"The media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage." - Marshall McLuhan
It is inevitable that each time a new product
is released into the market, it supplements, improves on, or (in the most
extreme cases) completely replaces an existing commodity, rendering what has
come before it obsolete. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the realm of
technology, where advances in hardware seem to come as often as the weather
changes. In light of this process, Best Buy’s Buy Back Program, in which
consumers “buy it now [and Best Buy will] buy it back when the new thing comes
out,” attempts to capitalize on consumers’ constantly shifting desires for new
commodities. However, by focusing on the commodities themselves and the service
role that the company takes in facilitating transactions, the commercial
effectively ignores the ways in which modes of labor are shifting and the
implications of an entirely information/service-driven economy should
traditional labor be displaced by technology.
In
order to advertise the Buy Back Program, the commercial directly appeals to
consumers’ feelings of frustration and distress over the constant cycle of
newly-released products. The first five seconds of the advert exaggerates
(perhaps rightly so) the notion of the rapid pace of technological innovation
that renders “everything else… obsolete” (0:04). Additionally, the text cards
proclaiming “Technology moves fast” (0:08) and “We feel your pain” (0:15)
showcase a (perhaps spurious) sense of understanding and sympathy towards the
consumer’s plight. It is only in the last five seconds that the commercial
makes any note of the company or program itself. That is to say, almost the entirety
of the traditional thirty-second commercial is focused on appealing to the viewer’s
reservations about technology and consumption. The rhetoric here seems to be
that it is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to desire the new “thing”,
whatever it may be, and the Buy Back Program is a route that enables the consumer
to literally “buy into” the incessant demand for novelty, and, as a result, the
continuation of the consumption process essential to the capitalist system.
The
incessant cycling between the old and the new is a major factor in what
Morris-Suzuki calls the “perpetual innovation economy,” one that “pour[s]
increasing amounts of capital and labor into the development of better
software, new techniques, different products” (18). In light of contemporary
application, this statement may seem problematic as in the past fifteen years, “labor”,
as a productive, human activity in the Marxist sense of the word, is being
increasingly and systematically replaced by automation and robotics technology.
However, Morris-Suzuki does go on to note that “many jobs – particularly jobs
involving personal services – continue to be relatively unmechanized” (24).
This outlook more closely fits with the shift from “productive” to
“non-productive” jobs, or what Mandel sees as the division between “manual and
intellectual labor” (21). A Best Buy employee fits into the category of the
“non-productive” or “service” labor because he/she is not responsible directly
for creating or producing the commodities, but rather acts as the middle ground
between the various technological companies and the consumer(s). In this vein,
the commercial for the Buy Back Program works to situate the corporation as an
important component of the “perpetual innovation economy,” and vital to the
continuation of the capitalist system. According to the commercial, it appears
that without the Buy Back Program, consumers would be left with their obsolete,
and thus ostensibly useless, technology.
Nevertheless,
it must not be forgotten that the “exchange of the ability to work (that is,
labor power) for wages, and wages for necessities” is actually at the core of
the capitalist system (Davis,
et al. 7). Without human labor to generate surplus value for the various
commodities, profits decline. Hirshl argues that the vast, continuous cycles of
technological innovation are “a catalyst for revolutionary change,” the sort of
social change Marx called for (158). Thus, the “cyclic process… [that]
increases unemployment, heightens realization crises, and thereby sets the
competitive conditions encouraging another round of technological adoption” actually
signals the “end” of capitalism, rather than it being an important facet to
continuing the economic structure (164). With technology getting smaller, more
precise, and increasingly sophisticated with each generation, as it is show in
the Best Buy commercial, it is not hard to imagine fully automated production
processes devoid of human labor. In a perhaps slightly less apocalyptic or
revolutionary attitude than Hirshl, Jones also rejects technological advances
as somehow creating a new or sustainable form of capitalism. Jones’s view takes
into account the idea that “information jobs are themselves highly susceptible
to labor displacement,” meaning that as technology renders productive jobs
obsolete, service and information workers will be affected as well (qtd. in
Hirshl 160). That is to say, as technology displaces human labor at the level
of “‘local’ system dynamics [it will] generate ‘emergent’ or ‘global’ dynamics”
(162). Without productive labor, regardless of the site of production (domestic
or foreign), the information/service worker would be out of a job.
In
the end, Best Buy, and subsequently its Buy Back Program, can only exist if
commodities are made with surplus value. Hirshl raises an important issue when
he questions what sort of jobs will be available in “information capitalism” as
“electronics technology replaces labor” (160). Despite Best Buy’s optimistic
stance on the “perpetual innovation economy” and its role in that system, the
future of the capitalist system as Marx outlined remains uncertain as
technology continues to displace human labor in favor of automation. Therefore,
it may not matter where the jobs will be in an “information capitalism,” as there
may not be jobs (at least in the traditional, capitalist sense) to begin with.
