Final Thoughts...

Though Adorno’s argument in “The Culture Industry,” is clearly at one end of an extreme, I found myself returning to it throughout the quarter as the basis for my understanding of where critical media theory is coming from. Furthermore, I found myself referencing it in other classes, in particular what I feel is Adorno’s explanation of why the mass media’s representation of reality are so powerful. By that same token, the Tomlinson reading was also very helpful and necessary in terms of presenting an alternative theory with regard to how people process media and incorporate it into their worldview. In terms of the case studies that we read, I thought Faye Ginsburg’s piece on embedded aesthetics was the most far reaching and widely applicable. I also really enjoyed Nicholas Mirzoeff’s “Teletubbies: Infant Cyborg Desire and Fear of Global Visual Culture,” because of its particularly compelling subject matter. Jonathan Stern’s Mall of America article had an equally interesting subject matter and thesis. In contrast, I felt like the other two essays that we read about radio, Jo Tacchi’s and Anahid Kassabian’s, while conceptually interesting, were essentially soft and unsubstantiated.

Media and Culture in the Art of Takashi Murakami

While I was home in Los Angeles this past weekend for Thanksgiving break, I went and saw the Takashi Murakami exhibit at MOCA. The show consists of a wide variety of mixed medium and thematically, it touches on a number of subjects having to do with the mass media and its relation to technology, as well as, culture. Specifically, Murakami has a Warhol like propensity for taking images that would otherwise be considered examples of lowbrow, popular culture and transforming them into “high art.” However, what is so interesting about Murakami’s work is the way in which he does this with icons from both American and Japanese culture. Moreover, Murakami does not merely elevate these images, but he reappropriates them as well. As a result of this process, the final work consists of an American image that has been reappropriated as a Japanese image, which has in turn been repappropriated as an American image, which has been reappropriated as a Japanese image, and so on in this manner until it is unclear as to which culture the original iconography is a reference to. For example, in one sculpture entitled Miss Ko^2, Murakami depicts a buxom, blonde waitress who bares a striking resemblance to both Barbie and some sort of heroine that you might find in a Japanese anime. Consequently, the piece, which stands at the entrance to the exhibit, establishes a theme of East meets West, while at the same time underscoring the problems that can arise from this sort of cultural mash up. Specifically, the contrast between Miss Ko’s doe eyed, childlike expression and her exaggerated, womanly physique implies pedophilia and perversion in the Western psyche where as in Japan, it does not. Accordingly, the individual piece and the retrospect as a whole both serve to illustrate a number of important topics in the anthropology of media. In particular, it serves as a material example of Tomlinson’s theory of mediation by illustrating how media is interpreted and absorbed given a certain cultural context.

"Whiteness" in Arlene Davila's "Culture in the Ad World: Producing the Latin Look"

In Arlene Davila’s, “Culture in the Ad World: Producing the Latin Look,” she explores representations of the Hispanic population by corporate advertisers and attempts to offer an explanation as to why these depictions look the way they do. In particular, Davila describes the typical Latino creative exec and subsequently illustrates how in their attempts to challenge stereotypes of the traditional Hispanic consumer, these so called “creatives,” end up “defending the whiteness, affluence, and marketability of the Hispanic consumer.” These characteristics end up becoming the basis for a new Latino stereotype that is both “whitened” and largely based on the advertising executives own self-image. This repeated allusion to the “whitening” of the prototypical Hispanic consumer in turn made me wonder about Davila’s perception of whiteness and the construction of a white identity by the mass media. Specifically, I thought about the concept of ‘the other,” and the degree to which Caucasian representations in the media are defined in relation to stereotypes and models of otherness. From the point of view of Davila’s essay, it is implicit that mainstream white America serves as the standard for normalcy in the realm of popular representation. Given this perspective, the question then becomes, from where does this representation of whiteness come from and what exactly does it comprise? Specifically, are American immigrants from Ireland or Poland included as part of this depiction? What about homosexuals and Jews? Where exactly does one draw the line in terms of normality? Is simply being white enough? Looking back, this was my problem with Davila’s argument, what I saw as her failure to define “whiteness” in terms of anything other than being a good consumer and being a member of the upper class. While I understand that the point of the focal point of the article was Latino representation in the ad world, her decision to leave the concept of “whiteness” largely unexplored left the essay somewhat deficient.

