7" of Separation

I checked out French director Louis Malle’s 1958 noir film, Elevator to the Gallows, last night. I’m not sure how it ended up on my Netflix queue, that is, I don’t think anyone recommended it to me. Set to an improvised soundtrack by Miles Davis (setting the standard for sorrowful trumpet), the film explores retribution, as it follows two couples as they attempt to get away with murder.

Overall, the film succeeds at inventing cool. However, I had some problems accepting the shallowness of the young couple and their ability to murder without emotion. I would recommend it if you like old Hitchcock films and want to see a different perspective on suspense circa the late 1950s.

Anyone else seen it?

Humanity wasn’t born into language. That is, language is a tool learned — it’s nothing innate. Kenneth Burke, and Derrida, for that matter, would argue language establishes hierarchy — humanity operating under the umbrella of a lingualism not owned, nor created, by any one user, but one cultivated to serve the interests of a powerful minority. Further, no human is raised to be truly multilingual, forever operating in a “mother tongue” (though, even mother tongues are vapor, an illusion of social interaction). These conclusions represent an oversimplified, reduced core of Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other, an obscure take on human languaging and our inability to grasp the true nature, or rather, daunting meaninglessness of spoken word and languaged thought.

Derrida exerts we dwell within our own monolingualism, drawing from it self, identity, culture, and powerful metaphors and idioms, with which we structure our understanding of reality. (But, in genuine, contradictory Derrida fashion, we also do none of the above.) In many ways, language is a trap. For, as Derrida explains, we cannot accurately speak of language but in that language itself, rendering cross-cultural communication and translation ineffectual at their core. Also trapping us inside our own minds, language is no less created by the individual than reality. The language by which we define ourselves is simply, from the beginning, a language of the other — created through history, by millions, owned by none.

Of course, Derrida has more to say (and much more to self-contradict), but this core idea of the trappings of language can be wonderfully extrapolated through Ngugi’s Decolonising the Mind. Colonized Africa has been systematically forced into the language of Western Imperialism, striped of a mother tongue (a first-level language of the other), crammed into the language of another, drawing Derrida’s theory into a second-level perspective.

Derrida states a foreign language, while possible to translate, is never inhabitable in the way a mother tongue is. In Africa, this resulted, as Ngugi explains, in the complete loss of power, and culture, of native Africans, as well as the creation of a corrupt, second-tier power in post-colonial African politics. Ngugi’s accounts support Derrida’s idea of power-creation by naming. Ngugi ancestors and contemporaries were forced to discard their native language, and as a result, discard their identities, in exchange for the language of the power holders. This rendered the liberal arts and creative class, the religious and the petty bourgeois even weaker due to the fact African culture was completely lost in translation or discarded for the cause of Western power.

Ngugi, working with concrete examples, is slightly more cheery than Derrida, speaking of a harmony of the mother tongue. And even though Derrida would argue Nguigi’s mother tongue also deceives him, Ngugi’s experience puts Derrida’s theory in perspective, allowing a sense of the real to rise out. For all who control language, control power — a lesson easily learned, but hardly applied.

Calling back to my reaction to escaping Adorno’s Culture Industry, it appears the solution lies in the individual. As Derrida puts it, and clearly Ngugi agrees, invention is the holy answer — individual invention of language, invention of form, invention of medium (as in Ngugi’s case of the African novel). Using this path, one can make some wonderful leaps, advancing the argument supporting art as a medium for social reform: from individuals (such as Ngugi), to collectives, to movements, to true progress.

But to return to the point, a more grounded argument could be made (and is by Derrida) for the importance of language in the creation of identity, and thus a stressed importance of the individual in the creation and cultivation of language. As Ngugi found, through creating a medium, by inventing, and owning, a new language of the other, one for the descendants of the mother tongue, he was rewarded with considerable power in the development of the resulting cultural movement. Knowing creation is power, then, is the first step toward securing freedom, the all-important universal ideal.

Any reader stepping away from Adorno and Horkheimer’s The Culture Industry must be instantly affected by the crushing cynicism in the author’s revelation that human acts of perception and creativity are merely the result of thousands of years of progressive, self-inflicted captivity. As a direct result of the industrialization of the creative process, culture — that is art, music, film, and all shared creative endeavors humans use to attach meaning to existence — has been boiled down into a finite number of socially acceptable art forms. This process of cultural industrialization is inescapable, as each new generation is born into the confines of the existing and preformed media paradigm. The true cynic reads into this, coming to the realization that no matter how ground-breaking, indispensable or avant-garde a work of art is, it is little more than the practice of collecting false notions of a false reality and attempting to pass them off as truth. (Good thing I’m not a complete cynic, as that framework is crushing on the soul.)