(Word count: 927)
---
Davis, Jim, Thomas Hirschl, and
Michael Stack, eds. Cutting Edge. London: Verso, 1997.
Print.
Hirschl, Thomas. “Structural Unemployment
and the Qualitative Transformation of Capitalism.” Cutting Edge. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl, and Michael Stack. London: Verso, 1997. 157-174.
Print.
lordbaenre. “Best Buy ‘Buy Back’ Commercial
– Technology moves fast.” YouTube. 19
May 2011. Web. 30 October 2012.
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Robots and
Capitalism.” Cutting Edge. Eds. Jim Davis,
Thomas Hirschl, and Michael Stack. London:
Verso, 1997. 13-27. Print.
“The perpetual motion was to produce work inexhaustibly
without corresponding consumption, that is to say, out of nothing. Work,
however is money.”
- Hermann von Helmhotlz
During Mostafa and I’s presentation last week on Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism
and Social Revolution, edited by Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl and Michael
Stack, I posed a question to the class in hopes to eliciting a conversation about
how technology fits within the capitalist structure. The full outline of our
presentation can be found at eng654.blogspot.com. In the entry for “Chapter 3:
Why Machines Cannot Create Value; or, Marx’s Theory of Machines” by C. George
Caffentzis, we posted a video published
by RSAnimate titled the “Crises of Capitalism” which is a remediation, of
sorts, of a lecture given by economist David Harvey.
In the video, from 7:30 to 9:05, Harvey seems to suggest that it is “financial
ingenuity” that has driven the course of capitalism. I presented this video in
class, with specific attention given to that minute and a half, because Harvey says that the “the
whole history of capitalism has been about financial innovation.” I saw this
standing in a little bit of a contrast to some of the previous texts we’ve read
in class, namely of such theorists like Daniel Bell and Manuel Castells, as
read via the Theories of the Information
Society by Frank Webster. Bell and Castells argue that the vast quantity of
bits of information form together to create a new society, as compared to such
previous eras like the Agricultural or Industrial Ages.
In an attempt to blend Caffentzis and Harvey with Bell and Castells, I asked in class whether it was
significant that Harvey
fails to mention technological and informational shifts in society in his
critique of capitalism. If we notice the gaps in his critique, then is it
possible to say that for Harvey,
technological innovation – such as robots, automation, etc. – is just another
form of the “financial innovation” that has shaped capitalism, instead of it
being a separate component? Unfortunately, I don’t think I posed the question
as correctly as I could, nor did I follow up by trying to tease out the
underlying reasons for my questioning.
So I thought I’d do that here, after this neat comic I found, of course:
In my thinking, this relates to
the debate between what Webster deems as those “proclaim[ing] a new sort of
society that has emerged from the old” versus “writers who place emphasis on continuities”
(7). It would seem to me that Harvey
fails to mention how he sees technology as shaping capitalism because he does
not see technology as anything that is worth standing by itself. As such, all the
components of technology that Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Caffentzis see as not
adding any value to the production process – specifically, robots and
automation – are, in Harvey’s view, just another factor in how the capitalists
have altered the economic structure(s) of the world. In the video, Harvey only takes issue
specifically with how “financial innovation” has “the effect of empowering the
financiers.” I see Harvey
as including technological innovation as just another category or element that
the capitalist employs in order to keep atop of the hierarchical relationship
between him and the working masses (or as Marx saw them, the proletariats).
Additionally, I see Harvey’s line
of thinking as relating to Caffentzis argument that despite the notion that “the
working day would be so reduced by mechanization that our existential problem
would be… how to fill our leisure time” (29), automation, robots and “mechanizationhas lead to an increase, not a decrease, of work” [author’s
emphasis] (31). An increase in work means an increase in the exploitation of
worker from the capitalist’s viewpoint, which ultimately leads to an increase
in value, ostensibly in a perfect application of the process. Replacement of
workers by robots does nothing to add value to commodities despite the application of automation allowing the capitalist to
manufacture commodities faster, cheaper and in greater numbers. According to
Marx, the real source of value lies in the exploitation of the worker’s
labor-power, and because robots have no labor-power to exploit, they cannot
create value. This whole argument seems to fall in line with Morris-Suzuki’s use
of Ernest Mandel’s theory that “total automation of all productive activity
(including services) is incompatible with capitalism. We cannot even be certain
that it would be compatible with human society of any kind” (15).
Of course, this brings us back to Harvey’s idea of “financial
innovation.” If the increasing use of automation and technology in the capitalist
structure is not the defining feature
in contemporary economic circles (like it might initially be perceived as
being), does this mean that robots are just another instrument in the capitalist’s toolbox, rather than a complete and separate
workspace? This would mean, of course, that every innovation, be it
technological or industrial, a new machine, robotic being or way of operating,
are only parts of the grand scheme of the capitalist to own and control the
vast economic spheres.
