Populist culture has always played a hero in setting the standards upon which people are gauged and measured. According to the article Popular Culture and Populist Technology: The Amateur Operators, Susan Douglass seeks to delve into the issue of the media and popular culture having an effect on the everyday life of all humanity. She especially does that by way of showing how society sets standards of measurement. People are then left to compete with these superhuman heroes who are brought forth as perfect and in possession of attributes that are set as standard. It is interesting that the media plays a critical role in propagating and popularizing these standards. Douglas reaches a conclusion that society becomes what its mass media tells them to become, in projecting certain attributes of boy heroes it forgets to put forth the truth. According to this article, it becomes clear that populist technology propagates popular culture, and that has an immense effect on society, but sometimes this populist culture does not reflect real facts.
Judging by the way she addresses the issue of populist technology and the impact it has on popular culture, the author is trying to convince any reader that indeed popular culture would never have been as popular and important as it is, were it not for populist technology and media. It goes without saying that populist technology has a visible manifestation of what is perceived to be the ultimate societal practices. Douglas affirms that fact by using media to show how much people’s minds get cultured to perceive something as the ultimate. She embraces the gratification theory to show how society consumes what is in the media and how they get accustomed to the standards set by it.
Douglass presents her argument by way of making readers see how sometimes populist technology is used to communicate what is not true. The turn of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century had its eyes focused on the boy- hero. Willenborg fitted the bill because in as much as he was not muscular and strong, he had walked the narrow road of boyhood discovery which was not his discovery anyway but the media wanted it to look like it is him who invented wireless technology. Publicity is used to attract the attention of the masses but what it echoes is not always the truth. Armatures are given attention and win the affection of people even when they are not deserving of it.
Work Cited
Douglas, Susan. “Popular Culture and Populist Technology: The Amateur Operators”. Inventing American Broadcasting. Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1987. Print
