HCJ Seminar Paper - John Carey - 'The Intellectuals and the Masses'

‘The Intellectuals and the Masses’ was written by John Carey to illustrate the population explosion, to which the intellectuals blame the ‘masses’ for. Any modernist books that were written, were to exclude the newly educated people from the 19^th Century when educational reform took place.

The Revolt of the Masses:

The ‘masses’ are known as the lower class, to which the people are not considered to be individuals they are only seen to be a part of this mass.

The majority of examples within this book are made by intellectuals who state why the ‘masses’ are a highly negative factor to civilisation.

The increase in population within the UK is described as "the essential disaster of the 19^th Century" by H.G.Wells. Wells explains three consequences of the population increase:
1) It causes overcrowding as everywhere is full, for example, trains, cafes hotels, parks etc.

2) It is seen as intrusion by the intellectuals because the crowd has taken over the places originally made for the best.

3) Due to the masses being the bigger party, they have a kind of dictatorship.

It is said that hyperdemocracy has created the modern state because the masses feel it is no longer necessary to have a political representative so they represent themselves, which the intellectuals then say is threatening civilisation. This becomes threatening because the intellectuals no longer have full control over the masses which they at one time had.

Within ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ written by Nietzsche, Zarathustra says, "Many too many are born and they hold onto their branches too long". Meaning he only wants the people who are willing to be different from the norm to survive and too many commoners are reproducing. People are taken within the masses and aren’t considered to be individual.

Nietzsche also stated, "everywhere the mediocre are combining in order to make themselves the master". The intellectuals were worried by the masses growing in power and influence, however they were making sure it did not get out of hand by writing new forms of work, which the masses were unable to understand as they were deliberately exclusive. The intellectual’s viewpoint on education was that it gave the public what the intellectuals wanted.

Popular newspapers were a major threat to the intellectuals as newspapers such as The Daily Mail were created for the masses. Northcliffe viewed newspapers as giving the public what they want. Newspapers introduced a new culture, which the masses followed and therefore bypasses the intellectual. Within these newspapers, stories of human-interest stories were very popular, as they included stories of everyday life, business and politics, which related to the masses. F.R.Leavis stated, "films, newspapers, publicity in all forms all offer satisfaction at the lowest level".

The masses had the same level of enjoyment while reading popular newspapers as the intellectuals had while reading sophisticated writing.

Newspapers then began to cater for women, which all men but mainly intellectuals highly disliked. Northcliffe said women readers are worthy of attention, which also created a threat for intellectuals as newspapers encouraged women to better themselves. "Are you visiting women? Don’t forget your whip." This quote from Nietzsche clearly illustrates how he viewed women.

Leavis said, "culture is at a crisis unprecedented in history", meaning no other period has seen this change of status between social classes. There was only a small minority of people who were capable of appreciating fine art and literature but this minority was being expanded due to more and more people being educated. This led to the intellectuals producing a class of literature that was only available to those intelligent enough to understand it, because once again they were then superior to the masses. Nietzsche states that ‘education should remain a privilege’ which supports the actions of the intellectuals.

D.H.Lawrence said, "only the higher forms of life live, the lower merely survive", and a similar suggestion from Nietzsche is that, "life in the modern state is a slow suicide". There was a lot of thought by the intellectuals regarding elimination of the masses, as it was considered "no more dreadful than the fall of leaves in the autumn". Yeats even said, "sooner or later we must the families of the unintelligent classes".

Modern art was said to be the divider between two classes; those who can understand it and those who cannot. Modern art was used so people can understand more of who they are.

Rewriting the Masses:

You will never see the mass in the physical sense and Nietzsche imagines he mass as a heard of animals, which strips them of human status. It is said that you can tell whether an individual belongs to the mass or the intellectuals. ‘Mass man’ is seen as lower class and therefore common.

The Mass Observation by Tom Harrison was carried out so that 30 observers used an impersonal notation when identifying human specimens. They would identify people by gender, age and social class. (M 45 D would be a male of 45 who is unskilled.) Masses were also considered as bacteria in a similar way that Hitler considered Jews as a bacterial disease. Hitler said, "only when we have eliminated the Jews will we regain our health".

The masses are often seen as crowds because they are dangerous. These crowds are seen to have the same characteristics as women: irrational, impulsive, emotional, and irritable.

