Essay starting points

Themes

• History/end of/stasis
• News
• Images
• Simulacra
• Culture that simulates rather than lives
• Failure to create real narrative (symptomatic of culture; of structure of media corporations?) ---> news is increasingly desperate to do this every day though long-term it fails - creates stories rather than reports them - all we remember are "iconic images" devoid of any sophisticated/informed/real narrative meaning, and the then omnipresence of certain stories

Reference points

• Baudrillard (various)
• Nietzsche (various)
• Barthes (Camera Lucida)
• Sontag (Regarding the Pain of Others)
• Fukuyama (End of History & the Last Man)
• Sennett (Corrosion of Character)
• Foucault (Power)
• Belsey
• The Day Today
• Broken News
• Current newspapers
• Archived/online news
• Twin Towers reportage - THAT photo/footage, simplification of the issue to The War On Terror, elimination of the history that led up to it- the most significant simulacrum of recent times?

(TV) news' use of images

• - "exclusive pictures" - what do they say, do they form, facilitate or illustrate a story?
• our reaction to images - (sontag/baudrillard) - apathy, blurring of perceptions between real and simulated/reproduced
• images as propaganda - (barthes) - photo escapes semiotic laws - decontextualised quote, simulacra - easily used, perverted/manipulated
• obsession with a moment- replayed over & over, history never created, time frozen at that image and not moving forward, use of moments to split up the linear, continuous progression of time into eras, landmarks etc
• news jargon - frequent news-speak ("seminal moment", overuse of the word iconic, limited vocabulary etc), use of images as jargon, interchange of words and images as the two merge

Empty communication - (sennett) - in the corporate workplace, particularly in the media environment, simulation replaces achievement, work, progress; jargon facilitates the replacement of responsible, direct, tangible authority with flexible, slippery, 'amoral' leadership/teamwork

Post-modern condition - absurdity, chaos, abandonment of knowledge for its own sake; info collated for short-term gains, constantly reorganised for its own sake and that of "freedom" and "flexibility"; images favoured for their immediate impact, for surface communication and their pliability of "meaning".