Media Permaculture
I don’t think any artist gets a pass for misogyny or gratuitous violence (Quentin Tarantino included), but we should be skeptical when pundits or presidential candidates rail against gangsta rap or “hip hop” culture given the unchecked misdeeds of the US military and entertainment business. Generally I take those terms as code for “black culture,” so use your radar wisely during this election cycle. Meanwhile, in “Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It” Ice Cube points the camera back at media hypocrisy.
Image source: Apoplectic Press
What follows will surely put me on Bill O’Reilly’s Most Wanted list (that is if I hit his radar at all, which is totally unlikely), but I came to the conclusion today that the number one cause of global warming has to be…. Christmas. Consider the following:
I think if Jesus could peer into the future and see what his birthdate would do to the planet he would surely have called for a moratorium on such celebrations.
Technorati Tags: ClimateChange
I am now facing my first fatherhood crisis. No it’s not the fact that I haven’t slept more than four hours in a night in the past seven months, nor the daily grind of spit and poop. No, it came in the form of a three foot mouse named Mickey, an uninvited guest who landed in the dark night of Xmas.
Receiving a monstrous Mickey Mouse doll should be a family decision. This is not something you casually buy someone with no warning. It’s an invasion, the D-Day of consumer capitalism. A well-meaning relative believed he was doing the right think by giving our daughter this play thing, yet it’s one of a dimension that can only be deemed, uhm, American. To a seven-month-old this is not a toy, a mouse or a Disney character, but a large plush blob conglomerating abstract shapes that through training takes the form of something more recognizable in the future. I have no doubt that Mickey will now join the family and give her hours of joy. That’s why I feel guilty re-naming him Beelzebub.
Upon rolling my eyes when He arrived, my Italian partner reminded me that I already have a Ronald McDonald doll in the apartment. But he’s wearing a Mexican wrestler’s mask and a button that says “McShit.” I also pointed out that I have two Zapatista dolls as well. She wondered why I object to the innocent looking creature that takes up half our couch. I responded that he is the smiley face of Empire, a gateway drug to consumerism. Once our daughter becomes acclimated to Mickey’s likeness, then the door opens up to a host of other nefarious consumer goods, none of which I can afford, nor do I want to. But can I break her little heart by arguing that Mickey was probalby made by Chinese prison labor, or that the fire retardant material it’s made out of is comprised of neurotoxins? But alas I remember my grandmother telling me that I should finish my food because other kids in the world were starving. I always hated it when she said that. I don’t think I will impose globalization upon my daughter. Yet.
Now, I don’t intend to censor my daughter’s reality. If she wants Disney, she will have Disney, with restraint, of course. We’ll do Santa, too. I don’t intend to be an anti-capitalst scrooge, 1) because I won’t deny her the magical aspects that brought me happiness as a child, and 2) because it will make her a social outcast. I know too many hippie kids who ended up becoming stock brokers and real estate agents because their parents nursed them on wheat grass and made them toys out of roof shingles. Still, something has to be done. Ultimately I have learned that it’s better to ask questions and let the child decide what is right and wrong. This is how my grandfather approached things, even when he denied me coloring books because they controlled my creativity. I honestly don’t know how I will respond when the society will parent my child again. But rest assured, I’m making it my project to design the best mousetrap possible.
BTW, Happy Holidaze!
Technorati Tags: Mickey Mouse, Disney
What happens when this young man rules the world?
Stay Free! Daily:
A Wall Street Journal columnist blames twentysomething narcissism on Mr. Rogers (unfair!), Boomer-style permissive parenting (getting warmer), and the gospel of self-esteem (warmer still). What the press reports seem to miss, however, is the fact that this is the first generation of children raised in an environment of unabashed marketing. In 1980, corporate lobbying managed to get Congress to abolish the Federal Trade Commission’s authority to regulate advertising to kids. With no watchdog in sight, an entire industry developed to market directly to kids. Full-length commercials began masquerading as TV cartoons. Channel One launched its in-school advertising “news” network. And junk food marketing skyrocketed. The most common message of marketing to tweens and teens is this: your parents are idiots, your teachers are dull, you’re so much cooler than everyone else. But we understand you and know what you want. Product!
