Dumbing Down: Culture, Politics and the Mass Media

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2001), "Dumbing Down: Culture, Politics and the Mass Media", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 1, pp. 42-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.1.42.8

This is a study, almost a polemic, about the rule of cleverness without wisdom. Such a regime, arguably, is a “dumbocracy”, a place where dumbing down grows in power. It shows itself in the manipulation of markets, media and power. We can see it in politics and culture, media and science, education and law. Dumbing down, like spin, is both a mantra and critique of the time. Novelist Ivo Mosley has put together (from previously published but separate material) a plain‐speaking and controversial collection of papers from about 30 influential writers. The case is argued throughout with vigour and relish, and compels readers to think through their own position.

Dumbocracy builds up from innumerable elements in society – lifestyles fantasising about lottery wins, a media providing undemanding entertainment, the arts where high and low art are caught in a postmodernist trap of anything goes, and science more hocus‐pocus masquerading as serious thought. It characterises an education system intent more on social inclusion than developing independent thought and knowledge. It shows itself in a government purveying axioms about the third way and “we’ll take care of everything”, and giving us anodyne assurances that accountable parliamentary government still exists. A key contributor is Robert Brustein whose own Dumbocracy in America has been influential. Financial analyst Dominic Hobson’s piece on “let’s play shops” argues that, in a frenzy to set targets for teachers and doctors and universities, we have created a culture of illusion, set more on reaching targets (literacy, health, degrees) than asking what targets really are.

Underlying this are other illusions: that there is a political or legal cure for every ill, and that, by institutionalising social inclusion, everybody can be happy in UK plc. Deeper still are thoughts about democracy and individual identity, knowledge and the purpose of science – contributions from thinkers like Michael Oakeshott, Michael Polanyi and Jaron Lanier probe issues of state and personhood. Oliver O’Donovan suggests that “publicity” interprets and defines key meanings and symbols in the modern state and culture. Where knowledge becomes publicity, and mere cleverness is accepted as wisdom, we get dumbocracy.

The intelligent reader – likely in this case to be general readers, as well as students and researchers and academics – cannot but react to this fiery display of rightist polemics. But it really does ask a lot of questions that deserve to be asked and which many of the social systems currently are too self‐imaging and promotional to answer with any authenticity. It is excellent as a catalyst on any media course, linked with appropriate journalism and critical writing in journals like LM and Prospect.