One is left wondering how we can escape this bleak condemnation of creativity. Adorno and Horkheimer offer little comfort, explaining that our only victory is our ability to operate with a working understanding of our own false reality. And this, honestly, is hardly triumph.

If this victory is so singular and limited to understanding, then our pitfalls are numerous and forever growing. Every act of creation becomes the culmination of our false reality. Adorno and Horkheimer were lucky, for as crushing and artistically destructive as the early film, radio and television industries were; in terms of cultural degradation, modern media trumps anything that came before.

Adorno and Horkheimer explain the world, in entirety, passes through the filter of the culture industry, creating a downward spiral that limits how we perceive to those options offered to us by the industry. This has become exponentially more disruptive and destructive in the last two decades, as reality TV has taken hold of television markets and the spread of the Internet has allowed for the simultaneous, instantaneous, amateur creation of reality by the masses.

This movement could not have been foreseen, as the authors argue the true power holders are those fluent in the jargon of the industry. However the industry has been spread so thin, its methods so universally adopted, that the power to create reality, to change our total perception of the universe and existence, is available to anyone and everyone. It would be hard to fathom in 1947 that only 50 years later, a vast information network would connect the entire world, allowing for a near-socialist ideal of shared power. Moreover, one wonders if this utopia of dispersed power could have been predicted, would they have also foreseen the popularization and acceptance of gutter media (unsourced, purely capitol-driven spam crafted as dressing for Google ads and product placements)?

It becomes clearer with each new television season, as reality TV contestants assume roles without direction and expect fabricated storylines, as viewers continue to believe, against their better judgment, that this programming says something deeper about human existence; that we are only continuing down the spiral of false reality. But now, instead of jogging, we are sprinting. Somewhere, the culture industry went meta — it was decided it was more cost-effective to directly warp reality than try to focus it through a creative lens. Clearly, this moves us further and further away from reality, further from truth.

I’m unsure whether or not Adorno believes there is any escape. And I’m unsure myself if there is either. Because we are born into captivity, we are forever shackled by our own culture. We are never given the chance to search for Truth, because we are already drowning in a sea of false truth, which too many accept as reality. So what can be done?

Try and try again, I assume. For the natural flaw of the culture industry is that all its strength is based on the same creations that can ultimately destroy it. And while humanity will never tire of the lowest common denominator entertainment, we will also forever crave progression. So there is hope in progression. Because not everything falls into the traps of the culture industry, we can slowly escape — or at least continue to stay informed and attempt to dig out. This ultimately comes down to individual progression away form the industry of culture. It demands artists take steps to free themselves, and hope others choose to do the same. There is no collective salvation, only individual salvation. So, as Adorno and Horkheimer point out, the first step is knowing. The second step, then, must be to choose creative isolation. But even then, there are no guarantees.

Common Media for an Uncommon Nation by Ben Bagdikian

The third chapter of Duffy and Turow’s Key Readings in Media Today is an excerpt from Ben Bagdikian’s book, The New Media Monopoly. The article, Common Media for an Uncommon Nation, begins with a brief history of the American media landscape, pointing out that America has not inherited the baggage of monarchy and government media control the rest of the world was developed under. Bagdikian asserts that this history of press freedom should result in a community-controlled media, which works to promote positive community development. However, the author contests, this is not the case, as the American media landscape is controlled by a handful of greedy corporations, who choose to run their monopoly as if it were a powerful cartel — technically, the author says, these corporations form a media oligopoly.

The author argues that this media oligopoly is the result of America’s free-market, capitalist economy. As a result of being market driven, the Big Five — Time Warner, News Corp., Disney, Viacom and Bartelsmann — carry highly duplicative content, leaving American consumers little choice in a field of artificially narrowed media options.

Worse still, the Big Five don’t operate in strict competition with each other, sharing 45 interlocking board members, 141 joint ventures and a friendly attitude toward each other when it comes to congressional lobbying. This cooperation and market dominance result in a single, powerfully dangerous reality — the Big Five manufacture the social and political aspects of American culture.

