Listening to the CD of McLuhan’s rap record from the late 1970s. A chaotic, dated mess, but nevertheless an interesting listen (if you have the patience). The book works better – which suggests why it’s still widely available and this is a limited pick up item.
Two essays that I have recently published in Routledge anthologies. Not for distribution. Read copyright notices. Selling Out, Buying In is 4000 words in length. Mobilizing Affect runs to 6000 words. As is the standard in Film and Media Studies, there are no standalone Lit Review or Methods sections – these are incorporated into the body of the essays – so take these as representative of the results and analysis section with an eye to structure. If you have no idea as to what I am referring being as you are not enrolled in my Senior Thesis course, then simply download the articles and, hopefully, enjoy. For students, please study for form.
Now we all have the tools to communicate. Unlike the recent past, when the tools of media production were almost wholly owned by large corporate entities, now, thanks to other large corporate entities (like Apple Computer and Adobe Software) the average person (defined as you and I) can produce media that for the most part lacks any sort of audience (defined as actual persons reading this post).
So, my imagined audience is “you.” But I need to imagine that you are reading, but I also need to realistically assume that you are not. Many, many fingers are clicking away on keyboards attached to the Internet which results in much text that for the most part goes unread (and video images that are never seen).
Obviously this moment is analogous to the historical moment when cheap paper and simple writing tools became readily available following the spread of literacy (and the leisure time in which to use these materials to produce diaries and correspondence became available as well). The divide that seems to have dissolved – one that held firm until rather recently – is that which formerly existed between private writing (represented by diaries and notes) and public writing (represented by letters and memos and such).
There must be many terabytes of drive space dedicated to private writing that never makes it to the publishable space of the web, but this is invisible to us – the Internet audience – real, not imagined as I and others do see and experience public forms of text on the web (also images, sound, and video). But, the imagined audience becomes important once communication is considered as a goal. Communication is a zero sum game by virtue of the finitude of lifespans. There are only so many hours in a day of usable time to communicate or to participate as an audience.
I imagine that an audience of some sort – I have no idea of the number of individuals who potentially comprise this aggregate, possibly none – is reading this post and I need that imagined audience in order to write this post. So the productivity of bloggers – in this example – is dependent on the goal of communication with the realization that the audience is most likely absent or simply friends, colleagues, or family (which, from experience, lack the time to read much anyway). Thus, a comment on a post is a blip communication. Sort of a message in a bottle returned – across space, even time.
Regardless, the imagined audience is necessary. It moves Internet communication from the realm of the one to the many (the multitude as absence).
There was a time in the late 1970s when the term independent filmmaking was synonymous with Lenny Lipton’s book of the same name (Lipton being the guy who wrote the lyrics to “Puff the Magic Dragon“ amongst other things). For Lipton, independent filmmaking signified the micro-buget productions of filmmakers ranging from Stan Brakhage to Fred Wiseman. These films by virtue of their small scale economic footprint (Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would call it ”restricted production“) could present their vision (ideas, concepts, approach, style, content) as the work of an individual artist or creator presented to a self-selective audience of highly engaged spectators. While this style of filmmaking fit with the model of the romantic genius artist that had developed under industrial capitalism (and, in fact, in response to industrial capitalism) it also represented the actuality of the process of production that these films entailed. A single individual could craft a film based on the industrial tools available at a quite modest expense.
Now, there seems to be some gathering consensus that independent filmmaking is coming to an end because the major studios are closing down the boutique studio brands that were acquired during the frenzy of the 1990’s Sundance style of independent filmmaking. For all of his creativity – and his film The Limey is one of my favorites – Steven Soderbergh’s cinematic output is simply a variation on the narrative techniques and tropes of mainstream Hollywood style. This is another example of the myopia of critics and viewers who fail to conceive of media as anything other than the conventional commercial approaches to production that are driven by cash. For the most part, independent seems to mean that the filmmaker needs to come begging for financial support, hat in hand. The end product remains similar in style and form to the larger scale production that is green-lighted with less trepidation.
Obviously, there is a world of media production that flies under the radar of mainstream promotion and criticism. It use to exist on video tape. Before that it lived on 16mm and super-8 film stock. Now it exists on the web. The heirs to Stan Brakhage are to be found in cyberspace. A romantic location perhaps – read William Gibson’s work to see how romanticized the Internet can be. The avant-garde as a political and aesthetic impulse was depleted long ago, but the underlying impulse, a resistance to modernity and capitalism, needs to be reinvigorated with every generation or we simply capitulate to the powers that be. Not a smart move on anyone’s part – left, right, or moderate.
