Category Archives: Deconstruction

The Transported Man

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Prestige-1
I have a new article up at Reality Sandwich: The Transported Man: Phantasmagoria, Tesla and Magic.

It’s an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Mediacology (out in April 2008). Though my article mostly deals with The Prestige, I also delve into some more philosophical musings. Here’s a teaser for the article:

Some art historians claim the Greeks were aware of linear perspectival space as a technique, but rejected it because of its innate distortion of God’s natural order. In this respect, the Renaissance and the project of Enlightenment, which conformed the world to the eye and book, would probably have incensed Socrates as a kind of sorcery, for Socrates hated magicians and poets: “I don’t mind saying to you, that all poetic imitations are ruinous to the understanding of the hearers, and that the knowledge of their true nature is the only antidote to them.” The vitriol continues as he vilifies the Sophist who is a “sort of wizard, an imitator of things.” Ironically, it was the codification of the alphabet by the Greeks that set our imitative technologies into motion.

Cut to the 19th Century when phantasmagoria was a popular entertainment spectacle that incorporated smoke, mirrors, and projected light to create illusions during live performances. The term itself combines roots for ghost or spirit (phantasm) and gathering (agora). Webster defines it as,

1: an exhibition or display of optical effects and illusions; 2 a: a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined b: a scene that constantly changes; 3: a bizarre or fantastic combination, collection, or assemblage.

The key words are “exhibition,” “illusions,” “shifting,” and “assemblage,” all of which characterize the change that was taking place in the 19th Century as a result of the rise of mass media, commodities culture, industrialization, urbanization and the exponential increase in speed of transportation that was shaping perception. What is particularly interesting about the root “agora” is the sense of an open gathering space of the Greek polis, denoting a collective, public experience , the phantasmagoria being a shared social reality.

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Thoughts on media mind control

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Periodically I get requests to review material to see if it’s relevant for media literacy. I was asked to view the above clip, which I found instructive in terms of how not to think about media. What follows is my reading:

Upon reviewing the video I would not recommend it for media literacy. While it is true that the many people in corporate media are on the CFR, I don’t believe they take directives from a secret group. It’s an issue of them all sharing the same values and worldview in the same way the same people mentioned probably all went to Ivy League schools and were in the same fraternities. Also, in terms of its educational applicability, it’s my opinion that it’s better to demonstrate how coverage of certain issues benefit specific sectors of society. A good example of this would be from the Noam Chomsky documentary, Manufacturing Consent, because it has good case studies.

Furthermore, I really don’t like the idea of conspiracies and secret cabals. Life is chaotic and messy. It’s easier to create chaos than order, although there is a point that generating a perpetual state of disorder is one kind of control, and that certainly has been true through out history. But that tiger is not an easy ride. If mind control truly were possible, we’d all be pretty mind-frakked right now. The system is in place to do it. Why hasn’t it happened?

Also, all the media discussed in the clip are increasingly irrelevant because the entire mediascape is evolving into a new paradigm. The assumptions of the narrator is that we inhabit a one-to-many, vertical model of information distribution, when in fact we are now in a more horizontal, many-to-many distribution flow. I’m not saying that corporate media are not dangerous to the planet, but we need newer ways of understanding, and unfortunately this particular clip features some outdated views of how media currently operate.

Finally, I don’t believe in the “conduit” form of media: that is, the idea that information exists as objects that are delivered from one person to the next without being altered. Communication is messy, so ideas don’t transfer that well. For example, how many of you can repeat all Ten Commandments and agree on what they mean? What is dangerous about media is how they produce “subjectivities”: ways of thinking. In a sense, the above clip just repeats the same “subjectivity” of the people it purports to critique, yet another example of the snake eating its tail. Time to change our diet.

Extraterrestrial Hummer

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File this one under inexplicable partnerships. National Geographic has now branded a hydrogen powered Hummer. I have mixed feeling about this. National Geographic is generally considered a green brand, perhaps because of its global scope and efforts to document the vanishing human and natural world. Hummer, on the other hand, is the perfect symbol of the war economy, as a gas-guzzling behemoth, but also as a stand-in for the emasculated male member. I have long monitored Hummer ads and have seen a repeated message that we humans have become extraterrestrials. Forget spaceship earth, the Hummer is spaceship survival. With an absence of drivers in this ad, you get the sense that the Hummer is a borg, and we are simply its servomechanism. The quick cuts of the commercial also generates a discontinuous, disjointed relationship with place. We jumpcut around the globe as if the SUV will serve as our time-space machine.

