media urgency
we're reading two interesting pieces for class this week - one by david buckingham and julian sefton-green and the other an excerpt from steven johnson's controversial book: everything bad is good for you. both are talking, broadly and specifically, about media in our lives - and suggesting, perhaps, that something is happening because of just how much media we engage with on a regular basis. in both there is an urgency surrounding their discussion of media - of poḱemon and television, respectively.
buckingham and sefton-green assert the following:
"the texts of Poḱemon are not designed merely to be ‘consumed’ in the passive sense of the word. On the contrary, they are designed to generate activity and social interaction. Indeed, they positively depend upon it" (2003, p. 389).
they are claiming there is an assumption of "social interaction" that is embedded in the media and media texts associated with this cultural phenomenon. if so, then how does this impact our view of media - of popular culture media as well as media, broadly speaking. (i make this distinction intentionally because media is so often associated with "low culture" - and when media is invoked, too often, as brownwyn williams (2002) notes, we are quick to qualify our media engagements, i.e., yes, i watch tv, but mostly PBS.
so what? so what that as we get older we have qualms about what we watch? and so what that media texts expect us to make connections across multiple forms? perhaps it's true that we need "a change in the criteria we use to determine what really is cognitive junk food and what is genuinely nourishing" (johnson, 2005, sec. 5, para. 3). maybe the urgency make sense - are too many people are spending too much time convincing themselves and others about what they don't do instead of critically and thoughtfull engaging in what they are doing...?
in the spirit of narrative divergence, i have certainly diverted. but a question remains: what does media want/expect/assume of us? and where is our power/space/imperative to talk back? maybe we should embrace the urgency and create our own "world on fire" videos...
posted by lalitha @ 10:21 AM
3 Comments:
Dbeeby here. Thanks, Lalitha for those comments.
I was really troubled by both of these pieces especially the Johnson article. I had hoped that one of these pieces would make a valid argument for the case that modern media offer "cognitive nourishment" as opposed to "cognitive junk food". Neither did.
I realize there's some hypocrisy when I say that the memorized names of Pokemon characters and some simplistic Japanese phrases are useless because there are folks who argue that any kind of abstract learning (e.g. foreign languages) expands our cognitive thresholds and because even I would argue that baseball cards or chess moves are somehow a more legitimate form of memorization/strategization than some silly Pokemon game. This hypocrisy brings us back to the "high culture"/"low culture" argument... and I think there's a valid culinary analogy here. Junk food is bad for you... so is junk culture. Green leafeys are good for you... so is high culture. The thing is that Twinkies win out over tofu any day (America's wastebands and our gaped-mouths prove it). There's a permanence and importance to reciting Chaucer or knowing Ruth's ERA, whereas the next batch of kids off the playground won't give a damn if you know the names of all 158 Pokemon characters or if you have a class 1 dragon-demon with 100 charisma points in your dungeon. There's no social (read: artistic) permanence.
Johnson's article was even more disappointing. His whole premise seems to rest on the fact that more characters and information are being thrown at us. Does anyone believe that watching ER would make you a better, more prepared person in a medical crisis. Could one of us administer CPR after watching that show? These shows are simply bombarding us with Jargon and complexities (so we say "hey, if I don't understand it, it must be smart"). This is his "texture" (aka Jargon) and "substance" (aka oversimplification) argument and it doesn't hold water.
We've been reduced to a point where the lowest of culture can be presented to us in the following equation:
(Grit + jargon + urbane banter) x (sexviolence coeficient) = mind expanding programming.
Finally, his argument that even the "junk has improved" is perhaps more unsettling. Hmmm. a substance that grows ever purer and stronger in refinement... sounds like "drugs" to me and the networks say "the first one's free, but you have to pay for cable after that".
These two authors seem to idolize a degree of "mental labor" that consumables like Pokemon and modern TV require when in reality it's simply the same passivity, but with excellent marketing/intergration campaigns and language that is just slightly over our heads so that we think it's a real mental workout. Shame on us for believing these people and ourselves.
really interesting to consider the temporal nature of information - i.e. does what is considered "low culture" so named b/c of it's potentially limited shelf life?
are the lines so clear? between tofu and twinkies? and between chaucer and pokemon? what lies in-between? and do the same labels apply in our increasingly multimedia, sound-byte, intertextual world?
Lalitha, That's interesting... I never thought of "low culture" as a temporal limitation. Instead, I meant to imply that there is actually a lower "value" to the artifact. I know this is incredibly subjective and elitist, but there is some validity there, no?
Of course, there aren't clear lines. I'm sure Lance Armstrong occasionally indulges in the occasional "twinkie".
Finally, I think our increasingly "intertextual" world is part of the problem. Many of these "texts" are both low in terms of being debased and flash-in-the-pan. Does or doting on them prepare us to think more actively in our current world or clog up our synapses with the flotsam and jetsam of or culture?
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