Freud explained that the individual, on becoming mass man throws off the repressions of his unconscious instincts. He says that the intellectuals see the mass as being preoccupied with fact and mundane realism. The invention of the camera proved the way the intellectuals see the masses. The camera was in reach of everyone and was very popular among the masses. Taking a picture meant the image was what you see, and nothing more needed to be understood about it, it was fact.

George Orwell was a journalist and explained that he became aware of social classes at the age of 6 when he was forbidden to play with children who were working class. He once had no problem with the children but growing up with this mindset meant he then became enemies with them. He said, "all I knew was that it was lower class sweat I was smelling and the thought of it made me sick". This shows how 19^th Century society manipulated people into disliking the lower class. Only the individual can appreciate high culture and mass civilisation threatens to destroy the individual.

The Suburbs and the Clerks:

In the 1900s there was a significant increase in the number of suburbs and the number of clerks. The increase in suburbs was due to developments in modes of transport, which were in turn cheaper.
Intellectuals were known to have lived in old-style green outer suburbs, which were no longer present due to the greed of the landowners of this time that wanted to keep building houses and buildings in place of the greenery.

It was said that the educational level of the clerks was relatively low because education for the majority in Britain did not exceed basic skills.

The clerks were also unequipped to appreciate high culture therefore the intellectuals did not favour them either. This matter was mad worse when Northcliffe aimed the Daily Mail at the clerks.

"The rejection by intellectuals of the clerks and the suburbs meant that writers intent on finding an eccentric voice could do so by colonising this abandoned territory."

Natural Aristocrats:

Nietzsche said, "men are not equal, and the mistaken belief that they are is to blame for the degeneracy of Europe". He also says, "one has a right to be a philosopher only by virtue of one’s origin".

Being a natural aristocrat means having a secret kind of knowledge which only intellectuals can posses. Intellectuals say you should only trust what your body tells you.

Bell explains that, "civilisation depends on the existence of a small group of people of exquisite sensibility, who know how to respond to works of art and who also have refined appreciation of sensory delights such as food and wine".

　

The masses were very much feared by the intellectuals because they were viewed as a crowd. The only control the intellectuals could hold over the masses was language, which is why they produced new works in order to exclude the masses and to, in effect, keep them stupid so their superiority remained.

WINOL - Week 4 Report - 'Autumn Trends 2010'

This week was our opportunity to start producing features, which we had more interest in. A fashion feature was very appealing so research was underway to get more of an idea of how to style a fashion feature. Claire and I came across a ‘how to’ fashion video on the Elle UK website:

http://www.elleuk.com/elletv/(channel)/FASHION/(playlist)/Fashion-School/(video)/how-to-capes

The style of this video inspired us to create a feature similar to this in the sense that the model stayed in the centre of the screen, with the clothes changing at a quick speed and fast music, without any voice over. It needed to be relevant so the trend was set to be autumn clothes, which were to be our own. Our model was Elsa Findlay, who we approached through a friend and was more than happy to model for us.
The T.V studio seemed suitable to film this feature so we had the help of the production team to help us with elements such as the green screen and lighting.
Our thoughts to begin with were to have Elsa positioned in one place, and slight movement from her but the clothes to constantly change illustrating many outfits for the autumn weather. The background was planned to be white however we were soon informed that this would not work with the green screen, which is how we came to have 3 different backgrounds. As we were demonstrating nightwear for autumn, a wardrobe was the background to which we had clothes draped over the clotheshorse. We had brought leaves in specifically for daytime outfits but also found an outdoor image of an autumn scene, which the leaves complemented well, and for the evening outfits, the image of a lit street was used.

The camera remained in the same position whilst recording and we ensured Elsa’s positioning stayed the same also by markings on the floor. She was filmed for a small amount of time in each outfit, which made editing quite simple, as we needed short clips. To begin with, each outfit was only to be shown once, however, it was then decided to have shorter shots and to keep going back to all the outfits to make the feature energetic.

In the Elle video a remix of a current chart song was used and we were looking to have an upbeat current song also played throughout the video but were aware of copyright rules and regulations, and were told we needed permission to use certain songs. Ellie Goudling – ‘Starry Eyed’ accompanied the video very well however, after asking for permission from the owners of a website to use the karaoke instrumental version of this song failed because this video was going to be published, we found a song from

www.freenotesmusic.com

.

Not having a voice over was agreed before making the feature, and after it was created we felt it did not need one, but it was advised to write a voice over, as it would make the feature better. Our written article for this piece was used as a guideline for the voice over as we tell the audience what they will need to survive the autumn weather. Two versions were kept of this feature, with and without a voice over and I have to say I prefer it without a voice over. 　

