Fictionalising Fact - Applying Psychoanalysis and Lacan's Symbolic Real to News Dissemination Methods and Audience Subjugation

FICTIONALISING FACT:
APPLYING PSYCHOANALYSIS AND LACAN'S
SYMBOLIC REAL TO NEWS DISSEMINATION
METHODS AND AUDIENCE SUBJUGATION
LIT4017: MEDIA ENGLISH AND CULTURE DISSERTATION
(SHORT DISSERTATION)
SUBMITTED BY:
J. LEE - 09270164
WORD COUNT:
5,471 words
TO BE MARKED BY:
MR. RICHARD HOLLINGUM
AND
DR. JON. MACKLEY
UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON
APRIL 2012

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Fictionalising Fact
J. Lee - 09270164
LIT4017: Media English and Culture Dissertation
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Introduction:
Fictionalising Fact - The Sun's pull on its audience
"Culture is called a habit system in which "truths" that have been perpetuated by a group over
centuries have permeated the unconscious. This basic belief system, from which "rational"
conclusions spring, may be so deeply ingrained that it becomes indistinguishable from human
perception, the way one sees, feels, believes, knows. It is the continuity of cultural
assumptions and patterns that gives order to one's world, reduces an infinite variety of options
to a manageable stream of beliefs, gives a person a firm footing in time and space, and binds
the lone individual to the communality of a group. Thus, culture impacts all aspects of this
reciprocal process of social influence, which process is prevalent in all human societies."
- Rosado
The world around us is constructed upon misconceptions and redirection
from matters that hold actual meaning to the everyday lives of those who
make up society. 1 Various government and news institutions propagate
this state of affairs; these institutions assuming an almost parental role in
influencing the public: teaching us what we should know, what we need to
know, what behaviour is to be lauded, and which to be deplored. I believe
that this relegates us to a role similar to the infant; our information
coming from an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipresent source - a theory
supported by various societal / media analysts and psychologists, such as
Searle, Engel, and Piaget.
Tabloid newspapers constitute the vast majority of the press read by the
public 2, and perhaps the most iconic tabloid is The Sun; therefore I shall
be looking at the relationship between this news institution and their
consumers - particularly the subconscious patois and psychological
management of the public, guiding them into accepting and even
constructing for themselves the media-driven world. Emphasis will be

1 Dobelli - p, 1
2 Bromley, Stephenson - p. 2

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Fictionalising Fact
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LIT4017: Media English and Culture Dissertation
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placed on considering how psychoanalytical theories can be applied to The
Sun's dissemination methods, in particular the inundation of information
of consumers angled at the creation of specific mindsets and social
groups, with an aim to identify how, and why, this helps to channel the
process of dissemination into improving The Sun's marketability and
creating a receptive audience.
The analysis will show how the news that we receive from the mass media
is less focused upon the events it proscribes than it is the consumer
market and creating within them a receptacle able to receive the meaning
wished to be given by the reportage, rather than the subject matter of the
story itself.

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Fictionalising Fact
J. Lee - 09270164
LIT4017: Media English and Culture Dissertation
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Chapter One:
A Cultured Mind - The science of dissemination
"Culture influences who we are as individuals and the different roles different individuals are
permitted to play within these institutions, and in what way these shape society, which in turn
shapes individuals and vice versa ... These forces and power arrangements shape people's
lives as well as the roles and institutions within society, resulting in exclusive structures and
society."
- Rosado
Through various means, whether fashion, hobbies or other societal trends,
people are cultured into appreciating certain things by the institutions,
governmental and commercial, of modern life 3, known to psychoanalysts,
through Lacan, as the Symbolic. Often an attempt for a return to unity
and security (known as the Real, covered later), this standardisation
denies the feelings and desires of human nature, even causing the vetoing
of their own intrinsic compulsions towards an issue in order to conform. 4
To manage these suppressed issues, the drives and desires are often
channelled, through a medium acceptable to the subject's peers, and
often directed by the media: a recent book, a new movie, the latest
game; these provide a temporary, vicarious gain, offsetting the sensation
of `lack' (again, covered later) through some form of attained equilibrium
and a catharsis brought about through the mind being engaged, rather
than free to dwell upon other matters.
With consumers seeking always some way to occupy themselves (due to
their sense of `lack'), playing on their desires has been a long-held

