Reflection: Part 2

The following is a loose outline using themes of power and participation woven through some of the works from our reading list.

There’s a power structure inherent in media culture that relies on participation. The very idea of a media “culture” implies a shared set of norms and expectations and behaviors. We all buy in, to some degree.

It starts with the transaction.  In David Graeber’s essay, “Exchange,” he traces the idea of exchanges throughout history and prehistory.

            • rational choice theory – economic idea of market logic/self interest applied to human interaction

• uneven exchange – someone benefited from a power imbalance

Reciprocal acts

           

Language is among the exchanges Graeber discusses.  In the essay, “Language,” Cary Wolfe cites Derrida, who makes two important contributions:

• defines language in two parts: 1) rules governing the language itself; 2) speech acts of individual speakers

• language is not complete in any speaker: communication requires shared understanding between speaker and audience.

What is the shared understanding? From Roland Barthes talks about “myth” and the concept of the signifier, signified and the sign to explain stereotypes and mental shortcuts that are continually employed.  “Everything is a myth.”

Can we be sure of anything, if we’re accustomed to using shortcuts so frequently we don’t notice them? In “Senses,” Caroline Jones traces the concept of our sensory perceptions in history.

            • empirical knowledge as testable, experience-able

            • senses can be fooled (Cartesian doubt)

Frederich Kittler writes about the shift in sensory perception noticed as people adapted to train travel.

            • fast-passing scenery

            • “fly-over country” idea (pre-airplane, obviously!) meant the destination was more important than what one passed by to arrive there.

            • differing concepts of the journey itself via the dining car, magazines to buy/distract from the traveling

In contrast, Marshall McLuhan offers the idea that media and technologies are actually extensions of the users.  

            • technological determinism – function follows form, so there will be certain effects from using technologies because of how they were designed

So things can alter our perception of the world around us.  Is that bad?  (Maybe.)

Martin Heidegger writes about this concept as “enframing.” He uses an example of the water mill to explain the mental shift.

            • water mill uses water from the river to operate mill

            • hydroelectric power plant uses water, produces energy, stores energy, power company sells stored energy; river is no longer just river, it becomes a power source and source of income.

Walter Benjamin writes about art in a similar way.

            • art can be reproduced, therefore is no longer unique, becomes commodity.

Media can demand a particular way of interaction.

            • film – watched silently, for full duration with audience

            • laugh with your fellow audience members

Who’s in charge? I thought I was deciding what I’m consuming.  (Perhaps, but you’d still be choosing from what you’re offered.)

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” trace ideas of

• mass production, necessitating uniformity and conformity

• manufactured demand for the products of the culture industry

• barriers to entry for the industry, and the resulting label of “amateur” given to anything produced outside of the major studios

The drive to conform, however, isn’t demanded by big brother, but by our own desire to fit in with our peers.

            

Quote from Tocqueville “tyranny leaves the body free and directs its attack on the soul. The ruler no longer says: You must think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do; your life, your property, everything shall remain yours, but from this day on you are a stranger among us.”

To what extent are we buying in? Are we conscious that we have done so?