Dove-olution? Updated

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I admit that Dove’s first round of postironic anti-”beauty” beauty commercials rubbed me the wrong way. I posted that it was a little too close to the edge of self-promotion for a beauty supply company to market itself as the anti-product. But this one is pretty darn amazing, to be honest, and it really hit me viscerally because I have a young daughter. The advice is wise: we shouldn’t let media parent our children. So though there’s a tiny cynical voice inside me that decries this as an insidiously ploy cloaked inside the protein shell of a corporate virus, I believe the intention behind it is sincere. I believe this would be a good teaching tool, as long as it is presented within the context of other messages.

Update:

I just became aware that Dove’s parent company Unilever also makes Axe, which has one of the most heinous, misogynous marketing campaigns in the universe. It is so insidious and evil it almost nullifies all the good will that Dove creates with its ad. Because on the one hand, Dove is promoting the self-esteem of girls, but on the other, Axe not only promotes the degradation of girls, it creates the fantasy that women are just tools of male sexuality. It subtly promotes a rapist mentality by encouraging the belief that every woman’s goal is to rip off her clothes at the first sent of a boy using Axe. And if she doesn’t, what will he do with his false expectations? It is quite infuriating and disgusting.

You can send a letter of protest here:

From Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood:

Unilever says it wants to promote girls’ self-esteem. Its Dove Campaign for Real Beauty has been lauded for challenging the standards of the beauty industry.

There’s just one problem: Unilever is the beauty industry. A manufacturer of diet aids, cosmetics, skin whiteners, and other beauty products, Unilever is responsible for much of the advertising it claims it wants to help girls resist. Unilever’s advertising for Axe grooming products – which appears frequently on MTV and other youth-oriented media – epitomizes the sexist and degrading marketing that can undermine girls’ healthy development.

If Unilever is serious about promoting girls well-being, they’ll start by looking in the mirror. Please take a moment to urge Unilever CEO Patrick Cescau to end the degrading Axe campaign.

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The Sicko Zeitgeist: a tale of two documentaries and the rat race of fear

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Zeitgeist

Image source LAFFOLEY ARCHIVE.

Sicko finally came to Italy. There must be some strange pleasure in reviewing and inspecting the sickness that has emerged in the American social system. My Italian partner tells me that since WWII Italians have always looked up to the United States as the future, a kind of Utopia to works towards. This might explain Berlusconi’s misadventure in Iraq. With the Italians gone from Mesopotamia, Roman theaters now feature documentaries about Guantanamo Bay, the US healthcare system and the docudrama Death of a President get equal play with horror and action films. Is there still an American Utopia out there? The Simpsons Movie opens this weekend.
Sicko of course left me feeling disgusted. In Italy, as a legal resident I’m entitled to a doctor and free healthcare. The system here is not as perfect as those shown in Sicko, such as France, England, Canada and Cuba. During the pregnancy a few times we had to go to expensive private hospitals because the equipment we needed for tests had too long of a cue at the public hospital. But still, disregarding what we paid for tests, the cost of our daughter’s birth was 100 Euros. I asked people in the US what the typical cost of a hospital birth is, and I was told around $8,000.

Like many of the tales in Sicko, I have my own healthcare nightmare, and despite having insurance, I have spent at least $20,000 in the past seven years because of health issues that resulted from environmental toxins. One thing that people should pay attention to in Michael Moore’s documentary is that societies that invest more into healthcare and prevention have healthier people who live longer and therefore cost less to the system (duh!). Is American capitalism so attached to greed and selfishness that it is not even willing to invest in a prolonged and healthier life? It is a sad irony of the Protestant work ethic that the glory of material wealth is really meaningless when you are sick and dying.

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Zeitgeist image of the week

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Olympia-Fire

With the Greek statue of Victory at Ancient Olympia surrounded by fire, we see a perfect visual metaphor for the state of our world. From where I write I can see the island of neighboring Sicily and the smoke from fires that have been raging here in Calabria for the past couple of weeks. With a searing North African wind called the Scirocco (pronounced “Sheeroko”) gusting through, the combination of aridity and increasing temperatures are too much for the regional environment to sustain. Fire is purifying the land and our efforts to control the world.