---
Caffentzis, C. George. “Why
Machines Cannot Create Value; or Marx’s Theory of Machines.” Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism
and Social Revolution. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl and Michael Stack. New York: Verso, 1997.
29-56. Print.
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Robots and
Capitalism.” Cutting Edge: Technology,
Information, Capitalism and Social Revolution. Eds. Jim Davis, Thomas
Hirschl and Michael Stack. New York:
Verso, 1997. 13-27. Print.
theRSAorg. “RSA Animate - Crises
of Capitalism.” YouTube. 28 June
2010. Web. 15 October 2012.
Webster, Frank. Introduction. Theories of the Information Age 3rd Edition. New York. Routledge, 2006. 1-7. Print.
“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow...”
- Lawrence Clark Powell
It always thrills me when what I’m studying in one class
merges over to another class.
With that in mind, in her essay “Writing”, Barbara Johnson makes
the case that what Derrida saw wrong with the logocentristic nature of Western
philosophy – the privileging of speech over writing resulting from the
hierarchical notion of binary relationships – was that “even when a text tries to privilege speech as immediacy,
it cannot completely eliminate the fact that speech, like writing, is based on
a differance… between signifier and
signified inherent in the sign. Speakers do not beam meanings directly from one
mind to another. Immediacy is an illusion” (343). I think it’s interesting that
Johnson uses the word immediacy, because the first thing I thought to connect
it to was Bolter and Grusin’s notion of remediation, in which immediacy and
hypermediacy play against each other as old media is adapted, updated and used
to create new media. If Johnson is saying that speech operates under the notion
of immediacy – that it is, it is “presence, life, and identity” – then the act
of writing, of creating a text, takes on ideas of hypermediacy, of “deferment,
absence, death, and difference” (343). Meaning that when we read words on the
page, at some conscious level we are constantly acknowledging that we are using
a tangible object in order to gain insight, knowledge, entertainment, etc., but
that this relationship is effectively hypermediated in that we can never see
past the words on the page to see something inherently sustainable underneath.
All we see are signifiers, never the truth.
Furthermore, I thought briefly to connect this to Habermas’s
idea of the public sphere, in which the act of physically meeting in a place –
a coffeehouse, a salon, etc. – changed how information was circulated. Habermas
suggests that because of the rise in publication materials such as newspapers,
magazines and journals, more of the population – that is, white, land-owning
males – became involved in political and social discussions. In this way, they
were influenced primarily by texts, by the written word, by physical objects. But
Habermas saw the actual meeting, the physical act of coming together, as the
most important facet of how the public sphere was shaped. Due to this
interpretation, it seems that Habermas was, to some extent, favoring speech
over writing.
---
Johnson, Barbara. “Writing.” Literary Theory: an Anthology 2nd
Edition. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 340-347. Print.
"Information smacks of safe neutrality; it is the simple,
helpful heaping up of unassailable facts. In that innocent guise, it is the
perfect starting point for a technocratic political agenda that wants as little
exposure for its objectives as possible. After all, what can anyone can say against
information?"
- Theodore Roszak
Originally
published in 1891, the advertisement for “Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescription”
–alleged to remedy such feminine
“maladies” as “nervous excitability, exhaustion, prostration, hysteria,” as
well as imparting “strength to the uterine organs” – shows some surprisingly
complex political and cultural undertones. Although it is not specifically
noted where this advertisement first appeared, we can assume that an
advertisement of this sort would most likely have been published in a journal
or magazine marketed exclusively for women. The undercurrents of political and
cultural notions arise precisely in regards to its form as a newspaper
advertisement and from its content as addressed specifically to women’s
interests, which in turn mark it as indoctrinating the patriarchal ideological
stances of the particular era.
As Jürgen Habermas
outlines in The Structural Transformation
of the Public Sphere, the shift from solely private activities to public
discourse amongst a widespread sphere of influence was marked by the rise not
only in public spaces such as coffee-houses but also in the proliferation of
affordable printed materials such as books and newspapers. Furthermore, up
until the eighteenth century, “advertisements occupied only about
one-twentieth” of political or cultural journal space, as most business
communication was conducted either face-to-face or by word-of-mouth (Habermas
190). However, it was around the middle of the nineteenth century that
advertising agencies became solidified business models. As newspaper and
journals increasingly relied on selling advertising space in order to turn a
profit, the publisher’s job was shifted from “a merchant of news to… a dealer
in public opinion” (Habermas 182). Indeed, we can see this manifested in the
advertisement, especially since the name of the product – “Favorite
Prescription” – marks it has having some sort of societal approval and
necessity. By keeping in mind Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s notion in Remediation that “no medium [seems to]
function independently and establish its own separate and purified space of
cultural meaning,” to some extent the rhetoric of the printed advertisement
seems to remediate the rhythm and persuasive techniques of the sales pitch of
the door-to-door salesman, albeit in a much more “public” setting, i.e. a
newspaper with a high circulation (55).
