Addicted to an Online World

When many people think about videogames, they imagine a thoughtless experience where someone idly plays a game to pass time, compete with friends, or procrastinate from work. But in her book Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle explains how role-playing games and other MUD’s (see this post) have created near-utopian escapes from real life trials and tribulations. Because of the appeal these games have, it is not surprising that people are susceptible to becoming addicted to Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMORPGs).

In this article, Michael Fahey describes the course of an addiction to the MMORPG EverQuest. He explains how, over the course of a mere four months, he managed to lose his girlfriend, car, job – essentially his life, all because he was completely consumed by his life in an online world. At one point he stopped eating, sleeping, or interacting with the people that he loved, all because it would take up time that he could have been spending online in EverQuest. Ultimately, he says, the videogame was not at fault, he was. Personal problems and self-esteem issues drove him to the game, and he found it easier to play the game than address his real life. “I ran from my problems, hiding away in a virtual fantasy world instead of confronting the issues that might have been easily resolved if I had addressed them directly. As far as I am concerned, the only thing Sony Online Entertainment is guilty of is creating a damn good hiding place”.

This story is a fascinating read, and I found myself truly sympathizing with Michael’s problem. But in doing so, I realized, both myself and Michael may have been missing a very important point to consider. Perhaps spending all of his time in a virtual world was not a terrible thing to be doing. How and why do we differentiate our virtual lives from our real ones? Why would it not have been perfectly acceptable for him to have an online job, online girlfriend – to basically spend his main life online?

Masculinity Through Media

In Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity, author Jackson Katz explores the role that advertising plays in shaping male cultural identity. He says that advertisements geared towards young men succeed by stressing gender differences by “constantly reasserting what is masculine and what is feminine” (352). He says that, “One of the ways this is accomplished, in the image system, is to equate masculinity with violence, power, and control” (352). He goes on to argue that there are two main subjects that advertisers use to capitalize on this effect: the military and sports. These ads inherently capitalize on characters with traits associated strongly with masculinity, whether it is a soldier demonstrating leadership or fearlessness, or a football player demonstrating strength, toughness, or teamwork. These advertisements succeed because, as Katz says, they utilize “male icons overtly threatening consumers to by products” or “exploit men’s feelings of not being big, strong, or violent enough by promising to provide them with products that will enhance those qualities.”

This topic of defining masculinity is the same one driving the film Tough Guise: Violence, Media & the Crisis in Masculinity. In it, the narrator explores the many facets of popular culture that have helped instill violence, toughness, big muscles, etc. as essential to “being a man”. The narrator shows a large number of heroic figures from movies that have been portrayed as desirable: nearly all of them are violent and ripped, and commonly rewarded for killing and beating up other men. Similarly, in sports, he shows that the biggest stars, he uses the example of Mark McGuire, are celebrated not for their kindness or charity, but instead for their brute strength and toughness. The result of all of this inaccurate portrayal of masculinity in the media, the narrator argues is terrible, “violence becomes an accepted cultural norm” amongst men and boys. He argues that this leads to everything from school shootings to gang violence. In many ways, the effect of this widespread representation of masculinity can be summed up in the statistic pulled forth by Katz: “approximately 86% of violent crime is committed by males” (349).

Bamboozling Questions

Spike Lee’s Bamboozled is a satire that raises a ton of questions about how we view race, and how race is portrayed in the media. It tells the story of Pierre Delacroix, a highly educated black man who works for a large media network tasked with attracting a higher number of minority viewers. Delacroix hates his job, but the only way that he can get out of his contract is by being fired, so he decides to pitch a concept so racist and ridiculous that the network will have no choice but to release him. He comes up with a pitch for a modern day minstrel show called Mantan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show. Although the plot of the created show was undeniably racist, with offensive jokes and puns, ridiculous stereotypes, and a cast in blackface, it was still embraced by Delacroix’s crazy white boss Dunwitty. The show becomes a huge success on television, but it isn’t long before everything gets out of hand.

