Dylan Kerrigan
  • Home
  • About
  • Academic Writings
    • Consultancy Summaries
  • Books
  • Opeds/Blogs
  • Other Writings
  • Teaching
    • Graduate Supervision
  • Therapeutic Cultures
  • In the Press
  • Presentations
  • Videos
  • Research
    • Past
    • Current
    • Future
  • Blog

The Cult of Oprah

3/5/2015

0 Comments

 
The depoliticisation of the individual and how Oprah symbolises a dumbing down of what social change really requires...
Picture
Now the point isn’t that it’s all Oprah’s fault – after all it’s hard to blame the world’s problems on one person! That said Oprah does provide a good illustration of how common sense can make you believe things that aren’t actually supported by hard evidence. The implications of which are important to understand, not least for conceiving why we live in a world more interested in ourselves as individuals than organising together for social change.

First let’s start with storytelling. Human beings are all storytellers, and story telling or narratives are important ways we make sense of our everyday reality. Oprah Winfrey is one of the most popular and well-known storytellers in the West, and probably the world. Her stories carry a lot of weight in how many people come to understand things like happiness, health and work.

At first glance, and perhaps second and third glance too, Oprah’s stories do not seem problematic. On the contrary they often seem like keen insights and practical solutions for how to navigate the world and feel empowered.

For fans of Oprah many of these stories are quite familiar. There is the oft-told account of how Oprah herself made it and overcame insurmountable odds. There’s the story that Oprah tells that she is doing God’s work. There are Oprah’s stories about her many philanthropic efforts and giving back. There are Oprah’s many stories about the power of the individual to overcome any obstacles in their life.

Oprah is also very good at empathy and making viewers, readers and listeners of her stories feel like they are supported and loved by her. Her story telling style is quick to confirm how hard life has got for many. And she always acknowledges the stresses, anxiety and uncertainty of the this world to her fans, and uses her own life experiences as evidence that if you listen to what she says, and follow what she did, you can improve your life too. If only life were that simple.

Oprah’s message whether it is about your job, love life, personal relationships, dreams or whatever else stresses that the solutions you are looking for come from within you, and if you don’t believe Oprah, she offers you her life or some other feel good story, motivational anecdotes or life guru’s tale that supports her viewpoint.

Yet the issues of dead-ends jobs, the reasons for crime, the social destruction of poverty, the depression of alienation, the solutions to ecological degradation and the problems of massive economic inequalities across Western societies cannot be solved by Oprah’s suggested individual strategies for success. And never will.

Oprah provides a smokescreen against the real reasons for societal problems and rather than asking for people to use their individual powers to come together and ask for political change her solutions ask individuals to modify themselves rather than modifying the system.

There is no assessment or acknowledgement that most of the obstacles people face in their lives have nothing to do with their mental attitude or working harder and everything to do with history and biography. Instead Oprah suggests your lot in life is far more to do with your own shortcomings and attitude than anything else.

No matter that Oprah’s message is accepted and believed by 100s of millions of people around the world, it is still a bold face lie. Yet with so many believers Oprah’s prophecies and the story about the world her industry builds should worry us all.

Essentially Oprah, for all her good intentions, and those like here such as Joel Osteen and are turning their fans into depoliticised and atomistic individuals who no longer recognise the world’s problems as structural and systematic as most social science demonstrates it is and instead believe that in fixing themselves the world around them will change. Or put another way instead of wanting to change the system they believe the solution to the world’s problems comes from changing themselves.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of social and political change. By becoming hollowed out political subjects, disinterested in voting, politics, collectivism or the truth about global inequalities we have been seduced by ideology and storytelling, to protect the wealth and lifestyles or those with immense privilege.

Oprah in this sense is still an angel like her fans believe, but she is an angel on the side of the powerful. She seduces her fans with stories that play to the stories they believe about the world, rather than truths about the world. She makes fans believe that the reasons why certain opportunities and life outcomes are denied to them and beyond them is because of shortcomings within themselves, even if such explanations are incorrect and misleading.

Oprah of course is not the reason for the world’s social problems, but she is a storytelling mythmaker who’s tales support the status quo and hamper our abilities to change it. It would be nice if we all lived in a world where a positive attitude and hard work support social mobility, but that just isn’t true.


http://m.guardian.co.tt/columnist/2015-05-03/cult-oprah
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Academia
    Amerindian
    Bias
    Capitalism
    Carnival
    Census
    Change
    Charlotteville
    Christmas
    Cipriani
    Citizenship
    Class
    Clico
    Colonialism
    Comedy
    Community
    Conspiracy
    Corruption
    Crime
    Critical Thinking
    Cultural Logic
    Cultural Logic
    Cultural Myth
    Culture
    Degradation
    Development
    Differences
    Disabilities
    Discourse
    Discrimination
    Diversity
    Division
    Drugs
    Economic
    Economics
    Economy
    Education
    Emancipation
    Emigration
    Employment
    Environment
    Equality
    Ethnicity
    Ethnocentrism
    Ethnology
    Family
    Gang
    Gender
    Governance
    Government
    Grenada
    Hcu
    History
    Homophobia
    Identity
    Imperialism
    Inequality
    Institutions
    Intellectualism
    Justice
    Language
    Legislation
    Marriage
    Mas
    Militarism
    Military
    Morality
    Multiculturalism
    National Security
    Nepotism
    Opportunity
    Patriarchy
    Policy
    Politics
    Poverty
    Power
    Precolonial
    Prejudice
    Prisons
    Privatisation
    Privilege
    Progress
    Propaganda
    Prostitution
    Race
    Reflexivity
    Relationships
    Religion
    Rights
    Science
    Security
    Segregation
    Sexism
    Sexuality
    Sex Work
    Slavery
    (small-goal) Football
    Social Media
    Soe
    Solidarity
    Speed
    State
    Status
    Success
    Taboo
    Teaching
    Technology
    Tobago
    Tourism
    Trade
    Transparency
    University
    Violence
    War
    White Collar
    White-collar

    Archives

    December 2022
    October 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    August 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    February 2019
    November 2017
    October 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012

    RSS Feed