One major
criticism of Habermas’s notion of the public sphere is its notable exclusion of
women. Habermas seems to peg this as a result of the “nobility joining the
upper bourgeois stratum [that] still possessed social functions… [of] landed
and moneyed interest”, thus resulting in conversations that included “economic
and political disputes” (33). Evidently, according to Habermas, women would not
be interested in such intellectual pursuits, and thus were neglected in terms
of participation in the public sphere. However, he does note that it was
“female readers… [that] often took a more active part in the literary public
sphere,” constituting a reading public that held some significant economic sway
(Habermas 56). Perhaps then this is the reason that the market for women’s
journals and magazines, aimed at their interests, came about well before equality
for women in the political realm, including the right to vote, which happened
almost thirty years after “Dr. Pierce’s” was published. Furthermore, the
advertisement’s likely publication in a women’s newspaper or journal, itself a form
of media which “developed into a capitalist undertaking… [fueled by] a web of
interests extraneous to business,” particularly shows its primary goal of
selling a product, not necessarily providing women with the tools or
opportunities for rational-critical debate (Habermas 185).
It is at
the intersection of form and content that we can begin to see the underlying
function of such advertising as related to Althusserian notions of ideological
apparatuses, as well as the inherent attitude of the dominant patriarchal
society. By considering Althusser’s thesis that ideology has physical
properties, then we could argue that this particular advertisement, as
published in a newspaper or journal, shows what Habermas sees as the
“psychological manipulation of advertising” (190). As such, the language of the
advertisement is directed to women by appealing to their insecurities. Of
particular notice are the phrases “Many lovers have been separated because the
health of the lady in the case failed” and “No man finds attraction in a woman
who is subject to [the various disorders]”. What is subverted in this
particular advertising technique is the fact that the “sender of the message
hides his business intentions in the role of someone interested in the public
welfare,” in this case, of the individual lady who might be suffering from
these thoroughly Victorian aliments (Habermas 193). Furthermore, the
illustration works to continue the “psychological manipulation” by
characterizing the male gaze. Much like Dürer’s woodcut, here the “desire for
immediacy is evident in [the man’s] clinical gaze, which seems to want to
analyze and control… its female object” (Bolter 79). The man stares at the
woman seated in front of the piano, turning the page of her music notes almost
like an austere school-master. He holds the position of authority, standing
above her, and thus she is regulated to a position of adolescence, fragility
and obedience. Bolter and Grusin later make the argument that the male gaze in
linear perspective “depends on hypermediacy, which is defined as an ‘unnatural’
way of looking at the word” (84). However, Althusser would argue that the
interpellation process so engulfs society in ideological viewpoints that we are
unable to see things any differently. For the women of this time period,
lacking political and social equality, a masculine authority admonishing them
for “undesirable” traits (i.e. the “organic diseases peculiar to women”) might
be enough to persuade them to immediately go out and purchase the advertised
product. Habermas extrapolates this claim by noting that “ideology accommodates
itself to the form of the so-called consumer culture and fulfills… its old
function, exerting pressure toward conformity” (215). It is precisely that
conformity to the patriarchal notions of the differences between the sexes that
is played out through this particular advertisement.
(Word count: 972)
---
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses.” Literary Theory: an
Anthology 2nd Edition. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell
Publishing, 2004. 691 702.
Print.
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000. Print.
Clymer, Floyd. Scrapbook:
Early Advertising Art. New York:
Bonanza Books, 1955. Print.
Habermas, Jürgen. The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry Into a Category of
Bourgeois Society. Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 1991. Print.
Webster, Frank. Theories
of the Information Society3rd
Edition. New York:
Routledge, 2006. Print.
“In making certain things easier for people, technology has
actually demotivated people from using their brains. We have all these devices
that keep us connected, and yet we're more disconnected than ever before. Why
is that?”
- Emilio Estevez
It is a scene all too familiar with the masses of restaurant
staff throughout the country nowadays, or at least one very common in
metropolitan areas. It can be a group of young teenagers, an older couple
enjoying a relaxing meal, or a family with small children. But no matter the
age demographic, generation gap or social function at hand (drinks with
friends, family meal, etc)., many of these food-seekers have one thing in
common: they can’t step away from their technology. As in, they spend their
whole meal checking their phones, playing with their tablets, or (in the case
of the families with little kids) watching movies. Yes, I personally see this
countless times every single shift I work at a particular family-friendly,
“premium casual” restaurant in the middle of Los Angeles: parents who set up their tablet
or phone in front of their kid and have them watch a movie or television or
play a game instead of interacting with the family unit.
