Mass Media
In Briggs and Burke's (2002) chapter on "Information, Communication, and Entertainment," I was interested in the idea of Reith wanting the BBC to set cultural standards that didn't just "give people what they wanted" but that "it should bring into the greatest number of homes. . . all that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavor and achievement"(p. 178). It was interesting to me that once media became more "immaterial" in the form of radio waves and was broadcast into houses instead of physically being brought that there was a resistance in some models' desire to not provide entertainment. I'm aware that this is in some ways analogous to what has been said and to the idea of censoring books and the lower status of print material that entertains versus informs/"cultivates" reader/viewer/listeners a la "we've got trouble, right here in River City" of the dime novels in the musical "The Music Man." However, in reading this section of Briggs and Burke I found myself wondering more about the possible connections between immateriality and decorum than the culture wars per se. Also, because I am working on writing my paper about the transformation of space into place through the spatialization and meaning-making of sound, I was particularly interested in the discussion of nationalism and radio. Especially notable for me was the idea that "Spill-over broadcasting from the United States greatly disturbed the Canadian Radio League"(Briggs & Burke, 2002, p. 180). To me this connected to the idea that although the border between the US and Canada certainly was demarcated firmly in the 1920s and 30s there might have existed some fear that in being able to/being subjected to American broadcasting, the space of Canadian territory was in danger of being identified or marred by the American identity. Finally, I thought it was interesting that Briggs and Burke(2002) note that Latin American telenoveias played with audience participation in an early, limited form in audiences being able to weigh in on alternate endings.
In terms of the piece "The Galaxy Reconfigured," I found myself thinking about the claim that hypnosis occurs in the focusing on one sense to the negation of the interplay of others such that Blake's idea that 'they became what they beheld' is true as well as that "Every new technology thus diminishes sense interplay and consciousness, precisely in the new area of novelty where a kind of identification of viewer and object occurs"(McLuhan, 1969, reprinted 2003, p. 199). This reminded me of the discussion of the embodied computer user and the idea of fusion between technology and perception. Also, I was interested in how this hypnosis works with the idea that in the age "when Western man fought the harder for individuality as he surrendered the idea of unique personal experience" in the form of mass media (McLuhan, 1969, p. 202). Finally, being currently in the middle of Joyce's Ulysses, I can appreciate the connections between perception and the pursuit of stream of consciousness to uphold the "individual wells of subjectivity" that are lost in mass media. Additionally, although I am new to McLuhan, (even the famous phrase "The Medium is the Message,") I can see some connections to Lev Manovich's new book and exhortation in a conference I attended this weekend called "Software Takes Command." In his talk, Manovich asserted along the similar lines of an attention to medium that new media studies should now focus, as well on the database and interface more generally, on the idea of web-based applications as cultural software and that they are discursive and hold importance beyond the product of the application. Both McLuhan and Manovich seem to speak against the popular perception that any talk of specific medium or software or technology gets dangerously close to what we would be ashamed to be-- technologically deterministic. And while I do think it is important to not adopt a certain practice, especially pedagogically speaking, just for the sake of X, I think that sentiment sometimes does get applied too broadly. As McLuhan (1963) proposes, "If the formative power in the media are the media themselves that raises a host of large matters"(p. 209).
I'm not sure that I agree with Jordan, Jacob or Horkheimer and Adorno in the indictment of the Culture Industry. As someone who enjoys bubble-gum 60s music and who "needed" another version of "Prom Night," I am not sure exactly what we are arguing about. Horkheimer and Adorno (1969) say "The unity of style not only of the Christian Middle Ages but of the Renaissance expresses the different structures of social coercion in those periods, not the obscure experience of the subjects, in which the universal was locked away"(p. 47). Not so much along the lines of Indie music and film as Jacob has noted do I see a reversal of the homogenized offerings of the culture industry, but in the movement of what I guess I'd call "obscure taste." For instance, the movie Juno was not so interesting to me in terms of its main themes, etc, but in how the idea of liking things that other people don't know or listen to is glamorized. Unlike what Horkheimer and Adorno (1969) say about the man who does not conform being condemned to "powerlessness" as an "eccentric loner" with "economic impotence"(p. 50), the new cool of the "indie segment" of the population is predicated on the knowledge and preference for obscure, non-mainstream tastes. Although, the argument can certainly be made that these tastes while obscure in the present time are no more a divergence from the mass crud of the culture industry in any discernible, authentic way, but then again I am not sure what we are arguing about if we say that.
Also, in terms of genre studies (particularly in film,) I am very interested in what hundreds of "bad" slasher films or disaster films or creature features say about people in the 80s, 50s, or whenever. Is there any value in looking (like Carol Clover) at a body of mass culture products and saying "God Told Me To," "Slumber Party," "House of a 1,000 Corpses" are certainly not interesting separately, but say something all together? Maybe I am missing Horkheimer and Adorno's point in some ways, but it seems like the fight isn't about a body of work that could possibly not be filtered through the homogenization of mass culture, but another high/low debate, as Jacob pointed out. I do not think that I believe in the high/low debate, but in (at least the illusion of) a right to choose to see or experience different works based on my own perverse preferences, even if that choice is in fact menaced by the idea of mass taste. I guess that I believe now more than any other time that with the Criterion collection and other attempts at archival, I can gain access to almost any film that I want to see even if it is as unpopular as "House of the Long Shadows," or old as "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," or just stupid like "Castle of Evil." I guess that I am saying the distinction between high/low doesn't matter to me as much as access-- the movement from "what does the Blockbuster near my house have?" or "what pirated VHS tapes do my neighbors own" to the entire database of Amazon, Netflix, etc. seems more important in subverting the idea of completely homogenized mass culture.
Benjamin (2006), in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" presented an interesting point in the idea of the "cult value of art" and the existence of works like sculptures of the Madonna which remain covered most of the year to maintain their "aura"(p. 225). This is also presented in opposition to the idea of exhibition value as in the example of photographing and displaying pictures of dead loved ones. This was a somewhat striking reminder for me of the power of a relatively old media (photography) as magically re-embodying the dead. After photography there was no longer the portrait that "didn't quite capture Aunt Bertha's smile or nose, etc." Instead, there are at-home photo galleries and books plastered with pictures of our dead, seeming reproductions of them. Also, in the discussion of the actor's anxiety before the camera, as in seeing himself before a mirror, I was reminded of the film "Peeping Tom," which plays on the idea of camera/mirror and the "horrors of dissociation" by having the killer use a camera with a very large spike and a mirror so that the person's last image is their own terrified face, and the tension in the early story is of the bodies of these victims who seem to have seen the worst site in the world, they seem frightened to death. Finally, in the conclusion, Benjamin (2006) notes that "[mankind's] self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order"(p. 242). I'm not sure, though, that this is a new aesthetic pleasure born of mechanical reproduction, but it is interesting to think about too in terms of filmic images that are destructive being used in terms of the sublime (like the final image of "Kiss Me Deadly" of nuclear explosion).
Stealing from Matt, I guess this blog could have alternatively been titled: plugs for obscure movies. And Jordan, you can feel confident in your ~4,000 word "win." 