3 Bikhchandani et al - p 1002
4 Hedstrom, Swedberg - p. 150 - 151

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LIT4017: Media English and Culture Dissertation
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marketing strategy, and reveals that the human condition, r marketing
and interests, has remained the same for centuries. 5 6 Claparede, in his
preface of Piaget's The Language and Thought of the Child, writes of
Piaget's ideas on an upper and a lower mental plane in children. The lower
is made up of base desires, an equivalent to Freud's id, whilst the upper is
logic-driven, reminiscent of the ego. The lack of an equivalent
representative of the super-ego - which I postulate to be replaced and
represented by today's media society - within the child produces one of
the tenets of my theory, and shall be discussed in greater detail in due
course.
Further into the preface, whilst talking about the formation of ideas,
Claparede states that function fertilizes structure, and whilst I agree that
the requirement of something will shape how it is made, I believe that
how something is made also shapes the requirement it may be fit for.
This can be seen in marketing through the development of the
Hypodermic Needle Theory into the Two-Step Flow Theory, brought about
by the Minimal Effects model which held "media messages acted to
reinforce existing belief rather than to change opinion." 7 The theory
changed from the public audience passively receiving information, to them
considering it and comparing the new data to previous knowledge. This
brought the realisation that people thought about the news they received,
and would then talk about what they read, and that the knowledge would
be shared amongst the other readers, so what had been seen and built
towards, as a way to transmit news, and had benefited from marketing

5 Engel - p. 17
6 Bromley, Stephenson - p. 19
7 Croteau, Hoynes - p. 241

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LIT4017: Media English and Culture Dissertation
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techniques to engage and draw in readers, was then able to use that
structure to improve its function, for both ideological and economical
benefit, with papers now aiming for profit over a Pulitzer. 8 This process of
something or someone being altered by something which they are
affecting themselves is also seen within people and society: "Individuals
are shaped and in turn shape the roles they play, [formed by the
institution they inhabit] ... Institutions in turn are shaped by the needs of
society as well as give structure to that society." 9 This establishes a
ground-state integral to my observations and studied more closely later.
Returning to Piaget, his belief is that children have a different kind of
thought to adults, with an autistic or symbolic basis - the use of signifiers
and semiotics in advertising across all realms making use of this, and this
fact entrenches the earlier comparison to the parent-child relationship.
The consumer child's lower mind is addressed directly by the parent
marketing companies (in this study, The Sun) as a way to draw upon base
needs and curiosities.
The mechanisms used in engaging the lower plane, in addition to being
used to draw people in to intra-personal groups of shared interest, can
redirect their attention onto less significant matters. 10 By appealing
directly to the drives which motivate consumers as people, bypassing the
higher plane, papers, such as The Sun, are able to transmit curiosity and
participation without conscious awareness, in a manner similar to the
Needle theory, disseminating not information, but interest. These

