DRAMATURGY, POLITICS AND THE AXIAL MEDIA EVENT

Current theorizing on the role of media in politics and interpersonal relations in contemporary American society not only echoes questions about connections between modernity and viable democratic politics (Ortega y Gasset 1932; Jay 1973; Kornhauser 1959), but also tends to see the media as an insidious and even erosive cultural force (Debord 1983; 1990; Edelman 1967; 1988; Poster 1990; McKibben 1992). Politics is shaped by the mass media and by the dramatic engaging visual spectacles it presents. In this way, a dramaturgical social theory both reflects society and is a means to analyze it. Clearly, drama suffuses modern life figuratively and literally, in part because media genres compete with personal experience as ways of ordering problematic situations. Drama, in various forms, along with war and sport, is the dominant metaphor of our time. A dramaturgical framework emphasizing audience, performance, and theatrical aspects of everyday life, is therefore appropriate for examining changes in the relationships among media, politics, and interpersonal relations.