Week 9: Resistance and Discipline
The book defines manufactured consent as social legitimization in which the employees of an organization or society adapt and enforce to the rules or the established system of the organization. This type of behavior relieves the individual from any blame when they act within that system, where the “actors” cannot be blamed for their behavior as they are viewed as an extension of the organization.
An example of manufactured consent that comes to mind is related to a Doctor who episode called “Doomsday” where the Cybermen (a race of cyborgs) invade earth and attempt to convert humans into more Cybermen. There are two specific scenes that in my point of view address this section. In one scene, as the employees of Torchwood Institute are being “upgraded” into Cybermen, Jackie Tyler blames Yvonne Hartman (who is the administrator of Torchwood 1) for the invasion of the Cybermen (as Torchwood 1 played a crucial role in the Cybermen’s ability to manifest themselves into that universe).
The purpose of the Torchwood Institute was an organization created by Queen Victoria to protect the British Empire from alien threat and to collect alien technology to use against those threats. Yvonne’s role and loyalty to this organization validated her actions throughout her involvement at Torchwood and when Jackie points out that the reason why all the employees are being converted into Cybermen and why planet Earth is being taken over is because of the decisions and actions Torchwood took. Instead of protecting planet Earth, they were attempting to collect as much alien tech to be able to fight aliens. In the following clip, we see this interaction as Yvyonne justifies her actions within Torchwood as she was “doing her duty for queen and country”.
As an individual person that is part and has a leadership role within this organization, she was just acting out what was expected of her, she was loyal to the organization’s cause. The other interesting about this episode is that not only do we see an example of manufactured consent but we also see this character challenge the legitimate power of the new organization she is now part of. Once she is already a Cybermen (and in theory devoid of human emotion) she continues to uphold the values of her previous organization by challenging the nature of the Cybermen (all Cybermen follow a Cyberleader) and she goes against that and against the Cybermen and attacks (as seen in the following clip).
The reason why the concept of manufactured consent is so important is because as individuals become part of organizations, they become part of that culture and develop a sense of identity within that organization. When individuals see themselves as parts of the whole, extensions or representations of the organizations they reside in, loyalty can be a result of that. Even the values of an organization do not resonate completely with the individual values of the person, the employee can still act out the organization’s values because they feel they are not misrepresenting themselves. They are not in fact acting out as themselves but as an extension of the organization they are part of.