This control results in the uniform success of the Big Five’s political and economic allies. Bagdikian goes on to argue that the success of conservative politics, namely the second Bush administration, was the result of the Big Five’s control over media. No matter how liberal the press is pegged to be, media tend to quote the powerful, follow the ideas of the dominate and use a large pool of capitol to force a majority viewpoint.

Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars by Henry Jenkins

Chapter 24 of Duffy and Turow’s Key Readings in Media Today is an interesting survey of Internet fan films written by MIT’s Henry Jenkins. In Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars, Jenkins looks at how creative reworking of science fiction movies and television universes for fan films has created an Internet phenomena and cultural media revolution that will have long lasting effects on the digital cinema movement.

Focusing mainly on Star Wars fan fiction and films such as Troops and George Lucas in Love, Jenkins pinpoints the effects of these unofficial media on the greater media landscape. This fan fiction was first seen as a misappropriation of trademarked property, and in some cases it still is. However, as transnational media corporations focus their marketing on “synergy” — that is, the marketing of a single property across multiple mediums — fan fiction and the creation of fan collectives on the Internet has aided the official marketing of larger properties such as Star Wars and Star Trek. By allowing fan fiction to exist, media conglomerates are allowing fans to enter into prolonged relationships with media properties.

Jenkins points out that properties that have failed to allow for the creation and development of online fan communities have failed to gain long-term viability in the marketplace. And while many companies complain that fan fiction is a form of theft, the author points out throughout the history of media, each new technology — the VCR, the photocopier, etc. — has introduced a new level of fan participation, and the Internet is, in fact, the most successful venue for fan fiction, and free marketing, yet. The result is a fan-powered force that breaks down barriers for media and allows them a successful entrance into the marketplace.

Jenkins also speaks of proprietary culture, and its battle with the corporate world. The author points out that as digital filmmaking gets less expensive and more accessible to the common man, a significant increase in proprietary films will appear. And, as we move into the digital age of film and Internet distribution, a new chapter in “fair-use” and copyright law will have to be written.

Authors note: With all honesty, I can say I’m not super proud of this piece of work. I always find it hard to write about myself in a serious way, and this intellectual autobiography, written for an introductory media studies course, is full of holes, half-statements and comes off, to me at least, as boring. But, such was the assignment and I do as I’m told in that respect. I pulled down an A-, and was shocked.
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While my intellectual development is as pedantic as the thinkers who’ve sparked my interests, I believe my own personal enlightenment can be boiled down into a set of three contexts that, for the purpose of this paper, can represent my path well enough. To explore the whole of my intellectual experience would be overwhelming and impossible. A generic oversimplification must suffice. Thus, the three areas to be explored are a) my discovery and embrace of academia through rhetoric, b) my professional development in media, and c) the longstanding affect travel has had on my intellectual development.

By focusing on these three areas, a multitude of thinkers, artists and personal inspirations will be lost through the cracks. However, a foundation for my current paradigm should be uncovered just enough to expose my motivations for joining the ranks of the New School’s Media Studies department.

An Embrace of Academia

Up until my junior year of undergrad, I hadn’t been dedicated to academia. In my spoiled, unenlightened mind, education was a fact of life, and therefore I saw it as a set of motions to go through. I felt trapped in science courses and became disenfranchised with my goal of becoming a veterinarian. As a result of experiences that will be covered later, I decided to leave science behind and join the Speech Communication department. This is where I found rhetoric.

Discovering rhetoric — and to a certain extent, philosophy — changed my attitude greatly. Put simply, rhetoric is at the core of my worldview. My lens is one of, as Aristotle puts it, “observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented” (Aristotle, 2004, p. 7). And while my grounding in rhetoric is classical, drawing heavily on Aristotle for my source of understanding concerning motivation and persuasion, I believe I’m drawn to a more modern view of rhetoric, as well. However in the monetized, mediated culture of today, relying on Aristotle allows me to see a glimmer of hope from within the culture industry. Viewing rhetoric is a source of power in a mediated culture, Aristotle has helped me realize any situation has the possibility to inspire a meta narrative concerning society and interaction.

As I insinuated above, my understanding of classical rhetorical study and its influence on my intellectual style is simply foundational. The classics have their place, but modern rhetorical theory, and especially the work of Kenneth Burke, has had a far heavier impact on my academic maturation.