8 Bromley, Stephenson - p. 19
9 Rosado
10 Dobelli - p. 2

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LIT4017: Media English and Culture Dissertation
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subconscious paradigms then take on the role of schemata ("unconscious
knowledge, shared within a group of people and drawn upon in the
process of making sense of the world") 11 within the populace.
Through the management and channelling of these drives into various
pastimes, under the direction of contrived governance by the institutions
of our countries of residence, there is established an equilibrium for
existence; and despite complaints of the current governmental system,
few actually remove themselves from it, setting themselves up elsewhere
in a self-sufficient homestead or communist retreat. This is due to the
psyches of the consumer market being moulded into a consumerist
mindset by the economical environment inherent in today's society into
desiring this very state. This could be due to the acceptance that occurs
when the status-quo is maintained. Or as Rossado says: " `If a situation is
defined as real, it is real in its consequences' Thus how one defines a
situation depends on how one perceives it." 12 This shows how, through
the schema created and implanted within them by the general media, the
public conform their individualistic tendencies into collective-orientated
traits and cliques, shaping the development and interests of the people.
As mentioned earlier, Piaget parallels Freud's model of the psyche, the
upper and lower planes of the mind equating to the conscious and
unconscious minds respectively. The upper / conscious mind interacts with
the world on a cerebral level, whilst the lower / unconscious mind deal
with the instinctual desires and, as we grow, suppressions held down by
the ego, and super-ego, a proxy of today's world, suppressing

11 Fowler - p. 43
12 Rosado

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psychological development. Freud describes this as due to the ego being
"essentially the representative of the external world, of reality," whereas
"the super-ego stands in contrast to it as the representative of the internal
world, of the id."13 So the ego is defined by the Symbolic, and the super-
ego is crafted by the Symbolic interacting, and to an extent over-writing,
the id, and the base desires and compulsions of a person.
The id, comparing most fully to Piaget's lower mind, through interaction
with the Symbolic world develops into the ego which forms the higher
mind, growing throughout a person's life, as a product of its environment.
The role of the super-ego is therefore left open; and subsequently filled,
by the voice of the press assuming the superlative parental role. This
develops into what is considered the conscience, the media compounding
its advice through reiteration and the ideas inherent within the schema it
creates, a theorem supported by Storey who states: "[The authority of the
parents (The Sun)] is then overlaid with other voices of authority,
producing what we think of as `conscience'." 14 The super-ego then
channels the id, through the structured use of schema, and "... acts as its
representative vis-a-vis the ego." 15 The Sun therefore becomes an avatar
for their audience's desires by manipulating their super-egos through the
creation of mindsets and social collectives, and reproducing for The Sun's
own devices the worldview that formulates the ego. This supplanting of
what should be an integral part of a person by a news corporation
indicates the over-saturation of the media in everyday life for the majority
of the public, and the artificiality of what is now considered to be a normal

13 Freud 1989 - p. 32
14 Storey - p. 72
15 Freud 1989 - p. 49

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LIT4017: Media English and Culture Dissertation
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life, or in the words of Storey: "What is called `human nature' is not
something `essentially' natural but the governance of our nature by
culture." 16
Freud believes that civilisation, since its inception, has suppressed the
basic human instincts, writing that "each individual who makes a fresh
entry into human society repeats this sacrifice of instinctual satisfaction
for the benefit of the whole community." 17 He highlights sexual impulses
as the most important drive, but the demands of society force the
repression of these. Freud claims that these subverted desires are
"unstable". He also says that "[sexual desires] are imperfectly tamed" and
"sexual instincts may refuse to be put to [a different use]." This creates a
dichotomy of intuition amongst the consumers - their interests, springing
from redirected desires, are then targeted and supplemented by what is
read in the press, but the actual sexual desires remaining unsatiated. In
support of this, Boorstin says that every time we attempt to satiate our
cravings, we only exacerbate them. 18 This leads to a bifurcated super-
ego, and a struggle for dominance between the ego and the id; a factor
which allows the covert extrapolation of these desires through other
means, such as The Sun's publishing of the supposed sexual
misdemeanours of the general public through Dear Deidre, and the
ubiquitous Page Three girls, etcetera. That The Sun addresses, and to a
slight extent, even redresses, these desires, through its content and
language provides a plausible reason for the paper's popularity 19 - the

16 Storey - p. 72
17 Freud 1973 - p. 47
18 Boorstin - p. 5
19 Bromley, Stephenson - p. 2

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popular rejoinder "Sex sells" 20 holding true - and allowing The Sun to take
on the role of super-ego, mediating the desires, and to an extent the
actions, of its readership.

20 Cutts (Bromley, Stephenson - p. 2)

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