Well major downside to writing long things in a blog widget: the damn thing doesn't have Edit Undo. So there goes half of my second response with one simple mistake. Cant we make the technology smarter, or wouldn't that require me to be more cleaver? Ug. On another note, I'm realizing that writing a response in a blog is far more reflective, conversational, and comfortable. Maybe because I have to care more, as I'm putting my thoughts out there?
What I was saying, and am now having to say again, was that McCluhan's analysis of film is an extension of the same argument I attempted to make before, e.g. that electronic technology provides a reciprocal relationship with time, in that the 'freer' we are, or perhaps the more leisure time we have the more we are consumed in technology/electronic media as an escape, or even a mode of being in which physical reality and electronic reality become blurred. The result is that we have much less "time" that we spend unconsumed in electronic media. A passage along these lines; "...the film medium as monster ad for consumer goods. In America this major aspect of film is merely subliminal. Far from regarding our pictures as incentives to mayhem and revolution, we take them as solace and compensation, or as a form of deferred payment by daydreaming...the movie is the mighty limb of the industrial giant." (394). I think this points out several things, 1) the means of control, really propaganda for goods/political views etc 2) the mode of complacency that is bestowed upon us socially 3) our experiences become dreamlike, movielike and the line is further blurred between 'reality' and 'electronic reality'. On the last point, I have often become confused, when thinking about some vague 'experience' in the past, I often ask myself, a) was I dreaming that? b) did I see that in a movie? c) did it actually happen? I imagine that I'm not alone in such happenings. This speaks to the further blurring of reality, I mean seriously now, hasn't the electronic 'world' become a part of reality? Not reality in the typical understanding, of a fixed state of affairs in the physical universe. My thoughts written into a computer exist, albeit, not in the same physical way that they would on paper. On the second point, movies, as much as they enter us into another mode of experience, as we absorb stories and information on the screen, seek to make us complacent, to absorb our minds, to take up our time and take keep us living in some experience that we 'had' (ie everything that goes into watching a film) but didn't actually 'happen' . In that way it is a method of control. The first point, then, is on this issue. Films that challenge the status quo, that challenge capitalism, and the government at least in America are either so subliminal that they do not have any effect, or they never circulate in the realm of popularity. I think this is the case simply because the industry is an industry and tied into money and a certain degree of power. You can't make a lot of money, or find good work in America if you are trying to incite massive social upheaval and change. These are just my thoughts...were the readings got my mind to go, I really have no idea wether they are logical or if they are clear to anybody else.
3 comments:
Hmmm got me thinking some..even tho I did nto read the actual articles.
One thought that popped into my head was that as we have more leisure time to use technology we have in fact less leisure time b/c more and more, our workplace invades our personal space..the lines are blurred...we work via technology 18 hours a day at times and work people have access to us thru email 24/7 etc. Seems we have less time away from the job than ever before.
The other thought I had was about media experiences..that never really happened to us but that we never-the-less experience. That got me thinking about vicarious experiences (ones thru say the media) verses "real" experiences and how they are different and how they are the same in terms of what goes down into our brains as having been "experienced." I was thinking about this in terms of vicarious trauma, as I see it in my work. If we see something on the TV or film or news etc and we are truamatized by it secondarily (vicariously) we can be truly traumatized...even tho we were not physically present the trauma (such as the hurricanes). Unrecognized and undealt with we can go thru life as trauma victims without really knowing it.
Similarly we can be traumatized just from listening to other's stories of truama ( as with therapists who experience vicarious trauma from working with trauma victims).So, what is "real" when it comes to media and life and "experience?"
Anyway...there's a couple of my thoughts related to your reflections.
Interesting stuff.
I wonder what the fascination is with the technology that pulls us in all of the time. Is it the potential to always be connected to one another electronically? Is it that, as McLuhan would have it, the electric world is an extension of our central nervous system and therefore absolutely compelling to us to explore? Is it the notion of narcissus that McLuhan brings up early in his book, that we fall in love with reflections of self? Is it all of these or something else?
Regarding film/propaganda etc., it seems very likely that few of us understand the extent to which we are lulled into complacency by our technologies. Though the excitement about the internet as a means of public discourse may belie that comment. People connect/discuss/create relatively free of commercial influences in cyberspace -- perhaps the revolution will be virtual?
Finally, interesting thoughts about trauma. Some images are better not internalized, which is the reason I have no desire to see certain films, I'd reather not have the image floating around in my head.
interesting points...on the trauma thread: i can't watch certain things either becuase my mind mulls over them and will not let go of the images. and it is a real sort of trauma...very odd. in a way the only distinguishing factors between "real" events and movies are a) one thing happend, and one was scripted b) one is 2d and one is 3...not a whole lot else that seperates fact from fiction.
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