The Greek statue embodies the ideal of rational man as separate from nature. This worldview smolders like the fires surrounding Olympia. Our mechanical, technological world is a direct consequence of the ancient Greek template to isolate and amplify our left-brain functions through the alphabet and to reject a right-brain, holistic conceptualization process of so-called tribal cultures. To be civilized was to impose upon nature certain ideals that don’t harmonize, but facilitate greed and selfishness. It’s fitting that the fires were started illegally to clear forest for development because it is not legal to build if there is forest in the location.

Even the concept of Olympia is questioned by the image: containing the force of the body through competition so as to restrain it within predictable outcomes is no match when the rivalry is with nature.

Finally, the photo itself is a kind of “truth” that we accept. By its fact of existence, we believe the reality that it contains to be valid as well, yet the truth is that a mediary chose to frame the perspective and point-of-view that is embodied within the photo. In this case he or she recognized that there was something significant in the relationship between the ideal of permanence set against a backdrop of catastrophe.

Cute but bogus gender-typing

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Zwinky.com is all the rage among tween and teen marketers. I haven’t tried it myself, but judging from these two ads, it seems to promote the opportunity to transform yourself, yet I don’t really see any substance there. It showcases standard gender roles (females as sexual, males as physically active) and defines change according to what kinds of clothes can be consumed.

Zwinky

Also notice in this screen grab from the site’s opening page how the boy gazes upon the girl, repeating the typical trope of the female as sexual object to be consumed by the male predator.

Sorry to be so puritanical, but Zwinkyland strikes me as a little bogus.

I touch, therefore I am

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Iphone-Touching

If you have any doubt about the deity-sized ego of Apple CEO Steven Jobs, this ad is proof that the iPhone now wants to replace God. I joked in a previous post that by making iPhone a keyword it doubled my Web traffic. But it was true. Yet AdAge reports that sales are not living up to the hype (article may be behind registration wall). But if you are God, nothing will.

The ad is an unmistakable reference to Michelangelo‘s “Creation of Man” image of the human finger touching God. Originally that was a conceit of the Renaissance that humanism would replace God as the central focus of society. Here we leap to a screen that enters us into heteropotic space– the in-between not here-nor-there of cyberspace. The image of the map on the iPhone screen indicates that with our fingers we have full control of the globe, the world at our fingertips, literally. But of course one company intends to mediate that experience: Apple. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is probably a great toy and as soon as the price drops by a few hundred bucks and ATT is no longer the sole provider I’ll probably get one. (Disclosure: I use and recommend Apple products and also advertise them here, but it doesn’t mean I won’t be critical of them).

The ad also reveals an emerging bias of contemporary culture: the tactile is replacing sight as the central sensory experience of our age. This is not to say sight isn’t a kind of “touching,” but more and more our bodies are getting involved with new media, whether it is with joysticks or wifi controllers. In general, I’d say that is a good thing, because the mind-body dichotomy has really gotten us into a dualistic heap of a mess. With the iPhone, “I think therefore I am” becomes “I touch therefore I am.” Too bad Descartes didn’t deploy more of his senses. Maybe our scientific revolutions would have had earth as a partner rather than as a specimen reduced to a field of visual objects that can be reduced and cataloged into conquerable parts.

I end with Paul Virilio, who observes that terminals, be they where airplanes and buses arrive and depart from or computer interfaces, are both entry and exit points:

Each surface is an interface between two environments that is ruled by a constant activity in the form of an exchange between the two substances placed in contact with one another…. What used to be the boundary of a material, its ‘terminus,’ has become an entryway hidden in the most imperceptible entity. From here on, the appearance of surfaces and superficicies conceals a secret transparency, a thickness without thickness, a volume without volume, an imperceptible quantity…. As with live televised events, the places become interchangeable at will.” (The Lost Dimension, p. 17)

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Celebrities colonize Africa

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This article was sitting in my backlog, so I thought I’d shoot it out there. I had read some interesting critiques of the Vanity Fair Africa issue that confirmed my suspicion that the goodwill gesture of celebrities to highlight problems in Africa was furthering the racist construct that Africans cannot speak for themselves (Boing Boing had some great links). Additionally, there is a problem of thinking about “Africa” as one monolithic concept when in truth it is a highly diverse continent that is rich with so many different cultures and perspectives.