While the plot of the film, especially the characteristics of the modern minstrel show, may seem a bit unrealistic from a 21st century perspective, the movie harkens back to a much different period in the history of our country’s entertainment industry. Not only do Delacroix and co. create show that adheres to trademark features of old minstrel shows, but Bamboozled is filled with references to specific shows, minstrel performers, and even historic black television shows such as Amos and Andy. In this way the movie helps establish a strong link to the past, but the main power of this film draws from its ability to raise a number of questions about how we think of race in the present.

One question that frequently surfaces is that of what it means to be black (or any race for that matter). This can be seen with Delacroix’s struggle to identify himself, especially when dealing with his boss. Dunwitty claims to be “blacker” than Delacroix even though he is white, all because he talks in slang, pretends to love black culture, and has memorabilia of famous African-Americans all over his office. He goes so far as to tell Delacroix that it is alright for him to say the word “nigga” because his wife is black. How do we as a culture define race? What are the consequences of labeling a person who is ethnically white as black, or vice versa?

Other questions about race are raised throughout the film, even by more auxiliary characters. For example, Julius, the older brother of Delacroix’s aassistant Sloan, changes his name to “Big Blak Afrika” as a response to a feeling of oppression and the lack of freedom that he feels in the current social and political system that he is a part of. Also, Mantay and Womack, the two main performers in the minstrel show, have to decide whether or not to continue acting in the show, weighing money and fame versus the integrity of their racial identity. In the end, Julius’ rap group the Mau Maus takes matters into their own hands to end The New Millenium Minstrel Show. That bears the question; whose responsibility is it to police racial prejudice? And what steps must we all take to combat racism and harmful stereotypes?

Bamboozled is a powerful film that forces the viewers to reassess a number of issues regarding race and segregation. In harkening to a dark past, the movie raises a number of questions about the power of racial representation in the media. But beyond that, it targets issues of race that are inherent in nearly all aspects of life, and leaves us wondering; when is something racist? What causes and helps perpetuate racial discrimination? At one point in the film Dunwitty praises the stereotypes on Mantan, and defends them to Delacroix “the show can’t be racist,” he says, “because you’re black.” How did our society get to the point where this would be considered a perfectly legitimate statement?

Selling Disaster

In "Televisual Politics: Negotiating Race in the L.A. Rebellions," John Thornton Caldwell looks at how the race riots in Los Angeles during the early 1990's were portrayed and influenced by the media and news coverage. I found many parallels between the article and the coverage surrounding the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. But a commonality that stood out as particularly disturbing to me is that in both cases people are selling - and buying, keepsakes and merchandise documenting the events.

Caldwell uses the example of people buying VHS tapes of the events in L.A. for $19.95. He says that "The big response also contained the threat by commoditizing it" (page 322). In other words, he says, people become less disturbed and overwhelmed by the various major issues that arose during the race riots by purchasing, or consuming, the news as if it were a commodity. This is a concept that can definitely be seen during the aftermath of 9/11, where street vendors and major retailers sell all kinds of keepsakes and trinkets memorializing the attack on the World Trade Center (for example the Christmas ornament pictured above). By purchasing these items, people are potentially able to reduce an otherwise terrifying and overwhelming experience into an object or collection of footage, making it easier to connect with and move on from.

This process, Susan Sontag would argue, is the same thing that happens when we take, look at, or collect the photograph of a horrific or tragic event. On Page 9 of "In Plato's Cave," she says "As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people take possesion of space in which they are insecure". To this effect the act of picture taking, or even looking at a picture, becomes an event all in itself, Sontag says. I would argue that there are inherently emotions associate with this event, which is likely why our perceptions of an experience are forever changed once photography (or purchasing memorabilia) is introduced.

The Power of Film

Take a moment to watch this video clip, part of the Omaha Beach landing in the movie Saving Private Ryan. The scene depicted is very, very violent, and watching it will likely conjure up a whole range of emotions. Feelings of shock, sadness, disgust, angst or any dozens of others will likely be triggered by the pain and death facing thousands of young soldiers as they stormed the coast of France, prepared to die for their country.