I was immediately reminded of this specific spectacle in
Chapter V: “The Social-Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” in
Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois
Society. For such a lengthy title, older publication date (1962) and
complex examination of the historical and social ramifications of the “public
sphere”, Habermas’s analyses are nevertheless thoroughly applicable to contemporary
outlooks on societal dynamics. By referencing H. Schelsky’s observation that
the power of the family on an individual’s social development and connection to
the public sphere lost much of its influence from “the elimination… of all
aspects not directly relevant to task performance,” Habermas saw that
“individual family members are now socialized by extrafamilial authorities, by
society directly” (156). Habermas does not seem to address this directly, but
it is more than likely he was primarily focused on the socialization of upper
to middle class, white males, since throughout much of history, the disenfranchisement
of women and minorities coupled with the poor education levels of the lower
class made it so that those operating in the public sphere constituted only a
small part within the larger community. As such, Habermas noted that with the
rise of the public sphere and the middle-class’s participation within in, more
and more individuals (read: educated white men) began to construct their
identities as reflections of society or their intellectual peers and sought
outlets of social interaction separate from their families by engaging in
discussions in public spaces. The result was that “privatized individuals…
[formed] a public [that] reflected critically and in public on what they had
read, thus contributing to the process of enlightenment (Habermas 51). However,
withthe shift towards capitalism and
the “disengagement from the functional complex of social labor in general,”
Habermas saw that the family “increasingly lost also the functions of
upbringing and education, protection, care and guidance” (Habermas 154-55).
I can recognize the loss in family “functions” each time I
see a child sitting at a table with his or her parents staring at a cell phone
or tablet screen, interacting more with the technology than with their family
unit. To this effect, the child is “socialized” by technology, making their
interactions and understanding of how this particular technology can be
incorporated into their lives paramount to their relationship with their
parents or social group. It is that loss of connection, of basic interaction
between members of a family that have me, at the rather young age of
twenty-five, feel nostalgic for the time before technology was so prevalent.
That is not to say that I myself do not rely on technology – I am, after all,
relying a computer, an internet connection and an internal spell-checker to do
a great deal of the work for this blog posting. Moreover, I will acknowledge
here that for some parents, this is probably the best way to keep their kid
focused on something so they do not end up running around the restaurant
screaming their heads off – and for the children who do end up doing just that, I always wonder if giving them a
computer screen would calm them down. However, it does not seem that we, as a
society, are making a cautious enough consideration to how this will – note how I do not say might – impact the upcoming generations’
abilities to perform, interact and participate in what Habermas deems the
“rational-critical debate” central to the public sphere.
On the other hand, Habermas does offer up a sort of support
to the idea that outside influences – namely, technology – can bring people
together in the realm of the public. He quotes William H. Whyte who saysthat “doing things with other people… even
watching television together… helps make one more of a real person” (158). I
would have to disagree slightly with Whyte in this aspect, as I do not see
physical or communal activities such as playing sports or watching television
the same as our culture’s dependence on individualized, hand-held devices. I do
not think checking my email, responding to text messages or surfing the web on
my phone results in the same sort of group dynamic that would come from, say,
watching a movie with my friends. Even in the darkened, quiet theatre, there is
a sense of the private (i.e. me solely focused on the screen in front of me),
but then afterwards, there always seems to be the social factor: debating the
movie, talking about particular scenes, discussing our interpretations, etc. I
rarely find myself involving other people in the various functions of my phone
(email, texts, etc.), and even then, I do not think showing someone a photo on
my phone or a text from someone else elicits the same “rational-critical”
debate that might follow a movie viewing.
In the end, I must admit that I do have reservations about
how the generations raised entirely in the “technologic” or “networked” age
will operated in regards to social dynamics, and how they will connect with (or
disconnect from) the public sphere, that is, if there is still anything resembling Habermas’s idea at all. My fear is
that technology is pushing individual users more readily and with faster and
faster connectivity into the realm of the private, one that seems to
incorporate the rhetoric of the
public sphere (i.e. phones and devices that allow you to “connect” instantly
with others; instantaneous search results; dynamic social networking) without
any of the positive results. Indeed, sometimes it seems to me that even with
our multiple devices that promise connections and encourage conversation, we
are actually moving towards a diminished sense of a “rational-critical debate”,
as it may come one day when the majority of those who would participate readily
in the public sphere do not know or understand how to make personal,
face-to-face connections with those around them.