The Ipod as a Ritual Object

Today I was reminded of a discussion we began in class regarding public and private space and the way in which this difference relates to the act of listening to music. In particular, the distinction made by Jo Tacci early on in “Radio Texture: Between Self and Others,” concerning “the mundane context of domestic media consumption, and the ritualized use of percussive sounds in rites de passage." Tacci’s ultimate conclusion is that during the act of listening to music, radio in particular, in a typical, home environment, the music has the effect of “conceptualiz[ing] social relationships.” This conclusion suggests that for a fair amount of the time we spend listening to music, we are not actually engaged with the music itself, but rather that we experience sound as “part of the material culture of the home, and that it contributes greatly to the creation of domestic environments". Though I agree with much of what Tacci has to say, I believe that parts of her argument runs contrary to my own personal experience. Specifically, when I initially read the essay, I immediately thought of listening to music on my record player and the way in which this process becomes one of ritual for me in my everyday life. For the most part, every morning when I’m home in California, the first thing I do upon waking up is to make a music selection and play it on my dad’s old turntable from when he was roughly my age. The turntable and the records themselves have all the characteristics of ritual objects, from their more superficial symbolic functions (they connect me to my father and to my extended family through him) to their deeper, symbolic ones (the circular shape of the record is reminiscent of the human life cycle). I could almost argue that my father’s gift of the record player to me when I was roughly sixteen was in and of itself a right of passage. Though I don’t have my record player here in Chicago, I think that in some ways my Ipod serves the same ritual function. Though the Ipod lacks the sense of community that is suggested by the physical characteristics of the record player, I’ve begun to notice that my roommates and I have created a ritual around the Ipod dock in our living room, which, we all share. Though the time frame changes on a day-to-day basis, it can be assumed that at some point, usually whomever returns home from class first will put their Ipod on the dock and start playing music. When I enter my apartment and I hear one of my roommates’ music playing, I am reminded of them and in turn, this ritual serves to reinforce the community that we three encompass. Though Tacci would say that this is again, “contributing to my sociality,” as a “reminder of social life outside of the home,” I fail to see how this necessarily discounts it as a ritual act.

Group Representation in the Art of William Pope.L and Steve McQueen

This past weekend I went to see William Pope’s exhibit, Drawing, Dreaming, Drowning, at the Art Institute here in Chicago. Best known for his work which challenges the idea of cultural identity, the centrepiece of Drawing, Dreaming, Drowning, is an installation titled Relational Painting aka If Black is Beautiful… The ambiguity of the piece’s medium (it contains elements of painting, sculpture, and even some audio components) raises a number of questions regarding the notion of artistic discipline; however, it seems to me that the nature of race is again the artist’s primary thematic concern. The piece’s apparent focal point is a large black tarp that is heavily adorned with drawings, paintings, and collage. This tarp is the most formal aspect of Relational Painting aka If Black is Beautiful, which, expands outward in all directions and does literally invite the viewer to enter into it. Initially, I found this aspect of the work to be suggestive of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, an association that is further heightened by the soundtrack of jungle noises that play from a group of speakers arranged on the floor in front of/within the piece. Subsequently, I was reminded of the Steve McQueen piece Gravesend that just finished playing at the Renaissance society, which, also deals with colonialism and specifically, the degree to which the British Empire is still very much a reality in modern day Africa. Though McQueen does not really explore the themes of beauty and representation, I felt that there were substantial similarities involving the subject matter of Gravesend and Relational Painting aka If Black is Beautiful…; however, what is almost even more interesting are the differences with which the two artists depict themselves in relation to their work. I am unsure of Steve McQueen’s race but, he is originally from England and as a possible consequence of this, the perspective of Gravesend is decidedly third person. In particular, McQueen’s camerawork is static and observational, even during the sequences depicting African workers mining for coltan. In contrast, Pope’s work is both a blatant example of self-representation, as well as, an attempt to synthesize the experiences of the viewer with his own as an African-American, as is evidenced by his invitation to observer to become a part of the art object. Thus, it becomes unclear as to whether the heart of darkness that Pope alludes to belongs to him or the person that has chosen to enter the space of Relational Painting aka If Black is Beautiful… Furthermore, it is made ambiguous as to whether the plain black tarp, obscured by paint and various other components that camouflage its original color, is a reference to Pope’s identification with his own racial heritage, or if it is a more grand statement regarding the nature of what it is to be an African-American.