As gripping as the scene is, the fact that you are feeling an emotional attachment to video such as this one is due to a phenomena outlined by Walter Benjamin in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". He says that creating a film "presents a process in which it is impossible to assign to a spectator a viewpoint which would exclude from the actual scene such extraneous accessories as camera equipment, lighting machinery, staff assistants, etc." (page 233), which he says, in contrast to theater and other mediums, gives the film an "illusionary nature". In other words, part of the reason we feel involved with the content of a movie, in contrast with that of a play, is because when viewing it we have no evidence of the steps taken to render the scene, and there is nothing to demonstrate that it is a documentation of something other than reality. Let's look back at the scene from Saving Private Ryan: whenever someone is shot, or loses a limb and body parts and blood fly everywhere, as viewers our instinct is to feel sick, upset, or shocked - in other words to treat the situation as if we were watching real explosions, real blood, and real people dying. Of course, nobody is actually being harmed, but because of film and cutting techniques, there is no visual evidence that the scene depicted is anything but reality,  and as a result, we become immersed in the images we see.

Another effect that Benjamin touches upon is the power that films generate from utilizing the close-up. He says, "by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace miliens under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action" (page 236). The concepts behind this quote apply perfectly to Saving Private Ryan, as the opening scene uses the close-up in many respects. For example, it is instantly worth noting that the director chose to focus specifically on one unit in the battle of D-Day, rather than merely give an overhead view of the entire battlefield or even jump across different parts of the shore. In addition, he zooms in to faces or battle wounds to convey emotions of fear, pain, and stress.

It is the result of these techniques that make it easy to suspend disbelieve when watching a movie, which makes it easier to become involved with and therefore more likely to be engaged. In a fitting conclusion, Benjamin says, "The film with its shock effect meets the mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention" (pages 240 - 241)

Photographs as Reality in the Digital Age

Seeing this photograph for the first time, whether it was in the Los Angeles Time or on MSNBC, millions of people accepted this image just as it was billed: an Iranian test launch of four ballistic missiles in the desert. At first glance (and second... and third...) there appears to be absolutely nothing wrong with the image. This image, taken last July by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, was altered prior to being released to the press.

See if you can spot what might have been changed, and click below to see the full post to see whether or not you spotted the modification:

Soldiers Using Ipods Echo McLuhan's View of the Radio

In the chapter of "Understanding Media" entitled "Radio: The Tribal Drum," Marshall McLuhan explains not only that radio can effectively influence its listeners (as is the case with any medium), but also how it is able to do this. On page 302, McLuhan says,

"Radio is provided with its cloak of invisibility, like any other medium. It comes to us ostensibly with person-to-person directness that is private and intimate, while in more urgent fact, it is really a subliminal echo chamber of magical power to touch remote and forgotten chords. All technological extensions of ourselves must be numb and subliminal, else we could not endure the leverage exerted upon us by such extension" (McLuhan, page 302).

What McLuhan is arguing here is that radio innately contains certain leveraging powers towards its listeners, and what makes this possible is that this interaction occurs entirely in the subconscious. He says that if people were directly aware of the influence that radio was having upon them, they would be less likely to accommodate (and therefor change with), what they were hearing.

Today, one of the biggest competitors to mainstream radio is the now widespread use of iPods for listening to music. In my own personal life, where I used to listen to the radio as I fell asleep or drove in the car, I now have my iPod to entertain me. As a result, I was very intrigued to find that I was reminded of McLuhan's comments when I stumbled across an interesting article online about iPods and soldiers. In this article, How the iPod became a tool of war, reporter Ian Sample of the British newspaper The Guardian explains the growing role of music as a tool to motivate and pump up soldiers at war in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Much like McLuhan's concept of radio, it is illustrated that the subconscious assimilation of music with violent lyrics, like those of songs by Eminem and Metallica, are able to actually motivate the soldiers to be more prepared to fight. For example, in this audio interview with Sergeant First Class CJ Grisham, the soldier explains how the blaring of the song Go to Sleep by Eminem and DMX would "artificially make [the soldiers] agressive" before a conflict, and as a result became a normal pre-battle ritual. The effect is so notable, says Sample, that, "What's interesting about the work is not so much which bands soldiers are drawn to, but the extraordinary terms they use to describe the power the music has over them. Some talk about tracks turning them into monsters, making them inhuman so they can do inhuman acts."

