Final Post

LIke many of my other classmates, I found Adorno's culture industry essay to be absolutely ridiculous and extreme, but could not let go of it throughout the quater. I absolutely loved it and Adorno's ideas on the whole media theory and role of media in our lives. Likewise, I also enjoyed Tomlinson's "Media Imperialism" as well as Anderson's "Imagined Communities". Having never taken an anthropology course before, I found these introductions to previously unknown theories fascinating. I also really enjoyed the Mirzoeff. I found it amusing that he incorperated teletubbies in such an appropriate way.
Some of the readings i found repetitive, for instance the Prins and the Tuner on indigenous media and national identity works such as Schwock and Davila.

Blogs: The Final Frontier

Blogging these last weeks was an interesting exercise to me. I am glad I was able to participate in what has started to become a burst of new media on the scene.

Blogs may be the most acceptable form of media to date. They are free, they are about anything and everything, and anyone can write them. Some are more popular than others but that is not because of accessibility but because of actual blogging ability and interesting viewpoints. Blogs are weaned out in the purest of ways: directly by the participation of the active audience.

And if any given individual does not like what they are reading, they can start their own blog. Everyone has the opportunity to say what they want to say, to represent themselves in whatever light they choose.

While I’m not saying blogs is the ultimate form of expression (Its often just a bunch of dorks with too much time on their hands, or a group of college students conducting a social experiment), they are interesting in the sense that they are not ruled by laws of profit, production, or outside representation. They are run solely by the individual and his ideas.

Critics and Media

I recently got a job in an area not surprisingly related with this class. For the last month or so I have been writing music reviews for the Chicago-based blog (“Web publication” as it says on my resume) Gapers Block. Doing this made me consider a unique medium that I believe we overlooked in the beginning of the quarter: that of the critic.

The critic is in a unique position because it is understandably both an audience and a producer of media. They are an audience obviously because they take in the media, but they are separate from others because their absorption of media is colored by the fact that they have to actively critique and write something about it for their own audience. They are certainly not Adorno’s passive audience, but they are a separate kind of active audience because their participation is also for their own media production and gain.

Critics also produce their own unique media. It is a secondary form of media in that it is not the actual production of art, but media produced about art. It does have its own audience, however, making it a unique form of media. I probably read more critique-based media (Op-Eds, music magazines, blogs) on a regular basis than any other form of media (except, of course, listening to music). This is interesting when you think of the fact that this time could be spent absorbing the media I am reading about instead of spending the time reading the critique. Does this concept mute the active audience because they are getting their ideas about media from an outside source or are they that much more active because it puts audiences in dialog?

Critics exist solely because of the world so saturated by media. They would not exists to such a degree if we didn’t have media in such a prominent place in our lives.

These various ramblings are just ideas that came to mind as I begin to see myself as a part of this unique form of media.

Adorno on illegal music piracy

Reading through the Nigerian Piracy article reminded me of an idea I maintain that most of my friends disagree with me on: that illegal music downloads/piracy/ this idea of mass distribution by those not in the “industry” actually sustains and promotes authenticity in a way. The music industry is a horrible corporate monster (as I like to think Adorno would agree with) that makes bands and artists struggle through years of toil before a profit-motivated record company CEO arbitrarily picks them because they have a hunch that’s where the market is going. With the internet all bets are off. Anyone can stream their music or put it up for download and get their name out there without having to suck up to the elite of the industry just for the chance to succeed. Bypassing this middle man, music spreading as rapidly as it does illegally through downloading puts essentially the “yay” or “nay” decision in the hands of the consumers who are, let’s not forget, also the fans. Of course this becomes problematic once a band wants to make any sort of money through their music, but that is what touring is for, right?
Radiohead just showed us all how fed up with the music industry they are by actually supporting this secondary system and releasing their newest album, In Rainbows, free on the internet. Ironically enough, even though I could have formally received it for free via their website, I still downloaded it illegally.