What Bono doesn’t say about Africa – Los Angeles Times (this may require registration to view):

JUST WHEN IT SEEMED that Western images of Africa could not get any weirder, the July 2007 special Africa issue of Vanity Fair was published, complete with a feature article on “Madonna’s Malawi.” At the same time, the memoirs of an African child soldier are on sale at your local Starbucks, and celebrity activist Bob Geldof is touring Africa yet again, followed by TV cameras, to document that “War, Famine, Plague & Death are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and these days they’re riding hard through the back roads of Africa.”

It’s a dark and scary picture of a helpless, backward continent that’s being offered up to TV watchers and coffee drinkers. But in fact, the real Africa is quite a bit different. And the problem with all this Western stereotyping is that it manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of some current victories, fueling support for patronizing Western policies designed to rescue the allegedly helpless African people while often discouraging those policies that might actually help.

Deconstruction is fun

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Kool
Click here to how this ad is deconstructed

Ever wanted to deconstruct an ad but don’t know how? The New Mexico Media Literacy Project has some sample ads with decontructions and instructions to give you a sense of the how to do it. Click here to see the gallery. You can also download my free media literacy handouts here.

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Stupor Bowl ads: disquiet on the home front

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Bud-Ax

Forget Bush’s State of the Union, you can measure the mood of the United States by assessing the vibe of the Super Bowl, and if yesterday’s game was any indication, Americans are feeling contrite. Unlike past annual spectacles, especially those produced by Fox, the patriotic mood was noticeably muted. With the exception of the requisite flyover of stealth fighters, there was little of the rah-rah-rah that is so typical of our Capitalist May Day parade. The militaristic tendencies of pre-game shows almost feel embarrassing considering our historical hubris. America is weeping inside.

The commercials were noticeably blah. Unlike previous years, violence guised as physical humor was considerably diminished, though it remained ambient in a ubiquitous way. The volume was substantially turned down on the misogyny, though Bud Light certainly did its share to tip the balance. There is a big uproar about the Snickers ad, which apparently advocates violence against homosexuals. I missed that one, but you can read about it here.

In a system predicated on novelty, consumer produced ads were the one unusual element, a nod to the Web 2.0 consumer-as-producer phenomena that is threatening to dislodge network television’s primacy. Still, there was hardly anything challenging or interesting about these “democratic” ad products. Same old, same old.

Perhaps still reeling from Janet Jackson’s mammary (funny how a breast gets so much more attention than depleted uranium poisoning caused by US weapons), CBS did what ever possible to avoid overtly politicizing the event or involving potentially embarrassing artists, Prince being a safe, professional half-time act that provided all the soothing, feel-good energy necessary to assuage our fears that we are in the midst of a disastrous war and presidency. The tepid and safe is a sure sign that on the home front all is disquiet.

Some links:

An ad chart highlight acts of violence.

This NYT commentary discusses the cartoonish violence of the ads but its interactive multimedia chart(which I find quite useful because it shows how tech is outpacing auto ads), does not list in its subject categories “violence” or “misogyny,” which goes to show that if you don’t categorize it, it must not exist.

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Forecasting media weather

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Weatherman

“You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows,”
Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan

Eat The Press | Fox Takes Fair And Balanced Look At Weather “War”…With One Side | The Huffington Post:

FNC’s “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocey did a piece on the “War over the Weather” this morning in advance of Friday’s United Nations report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with guest Sen. James Inhofe, ranking minority member on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (and formerly its highly underqualified chair), so Inhofe could once again hold forth on his views on climate change and global warming, namely, that it’s entirely normal and natural and not at all a man-based problem and anyone who suggests otherwise is a nefarious tool of the radical left. For his part, Doocey offered leading questions which also called out the “left wing”, creating a segment that was actually not at all unlike an informercial.

Does The Weather Channel (TWC) have a political agenda? Well, yes. It’s a business and makes money from advertising. But when Fox News Channel (FNC) accuses it of a “far left agenda” because its meteorologists acknowledge global warming, the implication of the finger pointers is that they are free of their own bias. I never thought weather could become a Rorschach test of ideology, but I suppose in a Stalinist political environment, anything is possible. For a clear understanding of how the FNC gyroscope is spun by Republican operatives, filmmaker Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed documentary is an excellent case study of how precisely reality can be constructed by a news agency. Debunking the human contribution to global warming is akin to viewing humans as beings who eat but never excrete.