The Embedded Aesthetic of Performance Art

This past week in my Art Practice and Theory class, we have begun to focus on performance art and its implications. In particular, I was struck by how many parallels I was able to draw between Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s discussion of his craft in “In Defense of Performance,” and Faye Ginsburg’s essay “Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media.” Specifically, I found that Ginsburg’s whole notion of an “embedded aesthetic,” to be very much akin with Gomez-Pena’s view of his body and the way that it functions in his art. Though Gomez-Pena initially refers to his body as an “empty canvas,” this is a misnomer, as he later goes on to liken it to “a tiny model for humankind,” as well as, “a metaphor for the larger sociopolitical body.” By utilizing the body’s representational nature as part of his work, Gomez-Pena hopes that others will in turn view the connections that he establishes through his pieces and subsequently “recognize them in their own bodies.” The success of the artist’s work thus relies upon its ability to embody social relations at both the individual and the communal level with the human body acting as a symbol for both. This is more or less the same goal of Aboriginal filmmakers who, as Ginsburg states, strive to produce work that has the capacity “to embody, sustain, and even revive or create certain social relations,” also via aesthetic representation. I believe it is no coincidence that both Gomez-Pena and the Aboriginal filmmakers are members of formerly colonized ethnic groups and accordingly, this manifests itself in their art by way of their perceived need to appeal to a specific cultural community, as well as, the global population. As Gomez-Pena states, by attempting to literally “decolonize” his body in his performance pieces and by “making these decolonizing mechanisms apparent,” hopefully his audience “will get inspired to do the same.”

Infant Sexuality and Techno Fetish as Expressed Via Teletubbies

In his essay, “Teletubbies: Infant Cyborg Desire and the Fear of Global Visual Culture,” Nicholas Mirzoeff discusses the implications of producing and subsequently marketing television for infants between the ages of one and three. This in turn raises questions of the very nature of childhood, as well as, the marriage of man and technology. I found the Freudian implications of Mirzoeff’s article to be particularly interesting, specifically its relevance to Freud’s notion that the child has sexual desires right from birth. The attribution of a gay teletubbie by members of both conservative religious organizations in addition to progressive gay rights activists and the ensuing commotion that developed amongst parents struck me as particularly interesting, given the fact that these same people would probably deny any notion regarding the proclivity of their children to think and fantasize in a sexual way. This in turn led me to consider Freud’s analysis of dreams and the idea that dreams are our way of subconsciously acting out our desires that would otherwise be considered inappropriate by society. I thought next of technology and the way in which technology must inherently be the manifestation of human ambition and accordingly, at some level, of human dreaming. This intrinsic relationship between technology and human fantasy is evocative of technology’s newfound purpose as an outlet for human sexuality, whether that means having sex via the computer/phone or the considerable availability of porn by means of the television and internet. Is it possible then that since the use of technology has replaced much of what once required real face-to-face contact between people that the next step is the actual physical melding of man and machine? I was reminded of David Cronenberg’s film Videodrome, wherein people actually develop slits in their stomachs, which then act as literal VCRs allowing them to be programmed through videotapes that are directly inserted into these openings. This image bears a startling resemblance to the teletubbies and their monitor stomachs on which they are able to receive broadcasts of “’real’ television pictures, showing children at play” (Mirzoeff 441). Thus, I am again led to wonder about the original concept of infant sexuality and to what extent our perceptions of childhood innocence actually exist.

