After reading McLuhan, I have
become increasingly more aware of how connected I am to technology,
specifically my phone. In “The Medium is
the Message”, Marshall McLuhan presents the concept that we are becoming
increasingly more reliant on media on an everyday basis to the point that we
have attained a heightened sense of responsibility and have lost the ability to
be ‘aloof’ and ‘disconnected’
I found the McLuhan reading incredibly stimulating;
specifically in the discussion of how often we interact with media in everyday
life. In the end, it is the process of mediation that brings the entire world
together, despite its disparate parts. I was interested in McLuhan’s view of
the globe as no more than a village. This idea brought me back to the first
picture taken of Earth from space; the image reminded the public of how small
the Earth we share is, which connects us to each other despite racial, moral,
and cultural differences. The absence of this ‘six degrees of separation’
concept of media was prominent during my three hours of network ‘silence’. In
response to the “heightened human awareness of responsibility” (McLuhan, 5), I
began to wonder to what extent we can be aware of responsibility until we
become over-stimulated by it and no longer affected. Is there a point where we
have so much information thrown at us that we begin to ignore issues and hope
someone more proactive will figure out a solution? Does this influx of
information promote moral laziness? As McLuhan examined the impossibility to
act aloof and dissociated, I was disillusioned by this effect that media has
had on society. Does this mean that we are so connected to each other that we
have lost the ability to ‘not care’? Are we really so constantly emotionally
invested in every social operation? This being said, I wonder if this is truly
such an evil thought; would society be better and more progressive without
constant emotional involvement?
On page 318 of Understanding Media, McLuhan goes into detail about the gender
roles of television actors and movie actors as well as the disparity between
the two fan groups. On TV, most starts are men and are typically the “cool”
characters while most movie stars are women because they are presented as “hot”
characters. A Hollywood hotel owner notices an interesting disparity amongst
the fan groups of both TV stars and movie stars. Typically, movie fans want to
see their favorite stars as they are in real life, not as in their film roles
whereas TV fans want to see the stars in their role. This disparity is a great
example of the multi-sensory interaction that viewers have with television.
Because they are interacting in multiple ways, they become more attached to the
characters and plot lines rather than the actors themselves. In fact, the
actors start to become synonymous with the characters due to this heavy
audience interaction and multi-sensory experience.
The Community episode “Remedial Chaos
Theory” is perhaps overly participatory, to the point that we start becoming
skeptical and untrusting of the plot, and television in general. The flow of
images in “Remedial Chaos Theory” is quick and action/content-packed. With each
new timeline created, the audience can expect certain details however they are
both slightly and dramatically altered in certain scenarios that the viewer
must give their complete and total attention. We become so invested in the
story to the point that we become upset when the end scenario is not the true
timeline; the last scenario shows everyone happy, healthy, and singing however
the actual reality is that everyone suffered. Community teased us – we became too involved ad too ready to settle
on the last scenario until they tricked us at the last minute. Luckily, because
Community is a serialized sitcom, we
know that by the next episode, Troy will be able to talk again, Pierce will be
alive, and Jeff will have all of his appendages. Still, one can’t help but feel
deceived by the order of the scenarios and the end results. However, McLuhan’s
participatory view of television still stands, as the viewer does not feel
deceived by the actual medium of television, but deceived by the plot of the
program. The viewer is hurt that, after participating with multiple senses to
the story of these seven people, there was not a happy ending like we had
expected.
The
multi-sensory participatory nature of television as a medium is interesting;
how come we do not feel the same way about cinema? Do the beats and commercials
of a television program require a different kind of audience participation than
cinema? Perhaps the human mind is not able to participate to the extent that it
does with television with cinema because of the lengths of the modern movies in
the television age. By the time the television evolved, movies were not short
clips of trains or Mickey Mouse – they were lengthy, cinematic blockbusters. On
the other hand, maybe the television is at fault for shortening our attention
spans with all of the sensory experience it demands in a 30- or 60-minute
episode. There are multiple theories as to why we participate with television
the way we do or if television is simply a conspiracy medium to exploit the
public for advertising time. Regardless, it cannot be contested that
television, as a medium, is unique from every medium that came before it.
**I have the episode on my computer if we want to watch it in class!
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