You need a weatherman to tell which way the digital wind blows

TWC represents itself through multiple segments and the ads it sells. But for the sake of analysis, I’ll focus on the network’s chief communicator, the weatherperson.

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The beauty patch

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Nicodermcq


Who could have imagined five years ago that nicotine patches would compete with commercial tobacco companies for attention and ad dollars. Moreover, in a strange twist of fate, the product is shopped as a beauty aid. But there you have it. This ad is also in line with the trend to use deconstruction techniques as a persuasion tool. If you are a teacher, you may want to use this to compare with a cigarette ad in your classroom to promote a discussion about beauty as a sales instrument.

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Product placement planet

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As the New York Times recently reported, companies are creating their own films, TV networks and “webasodes” under the rubric of “branded content.” The fact that I am writing about it is a tribute to the “marketability” of the concept. People ignore ads, so this is part of the commercial backlash to wire your eyes and ears. Until the novelty wears off, keep a look out for the ridiculous and sublime. With news of Anheuser-Busch’s soon-to-come BudTV (or should we call it “MisogynyTVforTeens”?), I’m loath to predict “reality” TV shows that in a real alternate reality would be called things like “Hangover Island,” “STD Survivor,” or “DWI Date Rape.” OK, so I’m a little off color here. But extreme times call for excessive parody.

Call it product placement planet in which all things brand are reality. This is the future of marketing, and the future is now. Don’t be surprised, though, because “brand channels” are the ultimate logical progression of a commercialized media system. After all, isn’t every advertisement also a compact, self-evident, self-contained ideological lesson plan on the merits and wonders of the commodities system?

One example that is worthy of a closer look (thank you media gods!) is instantdef.com, Snickers’ version of one of these self-contained brand universes proliferating the Web. I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while, so I’m sure it’s value as a viral meme has already been sapped as it has ebbed and flowed through the sea of marketing cool. But here goes. If you are an educator, I recommend this site as one of those great “teachable moments” that appears more often than not these days. Continue reading →

A wolf in doves clothes?

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Click here to view video.

You have to hand it to the commodities system for being so effective at absorbing dissent. But also credit the media literacy movement for making the misrepresentation of beauty in commercial media a contentious issue. For over a year now Dove has been running its “Real Beauty” campaign, the above video being its latest salvo. But this needs to fall under the “buyer beware” category. When an advertisement uses deconstruction as its sales technique, it’s a sign that the industry is getting increasingly sophisticated in its ability to deflect criticism.

Advertisers are well aware of our skepticism regarding the claims of commercials. It’s a tribute to our evolving critical engagement skills, but also an indication of the shallowness of commercialized culture. There is no dampening the human spirit when it comes to intuitively comprehending manipulation and false spiritual assertions, and advertisers are constantly searching for ways to circumvent and counter our innate resistance to such deceit. Continue reading →

Evil Muslim kids will destroy us

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Evil Muslim Kids

Here’s an image from the New York Post editorial: “A Dark Globalism.” It was the featured image in the print version. You have to click through the embedded slide show to get to the picture. It reminds me of the wicked kid trope in recent horror films, as if Muslim children are inherently evil. This is another example of how the so-called “war on terror” (a term that seems less in vogue these days) is ideologically reduced to a horror movie.

Weekly Deconstruction: The “Me” Market

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Me-marketI found something kinda creepy about this ad. Here we have a pluralistic panel of various demographics with each person donning a t-shirt inscribed with “me,” presumably as a way of appreciating the uniqueness of our highly individualized society. The ad copy states:

“Find your target with Boston Globe Media. From a narrow target segment to the full sweep of the Boston market, Boston Globe Media can deliver your audience.”

Then it offers a rollover tool to “learn more about our audience” (emphasis mine). So, despite the faux celebration of the hypermediated “me,” the “me” really is not an empowered individual but a nameless data pattern in a market segment defined by the Boston Globe. What the company wants to do is sell its audience; there is nothing “me” about it when your identity is bought and sold by corporations.