My first encounter with Burke was during an introduction to rhetorical theory course during that all-important junior year of undergrad. The professor’s dry, witless delivery of the material turned most everyone in the class away from rhetoric. Despite the lackluster presentation, when we hit on Burke’s definition of man, I became enveloped by Burke’s eloquent way of wrapping up humanity in a simple, scientific, yet masterfully poetic way.
Burke starts with language, calling man the “symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal,” rooting our entire existence in our ability to language while not ignoring our narcissistic tendency for hyperbole and our overwhelming ability for linguistic failure. Moving along, we’ve created the negative and are, in fact, moralized by it, drafting right and wrong from our wants and desires. We use tools to separate ourselves from our natural condition, a point post-humanists and technophiles are realizing more and more every day. Most importantly, though, Burke ends his statement with a wonderful set of points — man is motivated by hierarchy and, as a result, rotten from our search for perfection (Burke, 1966, p. 16). Burke crafts such a wonderfully bleak, yet entirely honest sketch of human kind that I’ve adopted his definition into my worldview. Since discovering Burke’s definition of man, I’ve pursued Burke through his thoughts on history, religion, motives and through his most widely known theory — that of Dramatism.

Shortly after discovering the classics and Burke, I met a number of other great thinkers who inspired me and led me further into my rhetorical worldview. Bakhtin, Foucault, Derrida, Perelman and others helped me struggle through ideas on utterance, grammar and language.

While wading deep into advanced rhetorical theory, I was simultaneously treading through the rhetoric of early America as seen through the lens of the study of social movements. Overseen by Dr. Robert Iltis, the chair of Oregon State’s speech communication department and a fanboy of early American rhetoric, I came into contact with Thomas Paine, among other great early proponents for American society.

Paine’s Common Sense pamphlet had a particular impact on my intellectual framework, especially impacting my search for my own understanding of the American ideal. Paine understood social construction and the power of the mass ideology. This idea is so foundational to Paine that even in his introduction he writes, “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom” (Paine, 1986, p. 64). Paine understood the founding of America, was at its core, an issue of society’s ability to perform a paradigm shift toward utopia. Paine’s hopes and beliefs, along with his idealism for what America should be, give me hope that freedom is still possible. Paine means to me that we can individually and collectively escape the culture industry that has become our new King.

Again, Paine is only one man in a long line of great American rhetoricians who’ve inspired my development. It would be upsetting to get through this section without mentioning the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionist work of the newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy, who both became martyrs for justice and good rhetoric.
However detailed I might hope to be in a survey of my undergraduate awakening and study, I could never do justice all the great thinkers I was exposed to during my final two years at university. Intellectually, this period was just the beginning of a long journey into theory.

At Work in Media

As hinted at in the introduction to the last section, my work in student media inspired my move into the liberal arts and speech communication. Thus, it should be noted that my professional development has been instrumental in my overall intellectual development, both by seeding my interest in rhetoric and media theory, but by also stroking the interest as it grew.

The story of my career started when I answered a call for DJs at the campus radio station my freshman year, a move that eventually led to a job in charge of the station’s programming, as well as a important trip to Berlin, which I’ll touch on more in the next section. I enjoyed my work for the station and found I was quite skilled at production, launching a number of freeform music shows, a live music showcase and a lineup of afternoon talk shows. Working in radio allowed me to combine my infatuation with music with a professional goal. That goal grew and I soon branched out, producing a television show and joining the staff of the campus newspaper, where I would eventually settle in.

After graduation, with the longstanding goal to head back to school in the future, I found myself staying in media, working for a small book publisher before landing a position as the editor of a community newspaper in a fairly rural section of Oregon. Far from the rat race, digging in to a position at the top of a community newspaper allowed me to experience a rare thing — traditional media that was relatively untouched by the trends of new media. During my time as editor, I got to revisit the foundations of journalism, watching the community react to my words, face to face with readers and community leaders. It was an inspirational experience, and my success in the role made me realize I could reach further with my career.

This realization led me to make the move to New York, where despite turmoil in the media market, jobs and opportunity would never be lacking. Since arriving in the city over eight months ago, I’ve established an independent publishing company, through which I run my freelance media work and a number of private projects. In fact, entering into study at the New School has come to represent a step toward full autonomy in my career.

Travel as Intellectual Inspiration

The influence travel has had on my intellectual development can be summed up by looking at two specific, life-altering trips. The first, a journey to Berlin, where I was tapped as a foreign media diplomat and given the opportunity to explore the affect American culture has had in Europe. And the second, more recent trip — a four-month road trip across America in a 1983 VW van.