What may be bad news for the pampered white kids featured in the segment, though, should be good news for America’s immigrants. Based on this segment, I’d say immigrants who’ve brought over a strong work ethic will have a great shot at out-achieving the coddled elites, once employers stop instinctively hiring rich whites. Let’s hear it for class war!
Carrie McLaren from Stay Free! discusses in the above post the recent whining in the media about what crappy workers the next batch of post-grads have become. The so-called “millennials” are even out-slacking the slackers (that would be my generation: “X”– sorry folks, the name is taken). Like Carrie I’ve been irritated by a lot of the complainers who are attacking liberal media or parenting techniques by the so-called “helicopter” parents. Who are these dreaded parents destroying the world with all their love and affection? Last time I checked (and as a former teacher I can tell you that I checked a lot), most families I dealt with were completely broken: divorced, working ten jobs, alcoholic, impoverished, I could go on. This mythic creature of the suburban parent and the overly protective family is some kind of demographic fantasy, or… I may just live on the wrong planet. Both might be true.
I think Carrie nails a few points. One is that advertising does demonize authority, teachers and parents. If you don’t believe me, randomly select any Budweiser ad and tell me I’m wrong. The common concern of the articles she sites is that immigrants still have a strong work ethic and , boo-hoo, the white race will slack off and die. The problem for marketers and the businesses that depend on them is that their realities are imploding. The whole history of sucking the emotion out of workers is the source of “cool” and the current trend of the ironic disposition. No one is allowed to care anymore, because if you do, you might actually unionize (see my previous post on the writer’s strike). Besides, why should we care? Most corporations of yore (the kind that our parents and grandparents grew up working for) at least offered you job security for selling your soul to the company store. Not anymore. They want your undying attention and will farm your pension to some bankrupt Enron of the future so that every dime of your retirement ends up in the golden parachute of the next defrocked CEO of international finance. Geez, with so much hypocrisy looping around our economic system, it’s hard to find a reason why anyone should care about whether or not a 20 year old has enough focus to read a spreadsheet before switching to Tetras. Slack on!
Oh, and add to that the need for a volunteer military who cares enough and will willingly die for abstract concepts like freedom and democracy in the world’s shitholes that happen to be of interest because of their proximity to composted dinosaurs. LOL.
I’d like to add the following theory. Part of the reason our culture (the affluent one that is supposed to perform the knowledge work of our society) is imploding is because they are the last generation to play out the final act of the alphabetized, and hence right-brained, mind. Immigrants, many of whom come from countries that are not dominated by the history of print literacy, have spacial minds that contain broader realities, including the multidimensional, multilayered, pattern-like world that is emerging. Perhaps that is is why they will some day (soon) rule the world. I’m crying crocodile tears.
Technorati Tags: Stay Free!
(c) ODTmaps
An interesting article on how the world can teach the US a thing or two. What follows is a snip that discusses “ubuntu.”
AlterNet: 11 Things We Can Learn from the Rest of the World:
Here’s a surprise. What Africa has to offer the West is democracy! History says Ancient Greece invented democracy. But the Greeks took their inspiration from the other side of the Mediterranean in Egypt. “African democracy,” which is practiced to this day in villages and towns across the continent — where 70 percent of Africans live — is very different from “Western democracy.” It is based on the humanist philosophy called Ubuntu, originating in southern Africa, which teaches, “I am because you are.” African democracy is focussed on including everyone, whereas Western democracy, with its basis in majority rule, divides people and nations.
Traditional African democracy doesn’t involve organized opposition. Power is arranged like a pyramid. At the top is the king who exercises supreme authority, assisted by his council of elders and sub-chiefs. But the king or chief has no power except that which is given to him by the people. He is usually enthroned for life, but the actual duration of his reign depends on how well or poorly he performs. If he is a good king, he stays. If he is a bad king — who oppresses the people, or acts against their interests and traditions — he is overthrown by the people, using the constitutional means established for the purpose.
With the sound of the other shoe dropping, i.e. the subprime mortgage market collapse, we can now see that chances are very strong that the US Empire will be disintegrating very quickly. People seem to forget that they are spending something ridiculous like a billion dollars a day on Iraq, so we have to wonder, who is going to pay for it? You guessed it. Anyhow, the chorus of Rome and US comparisons is hitting a feverish pitch. Here is just one snip of many flying through cyberspace these days, this coming no less from the US Inspector General (Congress’s autonomous watch-dog organization):
FT.com / World - Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned:
The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.
Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.
With the comparisons between the fall of Rome and the dire situation the US finds itself in, I think it would be wise to study history, indeed, but I would liken the situation closer to the fall of the Spanish Empire. There was a time when Spanish currency was the gold standard of the world, but the ruling elite became decadent (surprise!) and the Empire found itself importing more goods from France than they were producing at home. To this the French King said something like, “Let the Spanish spend their gold on our goods!” Perhaps the Chinese are saying the same thing.
But more importantly is the manner in which Spain digressed into its own Dark Age with the Inquisition and purge of its business and intellectual class through the expulsion of the Sephardim jews. Here is where the parallel is dangerously close. The recent anti-immigration fervor is nothing but coded racism, and with little else to latch onto, I predict the Republicans and the desperate Right are going to go all out with semiotic race war. And it won’t just target Latin Americans, but anyone who no longer fits the 1950s fantasy of white American society. The brain drain is on as technical jobs, and even CEOs are being farmed out of the States. The US is in grave danger of a racist purge, so please keep your eyes on the ball folks and make sure this doesn’t happen, because there are desperate people clinging to an outmoded reality, and that usually is a bad recipe for social harmony.
There is an upside to this, but this certainly is one that comes along down the line. As someone who lives in a formerly ruined empire, the nice thing you learn from being in Rome is that life goes on, even after 2, 500 years of a rise and fall of human fortunes (Mexico CIty has a similar fate). You have no idea what a relief it is to live in a place that is NOT an empire. It’s like having a dark gray energy bubble cleansed and released. The burden of Iraq, the stress of war, the faltering economy, the rise of the national security apparatus with the legal blessings of Congress, and the paranoid delusion and paranoia of the “others” is wearing people down. It’s a sad time, but also a moment to completely reevaluate the priorities and decisions of our society. I truly hope that this becomes a sobering moment, as in when the alcoholic finally bottoms out. It’s time to acknowledge that the “powerholic” has finally hit the floor, the face going splat. I just wish there was AA for people addicted to war.
Some media thinkers have remarked that with the advent of satellite imagery that we inhabitants of Earth would become more continentally conscious because we would cease to see the political boundaries of maps and begin to see ourselves living on islands. The creation of regional markets and trade zones buttresses this observation. I certainly had a shift in awareness when I first used Google maps and tilted my view from looking straight down on Earth to one that showed the horizon and the planet’s curve. It was a revelation, not on the scale of a religious ah-ha, but there was something strangely profound as I shifted and altered my perspective of the composited desert landscape with my mouse. It was as if I had full control of the planet. It felt like my computer had become a spaceship’s portal.
For the past few weeks I’ve been traversing continents (hence the dearth of posts) and I’m getting a better sense of the difference between those who are harnessing the island mentality to expand consciousness with those who are increasingly imprisoned by it. In particular two locales represent extreme spectrums: Bavaria and Oklahoma.
Traveling through Europe is an eye-opener. If you want to collect passport stamps as souvenirs, forget it. Flying between countries is as seamless as going between states. Somehow the countries of Europe are managing to harmonize their differences to facilitate business and cultural exchange. This is not to gloss over the very real differences and conflicts within the European Union, but one gets a sense of a wariness of war and empire building so pervasive in the US. There it is an archaic artifact of the industrial world. So it’s strangely ironic that in the US, which has always prided itself as being the “new” world, it is now embalming itself as it engages a nihilistic path of self-destruction.
Certainly there are things about Europe that are not desirable, especially the lack of professional and academic freedom enjoyed in the US, but it is impressive how the Germans are taking recycling and energy consumption incredibly seriously. In one building I walked through, the lights only went on when I passed sensors. At the Munich airport the escalator only runs when people are on it. On Lufthansa Airlines they recycle every bit of waste, including bottle caps. My brother’s Munich apartment has four different bins for recycling. It is strange, though, that Germans remain staunch holdouts on the smoking ban. It’s hard to grok seeing such heightened environmental consciousness while smoking is still permitted in restaurants and bars.
