are we better off?
i posed this question in class tonight with respect to the presence of television (specifically) and media (broadly). i think we only scratched the surface of this question. other questions still remain, namely: what do we mean by "better off"? and who does or doesn't from the existence of tv?
thoughts??
posted by lalitha @ 7:18 PM
2 Comments:
these posts make me think of the bakhtinian notion that all of our words are uttered in the echoes and shadows of other before them. so, without hope of original thought, i turn to questions:
does all of this reflexivity push us to ask different questions? that is, instead of asking what effect television has on youth, what if we asked what new questions a particular television program raised for the youth viewers?
can we rid ourselves of the persistent idea that tv is a waste of our time? should we?
what does "properly filtered" tv look like?
if not financial gain, then what could or should the purpose of television be?
what will it take to get there? who needs to be involved? what needs to be in place?
so how do we get there? who is implicated in the call to action that you propose?
- television stations?
- educators?
- the committees who write educational standards?
- filmmakers?
- researchers?
and in what ways can the message transform the medium? elicit new affordances for the growing numbers of technologies we have available to us? that is, when is a camera not just a camera, but rather a piece of armor in the fight against one-dimentional grand narratives?
mcluhan's words gain new meaning in these "new times" as we are all, from our respective positionings, challenged to consider the multiple messages that we convey through a variety of modes.
i've been reading "tuned in" by brownwyn williams and in it she's talking about the need for college writing professors to take tv seriously when teaching incoming undergraduates. the link to the earlier points is the reality that young people, now more than ever (and, i suspect it will only increase) are orchestrating multiple meaning making modes to convey increasingly complex and layered messages, and doing so with ease. at what point will 'we' take it seriously so that the great divide between the 'official word' (often printed) and the 'local word' doesn't deepen?
ok, i feel like i've gone off my own deep end here... but your cautious optimism energized me, susan. i'll also bring in excerpts from the williams' book to class tomorrow.
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