Upon arriving in Germany as a wide-eyed 19 year old, I had no idea what I was in store for. And while there are a number of dramatic events that stand out, my trip to Berlin occurred under an umbrella of personal enlightenment. It was while in Berlin that I came into my own as an adult and was first welcomed into an intellectual circle. The trip itself was professional — I was traveling on behalf of the Goethe Institute as a diplomatic representative of American college radio. However, the effect the trip held on my personal life cannot be understated. It was in Berlin that I fell in love with classic art, and more importantly, first encountered Dada. The works of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray spoke to my cynical sense of humor. (My interest in Dada would also later feed my interest in Burke, who lived in Greenwich Village during Dada’s takeover of New York in the 1920s.) Most importantly, my trip to Berlin opened my eyes to a larger worldview and, for the first time, made me question what being an American in the 21st Century might mean.

It was after returning to school from Germany that I transferred to the study of rhetoric and started my intellectual awakening in that respect. As I’ve already outlined above, this path took me into the heart of American rhetoric. This academic background, combined with my personal goals to take part in a new American intellectualism, led me to set out on a massive road trip across the country in the summer of 2008. As an exercise in stereotypical Kerouacian Americana, I hoped that I might discover some answers out on the open road.

I survived life on the road with only one major breakdown. And while I didn’t experience a drugged-out adventure like that of Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson, I did find a better way to look at America. Previously, I never understood how to find pride in the post-modern, fear-of-the-culture-industry America. Out on the road, though, I found the roots of my own American pride. I reread Paine and the speeches of Lincoln. I fell for the quiet, panoramic stretches of road in the Southwest. And, most importantly, I made the decision to return to school, where I might be able to expand on my experience and draft a new view on American culture and rhetoric.

Looking Ahead

With a strong academic, professional and personal foundation in rhetoric, media and culture, I hope to take some important steps during my time at the New School. First, I need to explore the possibility of giving into my desire to stay in academia long-term. Ten years from now, I picture myself with a Ph.D, and making the decision on what academic path to walk is important.

Obviously, seeking a graduate degree has some real-world ramifications, as well. Currently, grad school is offering a nice shelter from the storm, as the newspaper industry crumbles. The New Schools focus on practice courses should leave me a well-rounded media producer. And while landing in a career after graduating would be nice, surviving with the skills to be an independent artist and producer would be my ideal situation.
When looking down the road, I simply hope to add something significant to the body of thought surrounding media, culture and society. As broad of goal that is, my intellectual history has set me on the path to do just that. Now, I just need to figure out how.

Aristotle (2004). Rhetoric. Mineola, New York: Dover.

Burke, Kenneth (1966). Language as Symbolic Action. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Paine, Thomas (1986). Common Sense. New York: Penguin Books.

I was just looking over my last few posts, and I fear I might be coming off as a bit pretentious, talking about media theory and whatnot. So, just to be safe, here’s a snoring cat:

Also, it seems Twilight sold some three million DVDs in one day. I noticed that the company set up midnight release party events, which sort of defeats the purpose of being a nerd for something. The company shouldn’t need to set these things up. Nerds, like bananas, are better organic.

But the ol’ corporate-try-to-hard did help sell DVDs. Now, about 90 percent of those are going to end up on ebay within the year, as groups of girls everywhere figure out that only one of them needs to own the movie.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m passing judgment on the Twilight movie. Bring it.

I saw these two posters walking along Bedford in the burg today:

I liked them.

…

I’ve been reading a collection of essays on German Marxism and Ernst Bloch has been harping on Georg Lukacs for a number of reason, one being a misunderstanding of the importance of Expressionism to the development of the Nazi fascist regime. But, I’ve been getting lost a little because I’m not up on my Expressionists much.

So, on my way home from the coffee shop, I dropped into Spoonbill and Sugartown bookstore to see if I could a) find a book on Expressionism, hopefully with “expressionism” in the title somewhere so I could spot it on the shelf, and b) flip through what I was sure would be and expensive book without buying it. I looked all over with no success.

About to give up, I figured I’d check the sale rack to see what was there and guess what! Of all things, there on the $5 shelf was “Expressionism: A German Intuition, 1905-1920.”

Five bucks.

Granted, it’s the gallery guide to a Guggenheim exhibit from 1980. But for $5 I get a couple of essays and over 300 pages of art prints.

I’m so up on Heckel and Nolde now.

Bring it, Ernst Bloch.

…

Anyway, I never imagined I would find the exact thing I wanted and be able to buy it for $5.

It made my day.