I realize it is not fair to hold up Bavaria as foil for examining US consumption patterns, especially given its reputation that it is so sanitary that it is “licked clean,” but we have to take seriously the fact that what was once the center of one the most heinous regimes in world history is now a curious example of civic responsibility and forward thinking about ecology. In a contrast (and clash) of cultures, I happened to be at the US Consulate in Munich for its Independence Day celebration and found myself in a weirdly surreal environment in which McDonalds catored food (along with Holiday Inn and other corporate sponsors). It was the first time in my life that I ate a McDonalds cheeseburger and downed a pint of German beer simultaneously. It didn’t make the burger taste any better, and furthered my theory that the problem with the US business and government culture is a lack of aesthetics. But then again, aesthetics didn’t serve the Germans too well in the past.
Having been gone from the US for over five months (the longest spell away from my homeland), I was treated to major culture shock as I reentered the country. From being harassed by homeland security and being treated like a criminal by my own government to the chill of air conditioning, I’m finding it difficult to have faith in the future of our land. There is a strangely ironic twist to the refrigerated state that Americans so enjoy, as if a symbolic transfer of artic cold is being made in the form of electrically powered environmental conditioners whose energetic output is warming the glaciers and polar caps. You can see all that evaporated moisture in Oklahoma where it has been raining nonstop for a month and the state has been flooded endlessly from torrential downpours. I wonder if the ranch of Sen. Jim Inhofe, the man whose mission it has been to declare global warming a hoax and to serve as Al Gore’s nemesis, has been affected by all this rain.
With the amount of preservatives, sugar and grease people are eating, one gets the sense that when combined with such frigid air there is an unconscious process of embalming that people are going through as if to deny that the world is changing. For these obese humans—and believe me it is SHOCKING how fat Americans are becoming—fat serves as barrier against the world. I want to qualify this statement to say that I know some people are genetically predisposed to obesity and that I am not judging large people, but there is clearly a problem with our food and eating habits when you see heaviness so pervasively in contrast to other countries. When you eat at restaurants across the middle US you are constantly served not one, but two plates of food. At one point I had to ask a waitress when I ordered dinner how many plates the food would be coming on, and when she delivered the predicted response I asked if it was strange that people were stuffing themselves to death. The teen waitress responded with a question: “Didn’t you see Super Size Me?” Ah, there is hope after all. Still, it is no wonder the US can’t win wars any more. There is little able-bodied cannon fodder left.
I was working at a lake resort running a youth media program for the Creek Nation. During the week’s storms the lake swelled to the point that the children’s playground was half underwater and trees were drowning fifty feet out into the lake. I kept thinking about all the little short films I saw during Live Earth and the one common image of rising waters and floods. Meanwhile, inside the icebox cold resort, soda was served instead of water and cans were tossed into the garbage instead of recycling bins. Pounds upon pounds of greasy meat and dead vegetables were courses for the day. Down the road at a “nature” center animals and plants are caged and domesticated. I strained to see Al Gore’s vision applied here, and felt as far away from Bavarian ecological activism as one could feel in a planet that should be shrinking with cross-fertilization. Instead, in heartland America I get the sense of increasing isolation and a lashing out against the world because of fear of change. This is especially evidenced by the pervasiveness of evangelical TV channels permeating the broadcast spectrum. In America, we threaten to imprison ourselves in our own outmoded, dying paradigm of power, symbolized the by the growing girth of our bodies. It’s hard to imagine a more depressing image of a continent.
In case you haven’t noticed, here at Media Mindfulness science fiction is very popular. Here’s another movie trailer for a sci-fi book, this one for Greg Bear’s Eon. I like this trend, although I hope the images from the clip don’t spoil the ones from your imagination. I remember seeing the Hobbit animated and being horribly disappointed.
Technorati Tags: Greg Bear, eon
[youtube]kTyks-IRFPY[/youtube]
Forget Vegas, forget Disney. Meet Dubai. Nice beach-front property, just a stone’s throw from Iran and WWIII. God willing for oil economy investors, may the Straits of Hormuz remain open and sea levels even.