The Horrors of Programmed Music

Reading the Sterne essay “Sounds Like the Mall of America” brought back some frightful memories of the summer before freshmen year when I worked as a teller at a bank. While I have no complaints of working steady hours in an air conditioned building with little to no actual labor involved, the one horror I can recall is the programmed music. As an employee, not a consumer, I was on the other side of the programmed music. This means I sat for 40 hours a week listening to the same two CDs of “approved music” that the bank sends the branches. This music was meant to amuse customers so they wouldn’t notice how long they were waiting in line. What this music didn’t do was spark any kind of life into the employees. I don’t know all the songs included, since I am not that involved in pop music, but I do know that I heard Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” at least 5 times a day. 5 times a day x 5 days a week x 12 weeks. That’s a lot of Kelly Clarkson. Sterne said “The music in question is not meant to be listened to, but to be heard.” Well I was in the unfortunate position that the music was not designed for, I had to listen to it.
I definitely agree with Sterne’s idea that this background/foreground music builds sound spaces for people, but it did it in a different way for me, in that it separated work mode from everything else not just in the way I dressed or acted or where I was, but literally in every sense with the music as well. I found it so constricting that the moment I left I had to listen to something I associated as intensely “me” on the drive home in order to shake this sense of programmed music that I had endured for eight hours.
Divesting from the reading for a bit, I want to say that programmed music is by no means a bad thing. I do it with every aspect of my life, though in a less “corporate” sense. Driving, walking to class, reading all feel awkward if I’m not simultaneously listening to music. Roadtrips are defined by the playlists more than the destinations, and I have in the past been late to class because I had to find my iPod first. So I understand the need for mundane life activities, such as banking or shopping, to be accompanied with music, but I feel this whole idea of “programmed” music in the corporate design sense only mutes these activities more by operating under the principles that one should not actually listen to the music, or that these are the best sounds to define any particular experience.

More Imagined Communities

Reading today’s readings in light of Anderson’s Imagined Communities, I could not help but notice the irony in the media producer’s intention of the audiences vs. what actually happened. In the first example of the Egyptian melodrama, the producers sought to bring a more modern attitude or feeling to the viewers of the soap opera, to connect them to their principles of kinship and community in this way. Abu-Lughod argues that instead, a sense of individualism is sparked. The viewers begin to view their lives in this melodramatic sense, isolating themselves in a sense by portraying onto people in their lives the positions or identities of people in the melodramas and making themselves the main characters. In addition, however, the producers unintentionally created a stronger religious community among the viewers of the show. The subtle religious praises ignited the sense of imagined religious community among the viewers.

In the Dornfeld reading on public television, the many different opinions and production aspects that go into public television all have a different assumed audience, and thus alter the direction of any given program to please this audience. Because of the so many different opinions that go into public television specifically, every one person’s intended audience never was the actual audience. Instead the “hybrid” audience that Dornfeld describes is the actual community watching public television as opposed to each person’s imagined community.

Imagined Communities of "Cannibal Tours"

One of the things that struck me about the film “Cannibal Tours” was the “in between” nature of the village as described by one of the natives. As he said, the village he now lived in was not the village of his father, in the sense that it is no longer the isolated, untouched society that the people lived in. Now discovered by the “modern” civilizations and treated as a tourist attraction, however, the village is not yet “civilized” itself. It is in a limbo of development where the villagers are still living the lives they used to, but are now aware both of cultures and people different from their own as well as their status as a tourist entertainment for others. In a sense, this can be considered an “imaged community”. Their lives are forever altered by the presence of outsiders with cameras. They continue to live their former lives, but partially as display for the tourists, altering the finer points of their lifestyles. The tourists, as well, imagine what the native people live like but still are aware of how their presence has altered their way of life. For instance, their spirit house is actually in disrepair and missing practically all of its sacred relics, but it is imagined by the tourists that it is still a sacred space used by the natives for prayer important enough to pay to take pictures of it. The natives as well pretend that it is still sacred in order to get the tourists to pay for the pictures. Both sides are imaging and performing a community that no longer exists, a direct result of the very presence of the people who are doing the imagining and for whom the performance is happening.

Cultural Imperialism a reality?

In thinking about the ideas of cultural imperialism and the possibilities of revolution through media in the context of Thomlinsom and Harindaranath, one can realize how impossible this is in today’s Western society due entirely to the fact of media saturation in our society today. With the rise of the internet, Youtube, Napster, 500 channels of television, etc., whatever media we choose to consume can be consumed and all others be avoided. We have so many options that cultural imperialism, passive audiences, and propaganda or revolution through media can no longer have the effect they did even 50 years ago. Here we can simply change the channel, store personally chosen 20,000 songs on an iPod, and download almost any movie off the internet. The media has lost its imperialist power to the consumer.

