Discuss the central role of TV, movies, shopping centres, and other post modern cultural icons in Mason's Shiloh.
Shiloh story by Mason often refers to post modern icons like TV, movies, songs and others. It is not an unusual thing because in most stories they are present but in general, beside the plot they do not have other functions. Here in Shiloh I think it is different. Mason uses a large number of references to consumerism to emphasize the lost of the national identity. Consumerism is so present in our life that we are tell how to feel and how to act by the system. This does not happen only in Shiloh; the entire North America has lost their identity. With the apparition of all those post modern icons it has increase dramatically since the 60's.
Those post modern items play a role in determining the faith and life of the character. Without the little Leroy's allusion to Wonder Women at the beginning of the story our perception of Norma would be different.
They affect individual in the real world not only in Shiloh. Just take by example the recent story about this guy who killed some teachers in a high school and then killed himself because he was expulsed from the school a year ago. These kinds of stories tend to happen more and more those days. We are so exposed to violence with the apparition of TV show like "Cops", "NYPD blues", "Power Rangers", etc... I know that in Ottawa they had to ban everything related to Power Rangers in schools. This TV show had such bad influence on the kid that even if the kid was just kicking in the air for fun he was expulsed of the school. Even if it's only a TV show people thinks it real. It's so part of our lives now that we tend to adopt those exterior values.
In Shiloh it's the same. Leroy doesn't know how we should feel about things and situations until he sees them on TV. The best example of that is when Leroy and N
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