Photo: PCWorld.com
One last thing to think about: Eva, a Los Angeles restaurant (sadly, not the one I work at), will apparently give diners a 5% discount if they give up their
phones and devices before being seated. According to owner Mark Gold, about
half of diners have done so, and the goal in doing this is to
“create that environment of home, and we want people to
connect again. It’s about two people sitting together and just connecting,
without the distraction of a phone, and we’re trying to create an ambiance
where you come in and really enjoy the experience and the food and the company.”
(Hsu 1)
---
Habermas, Jürgen. The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society. Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 1991. Print.
Hsu, Tiffany. “L.A.
restaurant pays customers to put away their phones.” The Los Angeles
Times. latimes.com. 15 August 2012. Web. 23 September 2012.
“All ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously
drawn from a million outside sources. We are constantly littering our
literature with disconnected sentences borrowed from books at some
unremembered time and now imagined to be our own.”
- Mark Twain
“I remixed a remix; it was back to normal.”
- Mitch Hedberg
Kirby Ferguson’s video on “remixing” presents an
easily-understandable visual representation of Bolter & Grusin’s idea of “remediation”
on contemporary culture. His documentary series includes videos on musical
remixes as well as copywrite and legal issues, but I found this particular
video to be most telling of contemporary culture and mass media. Like Ferguson says, “transforming the old into the new is Hollywood’s greatest talent.”
Furthermore, while Ferguson
makes a quick mention and visual comparison of the “remixed master thesis” of
all remediations – Tarantino’s Kill Bill – there is another video online that
does the same thing, a video I first saw about a year ago. However, in a
perhaps predictable outcome, “Everything is a Remix: Kill Bill” is NOT made by Ferguson
(like I originally presumed given the similarities between the videos, but
rather by a Rob G. Wilson who is merely associated with Ferguson’s documentary.
It’s sort of weird in itself, the idea that Wilson’s
video is a sort of remediation (or remix) of Ferguson’s piece about remediation
(remixing). It makes me think of a mobius strip, in which remediations of
remediations follow along the twists and turns of our cultural pathway.
---
Note: I have posted here the YouTube uploads of the Kirby
and Wilson videos for accessibility, but used Vimeo for research.
Ferguson,
Kirby. “Everything is a Remix Part 2. Vimeo.
Viemo.com, 2011. Web. 23 September 2012. <http://vimeo.com/19447662>
Wilson, Rob G. “Everything is a Remix: Kill Bill.” Vimeo. Viemo.com, 2011. Web. 23
September 2012. <http://vimeo.com/19469447>
Zucker-Scharff. "Remixed: the derivative nature of
creativity and our failure to recognize it." Hacktext.com. 8 March 2012.
Web. 20 September 2012.
<http://hacktext.com/2012/03/remixed-the-derivative-nature-of-creativity-and-our-failure-to-recognize-it-1747/>
"Our culture conceives of each medium or
constellation of media as it responds to, redeploys, competes with, and reforms
other media... No medium, it seems, can now function independently and
establish its own separate and purified space of cultural meaning.”
- Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin
For my posting last week, I set out to examine a practice of
my own (sharing a photo of my cat) in the terms of Bolter and Grusin’s concept
of remediation. I thought this might help me better understand the ideas of
immediacy and hypermediacy, as well as giving the theory a practical,
“hands-on” aspect. However, as I should have figured, part of our in-class
discussion this week was seeking to examine three popular types of contemporary
media – a video game, a social networking site and a movie – using the same
terms, which worked to broaden my appreciation of how these concepts can be
applied to all media.
Mostafa and I choose to discuss Star Wars: The Old Republic, Tumblr/Pinterest and Silent House.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
(SWTOR)
Released in the winter of 2011, SWTOR is a massively multi-player online role-playing game
(MMORPG), which means it operates by providing an extensive online world in
which real players level, quest and interact with one another through the means
of avatars. Set thousands of years before the “Original Trilogy” of movies, it
nevertheless takes influence from and expands on the immense and singular
universe that is Star Wars.
Because SWTOR has
many of the same basic functions and characteristics that many other
macrocosmic MMORPGs have – such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (WoW) and,
to some extent, Guild Wars – the
remediation of any MMORPG can be argued to have come about by adapting traditional,
single-player computer games, sci-fi and fantasy novels, board games (as many
MMORPGs use gameplay mechanisms from Dungeons
and Dragons), and film.
Bolton and Grusin note that
“graphic, role-playing computer games” often “seek the real, sometimes through
transparency and sometimes through hypermediacy” (94). For the most part, it
seems that the experience of playing is extremely hypermediated. The game’s
standard interface (that is, without any add-ons) contain buttons on toolbars
for a wide range of utilities, including attacking abilities, passive
abilities, a chat log, health and magic/ammo bars, mounts for travel, a map,
coordinates for a precise location, a clock, party members’ portraits and
health bars, etc., etc. Additionally, the social aspects of the game are
potentially disruptive, as the mere presence of the chat log (showing area-wide
alerts and private messages between particular players or groups) often is
enough to remind the player that they are interacting with real people, rather
than with Jedis or aliens, as the fictional counterparts probably would not
cyber-bully, troll, quote song lyrics, or making Chuck Norris jokes.