So just as McLuhan perceived of the radio, its successor the iPod has essentially the same power to act as a strong, subconscious motivator. In fact, its strength to rally troops in war is so evident that many soldiers, as Ian Sample puts it, "only half joking, say iPods should be standard issue for soldiers. The psychological effect the music has, and highly stressful situations, make for a powerful mix."

MUD's: The New Newspaper

In chapter two of his book "Imagined Communities," Benedict Anderson describes the role that media, specifically newspapers, have had in unifying large groups of people, since around the 16th century. He argues that although reading a newspaper may seem like a truly independent affair, which he explains by saying "it is performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull" (Anderson, page 35), habitually reading the paper ultimately serves to establish the reader's place in a larger community. Anderson goes on to say that this occurs because,

"each communicant is well aware (while reading a newspaper) that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has no the slightest notion. Furthermore, this ceremony is incessantly repeated at daily intervals throughout the calendar. What more vivid figure for the secular, historically clocked imagined community can be envisioned?" (page 35).

In almost a direct response to that question posed by Anderson years before, Sherry Turkle, introduces the current scenario that exists with users of Multi-User Domains, also known as MUD's. In chapter 10 of her book "Life On The Screen," Turkle describes this technology, which enables people to create a separate online identity in a virtual domain, on that can coexist with their "real" identities in the physical world. Turkle evokes the work of social psychologist Kenneth Gergen, and explains the unifying effect that these online worlds can have. Just as was made possible by the creation of newspapers centuries ago, with the adoption of MUD's "Individual notions of self vanish 'into a stage of relatedness. One ceases to believe in a self independent of the relations in which he or she is embedded," (Turkle, page 257).

So although their creation is separated by about 500 years, newspapers and Multi-User Domains achieve the same thing - they create independent experiences and identities that actually serve to unify a larger group amongst all who use them.

Meyrowitz in Europe: Hot or Cold?

During the introduction to Joshua Meyrowitz's book "No Sense of Place", the author describes the scenario that faced him upon returning from a trip backpacking across Europe. His international journey had inevitably left him with dozens of interesting stories, but he faced a situation with which I'm sure you all are familiar with - he found himself subconsciously telling different stories to different people. Meyrowitz explains, "I did not give everyone I spoke to exactly the same account of my trip. My parents heard about the safe and clean hotels in which I stayed... (while) in contrast, my friends heard an account filled with danger, adventure, and a little romance" (Meyrowitz, pg. 1). He goes on that he is neither lying to his audiences, nor even stretching the truth of his trip to Europe: he is merely selecting which truths to convey to which people.

But why does Meyrowitz - or any of us for that matter - ever behave in such a way? He goes on to explain that certain activities and audiences require different behavior (on page 2 he compares sitting in church, where it is polite to be silent and passive, to eating dinner at a friends house, where it is not). This is pretty straightforward and logical, but something that often slips through our strains of consciousness nonetheless.

Throughout the rest of the introduction, Meyrowitz introduces other famous media theorists, among them Marschall McLuhan. He says "McLuhan describes media as extensions of the senses, and he claims that the introduction of a new medium to a culture, therefore, changes the 'sensory balance' of the people in that culture and alters their consciousness" (page 3. In other words, he is building upon his prior claim that we all alter our behavior for different audiences by saying that the media helps determine specifically how we judge our audience, and how our behavior changes accordingly. To further support this statement he explains how the perception of gender roles changed as a result of media events that occurred, on television and radio, during the 1960's.

But although Meyrowitz gives props to McLuhan in this reading, he regrets to note an important connection that exists between the idea of altering behavior based on audience, and with another of McLuhan's work. In "Media Hot and Cold", Marshall McLuhan breaks down the various forms of media technology that existed at the time into two distinct categories: Hot and Cold. Hot media technology he describes as being "high definition", and "extending on single sense" (McLuhan, page 22). Going further, he helps categorize a hot medium as one that is detached and rustic, and its examples include writing, photography, and radio. In contrast, a cold medium is one that is interwoven and modern, and includes the telephone, tv, and speech.

