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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

I always have mixed feelings on if art influences society ... or it is just a representation of it.

Particularly when it comes to getting eyeballs on TV, or a movie. People making that content are thinking about what people will want to watch.

Does someone "glorified 'The Thin Blue Line'" (just picking a random bit from this article) because they saw it on TV... or is TV responding to what that person already thinks / wants to watch?

It's super easy to think about other people who we don't share the same views with as: "Oh those people are just misinformed because X influence." But I'm not sure that's always the case.

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> I always have mixed feelings on if art influences society ... or it is just a representation of it.

It's a little bit of both. There is a model of society called the "base and superstructure" [0]. The base comprises of the means of production as well as everyone's relationship to the means of production. Superstructures, like art and culture, are built on top of the base and are both shaped by the base as well as re-enforce the base.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure

Doesn't the historic sucess of political propaganda, and the marketing successes of companies like Coca-Cola, illustrate the power of art to influence society, to some extent?

And it doesn't have to be an either or. They can both mutually shape each other.

Advertisements and entertainment seem different from a creation standpoint.

I don't doubt they both have influence, but why / how you write a cop show isn't why you make an ad for coke either.

The motivations may be different, but how they convey their message is very similar. Advertisements, documentaries, and even propaganda, manipulate our emotions and subconscious thoughts using the exact same techniques as film and television. All of these can be used to subtly influence public perception and opinions.

I think the motivation influences what you do. TV show, I want to show people what they're going to watch. Showing them some congestive dissonance generally won't work.

If I want to sell someone a burger I already made what they want "the burger" presumably to what they want to eat. Now I want them to know about it.

Andy Warhol and a million graphic designers might disagree :)

I maintain that art affects society. Scorsese makes Taxi Driver, some crazy guy watches it, decides to shoot Ronald Reagan to impress Jody Foster. Would crazy guy have done the same thing regardless of the movie? Maybe. Would he have done it on the same day, at the same time, in the exact same way? Probably not.

The world where Scorsese chose to make Taxi Driver is different than the one where the movie never existed; maybe the difference is trivial, but -some- effect is there. The remaining question is the extent of that effect.

The fact that when I imagine a cop, I imagine "Bad Boys" and "Law and Order", even when I haven't watched these shows for over a decade, is a testament to art's effects. Maybe this image was born out of the crime waves of the 70s-80s, but the image persists, affecting how people feel on topics of policing.

It's been said that more people get their understanding of the bible from Milton's Paradise Lost (directly or indirectly) than from the Bible. If you look at both, many elements we're familiar with are from Milton (IIRC, and it's been a long time, the apple in the Garden of Eden is an example).

> Particularly when it comes to getting eyeballs on TV, or a movie. People making that content are thinking about what people will want to watch.

But what they will want to watch isn't what they already know, it's what they are comfortable with. There is new information, the problem is new info that challenges the viewer too much. The better artists walk that line better: they find ways to present challenging information that will go down easily.

Note that the article quotes the Lear Center's research; it's named after and founded by Norman Lear, who made (among many other shows) All in the Family, which covered political issues, including race, and without pulling (many) punches, in 1971 and was an enormous hit. I highly recommend watching the first season - great on many levels. And it will press your buttons, even today.

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh or they will kill you." (Attributed to many people, from Oscar Wilde to George Bernard Shaw to Richard Pryor)

>It's been said that more people get their understanding of the bible from Milton's Paradise Lost (directly or indirectly) than from the Bible. If you look at both, many elements we're familiar with are from Milton (IIRC, and it's been a long time, the apple in the Garden of Eden is an example).

I doubt that more people have read Paradise Lost than have read the Bible

I don't think these are contradictory. More people have read the Bible, but many of the details they know about the story are from paradise lost, not the bible.

Right. That's what I meant by 'indirectly'. Not many people actually read the Bible either, but they know the stories.

The apple thing apparently predates Paradise Lost. It may have come from a Latin/Greek pun, or was possibly lifted from Greek mythology. And apparently neck lumps being called "Adam's apples" predates Paradise Lost by at least a few years.

Ah, thank you. Unfortunately, I haven't revisited that issue in a long time so that was the only example that sprung to mind.

It's bi directional. Art is both a reflection of society and the shaper of it. Specifically easily accessible media.

If it's too outlandish it doesn't resonate with people, so it's bound by the outer limits of what society accepts. However that outer limit has a lot of play room and let's you shift the overton window in terms of influencing society.

It's a feedback loop.

At best it can help shape society to be better. Introduce and normalize ideas like interracial romance (Star trek) or expand people's minds (e.g the Tulsa riots in Watchmen were the first that many had heard of it)

At worst, it's propaganda, cementing us in our beliefs. Like the example of drugs used in the original post, but worse, normalizing authoritarianism.

If someone tells you to imagine a cop, and you imagine a TV cop, that show has definitely influenced your worldview.

I love cops, they're so funny and silly and always do the right™ thing.

I literally will disgrace the national flag with my own version of it, and you know what? I'll even throw a punisher logo with a thin blue line, because you know, the punisher loved cops as much as I did.

This whole damn nation was founded on respecting the authority and licking boots.

> This whole damn nation was founded on respecting the authority and licking boots.

I think King George III might have a different take, eh?

I think the problem is that we don't encourage our children to be like George Washington.

I was recruited as a junior executive into a large media corp earlier in my career, and I will never forget my manager's closing "sales pitch" at a bar in midtown Manhattan: "Join us and become part of the group that shapes global culture. Where else are you going to go where you can have this kind of impact on society?"

It's an open question whether art influences society or vice versa, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that executives in show business have no doubt it's the former, and they revel in that power. It wasn't for me, I quit after a year.

Sales pitches... I mean I've joined places that were going to 'change the world'.

They didn't ;)

Not sure that means much.

The difference between being put in charge of programming that is consumed by tens of millions and joining a no name startup...

I felt something in media much darker than the stereotypical SV kumbaya-change-the-world thing. It was about loving that you have the power to influence how and what ordinary people thought about. Keep in mind this was before social media. Maybe this is how Facebook algorithm developers nowadays also think.

Art is one of many tools of social construction. Memes, for example, are just viral artwork. Plays are used to construct popular narratives and tell stories, which shapes how we see the world. Pictures are worth a thousand words. Society is both creator of, and by, art.

It is certainly a complex issue. Look at 24 series. Groundbreaking in its own way and its impact on cultural mores cannot be denied ( normalization of torture and so on ). If I wanted to simplify my answer, I would say it goes both ways.

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