Furthermore, it can become problematic to the gameplay experience if the player
is not using a computer that is built to handle the games’ depth and details,
and so it is often the case that lower quality computers cause low resolutions,
poor graphic qualities, and bothersome instances of lag and low frame-rates,
which can be enough to make a player become so frustrated that they log off. I
would argue that these elements are especially important in considering the
possibility of immediacy in the game, for if something is enough to make the
user turn off the game, it probably does not lend itself well to creating an
interactive or concentrated experience.
While the hypermediacy is easy enough to spot in such games
as SWTOR, there are some aspects of
immediacy that take some time to uncover and examine. One surface element that
is easy to spot is the incredible use of detailed cut-scenes that look
shot-for-shot out of an action movie. These filmic moments of the game probably
are not enough to make the experience completely
immediate, but there is the sense that the player is following along with a
narrative, much like they would do if they were reading a book or watching a
film. But MMORPGs like SWTOR build
upon the narratives by adding the dimension of a fully-realized, profound level
of interactivity that pushes the player into shaping the world itself. The
various classes that players can choose in SWTOR
all have individual storylines unique to their class packed of impactful
decisions – decisions that can go as far as to alter the course of gameplay.
Because the game resides in the Star Wars
universe, there is, of course, a light side and a dark side. Each player is
confronted with decisions that affect their light side/dark side standing,
which means that each player chooses for themselves if they are going to be
“good” or “bad”, or perhaps something in the middle. This technically means a
player could play a “bad” Jedi or “good” Sith – character types that might be
out of place with what players would normally assume them to be. For a
generation raised on the mythic aspects of the movies and the great battle
between good and bad, light and dark, this level of freedom within the game
allows each individual to decide their character’s personality, habits, fighting
style – and morality. This aspect of SWTOR is a great example of what Bolton and Grusin sees as games that attempt “to move
from hypermediacy to immediacy” (99). By forcing players to get involved and
giving them choices that affect their characters’ “lives”, it makes the reader
central to the narrative. Furthermore, the simple nature of the ever-expanding
game means that it is technically “unbeatable” and thus takes on an element of
constant growth and expansion that means the game will never truly “end”. Many
MMOs operate in this way, releasing updates, new characters or classes, and
extended gameplay in order to keep players invested and involved in the brand,
and it seems likely that SWTOR will
follow in this direction.
Tumblr/Pinterest
While it seems that most of our classmates choose to analyze
prominent social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, we wanted to look
at something that had more of a personal relevance to us, as well as examine a
site that people may not readily describe as “social networking”. In this frame
of mind, in class we discussed Tumblr, a blogging platform that “lets [users]
effortlessly share anything… text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos”
(Tumblr 1). While I am familiar enough with how Tumblr operates, I do not
use the platform myself. Instead, I have an account with Pinterest, which is
described as a “virtual pinboard… [allowing users to] organize and share all
the beautiful things you find on the web” (Pinterest 1). However, the
descriptions from each platform’s main website seem to suggest the same thing –
they provide a space for users to collect instances of various media (sites,
film, photographs, etc.), share those interests and network with others. It
seems that the main difference between the two is how the collected media is
presented – Tumblr has a top-to-bottom approach, showcasing one medium after
another in a subsequent order in blog-like entries, while Pinterest organizes
the various pieces in Boards, which adds an aspect of organization and
categorization.
My homepage on Pinterest.
Rosie's A Nice Little Tumblr Tumblr.
In general, both of these sites work by collecting other
forms of media and collapsing their dimensionality into the form of an
easy-to-navigate online space. For example, a user can post or pin a photograph
of a sculpture at a museum, a link to the museum’s website and a film clip
interviewing the artist all within seconds of one another and all with a flat dimensionality
on a web page. This experience is almost entirely hypermediated since it is
nearly impossible to ignore the features of the website in general, such as the
side-bar to scroll down, the mouse cursor, the layout of the sites themselves,
etc. Additionally, because the media (the photograph, the movie clip, etc.)
often take the form of visual hyperlinks in that they provide the user with
direct access to the source material (another website, a news article, even
another Tumblr/Pinterest user’s account), the whole experience moves beyond the
simple act of scrolling through various snapshots of media to a more
interactive, hyperlinked action. A small hint of immediacy could be argued that
much like the Facebook Wall feed or a Twitter feed, posts or pins are updated
in real-time, providing a good indication of where users’ interest lie and what
sort of media is actively trending.