Reflections of Benjamin and Adorno in Dennis O’Rourke’s Cannibal Tours

In his review of Cannibal Tours, Edward M. Bruner speculates that it is the “vicarious brush with danger” derived from visiting a land where cannibalism was once practiced that draws tourists to Papua New Guinea. These people’s desire for the “unpolluted, the pure, and the original” drives them to make the long trip to explore what they view as “the forest primeval”. As Brunner points out, the irony in this is that, had the native’s original culture not been “intentionally altered or destroyed” by colonialism, then the tourists would not have been able to have their faked experience of the indigenous people’s civilization. Interestingly, this process wherein the colonists’ “’yearn[ing] for ‘traditional’ culture” causes them to destroy that which they crave, closely mirrors aspects of the development of modern media. Specifically, Brunner’s reading of Cannibal Tours parallels the obliteration of and subsequent quest to reconstruct the aura of the original work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction a la Walter Benjamin’s famous essay. Photography and to an even greater extent film are both the outcome of art’s longing to create the most perfect illusion of reality possible. However, with the advent of such ideal mediums wherein this conclusion is so closely achieved, the original becomes cheapened to the point where, in the case of film, it no longer exists in any sort of conceivable form. As with the colonist’s longing for authenticity of culture, the connoisseur’s yearning for the same quality causes art to cannibalize itself.

Eisenstein's Influence in "Another Brick in the Wall"

After watching the music video for Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” it occurred to me that it bears some striking similarities to the work of Eisenstein (again, I am thinking explicitly of The Battleship Potemkin), both stylistically, as well as, in what I believe to be the intended effect of their shared stylistic elements. In both the music video and the film there is a clear hero with whom it is apparent that the audience should sympathize, as well as, an obvious villain for whom they should feel contempt. Furthermore, it is apparent that the film and the music video are not only intended to serve as revolutionary propaganda, but that they do so in a manner which is so overt that it boarders on the satirical. In terms of editing, the video for “Another Brick in the Wall,” borrows heavily from Eisenstein’s theory of montage. The combination of conflicting imagery that was prized by Eisentein can be seen in the alternating high and low angle shots of the teacher and the student. The Battleship Potemkin’s “Odessa Steps” sequence uses this same technique in order to make implications about power wielded by the soldiers in relation to the clearly defenseless townspeople. Additionally, the soldiers’ unvarying march in Battleship Potemkin closely resembles that of the students in “Another Brick in the Wall;” however, there is a slight, yet very telling difference between these two images. In Battleship Potemkin, the uniform shots of the soldiers are juxtaposed with those of the townspeople fleeing in utter chaos, where as in “Another Brick in the Wall,” the homogenized students are seen crosscut with images of their cruel and fascistic professor who is himself in the midst of some sort of crazed power trip. The resulting effect of this subtle disparity is the implication that this sort of unquestioned adherence to any one leader or ideology is completely idiotic. Regardless of how Eisenstein may or may not have felt with regard to this sort of fanaticism, he could not make such an overt statement given the context of working within Soviet Russia.

Adorno and Eisenstein

During today’s class, I was especially engaged by the question of whether or not it is possible for one to exist within Adorno’s “culture industry,” without necessarily becoming completely engulfed by it. In particular, I found the discussion of film to be exceptionally relevant given that the medium itself is capable of being utilized to produce both works of great artistic merit, as well as, products that have no value other than shear entertainment. Furthermore, it struck me as significant that the ability of film to create such an accurate illusion of reality could in turn be used to achieve artistic and commercial aims. Specifically, the work of Sergei Eisenstein occurred to me as an example of a director who attempted to utilize these two conflicting aspects of film in order to create a revolution within the culture industry. While Eisenstein recognized the power of the illusion that film creates and thus, its ability to be used as propaganda (his own ideologies are clearly on display in much of his work), he felt that through a “dialectic approach to film form,” it was possible to use montage in a way that presented an idea to the viewer without rendering him or her entirely passive. By juxtaposing conflicting imagery in the “Odessa Steps” sequence of his film, The Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein creates a strong statement in favor of the revolt; however, he also forces the audience into a state of heightened awareness that makes them incapable of simply accepting what they are being shown. As the technology of film improved and consequently, its ability to depict reality, Eisenstein warned other filmmakers to use the power of illusion responsibly. In his “Statement on Sound,” Eisenstein encourages the use of the new innovation in a manner that is similar to his use of montage, with the aim of creating an accurate representation of the world without going so far as to dupe one’s audience.