Dennis van Vreden/draft1

http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/mediawiki/images/7/73/Essay_firstdraft.pdf (this pdf has the image I am talking about later on)

Be advised that this piece of writing is going to include several theories of mine that are inspired by work I came across during my research.


“People can’t believe that I would take the position that I take and actually mean it, so they assume that I’m being ironic. And quite often I’m not, I suppose.”
Bruce La Bruce


The biggest thing in writing, researching and discussing the theme of How Media Effects Us is that the majority of people are not aware of the effect while it is affecting them. Therefore the first message would be, and is seconded by essayist Rob Riemen (2010), that massmedia should no longer be blatantly interpreted as truth. Riemen speaks about mass-society, a name given to society by Ortega y Gasset in 1930. “A society that, according to early suspicions from Goethe and with all of the features that Tocqueville and Nietzsche had predicted, is indeed manifesting itself all over Europe.” Riemen writes that Europe is on the verge of being a free society (more specifically in this society, he states that media is broadening our view of the world). But that this great moment of history is being rejected by this massamens (literally translates to masshuman). This massamens, he so describes, is found in all classes, rich and poor, literate and illiterate. Riemen (2010, p.16) quotes Gasset calling it a “threat of the values and ideals of the liberal democracy and European humanism; traditions where the spiritual and moral development of the free individual is the fundament for a free and open society.” The terrifying part about the massamens is that he thinks he is always right without required arguments. Non-massamens have to adjust to him and “in the language of reason, he knows only one language, the language of the body: violence” (even more so, everything that is not part of this mass, cannot exist). Now what happens with the media here is also a reflection of the massamens. Massmedia is created, feeding the massamens, for he does not think. (2010, p.17) “He is free of all spiritual effort. He adjusts to the mass - with for his look the current fashion and his opinion the massmedia as his aids to guide him through life.”

Another worrying fact about this, is that the wiser and intellectuals of society are ignoring the fact that people believe the things in massmedia. And that is the biggest mistake ever. That this even happened inside the subculture is beyond me. In the documentary Paragraph 175 (2000), where several homosexual survivors (specifically persecuted for being homosexual) of the second World War are also speaking about the mood in Germany during the years that the Nazi Party became the only legal party. They would laugh at Hitler at first, thinking no one would go for this man and his promises. Within these years Hitler and his party quickly had achieved total control over all media.

Now let’s focus on contemporary gay subcultural media. I would point out first that it seems to have two sides, a silent more passive and a active (maybe even agressive) side. Both, I believe, to be influenced, maybe even created, by the massmedia. The active one being more obviously influenced of course, the other seeming to be more of a seperate world. It seems to be that one side is more content in staying a subculture and the other is fighting for revolution, a change in the mass-society.

I’m looking at Bruce La Bruce’s (2004) work. In the Raspberry Reich we see two men heavily kissing, making out, all over a busy street in the city of Berlin. We see one woman repulsively reacting, but the men keep doing what they’re doing. In an interview with BUTT (2006, p.208-217) Bruce says:“... there has to be a sexual revolution before there can be any sort of social or political revolution”

Homosexuals work paradoxically. two things always seem to contradict each other but remain true. This might be a true product of subculture. The result of it not fitting in with the norm, therefore it would always have a paradoxical tension with it (this is very obvious with Bruce La Bruce). I compare this to a political campaign. I don’t think you work with a paradox in politics. You are fighting for justice and there is no paradox in justice. The paradox would lie in politics itself, finding a balance in what is justice and dividing the finances.
This paradox also comes back in the pages of, what I now consider to be the epitome of gay subculture, BUTT BOOK. I scanned (p.218-223) six consecutive pages in the book that perfectly show the contradiction. The family portrait, which is conveniently set in the country, and the homo-erotic photographs, set in a closed, bedroom-like, room. The two would never seem to mix but only inside this one man.

The subculture will always remain a subculture. It is the opposition of mass-society. It is a political system of the human spirit.