Silent House
I will first admit that I myself have never seen the film in
question, although I knew enough about its basic plotline and structure to
discuss it here (Mostafa has seen it). Silent
House is a 2011 horror-thriller film staring Elizabeth Olsen. I clearly
remember the marketing for the film when it came out, showcasing not only the
shrieking actress and heart-pounding moments of suspense, but also the fact
that the movie is eighty-eight minutes long and shot to look like it is one
continuous shot. This style is not completely unique or new to this specific
film as there are some films that have done this film style already – Hitchcock’s
Rope comes most immediately to mind –
but we wanted to look at an example that more of our classmates might be
readily familiar with.
Silent House seems
to step out of the standard “Hollywood” style of
film and into something that more closely resembles a documentary or home-shot
movie. This remediation brings a great sense of immediacy to the film. The
seamlessness of having one continuous shot from the point of view of the main
character creates a semblance of real life, as if what was happening on the
screen was happening in real time. There are no cut-away shots, no transitions.
Therefore, as the camera moves through the action following the character’s
movement, it can seem to the viewer that they are there with her, following
right behind or alongside her, seeing what she sees. In effect, this is a
stylistic or filmic representation of what we might consider a first-person
narration style, which limits what a viewer can see or know. In turn, this film
style works to invoke a sense of fear in the viewer, as they are forced to move
along with the action as it happens on the screen without much “down-time” or
pauses.
This is the trailer for the original film, released in 2010;
they also made a point of hyping the “real time, real life” aspect of the
continuous shot:
Furthermore, in both films’ trailers, it is clear that the
camera style and ambiance also contribute to the heighten sense of fear and
immediacy. The “shaky” style of the camera work suggest that there is somebody
there, holding a small camera, running along side the characters instead of
being operated on a crane. The lighting is “realistic” in that instead of being
shot with a traditional three-point lighting system, the only light seems to
come from “real-world objects” such as a flashlight, lantern, outside
moonlight, etc. (expertvillage 1). Additionally, the view might note that in both trailers, the
sound effects of a Polaroid camera taking a photo and printing it out provide
another hint of immediacy by suggesting that the film is capturing what is
happening “now”. In fact, other than the obvious nature of it being a horror
film with its reliance on certain tropes, we found that there was more about
the film that made it immediate, rather than hypermediated.
In conclusion, by examining the three different types of
media by breaking down our analysis into the component parts of how they
operated under the concepts of remediation, it seems that each of our examples
were constituted of aspects that made them both immediate and hypermediated. I
would argue that this is because each of the three categories (video game,
social networking, movie) were arguably very “new” media; that is, on the
whole, they are more recent
developments in media as opposed to paintings or photographs. In this vein, I
found it telling that the vast majority of my classmates’ examples were all
very recent developments, say, within the past few decades. It appears that the
bulk of mainstream, “new media” are much more complex and multi-dimensional
that simple, linear-perspective paintings or photographs have, which results in
there being more facets to discuss and analyze.
-------
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation:
Understanding New Media. Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 2000. Print.
Ellekaay. Pinterest. Web. 9 September 2012. <http://pinterest.com/ellekaay/>
expertvillage. “Video Production Basics: How to Use
Three-Point Lighting.” YouTube.com. 29 October 2009. expertvillage. Web. 9
September 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gkfv78919ek>
“Pinsanity!” YouTube.com. 9
May 2012. Comediva. Web. 9 September 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7m9BdeP0cc>
Pinterest. Web.
9 September 2012.
Rosie. A Nice Little Tumblr. Web. 9 September 2012. <http://anicelittle.tumblr.com/>
Silent House.
Dir. Chris Kentis and Laura Lau. Perf. Elizabeth Olsen, Adam Trese, Eric
Sheffer Stevens. LD Entertainment, 2011. Film.
“Silent House – Official Trailer
HD (20120).” YouTube.com. 6 March 2012. megatrailer. Web. 9 September 2012.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2v6MJgM7cA&feature=related>
“The Silent House (Teaser
trailer HD English).” YouTube.com. 25 January 2010. Tokiofilms. Web. 9
September 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM2uf2AF_6Y>
“Star Wars: The Old Republic
– ‘Hope’ Cinematic Trailer.” YouTube.com. 15 June 2010. EA. Web. 9 September
2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ToztqqDcaY>
Star Wars: The Old Republic. Redwood
City: Electronic Arts, 2011.
“SWTOR Gameplay Tips: Light Side vs Dark Side – Alignment Choices
and Consequences.” YouTube.com. 5 January 2012. Draeden5. Web. 9 September
2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cslgcMP59pY>
Tumblr. Tumblr,
Inc., 2007. Web. 9 September 2012.
