Читать книгу Sociology of the Arts - Victoria D. Alexander - Страница 50

As with reflection theorists, many shaping theorists have started—and stopped—with art. These authors do not convincingly link the content of the objects they study with the society where the effects are said to occur, as they do not present any data. They merely assert the effect. Adorno and the Frankfurt School are notable in this failing. Other studies have tried to make the link empirically; however, it is extraordinarily complicated to measure media effects. Lab experiments control many variables, but can only measure short‐term effects in artificial settings. Long term changes are virtually impossible to demonstrate, due to the number of factors involved. For instance, consider the reported fall in undershirt sales in the 1930s. Did sales decline because men realized, after seeing Clark Gable’s chest, that they did not need to wear undershirts? Or because women saw Gable’s chest and wanted their men to be like that? Or perhaps men had already stopped wearing undershirts as a rule and the movie reflected this trend, rather than shaped it? Or perhaps the movie had no effect, and undershirt sales fell because during the Depression, people were buying fewer undershirts simply because they had less money?⁶