calls ‘print capitalism—the convergence of early capitalism economics and the technology of printing” (Craig, 2004:173). This tradition continues by extension with radio and TV. As humans, we now have means to connect with each other beyond the physical, we move towards waves and broadcasted content in order to share in a common knowledge set and obtain information. These new forms of communities that share in a common knowledge source help to define a new set of boundaries. Anderson comments that ‘communities are differentiated not by wether they actually exist or not but, instead, how they are imagined’ (1983:6).
A large part of the imagined community is how one defines the term ‘nation.’ ‘National identity’ and ‘nationalism’ represent a “type of symbolic power which binds people together through a sense of belonging to a specific place and culture” (Craig, 2004:177). Essentially, one must feel both geographically and culturally linked to a group. At its most raw form, “the idea of the nation was produced to a large degree through the reportage of mundane matters” (Craig, 2004:174). Thus the focus is on the average, the day to day and not the extraordinary, which for most people, is what one can identify with. For the purposes of this paper, the term community and nation will be interchangeable, simply signifying a group of any size that has the characteristics described above.
Radio
As a form of media, radio is both diverse and readily available, lending it considerable power. It has developed into one of the most easily accessible forms of media with many styles and diverse content. In Australia, it is “the most pervasive medium” with many local, commercial, and music frequencies (Griffen-Foley, 2006:133). As part of media, radio has “expanded the boundaries of public by bringing the concerns of private life into public life” (Craig, 2004:173). This ability to make the personal public gives rise to identification through the sharing of ideas and opinions, making a larger knowledge base accessible to more people.
In establishing communities, radio has the ability to target a specific audience, recognizing the differences within a larger set and establishing a smaller community. Hendy comments on this unique distinction by saying that “radio—more minutely segmented than other media- provides a more precise reflection of the fragmented communities of modern societies, whether communities are defined by nationality, ethnicity, sex, or simply by patterns of consumption and taste” (2000:214). For example, a metal rock music station would not attract people who buy folk western albums, and thus the listeners possess a bond with each other by having a common taste in music.
Since radio differs from other form of media as relying solely on audio content, the focus on expression gives radio the unique ability to tie people together through language. Most, if not all, stations have some sort of talk element. Foxwell et al discuss the element of talk in radio as having a laidback feel: the “‘ordinary person’ style makes listeners feel as if presenters are ‘one of them’” (2008:11). Thus, listeners identify with not only what is being said, but also who is saying it. They are placing themselves within a group of people who listen and identify with a specific set of content. The ‘ordinary’ style demonstrates how the radio communities rely on common and accepted topics that are not presumptuous and are not based on areas outside of the community’s interests. In fact, radio’s “oral code of communication allows it to tie itself to communities of language which ignore official borders” (Hendy, 2000:215). Thus radio listeners may be part of a community that is not just based geographically, but instead on language and/or culture that is relevant to them.
Special interest is given to the community radio sector. While a specific radio station may have syndicated content, “for most listeners…radio is not an international medium, but rather a national or, especially, a local one” (Hendy, 2000:23). Community radio recognizes this feeling and uses this power to establish itself as a news and culture provider. As a media entity, community radio seeks to empower: “empowerment refers to the role of community radio and television in enhancing broader societal concepts such as citizenship, democracy, and the public sphere” (Foxwell et al, 2008:19). Thus, local radio programs that focus on issues that are pertinent to its listeners have a much more active role in the structure of a group. They can create bonds through the use of audio and constitute venues in which people can share in an experience. In the extreme case, for new geographical and cultural communities, “community radio takes on a central communicative role, providing a more important source of ‘community glue’” (Foxwell et al, 2008:16). As one community radio listener says: community radio “make sit easier for people to, to settle knowing that they are not really total strangers” (Foxwell et al, 2008:15). This ‘glue’ signifies the bonds that come from a shared part of daily life and help to form the imagined community between people.
With community radio, individuals posses the power to dictate the content and further establish themselves in relation to each other. Deutsch, quoted in Schlesinger, states that “membership in a people consists of a wide complementarily of social communication. It consists in the ability to communicate more efficiently, and over a wider range of subjects, with members of one large group than with outsiders” (1991:157). The process of developing content for community radio comes largely from the community itself: “communities are active in the representation, production, and maintenance of themselves” (Foxwell et al, 2008:10). Thus members of the community take an active role in not only forming groups, but also defining exactly who they are and how they want to represent themselves to the larger public. Furthermore, radio empowers ordinary people to share and sustain conversation and activities that people within the group value. Although most people in a community defined by radio may never even meet, they know that someone like them is dictating the content and sharing with them.