If the above promotional video isn’t convincing enough (yes, it’s real), read a sample of Mike Davis‘ remarkable piece on Dubai, sci-fi capital of the world:
New Left Review - Mike Davis: Fear and Money in Dubai:
Welcome to a strange paradise. But where are you? Is this a new Margaret Atwood novel, Philip K. Dick’s unpublished sequel to Blade Runner or Donald Trump on acid? No. It is the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai in 2010. After Shanghai (current population 15 million), Dubai (current population 1.5 million) is the planet’s biggest building site: an emerging dreamworld of conspicuous consumption and what the locals boast as ‘supreme lifestyles’. Despite its blast-furnace climate (on typical 120° summer days, the swankier hotels refrigerate their swimming pools) and edge-of-the-war-zone location, Dubai confidently predicts that its enchanted forest of 600 skyscrapers and malls will attract 15 million overseas visitors a year by 2010, three times as many as New York City. Emirates Airlines has placed a staggering $37-billion order for new Boeings and Airbuses to fly these tourists in and out of Dubai’s new global air hub, the vast Jebel Ali airport. [1] Indeed, thanks to a dying planet’s terminal addiction to Arabian oil, this former fishing village and smugglers’ cove proposes to become one of the world capitals of the 21st century. Favouring diamonds over rhinestones, Dubai has already surpassed that other desert arcade of capitalist desire, Las Vegas, both in sheer scale of spectacle and the profligate consumption of water and power.
And now for some video to flesh out the story:
Technorati Tags: Dubai, Mike Davis
Continue reading ‘Sureal Estate: Dubai is the sci-fi capital of the world’
Happy New Year! To get things going, here’s some positive attitude about media, something you don’t hear so much these days.
TheStar.com - sciencetech - The year in Ideas:
Massaged by the medium
Metta Spencer is a peace activist and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who argues that TV and film have already helped make the world a better place, and could make it better still. Not all TV and movies, of course, but shows with humanity, idealism and a sense of social justice. In a May interview with the Star’s Olivia Ward, Spencer – whose latest book, Two Aspirins and a Comedy: How Television Can Enhance Health and Society, had recently been published – recounted how she watched the Alaska-based series Northern Exposure while recovering from hip-replacement surgery, and “my pain would diminish for hours.”
But in her book, and the interview, Spencer went beyond the biochemical impact of laughter and positive emotions to look at how popular entertainments can spur social change. “Birth rates in the developing world are dropping ahead of schedule – TV viewers see small, happy families and emulate them,” she told Ward. “Intelligence levels are increasing by three points per decade, largely because of exposure to complicated plots in TV shows.
“In 1983, the film Gandhi brought non-violent methods to a wide audience, and activists studied that film closely and implemented those techniques in 1989, toppling Communism almost without bloodshed. It’s astounding.”
Ultimately, Spencer believes that TV and film could literally save the planet. “Motivation simply doesn’t come from information,” she said. “It comes from feelings – sentiments, affects. It comes from caring. It comes from emotional human relationships. Even fictional relationships can have emotional power.”
The Nation has a great special issue out on media. This was my favorite article:
A new media era is here. The head of NBC says he is selling to sponsors “on the air, online and on-the-go.” “Cross platform” is the term of the day. For progressives and independents, the old hurdles of distribution–erected by the powerful media conglomerates–are giving way to new opportunities. We don’t need a billion dollars to buy a network. We don’t need hundreds of millions to take over this or that media entity. We have at our disposal a rapidly proliferating array of tools available at low cost to get our messages out–from the Internet to iPods to cellphones and whatever comes next.
It’s that time of year for the international holiday for freaks, TV Turnoff Week. Sponsored by Adbusters, this has become a calling card for school librarians (yes, they are feeing the pinch) and is a good time to reflect on our addiction to media. A few questions, though. What is a TV anymore? With TiVo, V-cast telephones and Web TV it seems like TVs are very old school as a thought process. It has always been my contention that TVs are structures, not objects. When I suggested to Jerry Mander (author of Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
In a past life when I was a student at Berkeley, we used to have a TV smash party on Sproul Plaza. It was quite dangerous, actually. Did you know that tube TVs hold enough of an electrical charge to kill a human? (This is so you can fire it up on demand!) But we put on our goggles and had cathartic fun anyway. What will you do for TV turnoff week? I’ll be recording all my favorite commercials, so I won’t miss a thing anyway.
Eco-prison
Will eco-prison reform criminals? - World Environment - MSNBC.com: