Shadows cast by media scholars

Selecting a scholar for a presentation…

Mei: What’s the homework for the media class?

Ariana: Prof told us to select one media scholar and present a key concept and quotation on a single PowerPoint slide.

Mei: Who do we have to choose from?

Ariana: Postman, Baudrillard, Chomsky, Debord, McLuhan and others.

Mei: Ones who are pretty critical of media then?

Ariana: Critical? That’s what scholars do, criticize, isn’t it?

__________

Voice-over

Concepts like news are packaged like entertainment, distinguishing between real and unreal is difficult, media company owners influence content, mass media is about spectacle, and the message being influenced by the medium. Notions with a darker side.

Driving into the Future

Taking on a new course about TV and the future…

Stephen: Television is a difficult subject to teach.

Marshall: Oh, I agree. It means something different to everyone.

Stephen: So, I’ve been asked to teach a course on the future of television.

Marshall: That’s a challenge.

Stephen: I’ve talked to the professor who taught the course before. He treated it like a history of the medium and tried to foretell how it would develop.

Marshall: Like driving into the future using only the rearview mirror?

_______

Voiceover

What makes it difficult to teach this subject is that technology is disrupting the medium faster than history is incrementally changing its nature.

Inspiring Films

Inspired

What’s the paper called?

Persuasive films. Films with an educational element. After McLuhan’s “Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.”

And if they are educational, are these films still good to watch?

Some are inspiring. Here’s a table of categories.

I see you’re including both feature films which are mainly biopics or reenactments of real life stories and documentaries.

Well, you know my favorite reading is the obituary page in The Economist. Inspiring.

Shouldn’t you rename the paper “Inspiring Films?”

_____________

Voice-over

The table to categorize inspiring films.

...

Soc-Sci vs Lit-crit: Dialogic News Flow

Chair in Social Science

Chair in Humanities

Two academic chairs have differing approaches to writing the opening and closing sentences to a conference proposal…

Salt: We start out with…"Mass media simplify the message, social media allow for a more nuanced discussion."

Pepper: Nope. Too simple. How about… "Mass media and social media both shape public perceptions, and in turn, the unfolding news flow is shaped by an evolving public awareness."

Salt: OK, I’ll go along with that. Now, how about the conclusion? "Print media are losing money, they go online and give away big stories free and charge for the niche articles."

Pepper: Too obvious. Need something overarching. “While the parameters of this evolving dialogic model of news flow yet remains to be defined, it portends a new paradigm for shaping our understanding of human behavior and sociopolitical events.”

____________

Voice-over

Salt is straight social science, bordering on pure science, Pepper comes from a lit-crit tradition. The McLuhanesque message is the same, but the minimalist soc-sci language is like a plywood chair, whereas the lit-crit couching may be comfier for some....

Marshall McLuhan on Educational Entertainment

Edutainment

Bud asks if he can switch to a movie channel.

Father: Sure. Good night for movies. Moneyball’s showing on Fox.

Bud: Oh no. Pete Sprat said it’s a con. You think it’s about baseball but it’s really about maths.

Father: Edutainment!

Bud: So which is it: education or entertainment?

________________

Voice-over

Marshall McLuhan came up with a lot of enigmatic aphorisms, particularly about media. In one, he said, “Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.” He foresaw educational entertainment. A man ahead of his time.

What do you know about Marshall McLuhan? See synopsis of McLuhan at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9MafrHvSVQ

The Crane Returns a Kindness (鶴の恩返し)

He peeped!

A one-minute story…

A man pulls an arrow out of an injured crane’s wing.

A woman appears at his house and begins living with him.

They are poor, the woman asks the man to make a loom.

She closes the door, saying, “Don’t look while I am working.”

She produces cloth, the man sells it, they become wealthy.

One day the man peeps in the room.

He sees a crane making cloth with feathers.

She sees him looking, and says, “You have seen my true form, I cannot stay here,” and flies away.

__________

Voice-over

Sometimes, there isn’t time to tell a story slowly. Fidgeting starts. Give yourself one minute and deliver in the present tense. Jump cuts. No transitions. No diversions. Pure plot.

Old stories were often used for instructing.

They were a vehicle for a precept: a rule, command, order.

Or, more subtly, a moral: a message, meaning, point.

Interpretations for The Crane may vary:

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?

In a modern context, Respect privacy?

“Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary.” Margaret Cho. 

Or as Marshall McLuhan viewed it: “Publication is a self-invasion of privacy.”

...

Wearing a book

Evolution of Media

Wearing a book

Woodi: What drove our quest to develop media?
Marshall: Kings commissioned effigies, churches told stories, and now it’s business diverting us with entertainment and games. Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.
Woodi: Where will it end?

Marshall: In the future. Art is anything you can get away with now. Maybe we will be wearing books soon. Think about it.

_____________

Voice-over

Can’t but help notice we went from pictures through text and now we’re headed back to pictures. Or as McLuhan said it, “Only a fraction of the history of literacy has been typographic.” Perhaps my next book purchase will be a T-shirt.

...