WINOL - Week 3 Report

After last week, our editor wanted an off-campus navigation feature produced also aimed at the first year students, as well as two further staff profiles. The team was kept the same, Claire, Jake and I, and we followed a similar plan as the week before, looking for relevant and interesting people to include on the profile page. We decided to interview Neil Marriott, the Director of Winchester Business School, and Kate Gardner, Student Union Entertainment Officer. These interviews remained in the same style as the previous week – Q & A followed by quick fire questions.

To introduce our ‘off-campus’ navigation feature, the piece to camera was done by Jake again to keep these two features consistent and we filmed this at the View Point in the town centre, so the whole of Winchester was in the background.

As this feature was aimed at first year students who have just moved to Winchester, we were looking to include the stereotypical places most associated with students, such as, pubs, clubs, supermarkets with the best value for money etc. However, in doing this we remembered we could not film or name individual shops or restaurants as that would be seen as advertising. We were advised not to name any places individually in order to play it safe, so in the voice overs, places best for students in Winchester were described very vaguely.

Last week we were advised to include interviews in the piece to bring more into it, but because we could not name places – shops and restaurants - individually we decided not to interview anyone to prevent advertising – best meal deals for example. The only interview we thought would have been relevant was someone from Winchester’s Cathedral, but unfortunately no one was available to do so therefore we did not include any interviews. However, we were asked in the debrief why no one was interviewed and also why none of the places in Winchester were named. We were then told we could have done both of those aspects, we just needed to know the right way to go around it so that our piece remained neutral.

Editing was still an issue this week as once again we had problems with many of the computers when logging and capturing our footage. Our deadline was Wednesday morning, the same as the previous week, which was difficult to work to, as there was not a lot of time left to edit by the time we had filmed everything in Winchester town centre.

WINOL - Week 2 Report

The first WINOL week was very daunting. We had our first features meeting on Monday at 2:15 with our editor, who asked us all for our ideas and said she’d like navigation around campus feature made for first year students who had just joined the university. This year the features team wanted to begin including staff profiles on the website of important people around the university, and they wanted two profiles for the website every week, which we also started looking into.

Claire, Jake and I took on the navigation feature and began by booking out a camera and tripod and planned where we would film – where was most important to help first years find their way around. We chose, Reception, Student Union, library, Main Building, Food Hall etc.

To initiate the feature Jake presented a piece to camera outside reception, with ‘The University of Winchester’ sign behind him. We had been told not to include signs in packages if we can help it, however, not including one in this instance may have caused confusion to people outside of the university.

As we are students of the university we assumed we did not need permission to film buildings on campus, but thought we’d better check just in case and it turned out we did, so we approached the managers of each building and asked permission to film.

This was also only our second time using Final Cut Pro to edit anything and we had two days to edit this feature, so were feeling under pressure to finish this and two staff profiles.

While we were editing, we started to research people around the university who would be interesting to include on the features page of

www.winol.co.uk

.
We decided to e-mail the Student Union president, Seb Miell, and managed to arrange an interview for the following morning. As well as carrying out a standard Q&A written piece, we thought of filming quick-fire questions. We asked Seb his age, where he was born, to describe his job as president, future ambitions etc, while the quick-fire questions were more like, Pepsi or Coke? Football or rugby? Night in or night out? We did the same thing for the second person we chose, which was James Knight, who is captain for the university’s football team. The quick-fire questions were edited so that the questions would scroll on the screen in the style of a typewriter then the interviewee would appear stating their answer.

The main complication with editing was the computers, as we had to use a firewire to connect the camera with the Apple Mac, in order to log and capture our footage. But many of the connections would not work so it took us a while to get started on editing all three packages.

Once we’d finished editing the navigation feature, our editor checked it before we exported it and suggested we include interviews from people around the university to add more information and to also put a voice over in to describe all the places around campus rather than having just visual. Our deadline was the end of that day, so in order to put in these additional aspects that had to be moved to the following day. The manager of Waterstones, next to the Learning Café was more than happy to be interviewed, and we got a few words from Martin Filler who works in the Food Hall.

Editing these interviews took a while, as we wanted GV’s over the interviewees however, we did not get any of Waterstones so had to go back at the last minute to get shots of books from different angles etc.

Our Navigation around Campus feature was much improved by the interviews and voice over as it was move captivating and informative for our audience – first year students at the university.