Another Brick in The Wall

In a recent road trip I took this summer, one of the prime spots we stopped at was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. One of the most powerful exhibits I saw was the exhibit on Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Taking into account my bias as a huge Pink Floyd fan, the exhibit was exceptional, containing a huge segment of the actual wall used on the tour as well as other props (like the blow up model of the teacher we see in the youtube clip). Written on the wall was a quote by Roger Waters that really helped me gain better perspective on his motivation for the writing of The Wall as well as, after considering it in terms of Adorno, the concept of mass media and culture industry as a whole.
After some internet search, I seem to be unable to find the exact quote, but the idea of it as I remember is this: Pink Floyd was playing a show in Montreal during a tour for the album Animals (the two previous albums released by Pink Floyd at this time were Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon, so Pink Floyd was at possibly the height of their popularity in terms of popular culture/mass attendance at shows. Before this tour, the band and fans had the unique opportunity of being able to perform/ listen to Dark Side and other great Floyd works in intimate settings with minimal to no disconnection between band and audience. At the Montreal show, with Pink Floyd playing to mainly the popular culture consumers in huge arenas, Roger Waters told of never feeling more distant from an audience before. During one song he noticed a fan trying to climb the net that separated the “demi-gods” of the band from the mindless worshippers in the audience. Without thinking, Waters spit in this person’s face. After the show Waters had never felt so horrible, and he immediately began work on The Wall. He described his mission/motivation by saying that he could either remain “comfortably numb” to the position he now held in the realm of popular culture or use it to the extent that so many others have failed to do.
Here arrives the question of the possibility of revolution through mass mediated art. Waters’ and Pink Floyd’s art pre-The Wall clearly lost its intended meaning through its mediation into popular culture. But with Waters’ new-found realization of his place among “the masses” I think the idea of revolution he intended to portray through The Wall could possibly be more successful than a revolution attempted through mass mediated art without this self-realization.
Just to note some of the more obvious “revolutionary” points in Another Brick in the Wall, the teacher in The Wall reproaches the student for poetry, and otherwise not institutionalized thinking, but then as we see in the next scene, his lashing out at the students is really more emotionally driven by his frustration with his wife and her own domination over him. Possibly this could be a commentary on who is controlling the media/education/environment as a whole and what are their true motivations in terms of representation or even just what is and what is not mediated to the masses.
Also, through institutionalized education, the “machine” of the factory in the scene that the students are run though leaves them as the mangled, identical children marching identically to their places in society, reflected in Adorno’s essay when he comments on the muted forms of individuals we see in films and in characters, generic enough to relate to everyone, but still every individual is too specific to actually be one of the characters in the movie.
In terms of popular culture and mass media, we all have one of several options. We can either be mindless followers, eventually turned into mince meat by the presses of the institutions, we can recognize the issues and dream about revolution as does the main character in Another Brick in the Wall, or we can use mass media against itself in an attempt to change perception, as Roger Waters did with The Wall.

"Real" Second Chance

One thing I noticed repeatedly throughout both the Spitulnik and Ginsburg readings was how much truth and the concept of “real” play a subtle but important role in not just media but also the anthropological study of this media. Media, especially ethnographic or indigenous media not only have the potential responsibility of portraying different cultures unknown to the viewing audience, but also holds, maybe inappropriately so, the privilege of actually defining these cultures. This privilege can be seen as especially powerful as well as especially dangerous when one considers all the different aspects that make up the balance of media and the truth that goes into it, including producers, editors, audience, actual content, the labels given to the subjects, etc. This idea resonates with the producer of “If by Chance We Meet Again” when he so obviously antagonizes the bull owner and almost outwardly mocks him to his face in his questioning. Suddenly the piece is no longer a sad story of a man and his pet but a caricature of a man in the outskirts of America living an arguably crazy life. This one portrayal of the attitude of the producer eliminated, for me at least, the truth in the story and made it more of a work of fiction instead of a portrayal of a real man’s life.