Why are these two distinctions important, or at least relevant to Meyrowitz? We can use the medium type to determine whether or not we will alter the information that we convey. In the initial example, Meyrowitz clearly demonstrates how through speech the audience interacts directly with the audience, and therefore acts accordingly. This is also the case when talking over the telephone - the audience is known, and both parties will cater their dialogue specifically towards whom they are talking. What do both of these mediums have in come? McLuhan categorizes them as Cold.

Conversely, with Hot mediums, it becomes impossible to directly cater to a specific audience. In writing or photography or film or radio, the author or the media has no idea who will view their work. As a result, it becomes inevitable that the burden of the interpretation of the work relies almost entirely upon the audience. They ultimately craft their own meaning and emotional responses using the tools given by the author.

This is just an interesting connection that I made when re-doing the readings, it is interesting that someone as well versed as Meyrowitz in McLuhan's work failed to touch upon "Media Hot and Cold". It enables us not only to categorize the various media technologies, but also to predict how we will convey ideas across a wide range of medium.

Mass Culture

As this very blog exemplifies, the ideas behind "mass culture" and "mass society" are drastically changing during the internet age. In his essay "On/Against Mass Culture Theories", Peter Gibbian describes the traditional views of the public. He says, "Mass society was defined and described by culture critics such as Ortega and Gasset as a society in which the heedless many use the creativity of the few: his 'mass man' does not invent, but merely uses other people's inventions" (Gibbian, pg 14). In other words, the work and ideas of the famous represented the viewpoints of the many.

In explaining this theory, Gibian paraphrases the writings of theorist Frederic Jameson, who explores important ideas of media through looking at the movie Jaws. Together they essentially explain that public reaction to the shark (and therefore sharks in general), that it is something to be feared, results directly from how the three main characters in the film react to it (page 22). In this example, Gibian would argue that the three characters represent the "few" described by Ortega and Gasset. Their opinions (demonstrated through dialogue, as well as through body language and actions) influence the audience of the film. These people then go on to play a role buying scary shark posters, inspiring shark attack reports on television, and generally spreading a negative sentiment and fear of sharks. Ultimately the widespread hysteria and creation of programming such as Shark Week on Discovery Channel, all stems from the opinions of three scared, albeit fictional, men on a boat.

I, on the other hand, would be likely to argue that this idea is not essentially the case anymore, as a result of the widespread adoption of the internet. Now, when a celebrity or created personality says something, it is almost instantly evaluated and contradicted by thousands of people on the web. Through blogs or websites, ordinary people can express their thoughts and opinions in a widely accesible place, and as a result, people are more often receiving news and opinions from what would have been considered the "heedless many" by Ortega and Gasset. So as a result of the internet, a web documenting the flow of opinion and information is much more tangled and interrelated now than it would have been twenty years ago.

Welcome!

Welcome to Sam Rounds' Media Journal.

This blog will serve to function as the required journal for my Media and Identity course, and as such will primarily highlight any responses, insights, and ideas stemming from our assigned readings and class discussions.

But in creating this blog, I was motivated to eschew the traditional journal format; in other words I sought to escape the realm of the physical and to publish my thoughts into a digital existence. By creating a journal online I have made something that can be seen by not just my professor, Dr. Anna Akbari, but by anyone in the world to whom my analysis may be relevant. My posts can be commented on by my instructors or my peers, can be edited and made more relevant over time, and can combine many forms of media (video, sound, photography, etc), to help support the ideas and works of history's great media theorists.

So in creating my journal as a blog website, I am essentially creating an analogy for modern media in the internet age. Technology today has allowed even the tech-illiterate (see: Me) a chance to share their ideas and opinions with the world. I look forward to taking advantage of this opportunity, while hopefully providing a thoughtful and interesting analysis on the role of media in shaping our various identities.

Thanks for visiting the site

-Sam