media: July 2008 Archives

Meanwhile:

On June 24, 2008, the FCC passed some historic legislation (Florida Deaf Network), a corporate PR release was repeated by the Deaf Network of Texas, and all kinds of other folks. I didn't locate too many variations on the report, or much follow-up discussion on this topic, although I did locate

• info on some legislation in Congress concerning improved access on the internet (which would be cool)
• a critique of Obama providing segregated media for the Deaf community (not so cool)
• some non-corporate info on The FCC Rule and Order for TN and Emergency Access
• and a federal announcement posted on the FCC's Disability Rights Office homepage.

The new UMass Journalism Department weblog documents the disturbing trend in hard news staffing/investigative journalism, linking to an article that contexts the decline of trained journalistic staffing in the age of technological expansion. The embedded example of the linked reference source is powerful and poignant, but while an individual Palestinian enacted terror in Jerusalem, the Israeli military held an entire Palestinian town under curfew in an attempt to minimize civil protests against more construction of the wall.

I received an email Monday: "Urgent!!! International Support Needed In Ni'lin." An email report yesterday from the Ni'lin Popular Committee Against the Apartheid Wall clarifies that the curfew is over but not - as claimed by an Israeli military spokesperson - because of negotiations or mutual agreements concerning the issues at stake.

Here is where reporting gets tricky, huh? The intention to illustrate a very basic point plays into a much larger - and problematic - pattern, in which alternative perspectives on particular dilemmas are represented disproportionately. The fact of the created media/news statistic (a percentage of reports roughly "pro" Israel and a percentage or reports roughly "pro" Palestinian) perpetuates the majority-minority stances already rooted in historical trajectories, thereby centering the discourse on the most sharply defined edges of the conflict instead of - what I, personally, would like to see journalism do more intentionally - creating representations that allow people to shift from entrenched positions because alternatives are opened up.

Mike said that, talking (to himself?!) as he entertained a couple of neighborhood girls by trying to figure out one of their toys.

Yesterday was full of tugs. I spent the afternoon and evening enjoyably, after taking a much longer time than usual to blog (and cook! shhhhhhh). Being on the periphery of two kidnappings with happy endings left me full of vicarious emotion. For the last three days I have been feeling a bit de-centered, as if there's "a disturbance in The Force" (!), or - as the new roomie said, I am "out of alignment" with myself. My thinking is slow, difficult; my self-consciousness heightened. I speculate that I'm experiencing fallout from being (now) in a timespace different than expected (on land rather than still at sea), or the process of absorbing recent life lessons, or the malaise that lingers from old wounds . . .

I know I don't have the jazzy hectoring tone considered most successful in writing on/for the web. The thing is, I don't want to play into that collusively heeyyy cowboy insider attitude that Jack Shaffer promotes. Yet, I appreciate that friends do (sometimes, smile) actually read the blog and (rarer still, hence precious) give me feedback on my writing. Building "indexes" over the past few days must have put me in a summative mood, because I carried that mode into writing about Alf's freedom instead of just blogging the moment. Perhaps I'm feeling it more necessary than usual to justify my existence (I got flamed!), to explain the reasons for my choices, or otherwise try to articulate how I perceive things going together? I am also prepping to teach, and I never (ever!) stop learning.

Even though I'll probably never capture the tone of our times, my mind resonated with resemblances to another angle of Caleb Crain's reflections on online literary style. In particular, he writes (and I insert comments):

I've kept a blog for several years (ditto), and although its readership is tiny (mine too), I of course notice when the hits rise and fall. (I should pay more attention!) I seem to get more readers when I post frequently, when I write about people or topics in the headlines, when I have been drawn into a conflict, and when I write something that speaks to a self-image that a group of people share. (Hmmm, it would be interesting to know if any such patterns are evident here in Reflexivity.) Over the years I've gradually revealed more personal details (we differ in this); I still reveal very little, comparatively, but enough to entitle me to say that I feel a tug there, too. Perhaps the tugs that I feel are a better data source, come to think of it, than my blog's underemployed hit counter. If I were to interpret those tugs, I would say that writing on the internet tends to be more popular when it satisfies the reader's wish to be connected--the wish not to miss out.

Funny - is Crain suggesting an internal (his own) or external (from others) tug to reveal more? Where (with whom) does the wish to be connected originate, and can it be cultivated as a social/relational force for institutional/historical change?

Only if we act on those wishes. :-)

Wall-E was conceived in 1994 and born fourteen years later. That's a long gestation! One could argue that Wall-E was born "whole" - completely developed, a finished product, an artistic, aesthetic entirety in and unto itself. Notwithstanding the creative genius, technical sophistication, and pure brilliance of the hundreds of people who co-constructed the film, to deem it done would be a disservice to its communicative potential. Sure, the story is told with such self-deprecating humor one can readily overlook its grim source material. Heterosexual gender stereotypes persist, and the future appears predominately white - but these representations are mere gloss to the base commentary of global capitalism's devastating effect on the planet's ecology as it remains predicated on the twin engines of advertising and consumership.

I mused yesterday (on Facebook), about what A.O. Scott describes as the essential genius of all of Pixar's films:

"...this idea of an identity crisis - of a main character who is torn between the demands of his group identity and his own aspirations, ambitions and dreams." (Pixar's 4th Dimension)

My question, based on communication theory that privileges the ritual nature of communication as the primary shaper of our social (economic, intellectual, political) worlds, asked if Pixar is "determining the human condition for a generation or three?" To be precise, they are not doing this alone, but their reflection of our current situation (as illustrated in the consciousness concerning what makes us laugh at ourselves and each other) both acknowledges and reinforces other social trends. For instance, to what extent does Wall-E's clumsy and determined adoration for Eva, and Eva's haughty disdain turned affection, foreground the relational needs of people to belong and be cared for over the group needs of humanity to suck up and deal with the costs of conceding the direction of our future to impersonal institutions, such as war, law, finance, war, the profit imperative...

The interpersonal overlays the intrapersonal dilemma Scott argues is central to Pixar's successful main characters, whether they are natural rebels or reluctant heros, which is the necessity of

"finding a synthesis, or a compromise, a way of acknowledging who you are as a matter of where you come from, but also being able to express who you are as a matter of who you want to be."

In the background, unquestioned yet foundational to the story - and to our era - is the competitive quest to be a) Bigger n Larger than everyone else, bolstered by belief in a technological utopianism: we will design the machines that will save us. Unfortunately, rescue exceeds the human lifespan by several generations. Wall-E (with many more lives than a cat) displays a peculiar mix of curiosity and lonliness; not only is his directive to remove centuries of accumulated industrial garbage, his iconicity as a janitor is deliberately deployed to display an optimistic strand of pure dumb luck as the ultimate savior. He also lives out - tolerantly - the risks of examining objects closely: they tend to stick - often unfashionably so. This is how and why I suspect a pop cultural effect from Wall-E could be marshalled along with the many other contemporary strategies (overt and incidental) of innumerous people to alter some of the predictable trajectories of history.

Because here's the thing - despite everything Wall-E loves to dance! (Cute: hula-hoop and headphone vignettes.) (Dancing features prominently in friends' recent gmail status messages: "Where the Hell is Matt?" and "Chocquibtown - Somos Pacífico".) And he never takes himself too seriously - or at least, in seriously fulfilling his directive and embracing his nature, he copes with the inevitable fallout of various experimental attempts (balls, firehydrant). Pixar provides a personality template based on a way of being that has become popular, enshrining a cultural coping strategy we can turn toward the problems we face or use to mock them.

The thing is, whichever we choose, it's gonna take some time before we can measure the results.