Comedy
There are many reasons why people laugh. A situation or a unique way of looking at a commonly accepted value or cultural construct can be particularly hilarious. Yet, an essential element to any joke is finding the appropriate content that the audience can relate to and understand enough to find funny. In the past, comedy was “the most appropriate genre for representing the lives… of the ‘middle’ and ‘lower’ orders of society” (Neale and Krutnik, 1991:11). The same is arguably true in modern Australian culture in satire and the mocking of the everyday.
As a form of comedy, satire aims to re-present the society in which it is based in order to elicit laughs from an audience that shares the same societal construct in order to criticise. Because satire uses elements of society, it takes parts of the reality and re-presents it to the audience, drawing upon parody. Bowles notes that “representation as a form of display towards theories of discourse as a way of sharing in, and contributing to, the ways in which our cultural and language group undertakes its particular repackaging of the real” (Bowles, 2006:75). Thus by aiming to make the content funny, producers and writers are acknowledging that their representation of the real will appeal to a certain target group, or community, that share the same context as the people in the production.
A prime example of satire used to critique society is the Australian comedy “Summer Heights High,” a TV show that plays with the perceived discrepancies between private and public schools. Here we see a producer, using what he sees as reality, to hold up a mirror to society and dramatize it. As a comedic form, “satire works to mock and attack. It uses the norms within its province as a basis against which to measure deviations” (Neale and Krutnik, 1991:19). Applied, when Ja’mie comments on the number of Asian students at her private high school or how boring public school appears to be , it is intended to make individuals who share a similar experience in Australian high school laugh. High school constitutes an everyday, common concept and when put into the context of “Summer Heights High,” the audience is expected to identify with the characters and content. Therefore, the viewers would have to have a pre-conceived notion of what Australian high school is in order to fully understand the comical and socio-political connotations.
As demonstrated by “Summer Heights High,” one can see how comedy uses aspects of society to create a humorous situation that only a certain group could comprehend. In addition, the straightforward content makes a simple classroom situation or a high school kid’s thoughts comical. An individual watching would notice these aspects and possibly relate to them; O’Hara addresses this issue and states that the content is a “hilarious and accurate picture of a lot of what happens in schools today” (2007:72). Once a person recognizes that other people are laughing as well, he/she would begin to realize that the experience is not uncommon, and that other people share in the enjoyment of that show. “Summer Heights High” is a particularly strong example since there are “character types who are recognizable, irritating and yet often able to elicit sympathy” (O’Hara, 2007:70). Because there exists a division between those who would find “Summer Heights High” funny, or at least relate to the stories presented, and those who would not, the comedic show’s followers demonstrate how a comedy can produce an imagined community of people who are aware of the implications of the content. Furthermore, “Australia’s changing tastes in humour are indicative of the cultural changes over the last several decades,” placing the community established by comedy not only geographically different, but temporally as well (Bosanquet, 2006:92). So not only can we see comedy forms a group, but it also is indicative of a wider culture base where one can actively mark how the nation has changed as a whole.
As seen by community radio and comedy, Australian media forms imagined communities, based around the sharing of everyday occurrences. In a world that grows smaller every day due to technology, the term ‘community’ becomes more difficult to describe. Rupert Murdoch, in his lectures on ABC, rightly states “internationalism means both opportunity and competition…It also means being clearer about the nature of Australia’s identity, its qualities and its collective character” (Murdoch, 2008). That is why media, as comedy and radio do, should continue to address issues that are pertinent to their audience and aim to form the bonds that sustain a closer community. It is through recognizing the Australianness that permeates everyday life that we can become a stronger community and face the changes and challenges that come.
Bibliography
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London & New York, pp. 1-7.
Bosanquet, Tim. 2006. “Don’t Fence Me In: Australian TV Comedy – The Next Wave” in Metro #149, pp. 90-95.
Bowles, Kate. 2006. “Representation” in Cunngingham, Stuart and Turner, Graeme (eds) The Media and Communications in Australia (2nd edition), Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, pp. 64-77.
Craig, Geoffrey. 2004. “The nation and national identity” in The Media, Politics and Public Life, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, pp. 171-191.
Foxwell, Kerrie et al. 2008. “Sounds like a whisper: Australian community broadcasting hosts a quiet revolution”, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, vol.5, no.1, pp. 5-24.
Griffen-Foley, Bridget. 2006. “Radio” in Cunningham, Stuart and Turner, Graeme (eds) The Media and Communications in Australia (2nd edition), Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, pp. 133-153.
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